[SERMON] People Are the Quest: Seeing Others the Way Jesus Did | Side Quest Life

In this third installment of the Side Quest Life series, Pastor Cyle uses the concept of non-playable characters (NPCs) from video games to challenge listeners to stop treating people like background noise. Drawing from Matthew 9:35–38, Proverbs 27:17, and Luke 19:10, the message reveals that the people we rush past are not interruptions — they are God's divine appointments and the very harvest Jesus calls us to. The application is simple but convicting: slow down, make room in your schedule for people, and move at the speed of compassion.

Transcript

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Uh we've been in this uh sermon series called Side Quest Life, and uh what I found out is I thought this was kind of nerd time for everybody, but I found out we have a lot more nerds in here than I realized. So this is a lot of you play games and uh you're coming out of the woodwork, and that's fine. And so I'm it's excited to know that. So uh now we're gonna we talked about like the map. We talked about the map and the main quest, and we talked about the 6200 side quest in some games and how our life is a lot like that. There's a main quest in life, it's the road to eternity through Jesus Christ. That's the only main quest. But everything else is side quests. And some of you have been having hard conversations with yourself and with others about your side quests. Not all side quests are bad, but a lot of them just become the main quest for us. So I know a lot of you have been having good conversations. It's been fun to hear that. Last week we talked about how some video games have a lighted path that takes you to the destination. And so life does too. It's called God's Word, it's the light that lights our feet, and uh how we really need to make sure that God's word and his people are part of our journey and follow his lead and to that path that we need to go to eternal life through Jesus Christ. And so today we're gonna talk about something uh maybe even a little bit nerdier. So in every game, there are something called NPCs. What's an NPC? Somebody tell me. Non-playable character, yeah. So uh who is that the first time you've ever heard that before? We love uh we love acronyms around here, obviously. So uh, but non-playable characters. A non-playable character is not the player. You in life would be the player, and everybody else is the NPC. In a game, if you're playing the game, you're the player. Everybody, every other character in the game is a non-playable character. Here's an example from the one of the most famous games, Skyrim, uh, out here. You'll see uh it doesn't matter what the words are on screen when you see it, it's coming. Boop, nope, it's not coming. Pretend there's this beautiful picture here. There we go. Okay, there we go. This is from Skyrim, and in the game, you can interact with every character. You pretty much can interact with them, you can up in a button that says talk and talk to them, and then you'll get all these options a lot of times, and you can have like long conversations with some of these people. And so there's these non-player characters, and non-playable characters are background people who you can ignore or you can engage with. It's up to you. You can walk up to somebody, hit the talk button, or you can go right by them. Some of the games, they've even decided that when you walk up to somebody, they'll just say things randomly when you walk by, which can be annoying after 100 or 200 hours of a video game because they say the same things. They they run out of stuff to say. But you don't have to choose to interact with any of the non-playable characters because you are the player. That's how it works in video games. And so ultimately, there's a bunch of them. I got another picture I want to show you here. Uh now, anybody ever played this video game? Anybody? So far, two services, nobody. That's that's like three, four hundred people, and no one's ever seen this game. I don't know what game this is either, but I found a picture of it. So, but obviously, they're interacting. There's a menu that's a non-playable character because games today have non-playable characters in it. That's just part of it. Some of the characters give you quests, some of them give you resources, and some of them give you direction. And so it's important in some of these games to interact with the NPCs. It's the way the game works, it's a mechanic in the game. Here's another one called Starfield. This is a newer game, just another you know, view of like a space game. But every game kind of has this. You can have conversations and you can buy at the store. A lot of them have like vendors, you go to the store and you go and have these interactions. But most players, if you're like me, you try to skip the dialogue. Because every time you talk to the vendor, he says the exact same things, or she says the exact same things over and over again. And so what you start doing is mash the button as fast as you can because you're