Gospel Identity, Part 4 // Jesse Vaught // Tiana Miller-Jackson // Amy Joyner

This sermon was recorded at a Sunday morning gathering at Church of the Lookout in Longmont, Colorado.

Speakers — Jesse Vaught, Tiana Miller-Jackson, Amy Joyner

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Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast.

SPEAKER_06 0:24

Welcome to all the guests. If this is your first time to church or first time in a long time. So good to have you. About 20 years ago, you should know, I moved out to Colorado from Indiana, just a small town Midwest boy. I moved out here with long hair, a guitar, and little sense of how the world actually worked. And somehow I was recruited to come to a ministry training internship here at the church at the time called Ninth Hour. I did not have a 10-year plan. I didn't have a five-year plan. I barely had a two-week plan. Okay. I'm surprised I even got out here. And uh and I came out and and and the all I really had was a yes in my heart towards God. I think I want to give my life to whatever you have for me. And I think that involves serving your church. Came out here for uh did a ministry training internship for a couple years, and uh slowly after that um began began to uh come on staff here at the church in the youth department and worship and just anything. I it's just one of those things you'll find if you stick around church world long enough, people start handing you microphones, okay? And uh and that's that's what I found. Actually, really, what it was was uh over time people began to see in me things that I didn't yet see in myself. And and one of those people is here today, and I want to honor this morning Pastor Walt and Brit that are with us this morning. Pastor Walt Robertson. We they deserve your honor this morning. Thank you. We honor you. He was my pastor out here, and and we he he's worthy of of honor because we wouldn't be here. None of us would be here outside of his labor in ministry and in prayer and holding a space for the presence of the Lord. We thank you, Pastor Walt. Thank you. We honor you, and it's good to have you with us, Brent, as well, and and the family. And uh, it's a good day this morning. If you've been with us the last couple weeks, we've we've been exploring what it means to live out of our gospel identity and uh and what that means. Uh every one of us, every single one of us, is born with a craving to discover who we really are. It's something that's hardwired into us. It's actually a God-given impulse to settle into, to know who we really are. And there's all kinds of ways that we attempt to figure that out. We can try to find our identity through work and performance, through our achievement, through accolades, um, through relationships, through social status, through self-expression, through just kind of paving our own road and deciding who we want to be. But the scriptures show us that our deepest identity starts with a clear view of who God is and what he has done. And when we see God, it fundamentally transforms how we see ourselves and our identity. Identity is not something that we have to go out and find. Here's what we're leaning into today. It's a gift as we that we receive as we walk in relationship with the Father and the Son and the Spirit. And I believe that that's what he wants to do this morning. I believe that's what he's already been doing. Maybe you're sitting here feeling loved by the Father, and that's purposeful. He wants you to experience his love as you look to him. Yesterday we concluded a 21-day fast as a church, and what we were fasting wasn't just food. We were actually fasting anything that would compete for our attention. That was the invitation that went out 21 days ago let's fast for from anything that seems to be clogging up our mental pathways and vying for our attention, which, as you know, there are a lot of things that we pay attention to. And some of you entered that journey with us, and part of it was to make room to renew our minds of the Word of God. How many of you know that we, if we're not intentionally discipled by Jesus, we will be discipled by the world? Somebody say amen to that. Because what we give our attention to does transform us. I want to read a passage this morning. 2 Corinthians 3, 17 through 18. You're gonna hear this a couple times this morning. And I want to read this. In fact, let's read it together, if you would join me. Now the Lord is spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. So again, we were made to behold the face of God. And in the beholding of the face, there's a transformation that actually happens when we behold the face of God. And this morning we're gonna share a little bit of some train about transformation. We believe transformation isn't possible just in the past. It's not just about having a story that you can refer to in the past, it's a life of living as we behold the face of the one who's revealed himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ. And so this morning, we are going to invite, we're gonna do something we haven't done in quite some time. Uh, we're changing up the format to host what we're calling a family table. And I've invited three of our leaders here at the Lookout to bring stories of transformation in their own lives in the form of three short talks. And so, in just a minute, I'm gonna have you help me welcome Jesse Vaught and Tiana Miller-Jackson and Amy Joyner as they bring the word this morning. Yeah, I I said just a minute. I said just a minute. Save it, save it, just a minute, I said. And we're leaning into identity. This