This sermon was recorded at a Sunday morning gathering at Church of the Lookout in Longmont, Colorado.
Speaker — Luke Humbrecht
Visit Our Website — https://thelookout.church
Take Your Next Step--- https://thelookout.church/connect
Connect with Us --- https://thelookout.church/new
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Embark with us on an intimate odyssey, grounded in the teachings of Jesus Christ, as we seek the essence of discipleship amid the world's chaos. Our latest series invites you to reflect deeply on what it means to be with Him, become like Him, and extend His work into the tumult of today's society. As the political landscape quivers with the uncertainty of an election year, we contemplate how to uphold the pillars of presence, family, and mission, ensuring a life of flourishing within God's kingdom that outshines external turmoil.
The wilderness — both as a physical space and a metaphorical state of being — opens up an expanse for divine encounters and personal transformation. We turn to John the Baptist's example of solitude and embrace the solitude and introspection that are pivotal for spiritual growth. In an era where noise often drowns out clarity, we revere the silence that allows the word of the Lord to resonate within us. The Asbury University awakening stands as a profound illustration of how humility and hiddenness can spark waves of spiritual revival, encouraging a season of quiet and open-heartedness that prepares us for divine revelations.
As our journey culminates, we emphasize the eternal practice of worship and prayer, underscoring the importance of crafting a personal 'wilderness' for communion with God. Alongside our community's commitment to the Bread Bible Reading Plan and a week of unbroken prayer with 24-7 Prayer USA, we extend an invitation for you to weave prayer into your daily life. Let us bless our shared path and nourish a fellowship that cherishes reflection, tranquility, and an unwavering bond with the divine blueprint that guides our existence.
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This sermon was recorded at a Sunday morning gathering at Church of the Lookout in Longmont, Colorado.
Speaker — Luke Humbrecht
Visit Our Website — https://thelookout.church
Take Your Next Step--- https://thelookout.church/connect
Connect with Us --- https://thelookout.church/new
Give to Support the Ministry --- https://thelookout.church/give
Embark with us on an intimate odyssey, grounded in the teachings of Jesus Christ, as we seek the essence of discipleship amid the world's chaos. Our latest series invites you to reflect deeply on what it means to be with Him, become like Him, and extend His work into the tumult of today's society. As the political landscape quivers with the uncertainty of an election year, we contemplate how to uphold the pillars of presence, family, and mission, ensuring a life of flourishing within God's kingdom that outshines external turmoil.
The wilderness — both as a physical space and a metaphorical state of being — opens up an expanse for divine encounters and personal transformation. We turn to John the Baptist's example of solitude and embrace the solitude and introspection that are pivotal for spiritual growth. In an era where noise often drowns out clarity, we revere the silence that allows the word of the Lord to resonate within us. The Asbury University awakening stands as a profound illustration of how humility and hiddenness can spark waves of spiritual revival, encouraging a season of quiet and open-heartedness that prepares us for divine revelations.
As our journey culminates, we emphasize the eternal practice of worship and prayer, underscoring the importance of crafting a personal 'wilderness' for communion with God. Alongside our community's commitment to the Bread Bible Reading Plan and a week of unbroken prayer with 24-7 Prayer USA, we extend an invitation for you to weave prayer into your daily life. Let us bless our shared path and nourish a fellowship that cherishes reflection, tranquility, and an unwavering bond with the divine blueprint that guides our existence.
Visit our website
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on Instagram
Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast. Church of the Lookout is in Boulder, colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in His presence, growing in His family and living on His mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love. Visit us online at thelookoutchurch. Hey, good to see you guys again. So this morning we're gonna do both today and the next couple weeks. We're gonna use this opportunity, as we're starting 2024, to just paint some broad brush strokes of some themes that we believe are gonna be super important as we head into the year together. And as you guys know, you know the driving heartbeat around this community is that our vision is Jesus, and we say it every week. Our vision is Jesus and we say our vision is Jesus, abiding in His presence, growing in His family and living on His mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love. And so, as we start this year, I just want to be clear here with everybody that vision has not changed. All right, the vision is still Jesus. And what that means as a church, as a body of believers, as a family, to say our vision is Jesus, it means that our trust and our hope is not in a plan. Our trust and our hope is not in a project. It's in a person, it's in a living person, which makes this community a little bit different than other communities or makes the church in general a different kind of organization or organism than other institutions, because our vision is always it's never just static it's about turning our attention to a living person who calls us to follow. When Jesus showed up to his disciples, he never said, hey, come and follow this specific plan, come and follow, come and build this project with me. He said come and follow me. He said come and follow me. And so, as we're heading into the year, that's really the centerpiece of what we want to remind ourselves of and I believe this isn't really important as we come into this year in particular that we remind ourselves that, at the end of the day, what we're doing is we're holding open our lives, we're holding before God our lives and saying God, would you let your word, would you let your face, would you let your name be the rudder that guides us forward as we come into another year. And it's all really simple, because discipleship is simply this it's being with Jesus, becoming like Jesus and doing what Jesus did. It's nothing else. The core of discipleship is being with him, becoming like him and then doing the things that he did.
Speaker 1:So, as we kind of measure up, what are we for this year, a couple driving questions. Are we becoming people who look more like Jesus? Are you becoming the kind of person who looks more like Jesus? Listen, it doesn't matter what we accomplish this year, it doesn't matter what Q1 or Q2 does in your business. Are you becoming more like Jesus this year?
Speaker 1:Is your life looking more like him? Are we living lives that Jesus would live if he were us? This is a really good question. If Jesus were you, if Jesus lived in Longmont, colorado, if he lived in Lafayette or Erie, if he was a software engineer, if he was a CPA or a plumber or a stay-at-home mom, would he? What would your life look like if Jesus were you? See, these are good questions, because these are the kind of questions that orient us towards the vision being Jesus. What does that look like in our lives? What does that look like in our church? And so there's really three pillars.
Speaker 1:I just want to call us back to you for a moment, these pillars that we've talked about all the time of presence and a family of mission, of see. Being a people of his presence is being a people that know how to be with him. It's being a hearing people that know his word, and we're gonna get into that in a second. It's also being a people of mission. We don't just listen to God, we do what he says, we respond to what he says. And then, lastly, it's a people of family. We're not just individuals on solo missions just following Jesus on our own renegades, me and Jesus taking over the world, type of thing. We're a family, we're an interconnected people and what we say is we're a people that overflow in awe-inspiring love, sacrificial overflow, serving each other, serving one another, outdoing one another in showing honor, preferring one another in love, are we laying down our lives for our brothers and sisters? That's what it means to be a family presence, family and mission and the reason why I believe this is important, especially coming into this particular year I don't know if you know this really exciting.
Speaker 1:This is an election year and I can already see some people just starting to twitch right now. I still have a little bit of that in my body. I like this is an election year and it's like we got to kind of settle into that because if you survived 2020 or 2016, in particular the last couple of elections. You have some level of trauma still stored up in your body. I know I do, and that was a trying time, the last couple of elections, I mean, I think, especially for those of us who are feelers, who actually house things in our body and we can feel the climates of our nation. We feel the climate of the world and the volatility, the divisiveness of what's happening in the disconnection. What happens is that? That created such attention in me. It was both a grief, there was an anger, there was a sadness, this whole thing of what was happening, not just in the political government, but like the spirits, the mood of what was happening in our nation.
Speaker 1:And as we head into this year, we have to be mindful of what does it look like to live a flourishing life in the kingdom in a time likely of continued turmoil in the land that we live in? And not only that, we turn our eyes to kind of a sense of global instability. You know these wars that we've been tracking, the new cycle can only handle so much and we kind of forget a few weeks later. But there's still. The world is still at war. There is still a war in Ukraine and Russia. There is still a war in Israel and Palestine. These things are still happening, and all of that is what it's doing is it's creating a general mistrust in leadership and institutions globally. People are fundamentally frustrated with the world, and almost every leader on a global scale has a terrible approval rating, including the church. All right, let's just kind of level set that.