done hearing it, right? Some of you, that's a relationship with your spouse, right? I don't want to hear it again. Let me mash that button and get through this, right? You try to move on as fast as you can because you don't want to get caught in that same conversation over and over and over again. You just want to buy your thing and move on. That's what a lot of people do. And I I'm honest, like, if I usually start a game and I'll start reading the conversation, and then eventually, after enough interactions, I don't care about what they have to say. I don't care about the story, I just want to finish the game because I'm done. Right? Some of you, that's how you live life, right? I don't want to hear about the story anymore. I'll just move on. That's the way it is. And if you've played the game long enough, you know the right NPC, though, can change your entire game. There are websites dedicated to this. That map I showed you two weeks ago was from a website that had all 6,270 points plotted out. You could zoom in and all the details as to what treasure was there, what NPC was there, what they would say, what you needed to know. It would have secret ones that you could find secret ones, you can find caves, you can find dungeons, you can find all kinds of stuff. And so once you figure it out, there can be a specific NPC or two that will give you the thing you need to beat the game faster or to beat the game at all. And so NPCs can be a very important part of a gaming experience. And so the right one can change everything. And so let me say this. Now that I'm telling you something about how video games work, what if I told you you're living life the same way? Some of you, you're rushing past people, you're skipping conversations, and you're treating people like background noise, right? We do it. Some of us are mashing the buttons to get through things as fast as possible when we run into somebody. What about the grocery store? If I'm going there, my mission is to get groceries. My mission is not to talk to people. Anyone have that experience? And here's how, here's some of you are not raising your hands, here's why. You already mashed the buttons of life and found out you could order everything online, you could go to a parking spot, and they'll just bring it out. You don't have to talk to that person. Who raised your hand if that's you? Most of you sharp at Target, I know. So, okay. Well, we literally they had this conversation at my house. My wife's like, I love that you could just order things online and then they'll just you can just go and pull in a parking spot, they bring them out. Yes, that is smashing the buttons, right? It is. I want to get through it without any interaction with people because I'm busy, I have a task, and I want to move through things. When I go to the grocery store, I'm there for a mission of groceries. If you see me out in town and you don't say hi to me, I'm probably not saying hi to you. It's not because I don't like you. I don't see you. I am I'm I'm like a horse with blinders on. I have a mission. If you want me to talk to you, you need to stop me and say, hey Kyle, and I will stop and talk to you because I will. You just gotta say, oh, I'm over here, and I pull the reins, right? I'd be glad to. But like we have to stop rushing past people, skipping them because they matter. And if you're surrounded by you know people that you think are NPCs, the problem is God calls them the mission, right? You know, life has a lot of non-playable characters. Everybody that's not you is a non-playable character in your story. And the problem is for God, those people are NPCs. Those people are the mission. And here's how we know Matthew 9. Matthew 9, verses 35 through 38. This is talking about Jesus, and he's saying that, and Jesus went throughout all the and so Jesus went to all the cities and villages. That's big towns, that's little towns. That's Brooklyn, that's Jackson. Jesus went to all the places, and he was there teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. So Jesus would go to big towns, little towns, didn't matter, and he would do the same thing. He would go to the seed of the religion, and he would heal people, and he would cast out the disease, and he would teach them. That's what he would do. He cared. He spent time with the people. And it would say, then it says in 36, when the crowd, when he saw the crowds, he had compassion. Remember this. We're gonna come back to this. He had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. So when Jesus saw the crowds, he didn't be like, uh-oh, I gotta mash those buttons, right? I'm on a mission for the Lord, right? I gotta skip these people and get to the next place. It says he had compassion on them and being that he had compassion on them, he slowed down. He healed them, he taught them, he spent time with them. That's different. Those were also the NPCs in Jesus' story, but they mattered because they were the mission. It says in 37, it says, Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out his laborers into the