Approved || Week 3

United in Love

“My prayer is … that all of them may be one … so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one … so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” John 17:20-23

God approves of a Church that is United in Love.

There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community. Prov 6:16-19

• One enemy

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, (I’m out) but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Eph 6:12

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy …” John 10:10

• One mission

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit … Matt 28:19

• One strategy

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you (same politics)love one another. John 13:34-35

Discussion Questions:

What does being “United in Love “ mean from the sermon this week?

Why is it important at Relate? In your community?  In your home?

What is one way you can walk out being United in Love this week?

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Transcript

unknown 0:26

All right, good morning, everybody.

Series Setup: Approved By God

The Enemy’s Easiest Strategy: Division

Jesus’ Prayer For Oneness In John 17

Detours: Preferences Over Mission

What God Hates: Stirring Up Conflict

Rage Bait And Monetized Outrage

Denominations, Preferences, And Pet Peeves

SPEAKER_00 0:27

And welcome to church. How many of you are excited to be in God's house today? I am excited that you are here. I'm thrilled to be able to see everybody face to face and um spend time with you, get to know you. I have seen a few new faces, and it is really the thrill and the joy of our lives, Angela and I, not to just have church with you, but to be the church, to be able to spend time, do life with you. That's why we are a church with small groups, or we're a church of small groups. We uh every week, I think one of the most important things that we do is meet in circles and get face to face across a table and share, do life. That's where healing and life, and uh that's where some of the most miraculous things happen. And um, I got one person who agrees, and that's all I need. I'm also gonna look right at the camera and say welcome to everybody who's joining us online. It matters a lot to us that you chose to click in and on demand or stream the services today. There's a lot of great options for uh preachers and churches and messages, and um, we love that today you get to be a part of this community and um looking forward to what God can do in our midst. So go ahead and pull out your Bibles, pull out your notes. We are a note-taking church. And uh, if you are not sure uh what that means, Krista, would you hold up your book real quick and just we've got little notebooks for you out in the four, they're already paid for, you don't have to buy them. But we want you to take notes because it makes the message a little bit stickier, it makes God's word stay with us and it helps us to hold on to it when we're when we're taking notes. And scientifically, like your brain, when you're writing and taking notes, you're you're it's like different parts of your brain are awake during the message because you're you're you're processing information differently, you're processing the word differently, and so it it is stickier, and that's the reason uh why we take notes. And um, let me just give you an insider's view because I think this series that we're in is really kind of an insider's uh series because we're talking to the church. I think there's something special that a message that's uh better than you hearing what I have to say, and that is that at some point during the message, my prayer for you is that the Holy Spirit just says something to you during the sermon. And then uh I know that's true because so often you guys come up to me and say and tell me, hey, when you were talking about such and such in the message, it just really hit me. And I would sometimes think, I never said anything about that. I don't know. You were you were listening to the Holy Spirit, you were you were hearing more than just what I'm saying, and that's how God's word works. It it just um it kind of blows up on the page. And uh whether you're reading it off the screen or the notes or your Bible or your app or whatever you've got there matters a lot. So uh this series that we're in, uh we're gonna dive right into week number three of approved. The whole idea, the whole point of this is that we want to be a church that is approved by God. We want God's approval. We want God to be pleased when he looks at us, like when he sees you sitting on row two, young people. I want God to look down at row two at the five o'clock service on Sunday morning and say, I approve. I am pleased, Holly. I'm pleased. I that's what I want God to feel, to say it's like I want our worship whenever we're singing, I want it to be a sweet incense. I want it to be something that He says, I like that. Otherwise, we can just get to doing our thing, what we like, we approve of, and God says, I do not like that. And that's that that's the danger of becoming a part, like getting routinely into church and doing things the way we like them, is that we trend and tend towards the things we like. We want it our way, but I'm not gonna talk too much about that. But the series, that's where we're at, week number three. And so I want you, I want to just kind of start with this idea, and I want you to use your imagination and think about uh we we rarely talk about the devil, but he's out there. How many of y'all know we there's a real devil out there? If the devil's job is to stop the work of the church and stop to stop the the transformative power of God in our lives and to shut down God's purpose in us, he he if he if he every day or even probably his strategies are bigger than our lives, he he is