Becoming | Week 8

[00:00:00] Foreign church. We are thrilled you decided to listen to our teaching on your favorite podcast app. If you made a decision to follow Christ today, would you let us know by visiting yes.newlife Gillette.com Here is this week's teaching. [00:00:27] Good morning. [00:00:29] How are you this morning? [00:00:31] Good. Good. [00:00:33] Hey, we are going to be in Second Corinthians chapter five. If you got a Bible, go ahead and open up there. Second Corinthians, chapter five. If you don't have a Bible, it's going to be right here on the screen next to me. We are this is the last week of our Becoming series, which I have mixed feelings about. [00:00:51] I'm sad that the series is ending. I've been so impressed and blown away by how we as a church, how all of you guys have just cannonballed into the deep ends of embracing this becoming, who God's created us to be idea. And I'm excited about it. [00:01:08] So I'm sad that it's over. But also, this is the sermon that I've been looking forward to preaching the most throughout this series and this passage specifically. So second Corinthians, chapter five. We're going to start in verse 16. [00:01:21] Here's what it says. [00:01:22] So from now on, we regard no one. Everybody say no one. [00:01:27] We regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here. [00:01:44] All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. [00:02:03] We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Let's pray. [00:02:26] Jesus, we love you and this is all about you. [00:02:30] We sang your truth in worship. [00:02:34] We see your image in one another. [00:02:38] God, we love you. [00:02:41] I got in the sermon. If there's anything that's my opinions, my ideas, it's just for me. It doesn't matter if I'm excited to preach it or not. Let us let it go. Let us notice it and let it go. If it's just my opinions, but if it's faithful to you and consistent with your character, would you plant it deeply in our Hearts that we could become like you, Jesus. [00:03:02] Amen. [00:03:05] All right, I got a question to ask you. I got to start with a question, and this question is really important. So I'm actually going to give you. There's going to be a timer here on the screen with a full minute for you to think about this question. You do not have to answer it out loud. In fact, don't answer it out loud. Just think about it. If you want to turn to your neighbor and talk about it, that's totally fine. But I want you to think about this question. It's very important that you think about the question. So can you do it? [00:03:30] See, this happens every time. [00:03:32] You know it's going to happen. I'm going to ask. And then some of you guys are like, this is the worst. Why do you keep doing this? Because I have a microphone and I can. [00:03:40] Can you do that? [00:03:43] All right. Love it. So I'm going to. I'm going to say the question, then I'm going to explain the question, then I'm going to give you time to think about it. All right, here's a. Here's the question. [00:03:51] If there were no limits on who you could become, what type of person would you become? Now, let me clarify. I'm not really interested in, like, what you would have. [00:04:06] So I'm not really interested. If you're thinking I'd be a billionaire, great. Me, too. That's not really what I'm interested. If you're thinking I would have, you know, a house on the coast in California or a 20, 26 King Ranch, that's not really what we're looking for here. What type of person you could. What you would become. [00:04:22] If there were no limits on who you could become, what type of person would you become? You got a minute to think about it? [00:04:33] Starting now. [00:04:43] This is the awkwardest part of the whole sermon. It's me just sitting here, 30 seconds, running out of time. [00:05:15] You don't have to tell anybody your answer, but it better be a good one. [00:05:23] 10 seconds. [00:05:34] My son is 9, and one of the things I am constantly just amazed by is his imagination. [00:05:42] Those of you who are around young kids, you know what I'm talking about. The other day, probably a couple months ago, we were driving in the car. Weren't in the car for that long. Didn't have toys or an iPad or anything for him to entertain himself on. So I look back in the rearview mirror, and he has got the seat belt, and he's like folded a little man into the seat belt, and he's got the tab end of the other one in the other hand. And he is having an intergalactic space battle in the backseat of our car. Just. [00:06:08] Just aliens coming in. He's defending them right there with just a seat belt. I mean, that's his toy. It's a seatbelt. [00:06:14] A lot of times I'll come home from work and our living room will become a giant battlefield. He'll have taken his Magna Blocks and built vehicles out of