harvest. Harvest. Guess what? The harvest is people, that's the mission, and the laborers are you and me. We're the laborers. Now, I know a lot of Christians think the laborer is the pastor. Well, we pay the pastor, so it's his job to preach people. It's not. The Bible doesn't make that differentiation. The Bible says the laborers are all the followers of Jesus who are then to go into the world and make more followers of Jesus. Our one purpose in life is to know him and make him known. That's it. That is your sole purpose in life. Everything else is side quest. It is. And you can enjoy side quests, but there's still side quests. You have one main quest: know Jesus and make him known. And so Jesus didn't walk past people. He stopped, he saw, and he engaged with them. Because people aren't interruptions, they are the assignment. That's the key for us. We often think, well, I don't have time for that, it's just an interruption. People aren't the interruptions, they are the assignment. And in games, NPCs often feel like side content. Those side quests as NPCs, they're annoying, they get in the way, you gotta keep talking to them. But in God's kingdom, people are the content. That's the thing. In your life, the people in your life, they are the content. They are what matters. They're the mission, they're the harvest. And you have a job to do. And this is hard because listen, I'm as guilty as this as the rest of you. But we live in modern day America. Our mission of what we want is all that matters. The people are there in our way, right? And we just need to get out of the way to get what we want to. And here's how I know customer service representatives. Right? How many of you are guilty now, sinners? So, right? How many of you have mistreated a customer service representative this week, right? You have. Especially when they have a foreign accent. Oh, yeah, I see you all know. That's right there. You're just submitting to your sin with your your comments, right? You know. Uh-oh, he knows. Yeah, you're you're I got a message from your Facebook friends that said that person was not nice to me. Um truthfully, we do it. We do it. My wife and I were having a conversation the other day, and she was saying, you know, I don't know how you always do this, but like I'll be on the phone with somebody, and then it won't get nothing. You'll just call that person, and all of a sudden, they'll just do whatever you want. And my response literally was, well, you catch more flies with honey. That's right. Because the years ago, I made a decision I was gonna be nice to those people. I was gonna be nice to those people. Because they they don't own the company, they don't own consumers. How many of you have been mad at consumers in the last year? On the phone. Yeah, yeah. Those people don't own consumers, they're they're not paid well just like the rest of us, right? But we get mad at them and they can't really do anything for us. But if you find the right person, and so I gave some advice this week, they were really upset with somebody and uh another one of those call service people, and I said, here's what I here's my trick. I'll just tell you a Kyle trick. I just keep calling back until I get someone else who actually is friendly and nice, and then you'll do the thing I want them to do. And it may take five or ten phone calls, but if you just keep calling back, you'll find some other person having a good day who actually is like, I'm having a good day, I don't want to help this person. And if you find that person having a bad day, you might as well just hang up because it's not gonna go well. So, but ultimately, you can recognize that people are the content and you can do better with people. How many of us match the buttons at the grocery store when we've just tried to get our groceries and get out, and all of a sudden you get the chatty cashier who wants to talk? And you're like, I don't want to talk to you. Mash, mash, mash, mash, mash. Stop talking to me, I just want to leave. Right? We have to slow down and recognize those people matter. People are the mission. What we're doing matters. Yesterday, uh I was with uh some of my sons and their friends, and we were playing games. And so, you know, I'm nerdy, we play games. So we went at 11 o'clock, we started at one place, and then we went to another place at 3 o'clock, and we went from Jackson and Leslie to Lansing at 6 o'clock, and we had the day scheduled. We we packed lunches, we had lunches packed, we had waffles for breakfast. Uh, I actually had an event before that, even at 10 o'clock. So it was this day was well scheduled. It was a well-willed machine. We had to leave at an exact time. We knew the exact time for drive time to get from one place to the next. We knew when we had to order pizza so we could pick it up across the street. We so one of our kids walked across the street to get the pizza while we were getting the car loaded to go to the next place. There was no time to waste. That's that's how we schedule it. So, right, and the problem is that all works until people