is all part of this runway we're on. Next week, we're starting a longer teaching series called Sex, Love, and Jesus. And we're gonna talk about talks about things like sex, like singleness, like marriage, like our bodies and our gender, and entering into a vision for sexuality that could actually change the world. So, you know, just light and easy topics like that. Um, but we have to do it, and we're gonna do it. And it's gonna be a it's gonna be a great time over the next several weeks. So you want to be here next week for that. But we're concluding our our our this thematic, this renewing of our minds and just the entering into the identity given to us by God by hearing three stories today. I in personally invited these three speakers this morning, um, not just because they're good at speaking, but it's because of their character, it's because of the genuine and honest pursuit of the Lord. It's the way they serve this church. It's they don't love the microphone and they don't love the stage. They each have a desire, though, to use their voice to proclaim the truth of the gospel. And today I want to invite you, you're gonna hear three short talks this morning, and then we're gonna have a time of response. I just want to invite you, you're not here, you're not here to listen. You are here to receive the word of the Lord. And what that means is you're not passively listening to admire what somebody on the stage is saying. You are you're opening your ears to ask the question, God, what do you want to say to me today? What are you saying to us? And I want to invite you this morning, if you have your Bibles, use your Bibles. If you have a notebook, write down anything that you hear that feels like an invitation from God to you this morning. Okay? If you don't have a notebook, just open your phone to the notes app. Just write down anything that you hear this morning that God is speaking to you so that you can remember it and that you can respond to it. We want to be not only be hearers of the word, but doers of the word. Amen. So, that being said, you're gonna hear from Jesse Vaught, Tiana Miller Jackson, Amy Joyner this morning. They're part of the family here, and I want you to join me in welcoming uh these three all together right now. So let's we're gonna start with Jesse Vaught, but you can give a hand for all of them. Let's go.

SPEAKER_03 9:01

Yeah, like Luke said, we're wrapping up this 21-day fast, and uh it would be really cool if I could just um pass the microphone around the room and and hear some of the transformation stories that those of you who participated in the fast have undergone. Uh it would be fascinating. No doubt there's quite a few cool things that have happened over the last three weeks, yeah? And who doesn't love a great story of transformation, right? We all love it. Even in popular culture movies, a transformation story is a sure recipe for uh for a winning movie, right? You've got uh private uh Steve Rogers, skinny scrawny, becomes Captain America. Uh you've got uh think of another one, the uh movie The Pursuit of Happiness, where Will uh Smith plays uh Chris Gardner, a single dad who's homeless and broke and becomes through his transformation the CEO of a multi-million dollar brokerage. Rags to riches, weak to strong, lonely to loved, sick to healed, anxious to peaceful, irritable to kind, these are the stories that we love. But what happens if we feel like we don't have a story of our own to tell? What if we reflect on our life, our reality, our circumstances, our attitudes, our behaviors, and we don't see the transformation that we hope for? Maybe we we do have a story of transformation, but it's in the past, so long ago that we feel a little bit like a fraud to even bring it up in today, um, especially when we see others around us with fresh stories. Uh or maybe rather in the past, your your transformation story is just one hoped for, one yearned for, one in the future, so far in the future, maybe that you've practically given up on it ever happening. For me, personally, I find it quite interesting, quite a god thing, that I would be up here myself talking about this topic. Uh in my in myself, in my flesh, I feel inadequate to speak of transformation. So, what do you do when you not only don't feel transformed but feel unformed, or maybe even like I do at times, transformed in the wrong direction? Several years ago, I was the pastor of a church that my wife and I and a few of my friends who are visiting today planted and served in for 12 years. It was a great story itself. And it it was wrapped around many individual stories of transformation. So that's all cool, but that was then. When reflecting on my life now, looking for some story of transformation that I could share with you, all I heard was discouraging words. In fact, when Luke asked me to do this, um it brought up all kinds of swirl for me. I had so we just finished the renew your mind fast. I had a uh renewal crisis. Um actually, I crawled up underneath a blanket of shame, hid in the dark from all the pressures to perform, clutching tightly to my box of failures. And that can happen, right? Um we might think, well, I'm not like Luke, or I'm not like Piper, or I'm not like anybody that you might see up here in the light, or or I haven't experienced a miracle like the ones I've heard about. Or I still sin. Uh I haven't had a breakthrough yet from that sin. And and and as I was uh hiding under my uh in my darkness, something really profound happened, and it happened really quickly, which is very cool. God brought his big dad hand right into the center of my shame and reaching for my box of failures, he said, here, let me get that for you. And today, I really, really want to tell you and convey to you how he did that for me. I want each and every one of you to know the glory that's spoken of in 2 Corinthians 3, 7 through 18. And specifically the verse that God highlighted to me as he reached his fatherly hand into my darkness with the light of this verse, 2 Corinthians 3 17. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. In that one phrase, all of my performance anxiety just kind of whoop melted away because I recognized the truth that God was reminding me of that the spirit is with me, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. What that means is that if the spirit is here, the freedom is here. And what that meant to me in that moment is that because as a believer in Jesus as my Savior, the Spirit lives in me. And I am free. With the gospel, the message of salvation in Christ, with the gospel, there is now an identity truth that you simply cannot shake, even if you are a wreck. Even if you are detransformed, even if you are a has-been or disqualified or haven't arrived yet, if your life feels flat or dull with nothing amazing to share, where the Spirit is, there is liberty. This is a liberty that brings a glory that unlike a glory that fades and needs a recharge, or a story that happened, but now you need a new story, or you keep reflecting on the old story and talk it up a little bit, maybe the fish grows a little bigger. This glory is persistent, it's never fading. The context of this verse is a comparison of the ministry of condemnation with the ministry of the Spirit. It recounts how Moses would cover his face with a veil, a literal veil, to hide the fact that his shining face was fading. He had a glory experience, he had a transformation experience, but it didn't last, and he didn't want people to see the fade. Do we hide from our fade? Let me be more specific. Do you hide from your fade? Do you ever crawl under a shame blanket like I did? Or do you ever crawl under a desire for approval blanket? Or do you ever crawl under a, no, I actually am a big shot blanket? And do you make a vow to prove that to everyone, or are you resigned to the fact that you're not? Whatever your darkness is, guess what God does? He reaches right through that and he says, Here, let me get that for you. The passage says that that veil is lifted by Christ. Jesus has removed the veil for all those who receive Him. He provides a glory that does not fade. It's a glory that's not dependent on circumstance. It does not come and go. It dwells within the believer from the moment of acceptance of that saving message all the way to our final breath and our entrance into heaven. This glory, this freedom, is not waiting on you to arrive. It does not need you to have a shiny story to tell, although we do love those stories. And there are plenty to tell. But hear this. That glory is not dependent on that. Hear this. That freedom, that glory is not dependent on a sign. It is not lessened by the lack of a sign. It is all around us. It is in the tedious activities of life. It's in the dishes. It's in the laundry. It's in the studies. It's in the drives. It's in the conversations. It is everywhere. And it does not, it is not on you to make it happen. Let me read the next verse. But we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. You see, the problem that I had is I was looking in the mirror and I was seeing me. I didn't like what I saw. I wanted people to not see what I saw. I wanted them to see something different. And I'm not saying, too, by the way, that we shouldn't examine ourselves. And the problem isn't in examining, the problem is in ignoring the gospel when we examine. Trying to fix our shame by performing our way out of it. That produced great pressure in me. You may not, you may be like me and want to perform your way out of that. Um, but there's other ways that this hits you too. Some of you may just be resigned to it. Yep, I'm a failure. Always will be. I'm just accepting it. I know my place. I'm not like them. I haven't experienced that. I'm happy for them. Maybe we even invest our hope in um the transformation of others. Maybe our kid or our business, or we get behind a cause, or we join something. So I I would like to um uh try something, and it will be easy. Uh, I'd like you to think for a second about what you see. And and I might suggest that even um that we sit on the ground. You're you're already sitting, but I sat in in my mind, actually kind of crisscross, and for me, I was literally under this blanket of shame, kind of staring at my my box of failures. And and I would love if you guys seriously can can move around, find a spot. If you're in your seat and you don't want to get out on the open floor, then then just just take a bow. And I I I would like, and and I'm not forcing you to do this, but I would like to invite you into just checking in with what you see when you look in the mirror. Probably something happens very quickly. You probably hear something very, very quickly. Did you know that? Moses he used this veil when he was out in public. He was thinking about what people were seeing when they were looking at him. What do they see? What what do you see right now? And in Exodus 34 it says uh verse 34 when whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would take the veil off. Whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would take the veil off. You see, before before the Lord's presence, Moses didn't feel the need for the veil. Can you imagine going into a one-on-one with