them. And he'll have the couch and cushions and stuff rebuilt all over the room to create fortified locations and bases and all kinds of. There's dinosaurs and army men and everything you can imagine. And if you ask him about it, he can tell you everything that's happening. Like, this was just in his brain. This started in his brain and then he created it in the living room. A couple weeks ago, he had a friend over and they created. They turned our entire basement into a train loop. And this was an interdimensional multi universe train. It was a multiverse train. It started in Dinosaur World and then it went into Cowboy World, and then it went into Lizard and Snake World. And then all they could explain every single stop on this multiverse train station that went all the way around the basement. And I walked in and thought, how in the world can you imagine this? How can this just start in your brain and you just create it? Because I can barely imagine what I'm having for lunch today. And it's about an hour away. Right. [00:07:26] You probably noticed if you've been around kids or you might have just noticed this in your own life, that the longer you live, the harder it is to have that imagination. [00:07:39] There's probably a sociological explanation for it, but it's just true that it's hard to imagine. It's hard to be optimistic the older you get. I think maybe part of it is we make a few mistakes. [00:07:51] Life hits you really hard a couple of times, and then you just have a hard time imagining. You have a hard time imagining, what are you going to be beyond paying the bills? What could you become? I think that's why, if I had to guess, a lot of us, when I asked that question earlier, we didn't even know where to start. [00:08:08] What type of person would I become? I don't know, like, more of me. Different. I don't know, maybe some of us. You've got a mistake you made. You've got what was on your Internet search history yesterday in your mind, and all you can think is, I'd become different. I don't know what I'd become. But it really needs to be different. [00:08:25] We can't imagine what different looks like. We can't imagine what better looks like. [00:08:31] But we can imagine something needs to change. [00:08:34] The interesting thing, though, is that if you can't imagine something, you can't hope for something. [00:08:42] If you can't imagine it, you're not going to hope for it. [00:08:45] And if you don't hope for it, then you're probably not going to trust God for it. [00:08:50] And if you don't trust God for it, you're almost definitely not going to work towards it. [00:08:55] You're almost definitely not going to apply effort to it. It all goes back to this ability to can we actually imagine a life that's different? [00:09:04] The theologian and philosopher G.K. chesterton, who lived about 100 years ago in England, he in his book Orthodoxy, talked about this thing, this cynicism, this lack of imagination and joy that we develop as we get older. Here's what he said. He said it is possible that God says every morning do it again to the sun, and every evening do it again to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike. [00:09:36] It may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy. [00:09:47] For we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. [00:09:53] God can imagine something for our lives, but can we? [00:10:03] Sometimes when you're preaching, there's a passage of scripture that you get to that requires. It's nuanced, it's complicated. It requires jumping into the original language or unpacking, you know, context from the ancient world. And a lot of preaching is just kind of explaining what the text means and why it means that. But that's not really the case in this passage. This passage is really black and white and really beautiful. I think the best way for us to get through this passage today, instead of me trying to dive into it and unpack it, is just to kind of go line by line through the text and ask ourselves, do we actually believe what each line says? That's what we're going to do. We're going to start with this line, the first one. [00:10:40] So from now on, we regard no one. Everybody say no one, no one. From a worldly point of view. [00:10:48] Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Now the only thing we need to know from this verse is what is a worldly point of view? Because it's very clear we're not supposed to look at anybody with that point of view. So what's a worldly point of view? Here's what I want to propose. This is a worldly point of view. [00:11:06] You can go on. There we go. [00:11:08] A worldly point of view is judging someone's future based on their past. [00:11:16] Oh, I know where they're going. I know what they did last time. [00:11:20] A couple of weeks ago, I flew back to North Carolina for my grandma's