Speaker 1:So I was reading an article this last week that was published by Gallup and some of you know Gallup is the poll that tracks American statistics in particular but there's an article that talked about the global confidence deficit. It was just released this week, the global confidence deficit, and in this article they said Americans are less and less likely to say they have confidence in society's ways of dealing with things like health care, education, the role of big business and governance. Right, let's add in there the Denver Broncos. All right, we've lost our trust in any hope of leadership, and it almost applies to every kind of institution, every kind of global power, and there's a lot of reasons for this. In this particular article that they pointed out, they talked about the increase in political polarization. The middle is dropping out and turning into a very tribal herd mentality.
Speaker 1:That's what's happening around the world, and not just in America. All around the world, there's a decline in religious influence, the church has lost kind of an influence on a larger scale, and, because of some of those things, there's a less of an agreement on shared values and what's considered morally acceptable. Okay, and so, for all of those reasons, and probably more, there's not as much understanding of what is it going to take to pull together to become the kind of people we need to be, or become the kind of nations, the kind of institutions we need to be, and so all of those things. And I'm just telling you what you already know, what you already feel, and I don't mean to start with this huge bummer this morning. All right, it's gonna go up from here, I promise you, but we got to stare this thing in the face, because the question for all believers and for us here at the Lookout is how do we live as faithful, resilient disciples of the kingdom of God when the world is at turmoil?
Speaker 1:Okay, so the mood, though, of where we're at is there's a profound lack of confidence and mistrust in world leaders, which means there's a growing suspicion, there's a growing cynicism, there's loneliness and disconnection. Nobody quite knows who to trust, and you have experienced this. Nobody quite knows who to have certain conversations with, including in your own family, right, and so that breeds. What that breeds on a large scale is this kind of low grade sense of uncertainty and confusion and a little bit of fear. Who can we trust? Who has the solutions? Is there a way that leads to life? And so people are.
Speaker 1:What's happened is, people have been looking. We've been looking to centers of power and institution for the answers. We're wondering why the government can't get it together, why can't health care get it together, why can't the economy get it together, even higher education, all kinds of things. We've been looking to the centers of human activity and power for a sense of where is the hope, and not being able to find it. Now, while that seems bleak, I actually don't believe it is. I believe all that means is that we are unbelievably ripe for a move of God where people turn their attention back to the Lord, the Creator of heaven and earth. So we might feel that sense of oh my gosh, who the heck do I trust? Is there any hope or solution?
Speaker 1:But I'm telling you, can I remind you today that we are wired to not look to man for our sense of hope, but we turn our attention to the Lord of heaven and earth, even as followers of Jesus. Listen, this has to be sifted out of us, even in the church. This has to be sifted out of us. It takes a certain level of frustration I think the Lord actually lets us walk through frustration to be reminded that we're actually citizens of another kingdom. We're primarily citizens of heaven, secondarily citizens of the United States.
Speaker 1:Yes, I believe in patriotism and our participation in the affairs of our world. That's a good thing, but be not confused. We are citizens of the kingdom of God that has its own governing principles, it has its own values and it has its own King, whose name is Jesus. Our hope, listen, our hope is not in human progress but in God's promise to seek and to stave, to restore and to renew until the entire earth looks just like heaven. We don't live by the opinions of man, but by the word of the Lord. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Are you guys with me this morning? And so oftentimes, when we hit times like this and we're kind of moving through this thing of a little bit of like uncertainty across the board and for everybody's kind of feeling that I believe what the Lord is trying to do is he's pulling attention back to him and he wants us he's calling us back to hear his word again, that his word doesn't always come in the places that we're seeking to find it. It comes somewhere else.
Speaker 1:So if you have your Bibles open at Luke, chapter 3, we're gonna jump in to this passage together Luke, chapter 3. And where we come in on this particular chapter is there's this wild man. His name is John the Baptist. I like to call him JTB, john the Baptist. He's one of the only other ones in all of the Old Testament that was prophesied of his coming. Besides Jesus, isaiah 40 talks about a voice crying in the wilderness. And he came and really his only life purpose was to make way for another person. How would that, how would you like that to be for you? Like? You're born and the only prophetic word over your life is to get the world ready for another person. That was John the Baptist. His entire significance had to do. He would spend his entire life not building any of his own fame or significance. It was to prepare the world for the coming of somebody else.
Speaker 1:And so, in the Gospel of Luke, luke sets up his introduction, he introduces John the Baptist after the whole story of Jesus coming, or Jesus being born. Luke, chapter 3, says this in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip, tetrarch of the region of Iterea and Trachonitis, and Lysinius, the tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Cephaias, the word of the Lord came to John, the son of Zachariah, in the wilderness. Okay, so I'm just gonna pause there for a second. I just want to take a look at this passage. How long it takes to get to John the Baptist.
Speaker 1:Okay, you are introduced to a lot of people that you have no idea who they are or what they're doing, but I believe Luke is doing this purposefully, as he's setting up the, the introduction of John the Baptist. He's saying listen, this was a time where here is the ruler in Rome, here is the ruler in Judea. Here's the ruler in Galilee. Here's the ruler in Iterea. Here's the ruler in Trachonitis. Here's the ruler in Abilene, which I thought was in Texas but apparently is in modern-day Israel. Here are the rulers, here's who are the people leading the temple. But the word of the Lord came to John in the wilderness.
Speaker 1:Okay, so he's saying like listen, here are the centers of power all across the land, here are the centers of power. Here's what Rome is doing, here's what Judea is doing, here's what Galilee is doing, here's what's even happening in the temple. But God is saying but my word is not coming to any of those places. My word is coming on the fringe of society, out to a place called the wilderness, to somebody named John. You guys tracking Verse 3, it says this and he went to all the region around the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as as written in the book of the words of Isaiah, the prophet, the voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight.
Speaker 1:Every valley shall be filled, every mountain and hill shall be made low and the crooked shall become straight and the rough places shall become levelways and all the flesh shall see the salvation of God. And so we know that JTB was sent by God to prepare the way of the Messiah and his entire life. His mission was to create a runway for God, specifically in the wilderness, and this kind of larger metaphor that this place that was unprepared and undeveloped to raise up low places and to bring low high places and to make the kind of runway where the kingdom of God could land, almost like an airplane. And so Luke's introduction of John the Baptist. It didn't start with a time and a location. This is a list of rulers in the government in the temple, and they were the center of power and influence and authority. But the word of the Lord came to the wilderness, to one who had set himself apart for the Lord, and his message was one of repentance and preparation and let's make a way for God to come back into the center of our lives.
Speaker 1:And so it would be true for us to look at John the Baptist one who clothed himself with animal skin and ate locusts and honey as his primary diet as one who is a little eccentric. All right, if he was living among us, we would. I don't know. I mean probably Colorado would be the place for him to live, probably Boulder, I mean. I mean this would be a pretty safe place for John the Baptist, all right.
Speaker 1:But you know, most of us would take somebody like that and label him as eccentric. You know, this person is eccentric, which actually is the most accurate definition of JTB there is because eccentric actually means off-center, it means you're off-center, it means that you know that you're not the center, and so to live an eccentric life means that you're not the axis around which the entire world is revolving around. There's something else at the center, and this got Christians in trouble for a long time. Even in the 16th century, some of you guys know, copernicus and Galileo suggested heretically that the solar system didn't actually revolve around the earth, it revolved around the sun. And when they suggested that actually we are not the center of everything, that even the solar system is revolving around something else, it was such a, it was such an astonishing, it was such an otherworldly idea. They actually got ex-communicated from the church. They got kicked out of the church. Like why would you say something like that? We are the center of everything? They said, no, we're not.