working overtime to shut down the church and to stop you and to keep you from the best life, the abundant life that God has made for us, if that's his job, think about it. He doesn't have to come in and if it was me, I would say, okay, let's bomb all the churches, let's burn all the churches to the ground, and let's let's have a book burning and we'll burn all the Bibles and we'll do like if I'm thinking about how do we shut down the church, there's a lot of things we could do. We could ban uh God from the internet, and like I don't know how we could do that because all those things seem impossible, but it's like if you look across history, some crazy things have happened. But ultimately, he doesn't have to do any of those things to stop us from being where God wants us to be. In fact, I think it's much, much easier than all of those things. Instead of doing all those things and making us stop believing him, all he really has to do is just make us turn on each other. A house divided, right? Maybe he just has to put uh some hateful posts on social media and then we'll chime in and we'll choose sides, and all of a sudden, people who were united, people who should be on the same mission, on the same purpose, on the living for the same goal, those people who are following Jesus, those same people, who are all hopefully going in the same direction, living for the same cause, all of those same people would be head to head against each other, fighting each other. All of a sudden, the mission of the gospel of Jesus Christ has turned into a different mission, and that's to shut down the people who are doing the mission of the gospel of Jesus Christ wrong. And it sounds close to the same job, but it's not the same job at all. In fact, we'll trade one for the other so quickly. In fact, we don't even know we've changed. We don't we don't know that we've given up the job God gave us, the mission He assigned to us. We don't know that so often we just put that aside, we put it on pause, and God, we've got some more important things to handle. We got to take care of those other Christians, those people who are preaching the wrong thing, those those people who have the wrong version of the Bible. And so we get distracted from the primary issues, and we get focused on the secondary issues, and we get divided over preferences rather than united by our mission. So I don't think to hurt God's work, I don't think he has to destroy the church. I think all he has uh to do is divide the church. So today that's what that's really what I want to camp out for a little bit because I think for us to be approved by God, I think one of the most pleasing things to God is when we are in unity, when we are unified. In fact, I will I'll want to show you. We're gonna start in in John chapter 17, verse 20, right before Jesus is arrested, right before he goes to the cross, and uh his ministry is coming to the last chapter. Jesus says a prayer for his disciples. Watch this. In John 17, 20 it says, My prayer is that all of them may be what? One. He's not praying. I pray that you have miracles and signs and wonders and that you grow in epic proportions, and that I pray that you're protected, like all the things we could think that we would want prayer for. Jesus, pray for us. What does he pray? I pray that they may be so that the world may believe that you have sent me. Father, you sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, and they that they may be one as we are one. I would just let's pause right there for a second because if you look at the state of the church, and I don't mean the state of relate church, I mean the state of the big sea church across the world, around the world, around the United States, even just in this city. Would you say, not out loud, would you say the state of the church is as one? I would say no. And this message is not to bash any other church. I think the answer is not fixing the rest of the church. I think the answer starts right here and fixing us to be a solution to this particular problem that Jesus says, I pray that they are one, just as the Father you made, I've given them what you gave me. It's in other words, if you read this verse like I do, it's almost like a runner passing off a baton or a torch. I've given you gave it to me, I gave it to them, and they can't give it to anybody because they're so divided. They're scattered. They may be one as we are one, so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know, like they have to be in unity so that the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. That's crazy. Ultimately, Jesus connects the credibility of the gospel with our ability to be united. The world will be saved because they understand that God loves them. Like we can say, John 3.16, for God so loved the world, God loves you, and have shirts that say Jesus loves you and tattoos that say Jesus loves you. And we could do all the things that we think, oh, this is so cool, so trendy. But we're not doing the job of the church by being unified and showing people that it's true that we can love each other enough to prove that God loves you too. I feel like this is one of those messages that I shouldn't be as upset as I am. I should it should not be coming across as um intense as it is. I think. But we we I think we have to realize that there's a problem, and most of us know there's a problem, we just think that the solution is somewhere over there. Them, they it's the guy on the the the pew or the row, or maybe he's the one behind you or beside you. Some of you are thinking it's this guy right here. We want to be a church that God approves of, but in order for us to be a church that God approves of, we have to be people that God approves of. The answer doesn't is it's not a finger pointing anywhere. The answer is that we have to take responsibility to