happen. But I was at one place, and there was a guy from other campus I'd never met him before, but I heard about him. He plays with us and uh startup came in. So I met him and he just wanted to chat. And I have to I recognize that people matter, and so what I didn't leave time for at our schedule was people, right? And so we're chatting away, and I'm like, we gotta go. So we're gonna be late. And if you're late, you don't get a play. That's the way it works. And so uh you have to get there in time. So but we had I had to stop and have that conversation because it mattered. You have to make sure you have time for people because people are the content. And so Jesus, Jesus stopped for people. He stopped for the blind, he spoke to the outcasts of society, and he touched the untouchables, the ones that nobody else wanted anything to do with, the diseased. Jesus recognized that they mattered. What you call an interruption, God calls an appointment. Some of you need to take out your schedules and make some more appointments for Jesus with people. I bet if I looked to ask you to look at your calendar program, I'll pull my calendar program right now. It's called cozy. I got a lot of stuff on this calendar, right? My family has a lot of stuff. How much time is in your calendar for people? How many appointments are with people where you're just caring about people, making time for people? My wife was in the last service, and we were we had this conversation in front of the congregation here. She was sitting there, and um the one of the things that we do is we recognize that in ministry, our plans don't matter. If I don't come home for dinner, she doesn't care. She doesn't get mad. Now I know somebody that doesn't work in your house, that'd be a big problem. But if I don't come home for dinner, it usually means I've been peopling and that she'll just put it away and we'll heat it up when I get home. It does, it's not a thing for us because if if people are the mission, people are gonna just happen. And that's just part of it. For us, we normally have a conversation, we go somewhere, like how many cars should we take? Should we take two cars? Because Kyle, you're probably gonna get stopped talking, you're gonna stop and talk to people, and I'm gonna want to go home and need to take care of things. Now that we have kids who are older and our kids are involved in the ministry of the church, now the conversation is do we drive three cars? Do we drive four cars? Because what if someone else needs needs to go with someone? Or, you know, these interruptions. Like my son is is involved with the middle school group. And a few weeks ago we had the rummage cell, and so our mission teams for the youth ministry helped set up and tear down with the rummage cell, and it was great. But my son, my oldest son, Carver, walked down there. He's not going to the mission team, so he was not required to come serve. And he walked down there, he made the mistake of walking down there, and what he saw in the gym was a bunch of middle school kids helping out, having fun. And he thought to himself, those are my people. I need to help. His plan was to go home and relax because he comes back for youth group. But he recognized that that interruption was the mission. And so I found this out later. We had a conversation. I said, Why'd you stay? I thought you were gonna come home. And he's like, he goes, Well, I walked in the gym and all of my people were there. And I thought to myself, I need to be here with them. Now, he paid for it the next day because he woke up and he was super sore because they worked, they worked hard. And he's like, I'm really sorry for going down there. I was like, Yeah, you made a mistake going to the gym. That's what happens. But ultimately, that's the right choice. That interruption was the mission. And actually, Patty and I had a conversation afterwards, how proud we were that he made the right choice because there was a right choice. The right choice was the people. That's the mission, that's the harvest. And what you might think is interruption is actually God's appointment. And so I believe in something called holy introductions and divine appointments. I had a friend tell me this years ago. That your calendar, your schedule needs to be full of holy appointments and divine, uh, holy introductions and divine appointments. That means there's people in your life that God might have put there for you to meet, for you to minister to, for you to, for that to be the harvest for you to participate in. That's your mission. And if you don't engage it, you're missing out. And how many of us are guilty of missing out on holy introductions and divine appointments because we're too busy? Because we got our thing. We gotta get to my side quest thing as fast as possible, and we don't value people. The real mission, the real harvest. See, I think you can't say you're following Jesus while ignoring the people he died for. That's hard. I'm as guilty of this at times as you guys are. And I would say probably 90% of us, if not 100% of