Speaker 1:And so, forever though, their observation changed the fields of science and astronomy, and I believe that John the Baptist is the same way, his eccentric living what he was doing prophetically, to live on the edge of what, the center of human power. He was just saying listen, my life does not exist for itself, my life exists for another. There is a that God, that the center of what God is doing is in what is coming. And so for John, this literally meant living in the wilderness. For most of us, that's not what we're called to do, alright? So John actually lived in the desert, a place outside the edge of the city. Most of us don't aren't there. The closest we're gonna get is like Fort Lupton, or like go east right, go east to the eastern plains. You know, we got just it, just bare bones. Out there go deep mountains, but most of us are not actually living outside of the city. But I believe that, you know, even for John it was living in the wilderness. But for us, I believe, it means creating wilderness, desert-like places in our life, to call ourselves back to you, to remind ourselves that we are not the center, that God is the center. And from these places, of these wilderness-like places in our life, I believe that's where the Lord wants to bring his word, because the wilderness is where God shapes us, the wilderness is where God transforms us, the wilderness is where the word of the Lord is most clear. Okay, so the wilderness throughout the scripture some of you guys know the wilderness has a very specific. It's a theme from start to finish in scripture has a very specific purpose and intention All the way back to Exodus.
Speaker 1:When the Lord liberated the Israelites out of Egypt, he didn't just take them straight into the Promised Land, because they'd never be able to handle it. They couldn't go straight from Egypt to a Promised Land. Why? Because they didn't know who they were. They had no sense of what is God saying. They had no sense of what is the word of the Lord and what. Who does God even want us to be? They had no sense of identity. So God actually had to liberate them from Egypt and send them into the desert for 40 years to be reshaped as a people. It was very frustrating for them. It's definitely frustrating for Moses, but it was a time where they had to be separated from one thing so they could discover a new thing, and they had to be in a place where God could speak clearly to them, remind them of his intentions and purposes and call them back into his covenant, from which they would live an overflowing life as they came into the Promised Land. Okay, so the wilderness is a place of reshaping, of reformation, of the re-establishing of identity.
Speaker 1:We see, not only in John the Baptist but in the life of Jesus, the wilderness is a place of both testing it's a wilderness. The wilderness is a place of the confirmation of, of sonship. And so in Jesus, after he is baptized in the Jordan River, between Jordan, jerusalem, like a desert, and it says, the Spirit of God drove Jesus even out to the wilderness. He didn't just get to go from the waters of baptism into a healing crusade, he went out to the wilderness, to a place of quiet. It was so quiet he got to hear a lot of voices. He got to hear the voice of the Father and the voice of the enemy in that particular time. But it was in this place that his, that he got to that what was exposed was all of the potential counterfeit missions that he could have gone in. And so the enemy would come in and say, basically, if you do what I say, I will give you these things. If you take matters into your own hands, you can make food for yourself, if you can make a life for yourself of significance and security, belonging, just do what I say Basically, become my son and I will take care of you.
Speaker 1:And Jesus had to, in the desert, in the wilderness, be confronted with both himself be confronted with what was happening around him, so that he could leave the desert with a sense of security in his identity and sonship, from which it's the scripture say that he emerged from the desert in the power of the Spirit, because that's what the desert does to us. The desert allows us to deepen the power of the Spirit that comes out of an anchored identity in the Father. And so the wilderness is not insignificant. It does those things. It purifies our motivation, it remakes us and prepares us, but it's a place also of quiet and unrush living, and I think this is probably where we can draw the most from the wilderness metaphor.
Speaker 1:What I believe is going to be important for us as we head into 2024 is that we have to have places and spaces in our life where we move in the opposite spirit of what is happening all around us. Part of the way we live into the kingdom is to recognize what is happening all around us, in our world, and ask the Lord to show us. What does it mean to live in the kingdom, which often means living in the opposite spirit. So in a world that is full of absolute, frantic pace and energy, a world where the volume is so high that we have to create the kind of lives where we actually carve out wilderness places so that we can be alone, and silence and solitude so we can receive the word of the Lord again in the desert, often the word of the Lord doesn't come in the center of human activity. The word of the Lord comes on the fringes of our life, in the quiet places, the places of margin and the places where we actually slow down enough to listen again. Are you guys with me? And I believe this is really important because we cannot actually hear the word of the Lord oftentimes because our hearts are not quieted. We consume, many of us. We consume so much content that it makes it nearly impossible to discern the word of the Lord. This is so important. Guys. The amount of input we have all around makes us sometimes deaf to anything that God is trying to say, and I feel like it's a season where we can be reminded. It's probably always been like this, but definitely a season like this where the Lord is not going to compete with the noise and the speed and the activity of our lives. The Lord doesn't just try to barge in and try to talk louder. He's looking for those who are willing to cultivate wilderness spaces, that are willing to slow down and modify our lives enough to get quiet enough so we can actually listen again.
Speaker 1:It's almost like if you guys ever had a teacher in school. I feel bad. I mean, I props to teachers. Oh dear Lord, I think about what we put my teachers through, like an elementary, middle school, all that kind of stuff. Bless you teachers if you're in the room.
Speaker 1:But I remember in those classes where it was just like all the kids were talking really loud and sometimes, you know, there's some teachers that would try to yell above that right, they would just kids, kids, kids, settle down, settle down. They try to get order that way. But I always remembered the teachers who didn't do that. They would sit at the front of their desk and kind of cross their arms and just kind of do this really like just kind of stone faced, just kind of I'm just gonna wait here until you're ready, type of thing. Do you guys remember that? They just kind of wait there and then all the kids looking around. Something isn't right. You know something. There's like a disturbance in the force. All the kids start looking around. They notice a teacher just kind of just waiting for class to be quiet. And then finally the kids start self-regulating Be quiet, stop, stop, stop. Then finally, once everybody quietes down, then the teacher starts Okay, let's start the class. Right?
Speaker 1:I almost wonder in a season like this if that's the posture of the Lord where he's, in a season where our lives are so often marked by a pace of activity and a volume of noise, the Lord is saying listen, I'm not gonna compete with the noise of your life. I'm not gonna try to shout louder to overcome what you're allowing to come into your life If you're willing to come out to the wilderness with me. I have some things I want to say to you. I have some things I want to speak because I believe that the word of the Lord in the season is gonna come from the wilderness. It's gonna come from unlikely places.
Speaker 1:We saw that a little bit, even this last year, if you guys remember, in this little small town of Wilmore Kentucky something erupted that nobody expected to come from Wilmore Kentucky. Nobody even knew where Wilmore Kentucky happened or where that even was before last February. And then, out of nowhere, there is this pocket of college students at Asbury University who decided to just not end a worship service. And there was a chapel service and it just it didn't end because there was a remnant of students who decided, like we are so hungry for the Lord, what else? What are the choice that we had? We have, then, just to continue to sing to him and just to make a space for him, and many of you guys remember that this last year it just kind of marked, it sent like a ripple effect around the entire world. We call it like that Asbury outpouring.
Speaker 1:Nobody quite knows what it was. Was it a revival? Was it a renewal? Was it awakening? People just said, listen, it's just the simplicity of it. It's just a bunch of hungry hearts availing themselves to the Lord. It did not come from New York City, it did not come from LA, it did not come from the mega churches across the country. It came from a pocket, a hidden pocket in a known name city.
Speaker 1:And I believe that it's just. It's like first fruits of what God is doing in the season. He's not looking for everybody who has it together, he's not looking for where are all the centers of human activity, the centers of power. He's looking in the wilderness places for those who have availed their hearts and for people who said God, we're willing to go where you want to go, we're willing to receive what you want to see, but our ears are open to everything that you want to say. This is what wilderness life looks like, with the.