be the people that God approves of. So today we're gonna be focused right here in that God approves of a church that is united in love. God approves of a church that's united in love. Jesus said that they may be one, and I know that sounds right. Yeah, unity, everybody. We're excited about unity. We get hyped up about unity. The truth is that uh I don't I don't think anyone is waking up in the morning and thinking, I am gonna sow division within my church. Let's do it, everybody. No, no, I don't think that's what I don't think there's a single person that thinks that. What happens is we get so focused on our own selfish desires and our thing, like our preferences in church, that we get entrenched and we we so gravitate towards our desires that we stop, we totally lose track of God's desire. So I'm asking you, as some of you, I am your pastor, I'm asking you to put aside your own preferences for a second, let the Holy Spirit show you where you might be the answer to this. And this is not, I think, uh, like I would tell my kids when they were younger. Guys, can y'all just stop fighting for a minute? Just stop fighting till I leave, so I don't have to hear it. Then you can fight all you want. I don't, I just don't want to hear you fight. That's the way I talk to my kids, but I don't think that's it at all. I don't, I think the point is that uh he gives us a command to love one another. And the one another is not just the world out there, some random people. The the one another is the the people we have the hardest time loving, is the person sitting right next to us at church over time. We like everybody for a little bit, and then they sit too close, and we're like, oh it's not easy to accomplish this job because I think ultimately it comes down to we have an enemy that's strategizing and working, I said overtime. He he is working way harder than we are to divide us, than we are to be united. Because if we're united, then we're not we're unstoppable as a church. The message rings true to people who hear it and see it. But when the world sees a church that's divided and can't get along with itself, I know this is a message that I feel like I'm just preaching to the choir because you all we love each other for now. But it's when we're divided, then we become weak and ineffective, and we can't we preach and we preach and we preach, and it lands on people who don't care. I don't care anything that you have to say because I don't want the life you have. God doesn't just love unity, he hates division. In fact, let me show you really quickly in Proverbs chapter 6, verse 16. Watch this. There are six things the Lord hates. I thought God couldn't hate things. No, he can hate some things because they're uh directly in opposition to his nature and who he is. So hate hate his hate for these things is that he can't coexist with them. They oppose him. Watch this. Seven, so six things that he hates, but seven, the seventh thing is detestable to him. Haughty eyes, that's one, a lying tongue. We know God doesn't like a liar. The Bible, the Bible says that the devil's a liar. The message paraphrases that as it's his native tongue, his native language, it's all he can do is lie. Hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, which might seem like some of the other things on the list, but feet that are quick to rush to into evil, a false witness who pours out lies, again, lies. And then number seven, the things they the thing that God doesn't just hate, but it's detestable to him. And there's some things in your life and some things in my life that I detest, some things that I will just walk the other direction from, but there are some things that I will fight against. I detest them. Watch this. Number seven, and a person who stirs up conflict in the community. Can I just drop another little uh thought into your head? And that sometimes the person who uh stirs up conflict in the community doesn't do it on purpose. And that sometimes that person who stirs up conflict in the community, because some of you I know right now, I know you tell me, you're thinking, preach it, Pastor Sean. This person right here needs to hear this. Because I saw what they put on social media and it was not good. Some of y'all um y'all send me screenshots of stuff and I'm like, stop! I don't want to see it. It's that's why I'm rarely on social media. I don't get on Facebook very often. And so if you've sent me a friend request on on Facebook, I haven't not accepted I didn't not accept it because I don't like you. I'm just not on there. I don't it's too much. The problem is not the person that you think needs to hear this message. Would you just take this personally for a second? And because I think most of the strife, most of the conflict that gets stirred up in the church is inadvertent. It's done by just it is not done on purpose. You're not you're not throwing a grenade. Some of y'all do throw grenades. I know you do. Because you get excited when people are upset. I'm not talking about that so much. I'm talking about the the inadvertent things, the things that maybe listen. There's a difference between being right and then being right in the right way. And all of us want to be right, and we must stand on our right to be right, and by God, they're not gonna tell me. I'm gonna make, I'm gonna sh I'm gonna prove you wrong on social media, and everybody's gonna see it. This is not a message against social media, by the way. I'm just you can defend the truth, you can defend the body of Christ, you can defend the word of God, you can do all of those things in a way that is not divisive. What if we realized, and what if we what if we lived like division in the church was worse than the thing we're fighting against? Because we always have a reason. There's always like this justification. Well, there we had to put them