funeral. [00:11:25] And, you know, all the family I haven't seen in a long time was there. My cousin that I haven't seen in probably 10 years was there. [00:11:32] And, you know, he was one of the cousins I really looked up to when I was a kid. He's about eight years older than me and. And he was, you know, I remember him showing me how to throw a football. I remember him just taking us through the woods in my grandma's house, just absolutely wreaking havoc on every living thing in those woods. [00:11:47] Loved him. And I know that since then he's had a pretty tough go of it. [00:11:56] Struggled with addiction, had a really tough marriage that ended poorly, gotten in some trouble. [00:12:04] I didn't really know where his life had gone. I knew what had happened, but I didn't really know where it was at now. So I said, hey, man, good to see you. What are you doing? What are you doing for work nowadays? [00:12:15] And he said, I work for the county, for the school district, in the facilities department. And I said, oh, that's awesome. I have a good friend, one of my close friends, mentors of mine, does that. He cleans and changes the oil in school buses and absolutely loves it. He says it's a great job. He's never stressed, gets to work with his hands. And that's what I told him. I said, this sounds awesome. I mean, getting to work with your hands, get stuff done. That's great, man. And he said. He laughed a little bit. He said, I don't really do a lot with my hands anymore. I manage all of the facilities for the county school district. [00:12:51] He said, I have about 200 employees who work for me, and I spend most of my day balancing budgets and managing systems. [00:12:59] And I was blown away. [00:13:01] And I realized something. [00:13:03] It was that I had lost my imagination, that I knew his past and I had judged where his future would go. [00:13:17] We do this subconsciously and consciously all the time. [00:13:22] Hey, you know that. I mean, his dad was an alcoholic. His grandpa was an alcoholic. I'm pretty sure all his brothers are alcoholics. You should be careful trusting anybody from that family, because I mean, what are you going to expect? I mean, they've been alcoholics for a long time. [00:13:35] I mean, he's. He's not ever going to settle down. I mean, look at his dating history. He's just. He's never. He's never going to get his head on straight. I mean, don't stay away from him. Don't trust him. [00:13:46] There's no way he's going to change. [00:13:48] Did you hear that guy went to jail. You better be careful. I wouldn't just be careful trusting him. You know, people don't really change. You ever heard somebody say something like that? [00:14:00] I have. It's a worldly point of view. The thing about a worldly point of view is it makes total sense. [00:14:06] It seems like wisdom, because outside of Christ, all you have is what someone has done, right? It would make sense if someone's embezzling to not, like, leave your cash around them. You know what I mean? Like, that makes sense. [00:14:21] But the thing is that we are Christians, so that's a worldly point of view. Without Jesus, the only thing you have to predict someone's future is their past. But with Jesus, the thing you have to predict their future with is Jesus. [00:14:40] And Jesus changes everything. There's no trajectory of life that Christ can't change. So we can look at someone and say, wow, I wonder what's going to happen when they encounter Jesus. Because I bet everything's different. [00:14:54] Here's the most uncomfortable thing in this verse. [00:14:58] Remember how I had you say no one twice? [00:15:01] Like, not to be insulting, but you are no one. [00:15:08] No one means everybody. And you and I are part of everybody. [00:15:13] So we can't regard ourselves from a worldly point of view either. [00:15:18] That's what I'm the worst at. I can, like, manage in my mind to, you know, get over some judgment of other people. Sometimes it's when you look in the mirror and you're like, man, you screwed up again. You always do this. Why would you even keep trying? [00:15:30] This is what you always do. [00:15:32] Of course you let them down again. You let them down last time. You let them down two times ago. Of course. Just get. Just leave. [00:15:40] Just stop trying. [00:15:41] We know how it's going to go in the future. Look at what's happened in the past. [00:15:46] Of course no one's going to love you. [00:15:49] Look who left you in the past. Of course no one cares about you. Look who didn't care in the past. And we look at ourselves from a worldly point of view, judging our future based on our past, because no one knows Our past and our secrets better than us. [00:16:09] That's the first thing Paul tells us. You can't do that. [00:16:14] But why? [00:16:15] He goes on the next verse. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. [00:16:25] The old has gone, the new is here. I think this might be the hardest verse in the whole Bible to believe because it's not terribly hard for me to think Jesus forgives me and that I get to go to heaven. I've been taught that since I was a kid. [00:16:48] I can convince myself of that. It's not too hard for me to think that, yeah, like I'm gonna, I'm gonna squeak into heaven by the love of Jesus. Like, God doesn't really like me, but he did die. So I count, you know, in that. [00:17:02] But, but I know me. [00:17:05] So it's really hard for me to believe the old is gone. [00:17:09] It's really easy for me to think God loves me, but I'm still a screw up. So I'm probably going to keep screwing up for most of life, but at least I get to go to heaven. [00:17:18] I mean, I, I'm an addict. I've always been an addict. Like, I'm going to struggle with this for the rest of my life, but at least I get to go to heaven. [00:17:27] My dad was absent. I never had a dad. I don't know how to be a good dad. I'm going to try my best not to screw up my kids too bad. And at least I get to go to heaven. [00:17:35] That's the thing is most of us, we don't actually think the old is gone. What we imagine for our lives is a 10% better life. We don't imagine old gone, new. Here we imagine 10% better. So we imagine that if I've been broke my whole life and my parents were broke and all my aunts and uncles were broke and everybody's been broke, then what we imagine is maybe I'll be able to pay the bills, which is a wonderful thing to imagine. Like, praise the Lord for that. [00:17:59] But, but scripture. Now I should be clear. Scripture never promises to make us rich or give us money, but scripture does give us tons of advice on how to manage and be responsible with our money. Right? But, but, but if I can't imagine being a good steward, then I won't hope to become a good steward. And if I, if I don't hope to become a good steward, I won't trust God to teach me how to steward my finances. I, and then I won't work hard at stewarding my finances. Right? [00:18:26] We imagine 10% better. You imagine, well, my dad was gone, not around, horrible guy. [00:18:33] Every dad I know in my family has been absent. So you know what? I just don't want to be absent. Like, I'm probably never going to be a good dad. I'm probably never going to, like, actually be different. But if I can just not throw hands and not call them names and not leave, then that'll be enough. We can't imagine what it would be like to be a good, active, present, loving father. [00:18:53] We can just imagine what it would be like to not be quite as bad as our dad was. [00:18:58] Every marriage has ended in divorce in my family. Every marriage. You know, none of them are happy, even the ones who didn't get divorced. So what we imagine is a marriage where a couple's not screaming at each other. We can't imagine a loving, happy, intimate, godly marriage. That's a joy that your grandkids look back on and they're like, thank you, Grandma and Grandpa, for showing us what love was actually like. All we can imagine is just like, at least not getting divorced until the kids are out of school. [00:19:24] 10% better. [00:19:26] I've been trying to figure out how to explain this, and the best thing I could come up with was to actually steal an analogy from a different pastor. [00:19:34] There's a pastor named Russ Johnson, founded an organization called Lark. And here's how he describes this lack of imagination that we have when we get stuck not believing that anything is old. You can go back to the previous slide. [00:19:48] Not believing that the old is actually gone when we get stuck. He says, imagine this. Imagine that you live on the street, all right? [00:19:55] There's nowhere safe to go. [00:19:58] If it's hot, it's hot. If it's cold, it's cold. You're looking for food in trash cans, and you're living on the street, right? Nothing is safe. [00:20:06] Then you encounter Jesus. [00:20:08] And what does Jesus do? Well, he invites you into his house, so now you're not living on the street anymore. He says, I've got a room for you. [00:20:15] This is going to be great. I love you. I have a place for you. And you're like, I'm going to get off the street. All right, that's better. But Jesus being Jesus, Jesus is going to throw a feast, right? The Bible is full of feasts. I think we should bring back the church potluck. The Bible is full of feasts. I'm actually joking about that because I don't want anyone's cat hair in my casserole. [00:20:37] It weirds me out. I love the idea of us all eating together. I would just like. You don't know. [00:20:41] You know what I mean? No cats. No cats allowed in the kitchen. [00:20:45] Jesus is going to make a feast, though. And if Jesus makes a feast, it's going to be incredible, right? There's going to be, like, tomahawk steaks, there's