Speaker 1:Living in the wilderness in the context of life is about all day communion with the Lord. It's not about just escaping the realities of our life. It's about entering into the depth of the presence of God all day long. It's about carving out rhythms where we actually pull back and even stop a few times a day to be with Jesus and to listen again. It's where we have extended times of silence and solitude so that we can be reminded, we can let the motivations of our heart be exposed and let him purify where we're actually at and let him purify the intentions of our hearts. It's where God gets to sift us. It's where the Lord actually sifts us from the leaven, what Jesus would call the leaven of the Pharisees or the leaven of Herod.
Speaker 1:How many of you guys know, we can be so influenced by the thinking of our day that we don't even know it's there. We are so influenced by all the inputs that we don't even know oftentimes what is inside of us, and it's only in the quiet places where we avail ourselves before the Lord that he's able to come in and say let me clean you and purify your heart so that you can be reminded who you are and you can live before me again. Wilderness is a place of surrender, of open hands, of sopping to be with Jesus and saying God, I give it back to you, I give back my concerns, I give back my life to you again. He's with us in all of the things that we do. But to be a people that are able to receive the word of the Lord, it will continue to mean for all of us that we become very familiar with the desert.
Speaker 1:Sometimes God puts us in a desert for a season. Some of you know what that feels like. We call it wilderness season, oftentimes in the church, where it feels like there's not a lot happening in your life. Maybe you feel like you're there now, maybe you feel like you've been benched, you've just been inactive, you're in between one season and another. There's just not a lot of opportunities happening. We tend to be very uncomfortable in those times which, you know, we tend to try to get ourselves out of those things. But there is a gift in wilderness seasons and some of us that even aren't in wilderness seasons. We would be wise to create deserts in our life, in times and spaces, throughout our day and throughout our week and throughout our year, to stop and to resist the allure of the world, to resist the pace of the world, and say, god, I'm going to stop, I'm going to cease my life to be with you. This is what the Desert Fathers did.
Speaker 1:Some of you guys know in church history in about the fourth century, the corruption was so bad in the cities and even in the church that there is a group of believers called the Desert Fathers and Mothers that in Egypt and Syria and Persia they actually fled the city and went out to a wilderness place. They did this literally. They went out to a wilderness place, and they did it to preserve their heart for the Lord, to preserve their witness for God. It wasn't just about escaping, it was about we need to be able to live from a place of the certainty of our identity in the Lord. And so what happened is they created these huge communities out in the desert and it really saved Christianity for that time in history. It was just so corrupt, both in the church and in the cities, with the government, and the influences were so manipulative and so powerful that they couldn't actually preserve their hearts to the Lord. So they went to the edge of the city. People would actually come out from the city to visit with them because they sensed the purity and the presence of God with them.
Speaker 1:And the Desert Fathers would often say listen, the desert is not. This is a paraphrase, this is an exact quote. But when you read through the Desert Fathers and mothers, oftentimes the way they would describe it is like listen, it's not the desert that saves us. But for all of us who are willing to etch a desert into our hearts, to actually live and engrave this into our hearts, there is the potential to be able to live lives that make much of God in a world that seems to not know what to hope in. And so we say our vision is Jesus, and we mean it.
Speaker 1:And then church. I just wanna leave it very simply this morning, as we're kind of heading into the year, we talk about abiding in the presence of God. That's not just a zen-like, just levitate and just center our mind. It's abiding in the presence of God. It takes a resilient rudeness and anchoredness and the intentional connection to hang on at all costs. I will preserve the voice of the Lord in my life. I will not look for something somewhere else to be the solution to the world's problems, but I will avail my life to receive the word of the Lord and to abide in his presence, because his presence is our only hope. His presence is our hope. So there's a lot of ways that we live into this together and, again, I think, on a daily basis. I would say this as a church, as a church, as a people, as disciples of Jesus, that we're not just coming to church on a Sunday and then getting back to the way things are throughout the day. We're ordering our lives around the love and the presence of God. We're ordering our entire lives and there's a lot of ways that looks. I just wanna call you back into a few things and just mention a couple things that we're doing this year that I believe is gonna help us live into that as kind of Jesus is the center. Jesus is the vision Number one.
Speaker 1:Last year about this time we talked about daily prayer rhythms, and listen, I'm gonna send this out. If you're part of our email list and you wanna be a part of our email list again, all you have to do is text that number. We'll fill out one of the connect cards. We'll get you on our email list. This week, we're gonna send out two things on Wednesday. Number one we're gonna send you back this card, this kind of resource that talks about daily prayer rhythms, and what that means is rhythms of being with God. We're in the morning, and midday and evening. We actually have a rhythm of stopping to be with Jesus, to make much of Jesus. Now, some of us tried this this last year. It's difficult to kind of work that into our schedule. I believe, though, that the rhythms of being with God, even on a daily basis, to draw our attention back to what he's doing, specifically in silence and immersion in scripture, is going to be key for us to continue to overflow the heart of God in our world. So, daily prayer rhythms this year, coupled with, like I said, immersion in the scripture. One of the things that we're gonna send to you this week is something we're called the Bread Bible Reading Plan.
Speaker 1:Some of you guys do Bible reading plans. Maybe some of you started a Bible reading plan January 1st. Some of you do the Bible in a year, any Bible in the year people in this room? Okay, great, only a couple true Christians here, thank you, I'm joking. I'm joking. So we're not doing Bible in the year. Bible in the year is funny, though, because February is like where Bible reading plans go to die. Right, it's by the time you get to Leviticus and you're like all right, I'm out. It's really. It takes a lot of fortitude to make it through February in a Bible in a year. So we're not doing that.
Speaker 1:But what we have is a selection of scriptures that track through the year, that we can have a shared immersion in scripture throughout the entire year of the life of Jesus, and it even follows the historic church calendar, but every week has a different theme. And just, it's not aggressive, it's not multiple chapters, it's one passage a day. But it's not for the sake of just more and more content, it's for the sake of encounter. It's about. Here's a scripture that we can each hold together, and then I'll let God encounter us and actually respond to this particular passage. I think it's gonna be really fun. It's gonna be really cool to do it together. That's gonna come out this Wednesday. It's called the Bread Bible Reading Plan and I believe it's key for us this year to be in the scriptures, which is why, again, we already mentioned the weekends in the Word. Periodically through this year we're gonna have these weekends in the Word on Saturday mornings where we're gonna learn new ways to engage the scriptures, to excavate the scriptures. I wanna encourage you to come be a part, even if you have a regular habit of being in the Word. I'm just telling you the people anchored in the Word of the Lord. This year I think we're just gonna be able to be a resource and bring fresh bread in the lives that we live, to the people that God sends our direction. It's gonna be fantastic and this is how we fall in love with the scriptures again. But another cool thing this year is later this year.
Speaker 1:Some of you guys know we're partners with 24-7 Prayer USA and it's an organization it's actually a global organization that exists to catalyze prayer in the church all around the world and we're friends with a lot of these guys. But specifically in 24-7 Prayer USA, the theme this year is a year of unbroken prayer and in a time of division, part of the division this year for prayer is to call the church into unbroken prayer, and so the lookout is one of 52 churches across North America who are part of this initiative where we're taking one week this year to do a full week of 24-7 Prayer. In this church, we're gonna do a full week of 24-7 Prayer. It's gonna happen in October because we need to develop those muscles a little bit, right. We're gonna do a full week of 24-7 Prayer and so 52 churches in the entire year within this network is gonna be unbroken prayer. That happens and all these churches handing the baton to one another over the course of the year Isn't that cool and we're gonna play our part in that. Which means that over the next several months we're gonna have a couple different weekends where we're actually going to set aside. We're gonna call you guys to join us for a full 24 hours of unbroken prayer. We're gonna start probably from a noon on a Friday to a noon on a Saturday. We'll get you some dates pretty soon.