right, we had to put things right. What if what if the division was worse than the wrong in the first place that we had to put right? Watch this. I think this is a big problem today. Not just the inadvertent uh division and conflict, but also the on-purpose division and conflict. It's constant everywhere we everywhere you look. Uh, Oxford Dictionary puts out a word of the year every year, and for the last few years, um, a few years ago, three, four years ago, it was uh the word of the year was goblin mode. Some of y'all are thinking, I don't want to know what that means, but some of you know what it means. Um, the next year after that, the word of the year was Riz. The year after that was brain rot. And in 2025, the word of the year was rage bait. Rage bait. And that could be our next series for the next four weeks. Fe four weeks, we're gonna talk about godmo uh goblin mode, Riz, brain rot. Rage bait. Rage bait is content crafted to trigger anger reactions. It's content or headlines created so that you'll click and chime in and pick a side, you'll choose a side, you'll back one side or the other, you'll you'll feel obligated to give your opinion and stand on it and defend it and fight about it. So there are it's it's it's bigger than you think. There are literally people strategizing on how to divide us, how to create um religious discussions that divide people. Why? It's not because they care so much, or because they really want to defend one side or the other, or they want you to agree with them. No, they don't care. They just want you to click and post and share and like because they've monetized and weaponized your opinion and someone else's opinion and the disagreement itself. Because the disagreement gets a lot more clicks and advertisements, way more than just someone's popular opinion and unity. But I think it's pretty obvious that division sells, and we are buying into it. In fact, I think if you look around it, it could be said a great case could be made for the church buying into division as much, if not more, than anybody else. So let's let's do a quick uh a quick test. Uh and we won't go too deep, but I'll just ask you this. How many of you guys have you started in your walk of faith or your relationship with God? You started in a different denomination than you currently exist right now. Some of you don't even know what that means. That's good, just doesn't matter. I think that's most. We we a bunch of us have ended up in a different space than we started because where we started, we were like, I think this is good. And then all of a sudden, something it was exciting at the beginning. I'm so excited to be here. I'm I'm gonna be here forever. And then what happens a little while later? Something happens, somebody says something, we see something that says, I'm out, can't do this anymore. This is I didn't, I did not uh agree to this. It might be the fact over the last uh many, many years, decades, centuries, even the church has been. Has been divided over crazy things, such as uh, I can't believe they have an organ in here. I'm out. I can't believe there's a piano in here. I'm out. I'm gonna go do my own thing. I can't believe they have an organ and a piano. I cannot do both. That seems ridiculous, it seems absurd, but we leave and we're out over stupid things. People have left churches and denominations, and they've left God because I can't believe they're not wearing a three-piece suit right now. Pastor Sean, you are not wearing a tie. For 20-something years, I preached all every Sunday I was in a suit and tie. And then I realized I'm the only one in a suit and tie. I'm not doing this anymore. I don't think God cares if I have a tie on. People who have said, I can't, I believe they have yeast in the communion bread, I'm leaving. That hurts somebody's feelings right there. Don't get up and leave. Please. The length of the service is too long. Or the volume of how people say amen in the service. People have said, Oh, that's too loud, I'm out. Or because people drink coffee, or there are choos uh chairs and not pews. Or because someone has a beard. I don't know. Or because we believe different things about what might happen in the future. Someone asked this week if we were uh pre-mid or post-trib. Some of y'all are like, what does that mean? I don't. There are, according to Google, there are 49,000 denominations in the Christian church. That's crazy. I think there are 49,000 churches in spring. It feels like sometimes there's one on every corner. They all hate the next one down the street. Here's the thing. Unity is not surrendering and saying, okay, I'll put up with whatever you do. It's not pretending like we all think the same or act the same or we all are the same. Unity is saying that what um what unites us is infinitely more important than the things that divide us. And we can sit in the same room and and not agree on everything. We can sit in the same room and I can tell you this that I sit through our service sometimes, and they'll sing a song, and I think, I do, I hate this song. Why do we sing this song? This is a terrible song. But then I look around and ever the people are weeping. I'm like, okay, you're worshiping okay, fine. Let's sing it. So it's so important that we we focus on the things that unite us and we refuse to let go of the things that unite us. And I'm not saying to overlook the divisions and the things that we don't agree on. I'm just saying that the things that should unite us should be way more important and enough to hold us together and say, you don't have to agree with everything you say. I don't agree with everything my wife says. I don't ever I don't agree with everything my kids say, but I don't kick them out of the house. Because there are things that are way more important than a disagreement. We can just agree to disagree, right?