Yahweh? Jehovah God, Almighty? Not only is that true for us now, it's true for us in a much more profound and permanent way. Now where the Spirit is, there is freedom. With the Spirit in us, Christ has lifted the veil. And so now when we look in the mirror, we see his glory. We raise the veil without shame because we're standing face to face now, not sitting in our shame, but standing face to face, beholding as in a mirror, the glory of God Himself looking back at us. I look in the mirror and I see God looking back at me. That transforms me into the same image. When I gaze into the image of the Father and I see his characteristics, his attributes, it reflects back and it transforms me into the same image. What image is it? Is it what you were looking at when you sat down? Or is it when you're looking at when Christ lifts the veil and you see the Father? What are you looking at when you look in the mirror? That is what brings transformation. So this week, you'll probably have some moments like I did a renewal crisis. Uh it might come in the form of some fear before uh a responsibility, or maybe you'll notice um some irritability in the response to somebody. I I don't know what I don't want to tread too much on what the Lord spoke to you as you reflect on what you see. But when that happens this week, can you ask who's in the mirror right now? Who or what am I looking at? If you notice that it's you, uh which uh it probably will be because we're human and we look in the mirror a lot, hopefully. Um but spend a moment to let the Lord remind you of who he is. Is that something that we can try? Even just that little exercise we did of sitting on the floor and and picturing what we see and then visualizing the lifting of that veil so that we can meditate on who he is and what he has done, so that in that place of presence and companionship with him, we can know who we are, and then we can get up and because of that hope that is in us, we can speak boldly and we can move forward boldly.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

You the best. Hi guys, I'm just gonna jump right in to my story. Okay, it was July 2016. I was on a flight to Southeast Asia. Now I had only ever been to Singapore, this is where I was flying to, once for a layover, and now I was moving there for the next few years. So I'd been accepted to this doctorate engineering program from the National University of Singapore, and the Lord had led me there with crazy open doors and provision and signs, and I was so bursting with excitement for what I was gonna see and experience, and I was feeling this sense of hope over what I could accomplish through my degree, and also a lot of excitement around the people that I would meet and the new community that I would make to share all this exciting stuff with. The first few weeks were definitely exciting, but something came along with this pioneering excitement, and that was loneliness. So I would spend a lot of nights alone in my dorm room, like just wishing that the time zone change wasn't as far so that I could call someone from back home. It was a little rough. See, before moving, I lived with some of my best friends, and my awesome family was nearby. So I never lacked to just find someone to spend time with if I wanted to spend time with someone. So this was a lot different for me. Even though I was meeting people, they weren't letting me into their lives. And even though I was making acquaintances and friends, it wasn't those seasoned friends that you can call when you're crying, or I could tell them that school was hard, it was just different. And by the way, school had gotten really hard. So by now, by now it was my second year, and I'd given up a lot of my social time to just be at school. I was spending most of my waking hours during the week at school working on this big project, which was a huge part of my grade for my degree. And it was during that time that I had a meeting with my supervisor, and he basically said I wasn't meeting the standard, and that if I continued, you know, on this trajectory, I wouldn't be able to pass the program. So I was really devastated. And as you can imagine, if I was here, I would have called someone up, probably someone in this room, ranted, gone to their house, cried on their shoulder. But I wasn't here, I was there, and I was alone. So that night I went out to this uh terrace place at my dorm where I would go pray, and I was just talking to God. And I did believe that God was there. I believe that his presence was there in a conceptual sense, like, okay, God's everywhere, he's here, he can hear me talking. But for some reason that wasn't bringing me any comfort in the moment, just knowing that God's around, you know, like the way that the air is there. So yeah, I just sat there and I wasn't sure what to do. Have you ever felt alone? Loneliness is defined as mental or emotional unease or discomfort from being or perceiving yourself to be alone. Loneliness comes down to our perception and our experience. It comes down to us feeling connected or not. I thought that was interesting, that it's a lot in the eyes of the beholder. If you're like me, you believe God's there, but do you still feel lonely sometimes? Have you ever felt alone in a crowd of people? Although you're there, you're not really being seen, and maybe it doesn't feel like your presence or absence would matter. Have you ever felt alone because you're carrying something really difficult that other people couldn't understand? And maybe they couldn't enter into it and carry it with you, so there's a feeling of loneliness over that. Have you ever been in church? Like this morning, and everybody's happy and everybody's smiling, and families are going up to take communion together, but you're alone. It can feel pretty heavy. Many of us feel this loneliness in spite of being believers that God's with us. So, what do we do there? I want to look at this scripture, a character named David. Now he's someone God spoke really highly of, and he's someone that we're directed to follow as a godly example. We know that David believed God was everywhere because he wrote in Psalm 139, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. So basically, God, you're everywhere. But we also know that David still felt lonely because he wrote some other things. Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor. How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my own soul and have sorrow in my heart all day? How long shall my enemy enemy be exalted over me? Or Psalm 25. Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I'm lonely and afflicted. This is a good one. Psalm 22. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning? Oh my God, I cry to you by day, but you do not answer. And by night, but I find no rest. This is in the Bible, guys. But I'm a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind, despised by the people. Okay, to be honest, when I used to read these verses, I just kind of glaze over them like maybe David's having a moment. This doesn't really make sense theologically. Because we know that David believes God's everywhere, and we also know that he believes that God knows his thoughts. Because he says also in Psalm 139, you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. So what is going on here? If David believes God's with him, if David believes God knows his thoughts, why is he saying, God, where are you? You're not with me. Why is he telling God all of his thoughts? So can I submit to you that in doing all this that David was letting God in? That he was letting God into that place of loneliness that he was feeling. He wasn't telling God something he didn't know, but he was being vulnerable to say, here's where I'm at, here's what I'm feeling. And by opening himself that way and just being really raw and honest and not and unedited and not theologically correct, he's just letting God in. And isn't that the way that we speak to our close friends or maybe a spouse? We don't think about if it's correct, we just here I am, here's where I am. And isn't that how we actually receive the comfort from being real like that? Okay, so back to my story. So I was sitting on the balcony, and I was like, okay, hold on, let me move this. And I was like, Lord, I don't feel any comfort from this situation. I know you're my provider. You're sure not providing me the strength to get through this program right now, so that's not very comforting. And for some reason I had this idea, and I said, God, I know that you're perfect, that you don't make mistakes, and you're working everything for good, but can you just step outside that for a second? Because I really need a friend. Can you just be a friend to me right now? And I pulled up another chair next to me physically, and I just started talking, and I said to my friend, what's up with God right now? Like, I'm so frustrated that He's not doing what I want, and I'm here, I'm giving my everything. He led me here, I'm so confused, and I just let it out like I would vent to a friend. Probably look like a crazy person on this balcony from people looking down. I didn't care in that moment, you can believe. But something amazing happened. The Lord showed up as a friend to me in that moment, and all the feelings that I would feel from sharing this with someone, inventing to someone, I felt that comfort. I received that comfort. And I was like, wow, God, I didn't know that you could be this way to me. So before that, I saw God as a concept, but in that moment, he became a companion to me. I didn't know that he could be emotionally available to me and that he'd want to be with me in the process, but that's how he showed up. I want to say it was almost like, have you ever had a gadget or a new car? And you find this feature that you didn't know it had, and you're like, that's cool. It was like, whoa, I didn't know our relationship had this feature. Um, I've been missing out. This is so awesome. So going back to the scriptures, we see all over the Gospels that John, um, I mean, that Jesus approached people with compassion. He was stirred with compassion when he would interact with people. And the Holy Spirit has that same level of compassion for us. I'm saying this because I thought, is this too good to be true? Like this sounds so nice, but is this true? And we see we see it all over scripture, the Lord interacting with people this way. In 1 Peter 5 7, it says, cast all your anxieties on God because he cares for you. This is interesting, right? It doesn't say just think about the fact that God's making everything work for good and just fuck up and get through it. It says tell him what you're feeling in that moment, tell him about your anxieties in that moment. He doesn't just want to meet you over here when he brings a solution, when he brings the victory, and it's rah-rah, but like what about all this in between? He wants to meet you there, he wants to be with you in that process until then, as a friend. Even if the circumstances haven't changed yet, he wants to meet you there. And what changed for me there was that I wasn't alone anymore. And that's what the Lord wants to bring us. He wants to be God with us in every single area of our