us, struggle with this one. We're Americans in 2026. We care about our thing most and foremost of anything else. And we teach our kids the same thing. We teach our kids the sign quest is the main quest, and we put them in everything that we can put them in because we don't want them to miss out on life. What we're really doing is making them miss out on the mission because they're gonna grow up in adults thinking that's the right way, and they're gonna teach their kids to do the same broken thing we did we taught them, and then their kids are gonna miss out on the mission. It's broken, it's a broken system. God gave us a different mission, which was people. We need to make more time for divine appointments and holy introductions to people that matter. See, NPCs and video games, they give tools, they give clues, they give access, and they give upgrades. It's great if you're playing a game. But in life, it's the same thing. In life, the NPCs in our life, which is are the people that aren't us, they also give us the same thing. They give us upgrades. And I know, I know it seems like we were frozen here, but there's a Bible verse I'm gonna read to you. I'm gonna grab my notes. Oh, there it is. It came up. Alright, here we go. So in Proverbs 27, 17, this is how we know. It says this very famous Bible verse iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. See, NPCs give us tools. They move us forward, they upgrade us. We do the same thing for each other. We upgrade each other. See, some people are in your life because you need what they carry. You need their encouragement, you need their love, you need their grace, you need their forgiveness, you need their mercy, you need the compassion, you need them to sharpen you. Some people in your life because you just need them say the hard thing. That's what you need. What's over here? I I love to say the hard thing. Here's the thing: I I love people, but I love you enough to tell you the truth. I do. And I love you enough to tell you the truth and risk losing the relationship over it. And I'm okay with that. Because that's what love looks like. And you need to be better about that. Now, you that doesn't mean you're a jerk. It just means you love people. I can tell you the truth and be very loving and kind and merciful and compassionate because Jesus showed us how to do that. But some people are in your life because you need what they carry. That's how you're gonna get to life. They're gonna upgrade you. Some of them you need their advice, their experience, their counsel. And then for some of us, you might also be someone else's NPC that they need in their life. You have something that they need to sharpen them, to encourage them, to allow them to move forward in life. See Ephesians 2 10, it says, For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before him, that we should walk in them. Those are the divine appointments and holy introductions. God, God has plans for your schedule. He does. And he has plans for you to do good works and connect with people and to be their MPC that sharpens them, that encourages them, that moves the story forward for them and teaches them about Jesus. You're not random in someone's life, you're sent. We are all here for a time and place and a purpose for whatever it is right now. You're living in Brooklyn, Napoleon, Irish Hills, Jackson, wherever you're living. You're living here for a reason. God put you here. You gotta figure out the purpose. And the purpose is not to get rich, to have a bigger house, to have a bigger boat, car, have a better retirement, to travel more. That is none of that. To have your kids excel in sports, none of that. The purpose is to know Jesus and to make him known and to help other people do it. And that's the mission. Other people, the harvest. Jesus literally showed us how to do it. See, your obedience might unlock someone else's breakthrough. Your obedience to that mission might unlock the breakthrough someone else needs for life change, for transformation, for a journey with Jesus Christ. But if you're not going to be obedient to putting your schedule to where people matter, then it's change. I've had to learn in 25, 27, I don't know, 28 years of ministry now. I've had to learn to make time for people because my mama calls me the hurricane. Like, because my schedule, I come in, boom, we're on schedule, we're moving forward. We got a mission, we're gonna accomplish, we're gonna win, we're gonna achieve, that's what we're gonna do. And so for me, I have to slow down and make time for people. And I intentionally do that. Like we'll have times where Patty and I'll talk, and she's like, you need to make sure you make time for people. So make sure you let the schedule afford that you're gonna run into people who are gonna want to talk to you. And we gotta we gotta make time for that. And I do now. I didn't used to. And I really try to be as good as I can about making time for people. Because people matter. And I know there used to be a time where you couldn't call people after nine, that was rude. And then