unknown 26:14

That's right.

What Unity Is And Isn’t

Three Unifiers: One Enemy

One Mission: Make Disciples

One Strategy: Love One Another

Responding: Repentance, Prayer, Next Steps

Invitation To Receive God’s Love

SPEAKER_00 26:16

So I thought of three things that should unite us way more than the things that divide us. And so I'm gonna give them to you. You're write them in your notes. Number one, the the the first thing that should unite us is that we have one enemy. We don't have ten enemies. We have one enemy, and just I'm gonna just let you know right now that your enemy is not a person. So as soon as I said we have one enemy, you thought of someone, and it's not that person. The person you've been praying against. That's that's not how first off, that's not how prayers work. So don't Ephesians 6.12. Ephesians 6.12 says, For our struggle is not against flesh and blood. This may be our most repeated verse on a Sunday morning. I feel like I keep coming back to this verse because we need to understand that, and I could probably stop right there, if you would hear me. We could just pack it up right now, message over. We have an enemy. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood. Our struggle is not against a person, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly realms. We have an enemy. So I want to do something really quickly. I got five minutes. Can I get let's see? Can I get the four people right here on the second row and one person from the front row? Come on, guys, let's go. Come on, y'all give them a hand real quick. Come on up, join me up here. Come on, let's go. I'm excited for this. Yeah, they're not, but it's okay. Y'all are gonna do great. You look good. All right, so you guys line up and just link arms up. I want to see you link arms. So, just for the the the point of this illustration, now make it strong. Yeah, good, good, good. Looks good. They represent the church right now. They represent the church, and what should unite them is uh the fact that they they have been made the church by God, been given a mission, they've been they have a purpose, they have um they have so much that God has made them for, and yet when the devil, I'm gonna take the the place of the devil here for a second, the devil comes along and sees unity, and his job is simply to divide. He doesn't have to kill them all, he just has to separate them so that they can't be what they were made for. And so when the when the devil comes along, uh he starts trying to tell them, hey, you know what? Y'all look like y'all no, no, no, stay together. You're trying to stay together. That didn't even take you, I didn't even have to say anything and you were separating. You know what, bro? She's a girl, and you're a guy. She doesn't even know how you feel, she doesn't know how you think, she doesn't even like you. He's agreeing already. And if that doesn't work, he starts moving on and thinks, you know what? She probably votes different than you do. You should probably just create some separation. Or you know what? She's gonna say something that's gonna hurt your feelings, you should probably disconnect from her right now. Remember that thing he said a month ago? He has some, he has some, he's weird. You don't want to be around him. If you're with him, he you're weird. All the things that he'll say to try and put something in your head, it's all lies. But ultimately, he tries to show us that we're different and that we don't belong together. We have different opinions, and he'll do anything to try and separate us because watch, if he can. Now all of a sudden, JJ's isolated, he's alone. Any passion for faith and for the body of Christ that he did have is starting to dwindle and burn out, and I don't even know why I'm here. I don't he now all the thoughts that the enemy gives him, all the lies that the devil tries to tell him, he has no accountability, he has no one to give him faith, he has no one to talk to him and fill him with faith. He has to try and do now, he's doing life alone. And for some of us, that's a great illustration. But there are some people sitting in the room and watching all there, all of us at some time we've been that one that's been all up by ourselves thinking they don't even like me. They don't love, they never loved me in the first place because I left and they didn't say anything. They just let me go. We get all the things going through our heads as to why we they don't even deserve for me to be a part of the family. And what the devil would love is to separate every one of us and get us separated so that we're not together, we're not on mission, we're not doing what we were meant to do, and here's the thing. Watch this, let's go back together. Here's the thing. I have a brother, he's four years younger than me, and they're we could fight, and