Speaker 1:But part of what this develops in us as a community is, first of all, it develops the priority of living in and from God's presence. Right, it shows us that there is something eternal happening even in heaven, around the throne of God. Right now is unending worship and prayer, and we get to be a part of what God is doing all around this world. And if you've never been a part of 24 seven prayer, it's exciting. It's actually it's incredible to see how the Lord speaks when we set when clear a schedule, set aside a long length of time to say God, we're availing ourselves to you. So that's coming this year and I hope that that serves in your heart. I hope that connects with you because I believe again. I believe as we live into, as we live into this vision of Jesus, of becoming a people of the word and of prayer, of turning our attention to him, that he's gonna continue. He's gonna continue to help us to overflow with the awe-inspiring love that we speak of, and so this morning, I think.
Speaker 1:Where I want to leave us, though, this morning, is this across the room, maybe you're in a season where it's been difficult to hear the word of the Lord. Maybe you just feel like the noise in your head, maybe, maybe, like you have a hard time even being silent or being quiet in your life, because when you are. It's too much to bear. I just want to pray a blessing over you today and over us today. I want to pray a blessing as we launch into 2024 that we're a people like John the Baptist, who are willing to even be people that carve out a place for the wilderness in our lives, people that aren't joining in this collective cynicism and disappointment it's that doesn't lead to anything. The cynicism and disappointment in the world, systems and the powers and the government. That doesn't lead to anything. The only thing that leads to life is the word of God and the bread of God. It's the only thing that leads to life, which means that we must become people that carve out a wilderness in our lives, that stop to be with Jesus, that commune with him, that surrender to him and regularly and say God, what are you saying, what are you doing? You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you. Good to see you guys again.
Speaker 1:So this morning we're going to do both today and the next couple of weeks. We're going to use this opportunity, as we're starting 2024, to just paint some broad brush strokes of some themes that we believe are going to be super important as we head into the year together. And as you guys know, you know the driving heartbeat around this community is that our vision is Jesus, and we say it every week. Our vision is Jesus and we say our vision is Jesus, abiding in His presence, growing in His family and living on His mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love. And so, as we start this year, I just want to be clear here with everybody that vision has not changed. All right, the vision is still Jesus, and what that means as a church, as a body of believers, as a family, to say our vision is Jesus.
Speaker 1:It's not just a vision that our trust and our hope is not in a plan. Our trust and our hope is not in a project, it's in a person, it's in a living person, which makes this community a little bit different than other communities or makes the church in general a different kind of organization or organism than other institutions, because our vision is always it's never just static, it's about turning our attention to a living person who calls us to follow. When Jesus showed up to His disciples, he never said, hey, come and follow this specific plan, come and follow, come and build this project with me. He said come and follow me. He said come and follow me. And so, as we're heading into the year, that's really the centerpiece of what we want to remind ourselves of, and I believe this isn't really important as we come into this year in particular, that we remind ourselves that, at the end of the day, what we're doing is we're holding open our lives. We're holding before God our lives and saying, god, would you let your Word, would you let your face, would you let your name be the rudder that guides us forward as we come into another year.
Speaker 1:And it's all really simple, because discipleship… Simply this, it's being with Jesus, becoming like Jesus and doing what Jesus did. It's nothing else. This, the core of discipleship, is being with him, becoming like him and then doing the things that he did. So, as we, as we kind of measure up, what are we for this year? A couple driving questions. Or is? Are we becoming people who look more like Jesus? Are you becoming the kind of person who looks more like Jesus?
Speaker 1:Listen, it doesn't matter what we accomplish this year, it doesn't matter what Q1 or Q2 does in your business. Are you becoming more like Jesus this year, or are you? Is your life looking more like him? Are we living lives that Jesus would live if he were us? This is a really good question. If Jesus were you, if Jesus lived in Longmont, colorado, if he lived in Lafayette or Erie, if he was a software engineer, if he was a CPA or a plumber or a stay-at-home mom, would he, what would your life look like if Jesus were you? See, these are good questions, because these are the kind of questions that orient us towards it.
Speaker 1:The vision being Jesus does it. What does that look like in our lives? What does that look like in our church? And so there's really three pillars. I just want to call us back to you for a moment.
Speaker 1:These pillars that we we've talked about all the time of Presence and a family of mission, of see, being a people of his presence is being a people that know how to be with him. It's being a hearing people that know his word and we're gonna get into that in a second. It's also being a people of mission. We don't just listen to God, we do what he says, we respond to what he says. And then, lastly, it's a people of family. We're not just individuals on solo missions just following Jesus on our own renegades Me and Jesus taking over the world type of thing. We're a family, we're an interconnected people and what we say is we're a people that overflowing awe, inspiring love, sacrificial overflow, serving each other, serving one another, outdoing one another in showing honor, preferring one another in love, are we laying down our lives For our brothers and sisters? That's what it means to be a family presence, family and mission and the reason why I believe this is important, especially coming into this particular year I don't know if you know this Really exciting.
Speaker 1:This is an election year and I can already see some people just starting to twitch. Right now. I still have a little bit that in my body. I like this is an election year and it's like we got to kind of settle into that because if you were, if you survived 2020 or 2016, in particular the last couple of elections, you have some, some level of trauma still stored up in your body. I know I do, and that was a trying time, the last couple of elections I mean.
Speaker 1:I think, especially for those of us who are feelers, who actually house things on our body and we can feel the Climates of our nation. We feel the climate of the world and the volatility, the volatility, the divisiveness of what's happening, in the disconnection. What happens is like that created such attention in me. It was, it was both a grief there was an anger, there was a sadness, this whole thing of what was happening, not just in the political government, but like that, the spirits, the mood of what was happening in our nation.
Speaker 1:And as we head into this year, we have to be mindful of what does it look like to live a flourishing life in the kingdom in a time likely of of continued Turmoil in the land that we live in? And not only that. We, we turn our eyes to kind of a sense of global instability. You know, these wars that we've been tracking, the new cycle can only handle so much and we kind of forget a few weeks later. But there's still. The world is still at war. There is still a war in Ukraine and Russia. There is still a war in Israel and Palestine. These things are still happening, and all of that is what it's doing is it's creating a general mistrust in leadership and institutions globally. People are fundamentally Frustrated with the world and almost every leader on a global scale has on a global scale has a terrible approval rating. Okay, including the church. All right, let's just kind of level set that.
Speaker 1:So I was reading an article this last week that was published by Gallup and and Some of you know, gallup is that you know the, the poll that that tracks American statistics in particular but there's an article that talked about the global confidence Deficit was just released this week, the global confidence Deficit and in this article they said Americans are less and less likely to say they have confidence in society's ways of dealing with things like health care, education, the role of big business and governance. Right, let's add in there the Denver Broncos. All right, we've lost our trust in any hope of leadership, and it almost applies to every kind of Institution, every kind of global power, and there's a lot of reasons for this. In this particular article that they pointed out, they talked about the increase in political polarization. The middle is dropping out and turning into very tribal herd mentality. That's what's happening Around the world, and not just in America.
Speaker 1:All around the world, there's a decline in religious influence, the church has lost kind of an influence on a and on a larger scale, and, because of some of those things, there's a less of an agreement on shared values and what's considered morally acceptable. Okay, and so, for all of those reasons, and probably more, there's not as much Understanding of what is it going to take to pull together to become the kind of people we need to be, or become the kind of nations and kind of Institutions we need to be, and so all of those things, and I'm just telling you what you already know, what you already feel, and I don't mean to start with this huge bummer this morning. All right, it's gonna go up from here, I promise you, but we got to stare this thing in the face, because the question for all believers, and for us here at the lookout, is how Do we live as faithful, resilient disciples of the kingdom of God when the world is at turmoil? Okay, so the mood, though, of where we're at, as there's a profound lack of confidence and Mistrust in world leaders, which means there's a growing suspicion, there's a growing cynicism, there's loneliness and disconnection. Nobody quite knows who to trust, and you've experienced this. Nobody quite knows who to have certain conversations with, including in your own family, right, and so that breeds what that breeds on a large scale is this this kind of low-grade Sense of Uncertainty and confusion and a little bit of fear. Who can we trust? Who has the solutions? Is there a way that leads to life? And so people are.