it was 10. And now I think you can call people whenever you want now. I do. So I'll call you at 11, I'll call you at 12, I'll call you at 1 o'clock. I don't care. Don't answer. So like that's on you. Don't put your phone by your bed. But here's the thing for me. My kids will tell you when I'm in the car, I'm always on the phone talking to people. Because people are my job. That's the harvest, that's the mission. And I try to make time for people. I will talk to people all day long, all night long. I will because I think people matter. And yeah, it does affect other parts of my lives, and sometimes I just have to carve out time for the other people in my life, my family. But people matter. And one of the things that bothers me the most is when people don't matter to each other. Like we need to make sure that people matter because Jesus never treated people like NPCs. We don't ever see Jesus treating people like they don't matter. We never see Jesus walk into a city or village and say, I'm gonna mash the buttons to get through here as fast as possible. I'm gonna ignore all these people. Never once is that recorded in scripture. We the exact opposite is always recorded. We have some moments where Jesus is with the woman at the well. He's actually with a woman at a well who's politically of an alternative party because she's in a different country where they they separated. All right, so this is not like one of his people, and he gives her time. Then we have Zacchaeus in the tree. Zacchaeus, there's a song about him. Zacchaeus was a wee little man, was a wee little man, was he? He is what we would call a short king, right, in today's world. So like uh he was a little guy up in a tree that was kind of overlooked by society. He was up in a tree because he couldn't see over the crowds. He was that short. And in that society, that would have been seen as unwanted, unfavorable. And so Jesus gave him favor, told him to come down, gave him attention, said, Hey, let's have a meal, let's talk. Jesus saw him. And then we have the blind Bartimaeus and Jericho. This is a blind beggar that was sitting at the city gates, day after day, dirty, stinky, dusty. People went by all day long. He's just saying, basically, alms, give me alms, you know. I need to eat. And finally he hears Jesus coming through towns. He says, Yes, Savior, have mercy on me. And Jesus stops. When everybody else all day long just passed by without even noticing, he stopped and healed him. Jesus never rushed past people. Jesus moved at the speed of compassion. Remember that Bible verse? He moved at the speed of compassion. Do you move at the speed of compassion? Would you be guilty of that? Or do you move at you know ludicrous speed? America 2026. I'm gonna do everything I can as fast as I can to get what I want out of life. Or do you move at the speed of compassion? I'd say we're all guilty. If you're having a gut check in this service, it's like he's talking to me. I probably talking to everyone in here and myself. Like, there's the reality of this. See, Jesus didn't see interruptions, he saw people as souls. Do you see people as souls? Or do you see them as interruptions? They get in the way of what you want to do in life, what fun you want to have, or what experience you want to have, or what you want your kids to have. See, in games, you can skip every NPC and you can you can miss half the story. In life, you can do the same thing. You can just rush through life, smashing buttons, trying to get through everything as fast as possible. I'm guilty of that. I just get tired of the video games. Like, I'm tired of these conversations, I just want to end this thing. Some of you, that's just life. You're just rushing through as fast as you can, missing people. That's the thing. We need to move forward in life. Can I get the next slide? It's coming. We've been having some problems with it today. Is it coming? All right. This is the same price that froze earlier. All right. You can chase your purpose in life, and you can miss the people who are the purpose. That's hard. You can chase your purpose. Doesn't say God's purpose. You cannot chase God's purpose and miss people. Because people are the purpose. They're the mission, they're the harvest. But you can chase your purpose, which your purpose means, your side quest. Because if people are not the purpose, you're on a side quest. If it's sports, adventure, life, travel, money, wealth, retirement, entertainment, it's all a side quest. That's a purpose that's not God's. It's not for you. That's your purpose. You missed out on the real purpose, which is people. So, what does this mean for you? Why are we taking time? I think I think this is a gut check for us as an entire church. I do. I think we need to slow down and see people. What does that look like when you come to church on Sunday? Slow down and see people. I know we got introverts in here. I know we got extroverts in here. Do you talk to people? If you're an introvert, here's how introvert, like I think when you come to church on Sunday, it's not my job to