going to be ribs, there's going to be. I don't know what you vegetarians eat, like grilled tofu or something. I don't know, whatever y' all like is there too. But there's going to be brisket. In fact, to make this analogy make more sense. And because I've always wanted to do this, I had my friends over at Palmer's Pit Stop smoke a brisket for us for today. So you can imagine what a feast is actually like. Now, this is the worst day to sit in the balcony because you guys will be able to smell this in just a second. And if Jesus is going to make a feast, I mean, it is going to be a. [00:21:25] You can't see all the juices, but just. Oh, my gosh, look it. [00:21:31] Can I get an amen? [00:21:33] Yeah. Yep. [00:21:35] Absolutely. And so Jesus. I mean, Jesus is at. If he's. If he's making the feast, then, I mean, the feast is just going to be. It's going to be incredible. It's going to be. Look at this. [00:21:49] Yeah, you smell it up there? Yeah, yeah. [00:21:53] And then he's going to cut it. And Jesus isn't going to. He's not going to skimp out. You know, sometimes they cut it like real thin. No, he's not going to do that. He's going to give you the, like, solid half inch. Inch just. [00:22:06] Yeah. Oh, it's falling apart, guys. It's falling. It's falling apart as I'm picking it up. [00:22:12] It's too hot. It's too hot. [00:22:14] See? [00:22:15] Amen. [00:22:17] Yeah. [00:22:18] See? And Jesus isn't going to give you the lean cut. I don't know who in the world orders a lean cut of brisket. I mean, come on. He's going to. In heaven, calories don't count. So he's going to give you the fatty cut. And it's going to be. You're just going to love it. It's going to be incredible. I'm not going to make you watch me eat that. [00:22:32] I'm going to lick my fingers, though. I don't know. I don't care if it's weird. [00:22:35] Yes. [00:22:37] Yeah. That's amazing. See, Jesus has a feast right and if he has a feast, everything's going to be there. Everything you could imagine wanting, everything you could think of. And then he says, because he's Jesus, he says, and if there's not anything you want in here, then open the fridge, go through the cabinets. This is your house. Eat anything you want. But the problem is, I still think of myself as a street person. [00:23:04] And I'm thinking, well, I mean, it's. At least I'm not on the street anymore. It's way better to be in here. [00:23:09] And, like, I'm still kind of dirty. I don't think Jesus would want me at the table. [00:23:15] And Jesus is saying, no, I do, but, but, but you know how it is. It doesn't matter how many times we say it. We can't believe it. We can't imagine that it would ever be true. So, oh, Jesus, you don't. [00:23:25] I know what. I know what I've struggled with. I know what my problems are. I know what. I know what my mistakes are. You don't really want me at the table. You look at all the other people at the table and you're like, they definitely didn't struggle, like. Like I did. They were probably born in this house. They've never. They weren't on the street. What you don't know is that everybody was on the street until Jesus invited them in. But we can't imagine that. We can only imagine that everybody else was perfect and we're not. Everybody else has everything together and we don't. So we say, ah, I don't. [00:23:49] At least I'm not on the street. That's good enough. So we just grab a bag of saltines and go sit in the bathroom. [00:23:56] And we say, oh, well, this is better, though. [00:23:58] At least I'm not on the street. [00:24:00] I mean, this is better. [00:24:03] There's running water and there's heat in here. [00:24:07] Jesus is saying, the old has gone. You're not a street person. And we're saying, yeah, I know, but I still smell like one. I still look like one. I still feel like one. I shouldn't be at the table. And Jesus saying, no, that's not who you are anymore. [00:24:21] But we're saying, I don't know. [00:24:24] That's the funny thing about Jesus is he'll come by and he'll knock on the door and he'll say, hey, there's still brisket at the table. Chair has your name on it. This is your chair. I'd love for you to. I'd love for you to come to the table. And then we'll say, no, Jesus, I'm good. [00:24:36] I'm good right here. I'm fine. I don't really think I should be at the table. And he'll say, okay, well, I'm just glad you're here, but you're welcome anytime you want. Anytime you want to come. Jesus will knock on the door and he'll say, hey, the new creation is out here. [00:24:48] The new life I have for you is out here. Are you. Are you ready for it? And we'll say, no. No, Jesus, I just don't know. I just don't think I could ever really change. I think I'm just going to stay here and that's fine. You're not on the street anymore. Praise the Lord for that. That we get to go to heaven. But I would prefer to get to