Speaker 1:What's happened is people have been looking. We've been looking to centers of power and institution for the answers. We're wondering why the government can't get it together, why can't health care get it together, why can't the economy get it together, even higher education, all kinds of things. We've been looking to the centers of human activity and power for a sense of where is the hope, and Not being able to find it. Now, while that seems bleak, I Actually don't believe it is. I believe all that means is that we are Unbelievably ripe for a move of God where people turn their attention back to the Lord, the creator of heaven and earth. So we might feel that sense of oh my gosh, who the heck do I trust? Is there any, any, any, any hope or solution? But I'm telling you, can I remind you today that we are wired to not look to man For our sense of hope, but we turn our attention to the Lord of heaven and earth, even as followers of Jesus. Listen, this has to be sifted out of us, even in the church. This has to be sifted out of us.
Speaker 1:It takes a certain level of frustration I think the Lord actually lets us walk through frustration to be reminded that we're actually citizens of another kingdom. We're primarily citizens of heaven, secondarily citizens of the United States. Yes, I believe in patriotism, in our participation in In the affairs of our world. That's a good thing, but be not confused. We are citizens of the kingdom of God that has its own governing principles, it has its own values and it has its own king, whose name is Jesus. Our hope Listen, our hope is not in human progress but in God's promise to seek and to stave, to restore and to renew until the entire earth looks just like heaven.
Speaker 1:We don't live by the opinions of man, by by the word of the Lord. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Are you guys with me this morning? And so often times when we hit times like this and we're kind of moving through this thing of a little bit of like Uncertainty across the board and for everybody's kind of feeling that I believe what the Lord is trying to do is he's pulling attention back to him and he wants us, he's calling us back to hear his word again that his word doesn't always come in the places that we're seeking to find it. It comes from where else.
Speaker 1:So if you have your Bibles open, a Luke chapter 3, we're gonna jump in see this passage together Luke chapter 3, and and and. Where we come in on this particular chapter is there's this wild man. His name is John the Baptist. I like to call him JTB, john the Baptist. He's one of the only other ones in all of the Old Testament that was prophesied of his coming.
Speaker 1:Besides Jesus, isaiah 40 talks about a voice crying in the wilderness. And he came and really his only life purpose was to Make way for another person. How would that? How would you like that to be For you like? You're born and the only prophetic word over your life is to get the world ready for another person? That was John the Baptist. His entire significance had to do. He would spend his entire life not building any of his own fame or Significance. It was to prepare the world for the coming of somebody else.
Speaker 1:And so, in the gospel of Luke, luke sets up his Introduction, he introduces John the Baptist after the whole story of Jesus coming, or Jesus being born. Luke, chapter 3, says this in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, pontius Pilate being governor of Judea and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip, tetrarch of the region of Iteria and Trachonitis, and Lysenius, the tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Anas and Kephaeus, the word of the Lord came to John, the son of Zachariah, in the wilderness. Okay, so I'm just gonna pause there for a second. I just want to take a look at this passage. How long it takes to get to John the Baptist.
Speaker 1:Okay, you are introduced to a lot of people that you have no idea who they are or or what they're doing, but I believe Luke is doing this purposefully, as he's setting up the, the introduction of John the Baptist. He's saying listen, this was a time where here is the ruler in Rome, here is the ruler in Judea, here's the ruler in Galilee, here's the ruler in Iteria, here's the ruler in Trachonitis, here's the ruler in Abilene, which I thought was in Texas but apparently is in modern-day Israel. So here are the rulers, here are the people leading the temple. But the word of the Lord came to John in the wilderness. Okay, so he's saying like listen, here are the centers of power All across the land, here are the centers of power, here's what, here's what Rome is doing, here's what Judea is doing, here's what Galilee is doing, here's what's even happening in the temple. But God is saying but my word is not coming to any of those places. My word is coming on the fringe of society, out to a place called the wilderness, to somebody named John.
Speaker 1:You guys Trachon, verse 3 says this and he went to all the region around the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as as written in the book of the words of Isaiah, the prophet, the voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make, make his path straight. Every valley shall be filled, every mountain and hill shall be made low and the crooked shall become straight and the rough places Shall become level ways and all the flesh shall see the salvation of God. And so we know that JTB was sent by God To prepare the way of the Messiah and and his entire life. His mission was to create a runway for God, specifically in a in the wilderness, and this, this kind of larger metaphor that this place that was Unprepared and undeveloped to, to raise up low places and to bring a low high places and to make the kind of runway when the, the kingdom of God, could land, almost like a, like an airplane. And so Luke's introduction of John the Baptist didn't start with the time and a location. This is a list of rulers and the government in the temple, and they were the center of power and influence and authority. But the, but the word of the Lord Came to the wilderness, to one who had set himself apart for the Lord, and his message was one of repentance and preparation and and let's make a way for God to come back into the center of our Lives.
Speaker 1:And so it would be true for us to look at John the Baptist one who clothed himself with the animal skin and ate locusts and honey as his primary diet as one who is a little eccentric. All right, if he was living among us, we would. I don't know, I mean, probably Colorado would be the place for him to live, probably Boulder, I mean. I mean, this would be a pretty safe place for John the Baptist, all right, but you know, most of us would take somebody like that and label him as eccentric. You know, this person is eccentric, which actually is the most accurate definition of JTB there is, because eccentric actually means off-center, it means you're off-center, it means that you know that you're not the center, and so to live an eccentric life means that you're not the axis around which the entire world is Revolving around.
Speaker 1:There's something else at the center, and this got Christians in trouble for a long time. Even in the 16th century, some of you guys know, copernicus and Galileo suggested Heretically that the word the solar system didn't actually revolve around the earth, it revolved around the Sun. And when they suggested that actually we are not the center of everything, that there, the, even the solar system is revolving around something else, it was such a, it was such an astonishing, it was such an otherworldly idea. They actually got excommunicated from the church. They got kicked out of the church, like why would you say something like that? We are the center of everything? That said no, we're not.
Speaker 1:And so, forever though, their observation changed the fields of science and astronomy, and I believe that John the Baptist is the same way, his eccentric living, what he was doing Prophetically, to live on the edge of what, the center of human power. He was just saying listen, my life does not exist For itself, my life exists for another. There is a that God that the center of what God is doing is in what is coming. And so for John this literally meant living in the wilderness. For most of us that's not what we're called to do, all right. So John actually lived in the desert, a place outside the edge of the city. Most of us don't aren't there. The closest we're gonna get is like Fort Lupton, or like go east right, go east to the eastern plains. You know, we get just it, just bare bones. Out there go deep mountains, but most of us are not actually living outside of the city. But I believe that, you know, even for John it was living in the wilderness. But for us, I believe, it means creating wilderness, desert, like places in our life, to call ourselves back to you, to remind ourselves that we are not the center, that God is the center, and in from these places, of these wilderness, like places in our life, I believe that's where the Lord wants to bring his word, because the wilderness is where God shapes us. The wilderness is where God transforms us. The wilderness is where the word of the Lord is most clear. Okay, so the wilderness.