greet everybody at the door. There's a reason I do that. I do that because when I go to church as a visitor and I don't meet the pastor, I just think it's weird. So, like, I can stay at the door and greet people. I know you all want to rush out of here as fast as possible. Mash that button. I do too. Because you're you're you're on the way somewhere. It's just supposed to be, hey, you're seen. I'm glad you're here. Like, we don't have to have a conversation, that's what the week's for. But it is just say, hey, I value you see. But when you come here on a Sunday, you need to slow down and see people. You need to have your head in a swivel and look around the room and wave at people, smile at people, say hi to people. You need to make this a friendly place. But a lot of you, you just come through the doors as fast as you can, you just mash the buttons to get through this experience as fast as possible, get on to the next thing. I know because everybody rushes out really quickly to that next thing. We all do it. We're guilty of it. I I do it. You gotta slow down and see people. Now I know some of you introverts, and I just tell, like, you're not gonna meet people. I'm not coming next week. Here's here's how introverts say hi to people. You do this side sideways like this, and you go like this. That means I want to say hi, but I don't want you to talk to me. So, like, that's what that means, right? Like, I don't like hugs, but if you give me the hug symbol, I know that you want one. So, like, it just is what it is. You walk up like this, that means hug. Um so like it's okay, but even if you're an introvert, you can wave at somebody, you can hide, you can you can let them know I don't want to talk to you, but like stay away. But uh, I do, I see you. It's okay. Like, if you God made you be an introvert, be an introvert, but you can still be a friendly introvert. You can't, right? And if you're if you're overly friendly extrovert, be a little less overly friendly sometimes. So right, but slow down and see people. It does matter. And then engage the interruptions. You've got to engage the interruptions. Your schedule needs to have space for people. Mine does too, and I'm always, we are having this conversation at my house all the time because people are my job. Like, my job is not this. This is a very small part of what I do. I know that's what everybody thinks this is crazy. Oh, you only work one hour a week, right? This is a very small part of my job. My job is people all week long. That's what I do. I spend time talking to people, following up with people. When I'm counseling people, I'm I'm regularly calling them, texting them in that counseling conversation until they're to a place where I don't have to do that because people matter to me. You gotta engage in interruptions. You gotta make time for it. This week, Thursday, was my busiest day by far. This last two months, getting ready for everything's just been insane. And on Thursday, I left my home, my phone at home, which was was awful because then I felt naked the rest of the day. And I went to go and do something. On the way back, I stopped in at the Groves. Now, the Groves is a campground right by MIS. I don't know if you've been there, but uh I met the new owner a couple months ago, said I would stop by. So I was driving by, I was like, I should stop in. So I did. She was there, and I for two hours we chatted. I got a tour, I saw the whole property, I saw uh I saw all of her machines, everything, heard about her life. She's from California, she's amazing, she's a very friendly person. She's like, if your church wants to come out here and use in for the MIS race and set up a vendor booth, that'd be awesome, and we'll take care of you. Like it was just a great experience, which I never would have had if I didn't make time for it. And I could have gone in and drove. I thought I literally thought I was gonna drive in, just kind of give my own myself a preview and leave, like without even talking to anybody. And she happened to walk out. And I'm like, uh-oh, here we go. Interruption time. But it was a great experience. I had to make time for the interruption. I did. And I gotta connect with her and meet her and hear her story, and that's what we gotta do in life. I could have just said, well, I don't have time, I don't have time for this. I'll come back to my time. I didn't, because honestly, I couldn't make the time. And I did. You just have to do it, and then you gotta be available to be used by God when there's an interruption, when there's another person in your life that needs you to sharpen them, to encourage them, to love them, to share with them about Jesus. You gotta be available to be used. See, I think the question we gotta have to ask is where is God asking me to step into someone else's story? Where is God asking me to move their adventure along their story along? What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to upgrade them? How am I supposed to give them a tool or resource that moves them to the main quest, which is Jesus? How do I