heaven and it feel familiar because I was as close to who I was created to be on this side of it, that when I got there, I was like, oh, this is pretty normal, right? I would prefer, if possible, to become who I was created to be so that when I experience heaven, it's the fruition of everything that's happening. I would prefer to not miss out on who God has created me to be in this life and live the 60 or 70 years or 80 years or 100 years, still enslaved by my past, still enslaved by addiction, still telling myself, you're just a failure and just an addict. Still. Still perpetuating the cycle of divorce, still perpetuating the cycle. I prefer not to do that. I prefer, if possible, to become exactly who God's created me to be in this life or as close as I can possibly get to it, empowered by the Holy Spirit. In other words. I'd prefer to get out of the bathroom and take the seat at the table. But the problem is Satan lies to us. And he says, no, you don't belong there. [00:25:58] But can you imagine. [00:26:00] Can you imagine what it would be like if. If instead of you looking at your. Your marriage and saying, okay, well, I just want to have a marriage where we don't argue all the time? [00:26:08] Like, what if you looked at your marriage and you said my. You said, my kids will never know divorce. Divorce will sound like a word in French to them. They won't know it. [00:26:19] My kids will never know what it's like to have a marriage that isn't two people loving one another the way Christ loves the church. My kids will never know that. I will change the cycle in my family. What if instead of imagining just barely getting by, you can imagine changing the generational cycle of your family. [00:26:36] What if instead of imagining just paying the bills, what if you could imagine. What if you can imagine a life where you do the ramen noodle diet for a while so that you can build up a savings account, you have an emergency fund and your kids don't know what it's like to grow up enslaved by finances, but they know what it's like to see that someone can actually find freedom in spite of their past. Amen. [00:26:57] What if you decided to change the cycle? What if you could imagine what it would be like not just to be a dad that's not gone, but to be a dad that's probably present and loving and kind and shows to the best of their ability, even though imperfectly what the Father God is like and absolutely changes the cycle? What if your kids would have no idea what a deadbeat dad looks like because you are so far from that? What if your kids had no idea what a cold or. Or distant mother looked like because it didn't matter what mother you had. You said, I am not going to be what they said, what my past said, said I would be. I'm going to be who God says I am. I'm going to be the new creation. What if you could imagine it? Because if you can imagine it, you can hope for it. And if you can hope for it, you can trust God for it. And if you can trust God for it, then you might actually work towards it. And you know what? I bet you'll experience pretty darn close to it. [00:27:47] What if you could imagine that everything could be different that the old. [00:27:53] What if you could imagine a weekend where you're not just sweating, trying not to take a drink, but you actually experience freedom? [00:28:01] What if you can imagine a life where you're not just trying to avoid shooting up, but now your testimony of freedom from addiction is changing other people's lives and you are walking in the healing and wholeness of Jesus. What if you could imagine that? [00:28:13] What if you're not who you used to be? [00:28:20] There's something that all of us become. If we're going to continue this analogy. There's one table that all of us sit at. [00:28:27] We all have different seats at that table. Some of us have the pastor seat, some of us have the missionary seat. Some of us have the generational cycle breaking mother or father seat. Some of us have the doctor seat. There are different seats at the table, but it's all the same table. And Paul goes on and he tells us what the next seat is. He tells Us what the table is. I mean, he says, all of this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. Did you know you're called to ministry? [00:28:56] Ministry is not the work of pastors and missionaries. Mission ministry is the work of Christians. [00:29:01] Some of us do what's called vocational ministry, meaning it's for our job. [00:29:05] But every Christian does ministry. [00:29:08] And he gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. Do you know what an ambassador is? [00:29:30] If you go to. If you go to Brazil and you go to the American embassy, that's where the ambassador works. That's where his or her office is. And you go inside the embassy, you are on American soil. [00:29:42] You're in Brazil, but you're