Speaker 1:Throughout the scripture, some of you guys know the wilderness has a very specific. It's a theme through from start to finish in scripture, as a very specific purpose and intention, all the way back to Exodus, when, when the Lord liberated the Israelites out of Egypt, he didn't just take them straight into the promised land, because they'd never be able to handle it. They couldn't go straight from Egypt to a promise land. Why? Because they didn't know who they were. They had no sense of what is God saying. They had no sense of what is the word of the Lord and what. Who does God even want us to be. They had no sense of identity. So God actually had to liberate them from Egypt and send them into the desert for 40 years. To be Reshaped as a people was very frustrating for them. It's definitely frustrating for Moses, but it was a time where they had to be separated from one thing so they could discover a new thing, and they had to be in a place where God could speak clearly to them, remind them of his intentions and purposes and call them back into his covenant, from which they would, they would live an overflowing life as they came into the promise land.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the wilderness is a place of, of, of reshaping, of reformation, of the reestablishing of identity. We see, not only in John the Baptist but in the life of Jesus, the wilderness is a place of both testing it's a wilderness. The wilderness is a place of the confirmation, of, of Sonship, and so in Jesus, after he is baptized, in the Jordan River, between Jordan, jerusalem, light, a desert, and it says, the spirit of God drove Jesus even out to the wilderness. He didn't just get to go from the waters of baptism into a healing crusade, he went out to the wilderness, to a place of quiet, and it was so quiet he got to hear a lot of voices. He got to hear the voice of the father and and the voice of the enemy in that particular time.
Speaker 1:But it was in this place that his, that he got to, that what was exposed was all of the potential Counterfeit missions that he could have gone in. And so the enemy would come in and say, basically, if you do what I say, I will give you these things. If you take matters into your Own hands, you can make food for yourself, if you can make a life for yourself of significance and security, belonging. Just do what I say basically become my son and I will take care of you. And and Jesus had to, in the desert, in the wilderness, be confronted with both himself, be confronted with what was happening Around him, so that he could leave the desert with a sense of security in his identity and Sonship, from which it's the scripture say that he emerged from the desert in the power of the spirit, because that's what the desert does to us. The desert allows us to deepen the power of the spirit that comes out of an anchored identity in the father. And so the wilderness is not insignificant. It does those things. It Purifies our motivation, it remakes us and prepares us, but it's a place also of quiet and unrushed Living, and I think this is, this is probably where we can draw the most from from the wilderness metaphor.
Speaker 1:What I believe is going to be important for us as we head into 2024 is that we have to have places and spaces in our life when we move in the opposite spirit of what is happening all around us. Part of the way we live into the kingdom is to recognize what is happening all around us, in in our world, and Ask the Lord to show us what does it mean to live in the kingdom, which often means living in the opposite spirit. So in a world that is full of absolute, absolute, frantic pace and energy, a world with a volume is so high that we have to create the kind of lives where we actually carve out wilderness places so that we can be alone, and silence and solitude so we can, we can receive the word of the Lord again in the desert. Often the word of the Lord doesn't come in the center of human activity. The word of the Lord comes on the fringes of our life, in the quiet places, the places of Margin, in the places where we actually slow down enough to listen. Again, are you guys with me? And I believe this is really important, because we cannot actually hear the word of the Lord Oftentimes because our hearts are not quieted. We consume, many of us. We consume so much content that it makes it nearly impossible to discern the word of the Lord. This is so important, guys. The amount of input we have all around Makes us sometimes deaf to anything that God is trying to say and I feel like it's a season where we can be reminded. It's probably always been like this, but definitely a season like this, where the Lord is not going to compete with the noise and the speed and the activity of our lives. The Lord doesn't just try to barge in and try to talk louder. He's looking for those who are willing to cultivate wilderness spaces, that are willing to slow down and modify ourselves, modify our lives enough to get quiet, enough to we can actually listen again.
Speaker 1:It's almost like if you guys ever had a teacher in school. I feel bad. I mean I Gosh props to teachers. Oh, dear Lord. I think about what we put art, my teachers through, like an elementary middle school, all that kind of stuff. Bless you teachers if you're in the room. But I remember in those classes where it was just like all the kids were talking really loud and and sometimes you know there's some teachers that would that would try to yell above that, right, they would just kids, kids, kids. You know, settle down, settle down. They try to get order that way. But I always remembered the teachers who didn't do that. They would sit at the front of their desk and kind of cross their arms and just kind of do this really like Just kind of stone face, just kind of I'm just gonna wait here until you're ready, type of thing. Do you guys remember that there is kind of wait there and then all the kids that's looking around, something isn't right, you know something. There's like a disturbance in the force. All the kids start looking around. They notice the teacher just kind of Just waiting for class To be quiet, and then finally the kids start self-regulating Be quiet, stop, stop. Then finally, once everybody quiet sound, then the teacher starts Okay, let's start the class, right? I Almost wonder, in a season like this, if that's the posture of the Lord, where he's, in a season where our lives are so often marked by a pace of activity and a volume of noise, the Lord is saying listen, I'm not gonna compete with the noise of your life, I'm not gonna try to shout louder to overcome what you're allowing to come into your life If you're willing to come out to the wilderness wilderness with me.
Speaker 1:I have some things I want to say to you. I have some things I want to speak because I believe that the word of the Lord in this season is gonna come from the wilderness, it's gonna come from unlikely places. We saw that a little bit, even this last year, if you guys remember, in this little small town of Wilmore Kentucky, something erupted that nobody expected to come from Wilmore Kentucky. Nobody even knew where Wilmore Kentucky happened or where that even was before last February. And then, out of nowhere, there is this pocket of college students at Asbury University who decided to just not end a worship service. And there was a chapel service and it just it didn't end Because there was a remnant of students who decided, like we are so hungry for the Lord, what else? What are the choice that we have? We have, then, just to continue to sing to him and just to make a space for him. And many of you guys remember that this last year just kind of marked. It sent like a ripple effect around the entire world. We call it like that, asbury outpouring.
Speaker 1:Nobody quite knows what it was. Was it a revival? Was it a renewal? Was it awakening? People just said, listen, it's just the simplicity of it. It's just a bunch of hungry hearts availing themselves to the Lord. It did not come from New York City, it did not come from LA, it did not come from the mega churches across the country. It came from a pocket, a hidden pocket in a known name city, and I believe that it's just.
Speaker 1:It's like first fruits of what God is doing in the season. He's not looking for everybody who has it together. He's not looking for where are all the centers of human activity, the centers of power. He's looking in the wilderness places for those who have availed their hearts and for people who said God, we're willing to go where you want to go, we're willing to receive what you want to see, but our ears are open to everything that you want to say. This is what wilderness life looks like, with the living in the wilderness in the context of life.
Speaker 1:In the context of life is about all day communion with the Lord. It's not about just escaping the realities of our life. It's about entering into the depth of the presence of God all day long. It's about carving out rhythms where we actually pull back and even stop a few times a day to be with Jesus and to listen again. It's where we have extended times of silence and solitude so that we can be reminded, we can let the motivations of our heart be exposed and let him purify where we're actually at and let him purify the intentions of our hearts. It's where God gets to sift us. It's where the Lord actually sifts us from the leaven what Jesus would call the leaven of the Pharisees or the leaven of Herod.
Speaker 1:How many of you guys know, we can be so influenced by the thinking of our day that we don't even know it's there. We are so influenced by all the inputs that we don't even know oftentimes what is inside of us. And it's only in the quiet places where we avail ourselves before the Lord that he's able to come in and say Let me clean you and purify your heart so that you can be reminded who you are and you can live before me again. Wilderness is a place of surrender, of open hands, of sopping to be with Jesus and saying God, I give it back to you, I give back my concerns, I give back my life to you again. He's with us in all of the things that we do. But to be a people that are able to receive the word of the Lord, it will continue to mean for all of us that we become very familiar with the desert.
Speaker 1:Sometimes God puts us in a desert for a season, so if you know what that feels like. We call it wilderness season, oftentimes in the church, where it feels like there's not a lot happening in your life. Maybe you feel like you're there now, maybe you feel like you've been benched, you've just been inactive, you're in between one season and another. There's just not a lot of opportunities happening. We tend to be very uncomfortable in those times which, you know, we tend to try to get ourselves or pray ourselves out of those things. But there is a gift in wilderness seasons and some of us that even aren't in wilderness seasons. We would be wise to create deserts in our life, in times and spaces, throughout our day and throughout our week and throughout our year, to stop and to resist the allure of the world, to resist the pace of the world and say God, I'm going to stop, I'm going to cease my life to be with you. This is what the Desert Fathers did.