then if someone else came and said something to him, I would defend him, right? That's that's most of us. Some of you say, I don't care. Go ahead. Please. Um but we're willing to defend what what would why is it that when it comes to our brothers and sisters in the in the body of Christ in the church, why is it that as soon as cut someone comes along, as soon as the enemy comes along and says, She's different, she's weird. You don't need to be around her. She's she's she's the worst. We believe it. Yeah, they are pretty bad. Yeah, they say some things. Uh I probably don't want to be a part of them anymore. Why is it that we think, oh, blood's thicker than water, and we think we have to be, we have to defend our family till the end, and then uh it's so painful. Jesus said, Who is our who is my mother? Who is my brother? We have the same father. We should be a family that is united on purpose. All right, y'all give him a hand. Thank you guys. That's the point we were making. Thank you. We have one enemy in John 10:10 says the thief comes only to steal, kill, and to destroy. One of the strongest unifying forces that we have should be that we have a common enemy. All right, here's number two. Not only do we have one enemy, but we have one mission. And I've been saying it since the beginning. We have one mission, and that mission is not to uh is not to uh correct the person next to me. The mission is not to fix this person or to make sure that they're doing their job. Matthew chapter 28, 19 says, Therefore go and make disciples of all nations and what baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them all the things. Jesus said, all the things that I have shown you and commanded you. That's our job is to go with the great commission to walk into the world and to give the message, to take the torch that he handed to us and pass it off. And we can't do that if we're divided. Jesus did not tell us to go therefore and win arguments. Go therefore and be right everywhere you go and defend yourself to the very end. I'll never forget um one during the first year of our church, we started. There were so many people from different backgrounds, and there was one lady who was so excited. We were just a small group. I would say the church maybe was like 40 people. And we had a Bible study at our house, and there was probably 15 people at our house. And um the very Bible study's over. We're like, okay, everybody, let's let's all just stand up and we're kind of come together, and we kind of circled up, and we're like the end of a normal, like small group Bible study. We're gonna we'll let's just pray. Uh let's just pray for each other and uh close in prayer, right? It's gonna be a simple prayer. Lord, thank you for your word. It was not intense. In fact, we had some like fun music playing in the background at that point, and there's desserts, and it's very lighthearted. And all of a sudden, um, somebody, I asked someone to pray. I said, Hey, can you just close us out in prayer? And then they said, Okay, everybody, would you just uh let's just join hands and and and I'll pray. And so everybody joins hands around the circle, and one lady says, uh-uh, don't touch me, don't lay hands on me. I'm not that I don't do that. All of a sudden, there was this like shocking. She was upset, she was afraid that someone was gonna touch her and pray for her. And I said, Hold on, hold on, okay, everybody, let go. I was like, hold on, hold on, we're not gonna let this be the thing. She was so upset that someone tried to touch her during prayer. I I had no clue. I was like, we're just all joined hands and pray. It was like kumbaya, we're gonna have this moment. It's like a heartfelt prayer, and I would I I thought, oh no, in fact, it wasn't very long. They they didn't stick around for too long. I think it's so ingrained in us that I'm in this camp. I'm in this, I do church this way, I love Jesus this way, I read this Bible, I I I say these things, and I don't do these things. That we have these guide rails set up that I don't know how the guide rails even got there for some of us. You don't even know how the guide rails got. You don't know why you do the things you do. I don't know. Some of the things that I do, I'm like, I've been challenging. Why do I do that? Why do I think that? Is it because somebody told me or is it because the Bible says so? If the Bible says it, I want to know, let's understand it and let's I want to be obedient to God's word. I want God to approve of my life. But there's some things that we do that are nowhere in the Bible. I don't know, I don't know how we got to them. And I thought, okay, I guess we are that kind of church that we hold hands when we pray. There's some things that you need to challenge in yourself that you've been against, and anybody who does them, you're