life, in every single circumstance. So for me, that was a paradigm shift, that was a transformation, and maybe it is for you. I feel like there might be some people in this room who are thinking, all right, I don't know if the Lord wants to be there for me, though. He does. And there might be those of you thinking, I don't know if the Lord wants to hear me whining and my crying and the little things that bother me or the things I'm anxious about. No, he does. He wants to hear every single thing from you. It's precious to him, it's a connection point with him. So for me, God led me to that place of loneliness to give me this gift of companionship. And it's one of the most precious things that I have now is this relationship with the Lord. To continue the story, I passed the program, some other miracles. Thanks. Thanks. Um, and I moved back to Colorado, and guess what? That was hard too. Surprise! Like I was shocked. I thought it was gonna be so easy, but now I was someone different, and this was a different place, and I needed to meet the Lord in companionship again because he was there with me and he understood everything, so he became my companion in a new way. And at the moment, you know, I have this engineering degree that we just heared about, and I don't have an engineering job, you know, it's kind of confounding to a lot of people that talk to me, they don't understand it. So that's my current walk with the Lord of companionship. Like, Lord, you know where I'm at. Other people think that I'm crazy, but here we are. So, all that to say, I believe that the Lord has this for all of us, that he wants to invite each of us into that place. And if it's something that you've never stepped into before, I just want to challenge you this week to just share something with the Lord that that feels frivolous, that feels silly, that feels like something he maybe wouldn't care about. Just try it. If you're already someone seasoned in this that tells the Lord everything, go a little deeper. I want to challenge you. I feel like the Lord always has more for us, always has more ways to connect with us than we're even aware of. So I'm gonna pray. Lord, I pray that anyone who wants this, this friendship with you, God, this connection with you, emotionally in friendship, that you'll release it to them. And I just want to invite you, if you're comfortable, to hold out your hands if you want to receive this. No pressure if you don't, but it's just a physical participation. I'm a big fan of those. Lord, I release the spirit of intimacy and connection with you that will blow them away. God, I release the ability to be so vulnerable with you. That would let you into the deepest places, God. That they could experience you as that friend that they've always longed for, the one who knows them fully, the one who's always there, the one who understands them completely, the one they can just unload their burdens to, God. I pray for a lifting of burdens this week and this next season as we're stepping into this. I just pray for opportunities and moments this week, God, for each of us to share something with you. Whether it's heavy or whether it's a joke, whether it's something that we find funny, that we just share with you, Lord, and have have that space with you. Because Lord, we know that ought-to's can be abandoned and that conceptual knowledge of you can be shaken. But this love relationship, this connection, this deep knowing is what's gonna hold us, what's gonna hold us steadfast in our faith to the end, God. So we ask for that. We ask you to give us a vision to fight for that, God. For that deep intimacy and friendship with you. And I pray that it would be our friendship with you would be strengthened like never before. In Jesus' name. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 41:15

Hello. Hey. It's a pattern I noticed last year in my life. I get really angry when I don't feel protected by those that should be protecting me. I get really triggered by poor leadership. I want to shake controlling husbands because they're not laying their life down. I want to get to the woman's heart who does not know what it means to build her spouse up. I just want you to know, Joey Joyner is A plus. Love him. But it's a trigger for me. And it kept coming up in my life in various moments. And the most frustrating thing is I would get angry and I would be in a moment that I knew was a God-given moment. Like maybe I had gone through a season where, and I have gone through seasons where I literally felt blown up from the inside out. And I'm not talking about one thing, I'm talking about multiple deaths in my life. I'm talking about loss of of community, I'm talking about being alone in another state. And so when you know Jesus, like Tiana's talking about, and Jesse, when you know the presence of the Lord, you know that once you can enter in, he can renew your heart. My husband asked me, why is this transformation topic so important to you this week? He was like trying to help me not criticize me. And I said, Because it's the single handed, the ministry of the Holy Spirit and the transformation of God is this single handed tool. It's like this tool in the toolbox of the full armor of God that has kept me on pure footing, like no matter where I. And if I don't know how to tap into the presence of the Lord, I'm stalemated. And if I can just if the enemy can just trigger me, my heart leans out. Judgment comes up. Separation comes up. And so sometimes I found myself going around this mountain over and over as a figure of speech. And it it's like I would walk away going, God, I know I