Speaker 1:Some of you guys know in church history in about the fourth century the corruption was so bad in the cities and even in the church that there is a group of believers called the Desert Fathers and Mothers that in Egypt and Syria and Persia they actually fled the city and went out to a wilderness place. They did this literally. They went out to a wilderness place and they did it to preserve their heart for the Lord, to preserve their witness for God. It wasn't just about escaping. It was about we need to be able to live from a place of the certainty of our identity in the Lord. And so what happened is they created these huge communities out in the desert and it really saved Christianity for that time in history. It was just so corrupt, both in the church and in the cities, with the government, and the influences were so manipulative and so powerful that they couldn't actually preserve their hearts to the Lord. So they went to the edge of the city. People would actually come out from the city to visit with them because they sensed the purity and the presence of God with them.
Speaker 1:And the Desert Fathers would often say listen, the desert is not. This is a paraphrase, this is an exact quote. But when you read through the Desert Fathers and mothers, oftentimes the way they would describe it is like listen, it's not the desert that saves us, but for all of us who are willing to etch a desert into our hearts, to actually live and engrave this into our hearts, there is the potential to be able to live lives that make much of God in a world that seems to not know what to hope in. And so we say our vision is Jesus, and we mean it. And then church. I just wanna leave it very simply.
Speaker 1:This morning, as we're kind of heading into the year, we talk about abiding in the presence of God. That's not just a zen-like, just levitate and just center our mind. It's abiding in the presence of God. It takes a resilient rudeness and anchoredness and the intentional connection to hang on at all costs. I will preserve the voice of the Lord in my life. I will not look for something somewhere else to be the solution to the world's problems, but I will avail my life to receive the word of the Lord and to abide in his presence, because his presence is our only hope. His presence is our hope. So there's a lot of ways that we live into this together and again, I think, on a daily basis. I would say this as a church, as a church, as a people, as disciples of Jesus, that we're not just coming to church on a Sunday and then getting back to the way things are throughout the day. We're ordering our lives around the love and the presence of God, we're ordering our entire lives, and there's a lot of ways that looks. I just wanna call you back into a few things and just mention a couple things that we're doing this year that, I believe, is gonna help us live into that. As kind of Jesus is the center. Jesus is the vision Number one.
Speaker 1:Last year about this time, we talked about daily prayer rhythms, and listen, I'm gonna send this out. If you're part of our email list and you wanna be a part of our email list again, all you have to do is text that number. We'll fill out one of the connect cards. We'll get you on our email list. This week, we're gonna send out two things on Wednesday. Number one we're gonna send you back this card, this kind of resource that talks about daily prayer rhythms, and what that means is rhythms of being with God. We're, in the morning, and midday and evening, we actually have a rhythm of stopping to be with Jesus, to make much of Jesus. Now, some of us tried this this last year. It's difficult to kind of work that into our schedule. I believe, though, that the rhythms of being with God, even on a daily basis, to draw our attention back to what he's doing specifically in silence and immersion in scripture is going to be key for us to continue to overflow the heart of God in our world. So, daily prayer rhythms this year, coupled with, like I said, immersion in the scripture. One of the things that we're gonna send to you this week is something we're called the Bread Bible Reading Plan.
Speaker 1:Some of you guys do Bible reading plans. Maybe some of you started a Bible reading plan January 1st. Some of you do the Bible in a year, any Bible in the year. People in this room Okay, great, only a couple true Christians here. Thank you, I'm joking. I'm joking. So we're not doing Bible in the year. Bible in the year is funny, though, because February is like where Bible reading plans go to die. Right, it's about the time you get to Leviticus and you're like all right, I'm out. It's really. It takes a lot of fortitude to make it through February in a Bible in a year. So we're not doing that.
Speaker 1:But what we have is a selection of scriptures that track through the year, that we can have a shared immersion in scripture throughout the entire year of the life of Jesus, and it even follows the historic church calendar, but every week has a different theme and it's not aggressive, it's not multiple chapters, it's one passage a day. But it's not for the sake of just more and more content, it's for the sake of encounter it's about here's a scripture that we can each hold together and then I'll let God encounter us and actually respond to this particular passage. I think it's gonna be really fun. It's gonna be really cool to do it together. That's gonna come out this Wednesday. It's called the Bread Bible Reading Plan and I believe it's key for us this year to be in the scriptures, which is why, again, we already mentioned the weekends in the Word. Periodically through this year, we're gonna have these weekends in the Word on Saturday mornings, where we're gonna learn new ways to engage the scriptures, to excavate the scriptures. I wanna encourage you to come be a part, even if you have a regular habit of being in the Word. I'm just telling you the people anchored in the Word of the Lord. This year I think we're just gonna be able to be a resource and bring fresh bread in the lives that we live, to the people that God sends our direction. It's gonna be fantastic and this is how we fall in love with the scriptures again. But another cool thing this year is later this year.
Speaker 1:Some of you guys know we're partners with 24-7 Prayer USA and it's an organization it's actually a global organization that exists to catalyze prayer in the church all around the world and we're friends with a lot of these guys. But specifically in 24-7 Prayer USA, the theme this year is a year of unbroken prayer and, in a time of division, part of the division this year for prayer is to call the church into unbroken prayer, and so the lookout is one of 52 churches across North America who are part of this initiative where we're taking one week this year to do a full week of 24-7 Prayer. In this church, we're gonna do a full week of 24-7 Prayer. It's gonna happen in October because we need to develop those muscles a little bit right. We're gonna do a full week of 24-7 Prayer and so 52 churches in the entire year within this network is gonna be unbroken prayer. That happens and all these churches handing the baton to one another over the course of the year Isn't that cool and we're gonna play our part in that, which means that over the next several months, we're gonna have a couple different weekends where we're actually going to set aside. We're gonna call you guys to join us for a full 24 hours of unbroken prayer. We're gonna start probably from a noon on a Friday to a noon on a Saturday. We'll get you some dates pretty soon.
Speaker 1:But part of what this develops in us as a community is, first of all, it develops the priority of living in and from God's presence right. It shows us that there is something eternal happening even in heaven, around the throne of God. Right now is unending worship and prayer and we get to be a part of what God is doing all around this world. And if you've never been a part of 24 seven prayer, it's exciting. It's actually it's incredible to see how the Lord speaks. When we set when clear a schedule, set aside a long length of time to say God, we're availing ourselves to you.
Speaker 1:So that's coming this year and I hope that that serves in your heart. I hope that connects with you because I believe again. I believe as we live into, as we live into this vision of Jesus, of becoming a people of the word and of prayer, of turning our attention to him, that he's gonna continue. He's gonna continue to help us to overflow with the awe-inspiring love that we speak of. And so this morning. I think where I wanna leave us, though this morning is this across the room.
Speaker 1:Maybe you're in a season where it's been difficult to hear the word of the Lord.
Speaker 1:Maybe you just feel like the noise in your head. Maybe you have a hard time even being silent or being quiet in your life, because when you are, it's too much to bear. I just wanna pray a blessing over you today and over us today. I wanna pray a blessing as we launch into 2024, that we're a people like John the Baptist, who are willing to even be people that carve out a place for the wilderness in our lives, a people that aren't joining in this collective cynicism and disappointment that doesn't lead to anything, the cynicism and disappointment in the world systems and the powers and the government that doesn't lead to anything. The only thing that leads to life is the word of God and the bread of God. It's the only thing that leads to life, which means that we must become people that carve out a wilderness in our lives, that stop to be with Jesus, that commune with Him, that surrender to Him regularly and say God, what are you saying? What are you doing?