against them. One time, uh, right after COVID, we were in uh uh not in the movie theater, but we were in a different rented building. And I remember I was preaching. I haven't done a series on unity. I talk about being in unity and being in uh loving one another all the time. That's one of our core values. We're gonna love love people. Here's the thing. I was preaching a message, not this message, but very similar. We have to love one another, everybody. No matter, and I started talking about how we have to love people who are different. I am not joking with you. A family directly stood up in the middle of the service and walked out. We're so offended that I that I was talking about, and some of you guys in the room, you may have I might already have struck a chord because I said something about something that resonated with you. And all of a sudden we have this thing that makes us throw our hands up and like the lady in our prayer circle and just say, I'm out. Can I tell you that the enemy would lie to you and love to take you out of God's purpose and God's plan for your life? And if he could just divide you and make you take a stand with no meaning, there are some things worth fighting for. I'm not saying that I'm not saying that we shouldn't fight for truth. Absolutely, we must fight. We have to defend truth. But there's a way of defending truth that's not saying, I'm out. I'm out of here. We can't be so in love with the method of church that we do that we lose the mission. And I'm not just saying that we're gonna do it our way. I'm asking you to just look into your own heart and into your own routine, the things that you have ingrained in yourself, the things that you have called, this is the way I serve God, this is the way I worship God. We need to worship God with passion and embrace his word. But also we need to fight for unity and fight as hard for unity. Now, I think what will happen, because this always happens, then I'm gonna give you the last one. What always happens whenever I preach a message about something like this is that you're gonna walk out of here and then you're gonna recognize the person who lives across the street from you or your family member or the person who sat next to you today. You're gonna start seeing, I did not know that they watched SpongeBob SquarePants. Or I did not know that they gave their kids phones at seven years old. And I don't believe in giving kids phones at seven years old, or all the things, right? There's gonna be something that just irritates you, and you're gonna have to decide whether you're gonna be disconnected or whether you're gonna walk in unity, and whether that thing is gonna be more important than the mission that God gave you, which is to spread the gospel and to live a life that is a witness. Here's the last thing, and then we'll close. Not only do we have one enemy and one mission, but we have one strategy. I'm gonna get the band to come and we're gonna close and worship. We have one strategy to carry the gospel and to live a life that is he's he's called us to be a light that shines in the darkness. John 1 says that he is a light in that came into the world, the world didn't understand him. But what happens is when he gives us that light and charges us, calls us to go and be a light that and to be salt and light, what it that becomes worthless and tasteless and dull as soon as we start infighting and arguing with each other, and we start changing the point of why we're here in the first place. So, last verse is this, John chapter 13, verse 34. And I'm gonna read it slowly for you because I need you to really get this. And it's a new command, Jesus says, a new command I give you. Love one another. In fact, why don't you look around the room? Turn around, look at the people behind you, beside you, in front of you. That's the job. How can you love God? Jesus talks about how can you say you love God, but if you don't love other people around you, if you don't love your brother and your sister, then there's not love in you. Your job as the church is to walk as one, to live as one, and to love all the people that are sitting around. The job is not to just go out and love the world and be able to touch the untouchable, which we we believe in. And love the unlovable and care for the people who are hard to care for. That's part of it. But it's also the people who are sitting right in this room, the people who God would add to us, the people who you've burned bridges with before. He says, Love one another as I have loved you. And you know how he loved us? He loved us first. He loved us before we ever earned love, he loved us before we ever deserved it, he loved us before we ever knew about it. He loved us. And so, whenever you say, Well, they haven't earned my love, they haven't, they haven't asked for