prayed about if I was supposed to do this. Father, I know you have your hand on my life. God, when I'm, I would call my dad in this season and I would say, Dad, I don't know what the heck is happening, but I think I'm having a personal revival alone in my car. And somehow I need this to translate corporately. Like I know the nearness of Jesus. But how come when I feel Jesus leading me in to these corporate settings? I am extremely triggered. I feel unsafe and I want to step back out. And I admittedly used it as an excuse to not be who the Lord had created me to be because it was more comfortable in my hiddenness with the Father. And there are some in this room, you are so comfortable in your hiddenness. You know the grace of God. You know He loves you. You're hearing about it, you're curious, but you do not want to deal with the trigger. And I got so frustrated because I felt like it was actually holding me back. I like felt like even though I was justified in my judgment, my justification was holding me back from the fullness that God wanted me to operate in. And I I went to the Lord in prayer multiple times. I processed this with my small group last year, and it it as it turns out, it's a thread through my childhood in various different ways. So I want to encourage you right now to ask the Holy Spirit, God, what are those threads that are tripping me up? And and I was in this moment of prayer. I'm literally like, God, I'm so frustrated. Like, why can't Luke just be a better pastor? I'm just joking, it wasn't like sorry, Luke and I are friends. But I am so frustrated. God, why don't I feel protected? Where are the moms? Where are the fathers of the house? And the Holy Spirit said to me, Amy, don't you know I have led you to each and every one of those moments? Because you are empowered with the Holy Spirit, and I want you, instead of stepping out and embracing your judgment and your woundedness and your disappointment, instead of stepping out, I want you to step in and say, Holy Spirit, what are you saying right here? Something's off. Am I to pray? Am I to speak to it? What are you doing? And it's something that can only happen when the Holy Spirit is speaking. But all the wounds I had ever felt from my father to my leaders, to my pastors, to my friends, everybody that I felt never protected me or those that I loved. All of a sudden, I felt forgiveness. And I felt revelation of who God has called me to be. Mothers and fathers, if you do not deal with those few things, and we all have them in our family, if you do not kick down spiritually and go let the heart of the father minister to it and walk in it, your kids are gonna have to. Guys, church, get out of your judgment. Pay attention to the patterns in your life. Let the Holy Spirit lead you because it's like we're a new creation. Romans 12:2 says, do not be conformed to the ways of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. That is when we come into salvation, but it's a daily renewal. The power of the Holy Spirit has set me free from depression. It has silenced tension, chaos, and arguments in my home. It has healed my womb. I have uh 10-year-old triplets here. And guys, I could I'll tell you offstage their testimony, but they would not be here without the leading of the Holy Spirit. They are a living miracle in my life. And guys, it's not just for me. Like, I see, I wanna, like I see some of you in here, and I see the anointing on your life, but you're really comfortable and you're not stepping out. There is mamas in the house, and you've been burnt out, and you're like, I'm not doing that again. And that's fine, that's your choice, but you're gonna leave the spiritual transaction to take place for your children. And guys, it's a really good, good journey with the Father. So there's two sets of people in this room. There's those of you that you you know God, you've confessed to believe in Jesus Christ, but you're not including him in your comings and goings. You actually don't know, like we say, being empowered by the Holy Spirit. You actually don't live an empowered life. And guys, I I I've shared with you my journey. There's no judgment there. But I believe that the Lord's calling you up, he wants to activate you this morning. And then there's those of you that you are hearing about the Holy Spirit, but you don't quite have any context or you don't know how to physically, day to day, walk that out. And I believe that the whole the Lord wants to fill you with his Holy Spirit, and you all he's looking for is a yes. Something I say daily to my husband is my yes is to Jesus. My yes is to Jesus. If Jesus is saying it, I'll do it. So I'm gonna end with prayer, and Luke's gonna come up and lead us into a ministry time. Father. Jesus, I thank you. I thank you that in my weakness, Lord, that you have been so strong. Holy Spirit, I thank you that you are the great comforter. That you have enlarged my heart when the bad news and bitterness and judgment has come rushing in. God, I bless this house. I bless this region, I bless every denomination. In the name of Jesus, I ask that there would be revival in our nation. I pray that hearts would come alive, and I pray that you would just start here, God, right now, Lord. God, you can have my comings and goings. You can you can have it all, Lord. Because Jesus, your love is better. Your joy is pure. You keep no records of wrong. You qualify us, Lord. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.

SPEAKER_06 54:00

Alright, just across the room. Keep your eyes closed for a moment. We're just gonna give space, just a little breathing room here.