do that? And you gotta figure out what that looks like, because I bet I bet you're all guilty of this. I bet we all are. And I know some of you are just sitting there like, this one's for me this week. It is. Because I think it's for all of us because we're Americans in 2026. You see, in Luke 19, 19, 10, it says this for the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. That was the mission. It doesn't say for the Son of Man, which is Jesus, came to make sure that we all could be better athletes, more intellectual, have bigger houses, bigger cars, better retirement, having more travel and entertainment. It says none of that. He just came to seek and save the lost. That was the that is the job. And then when he left to ascend to heaven, he told his best friends by the way, your job, which we call the Great Commission, is to go into the world and teach people everything that I taught you. Teach you to obey it, teach you to know it, teach you to know me, and to baptize them in the name of the Father Son, Jesus. That's it. That's the job. He gave us the same job that he had. He didn't give us any other job. We find a lot of ways to make a side quest, that's the main quest. You weren't an NPC to Jesus. He made you the mission. He made me the mission. We were the mission. So let's stop treating other people like they're NPCs and let's start treating them like they're the mission. They're the mission. The people that you come across, the people at the grocery store, the people in the customer service calls, the people that you meet in life, they are the mission. So stop skipping people and start seeing them like Jesus did. I know this is hard because I'm just as guilty as some of you are at times. I work really hard to not be. But the people that you're tempted to ignore may be the very reason that God put you where you are in life. Do you live like that? Or do you just rush through as fast as you can? If we really truly change, it changes people's experience here because this becomes a church where people matter. And we take time to see people, to value people. I I love telling people because I know where you sit. You guys all sit the same places every week. So I'm like, we were having a conversation. We did our uh our challenge dinner, it was awesome. Um Randy came, Randy made some pork and came. Uh, and and uh I was telling Randy, hey, do you know this? I was introducing Randy to this other person. He's like, I've not met this person. I said, Randy, it's because you sit, which would be from your left side rear center. That's where Randy sits. And the problem is that this person sits right side rear, and you guys never talk to each other because they literally never go across the center to meet each other. Like people in this row meet these people, and people you can move around a little bit, you can stay in the lobby and just say hi to people. You don't have to become best friends, but you just have to start seeing people. See people. Try not to rush out to Sunday, try to make time. Come to Sunday to service and come 15 minutes early and stay 15 minutes late because people matter. And watch what God does as you start peopling and see how it changes you and your heart. It might surprise you what God will do in your life when you recognize that the mission is the mission and it's the harvest of lost people. We want to be a church where we believe the NPCs matter. I know we're all guilty of this, and so I encourage you to fill out your connection card. And if you know you got a problem where you're rushing through life and you're not making the NPCs matter in your life, write NPC on here. We'll pray for you. I think you all probably should be writing it down, to be honest with you. There should be a lot of these this week. And I'll be praying for all of you. Write your name down, right? Write NPC on the back. If you know you guys struggle with this, this message is for you. Because we need to make sure that people matter because they matter to Jesus. So I want to pray for us as we're a church where where the NPCs in life, they are the mission, they are the harvest, they are the souls that we're sent to reach. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we just thank you for we thank you for Jesus. We thank you for his example. Lord, we pray we can be more like him, we can be more loving. Lord, we can operate at the speed of compassion and not the speed of America 2026. That we can see people, we can equip people, we can encourage people, we can point them back to you, Lord. We can face we can be the face of Jesus for the people in our lives. So we pray that we can do better and be better and understand that our job, Lord, is to know you and make you known by the way that we live, the way that we slow down for people, and the way that we sharpen each other. So we just pray that this is the kind of church that we are, Lord. We pray this is the kind of people that we are. And Lord, we ask your forgiveness for them or not, and that we can do better. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.