forgiveness, they haven't asked, they haven't, they haven't even shown me that they that's not the job. The job is to love as he loved us. That means I have to put down put aside my own pride, but put that means that I have to swallow or put aside my own right to be right. Okay, I don't have to be right about everything. You don't have to know that I'm right, and I can still be right. Why must we love one another? He said, by this, everyone will you know, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have the same politics or you boldly speak your truth. That's how everyone will know, right? Everyone will know that you're my disciples because you post on Facebook a picture of your Bible with your coffee, and you're just so comfortable, and you're so spiritual. That's not it at all. Everyone, the proof of our faith and our calling is in our ability to love each other. So if I said, Do you love Jesus? and you said yes, and I said, Prove it, the only way that you can prove that you love Jesus is to show me how you love other people. So any other thing that just popped up in your head, well, I served, I gave, I I I was faithful with my tithes and my offerings, and I was I was in church 52 times a year, and I pastor trying to add all the notes in my notebook, clicky binder, I had 52 of them. Plus first Wednesdays. That's not it. The proof Jesus said, I pray that they will that we be one. So I want us to pray. And I want us to close, and I want you to just examine your own heart and let the Holy Spirit show you where you have walked in division, where maybe you've bought into the lie of division. Maybe you've just accepted a truth that never should have been true. That you've traded your one enemy for someone else, or you traded the one mission for a different mission that's close, but not the mission. And you traded the strategy for a strategy that Jesus never gave us. Would you stand up on your feet and I want us to worship for a moment? But I want you to just open your heart and let the Holy Spirit show you this is where I need you to take a step. This is where I need you to ask for forgiveness. This is where I need you to grow. This is where I need you to open your heart and accept someone a little bit more. I don't know what that looks like for you, but I know that He can lead us and we can walk in unity. So, God, would you lead us to be one? Holy Spirit, make us one the way that you want us to be one. Help us to make the right decisions. Help us to choose you first. Help us to choose and to recognize our enemy for who he is. Help us to grab a hold of the mission that you gave us and to walk in the strategy that works and not one that we just prefer. We love you, Lord, and we honor you in Jesus' name. Holy Spirit, speak to us. Let's worship for a moment and then we'll pray in this place. Until you know the love of God. You can't share something that you don't have. Maybe today you're in the room and you're thinking, I don't know what the love of a father looks like. I never had one that showed it to me. I've never seen that kind of love before. I don't know what unconditional love looks like or feels like. So how can I give it? How can I give grace that I've never experienced? I want to give you a chance to experience and to receive the grace and the mercy and the love of a Father that loves you more than anything. The Bible says, whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And God wants to take you on a journey of faith. He wants to walk with you through life. He wants to take you by the hand and show you what abundant life is. But you have to start with one step of faith, and that is to accept the free gift of life. We do that by we say a prayer, but it's a confession of faith. We believe in our heart and confess with our mouth. We say we have a moment where that transformation begins. And then you get the rest of your life to walk it out. So would you just bow your head and close your eyes right where you are? I'm not going to embarrass anyone or call you out, but if that's you, I'm going to invite every person in the room and those watching online, if that's you and you're ready to take that step of faith today. Would you say this prayer with me and begin a relationship that God so wants with you? Would you say this out loud? God, today I give you my life. Today I choose to follow you. So forgive me of my sin. I trade in my old life for a new one. So breathe life into me. From this day forward, I'll follow you. In Jesus' name. Amen. Would you put your hands together for those who said that prayer? I love that you took that step if you did today. It's an exciting place to be, and God has so many things for you. I love to get to know that, get to know you. And I'm praying for you this week. God bless you. Y'all have a blessed week, and I will see you on