SPEAKER_04 54:12

Invite the Holy Spirit. We walk in you, Holy Spirit. Come, Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_06 55:08

Maybe some of you are here today, and like Amy's saying, you you've noticed a similar pattern. There's there's seasons, there's circumstances where something triggers in your heart. You feel uncomfortable, afraid, unsafe, and you have a tendency to step out, to escape. And you know that God is speaking to you. He's calling you. That's not who I made you to be. I want you to step in, to be who I made you to be, to step into new boldness or confidence. That's gonna be some of us here today. Some of us here today are needing to move from knowing God as a concept to God as a companion. And you've believed in God your entire life, but you've never yet walked in friendship with God because you didn't even realize that was a possibility. I'm telling you, today is your day. God is your friend. He said, No longer do I call you servants, but I call you friends. That's what Jesus said to his disciples. He's saying the same thing to us today. Will you be my friend? Can I be your friend? Some of you here, when you look at an image of yourself in a mirror and you picture yourself looking into your bathroom mirror, you are not a huge fan of what you see. You do not see the glory of God. You see a fading image of a person who once had something going for them, but now is struggling to keep up. Is that the image that you see where is God calling you to reinterpret what you see, to see a glory that is unfading, not because you did something to deserve it, because he made a decision about you through going to his death on a cross to prove to you your worth and your value, to reveal to you a glory that is unfading as God calling you to see a new image in the mirror? Where once where you see darkness, he's calling you to see glory. Is that you today? Is that you today? I want to ask you across the room, I asked you to write down something. If you felt God speak something to your heart this morning, I ask you to write it down. I just want to, across the room, if if God spoke something to your heart this morning through the proclamation of the word, if God spoke something to your heart, would you just stand up across the room? If not, it's okay. You can stay sit, you can stay sitting, it's totally fine. If God spoke something specifically, just stand across the room. This is beautiful. See, there's invitations all across the room. It's not going to be the same invitation. These are different ways that God is meeting us across the room. I want to bless you here today. We just want to welcome God to take what He's doing and to continue His work. So let me pray over us this morning. Jesus, we thank you, God, that you allow us to come as we are, but we never leave as we are, because when we look at you once with unveiled face, you are transforming us from one degree of glory to another. So I bless my brothers and sisters. I bless my friends here today who felt a whisper, even a tug on their hearts today, Lord God. We thank you that that is not a man-made tug. It's not us just working ourselves into an emotional connection, but we thank you, Holy Spirit, that you know exactly what our hearts need to hear. You know a way to our hearts where oftentimes we don't know the way to our own hearts. And I thank you, Lord God, that each person here, whether standing or sitting, God is has been invited to behold you with unveiled face. So I bless your work in each one. We say yes, Holy Spirit. We say yes, Jesus, just use your voice and say yes to God this morning. We say yes, Holy Spirit. Would you take what you've spoken and let it go deeper? God, let your word fall on good soil, Lord Jesus. Not to be not to fall away as soon as our feet hit the parking lot, but to go deeper with us and to work itself inside of us where there are where where there's things that we've heard that we can no longer unhear. There's things that we've seen that we cannot unsee. I thank you, God, that you've made us into a people to reflect your glory. So we bless your glory among your people here today. We thank you, Jesus, and we receive with gratitude all of your work in our hearts. In your own words, can you thank Jesus this morning? We thank you, God. And maybe you're here today and you don't have a relationship with Jesus. Maybe that's something that's just new to you. Maybe you're here this morning, and the whole thing is quite frankly a little strange. It's okay. It's okay. God is mysterious. God invites us into a life that we could never imagine. I just want to invite you here today. Maybe you don't quite know everything that is being said or everything that is being sung or what you're experiencing, but you feel something churning on the inside. I'm just inviting you, do not rush away from whatever is going on inside of you, but just linger for a moment. We're gonna have our ministry team come up front, our prayer ministry team to the front of the room, and maybe some on the sides. You're gonna see a badge on them. And you could take a seat for a moment. You can take a seat. You're gonna see a badge around their necks. And these are people that we trust to pray. And some of you are here, don't even know what you need prayer for. You just need to talk to somebody and just know that someone is here to be with you. And I want to ask you to be bold as we end our time here together to not rush out of the room, but come forward because God is at work and God is here to meet you where you're at. He's a good God. He loves you, he loves us, and he's inviting us into transformation. Don't you love that God does not leave us as we are, but he changes us into his likeness. Who here is excited about that? So, God, we thank you. We thank you again for the abundance of your love. What you supply to us when we need, when we need help, when we need strength, when we need something we lack. We thank you that everything, the riches of heaven and earth are found in you, Jesus. We thank you, God. All right, let's stand together. Let's stand together. And I want to bless us one last time. Here together, and the room's gonna stay open. If you need to come forward to a ministry team, we invite you to do that. If you're new with us and you want to connect, you just look for there's a sign in the back of the room. It's really clear. It just says connect with us. You can follow that sign. We want to meet you. We'd love to, we'd we'd love to meet you and get to know you. Um, and if you have kids, you can go and get them right off the service and bring them back up. But just across the room, would you mind just putting your hands out like this, like you're receiving a gift from the Lord? I'm just gonna bless you. This is a blessing from Scripture. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May He make his face to shine upon you. May He be gracious to you and give you peace. Now go in the strength of the kingdom of God. Love you guys. Have an awesome, awesome day. Blessings.