on American soil. [00:29:46] The ambassador speaks on behalf of the country. The ambassador represents the interests of the country. The ambassador furthers the goals of the country. So the ambassador, where they live and work is America, whether they're in America or not. [00:30:01] Paul said, you are an ambassador of Christ. Here's what that means. If you're an elementary school teacher, guess what? Your classroom is heaven. [00:30:11] It's at least as close as. As close as you can get it to heaven. Your elementary school, that classroom works for the ways of heaven and accomplishes the goals of heaven. And you're using all of it to further the kingdom of God. You're being a loving presence. And what you're going to become the person God created you to be so that you can make that embassy of your classroom as close to heaven as possible. Are you a dad? Are you a mom? Are you a husband or wife? Guess what? The home you live in, that is heaven. It's heavenly soil underneath that home. And you become who God's created you to be so that your house is as close to heaven as possible. So that maybe someday when your kids get to heaven, they say, I think I know what this is like. It's a lot like the home I grew up in. [00:30:53] Can you imagine what that would be like? You imagine it'd be like if our kids, if someday they walk up to Jesus and they're like, man, it's great up here. But it reminds me of home. [00:31:03] Because we as parents said, no, I won't repeat the cycle. [00:31:08] I'm not just going to be slightly better than what came before. The old is gone. [00:31:13] The new is here. [00:31:15] I'm going to become who God created me to be. [00:31:20] I have this dream. It's kind of silly dream, but it's a dream that in Campbell county, if you could find a way to put on your resume, I go to New Life and I volunteer that, you'd be way more likely to get hired, because employers in Campbell county would know. Well, if that person's at New Life, they're becoming who God created them to be. And that means they're on time and they work hard and they're never, like, trying to fit an extra 10 minutes into their break. And they're never, like, they're never being sketchy with their hours, and they're. When they make a mistake, they own it and they're responsible. You should hire that person because that person does their best. That person works like Jesus is signing the paycheck. That person works like Jesus is in the office in the other room. That person works like everything is for God's glory and for his kingdom. Wouldn't that be incredible? [00:32:04] Because that's the thing. If you're a roughneck, well, guess what? Every time you go out with your. Your crew, heaven doesn't matter what the other guys say. Doesn't matter what jokes they make, doesn't matter if they're trying to slide under the boss's eye and get away with stuff. No, you're an ambassador of the kingdom of God. You work for Caballo. I hope that you are the best miner Caballo has ever seen. [00:32:25] And not because you accomplish more or anything like that. Not because you're working your way up the top and going to run the company someday, but because you're on time and you own your mistakes and you don't try to slip anything under the boss's eye. And you're honest about everything. Why? Because you're an ambassador of the kingdom of God. And I hope when you're on shift at Caballo, that Caballo is a little bit like heaven. [00:32:48] We're all at different seats. There are no better or worse seats at the table because we're all at the same table. That's the thing. As Christians, we only brag about what Jesus did. We don't brag about what we do. So none of us get to say, I'm in the pastor seat or I'm in the CEO seat or I'm in the whatever seat? No, we all get to say I'm at the table with Jesus. We have different seats. The seats all have equal value and they all have equal honor. [00:33:11] They're just a different places around the table. It's the table that matters. [00:33:16] What can you imagine who God could have you become if there were no limits? If you could become an ambassador for the kingdom of God? So that where you work and where you talk and where you hang out and the coffee shop at the alley, when I go there and get a cup of black coffee, that every time I go in there, that it would be a little bit more heavenly than it was before I got there. [00:33:39] You imagine what that would be like if there were no limits on who you could become. [00:33:46] Because God is making his appeal through us. [00:33:52] Some messages you have to respond publicly. It's like, I don't know, it's like when you got a crush in eighth grade and if you don't say it out loud, it doesn't count. You know, nothing ever comes of it. And sometimes not all the time. Sometimes we have to do that. [00:34:06] So in a minute, we're going to have a time to respond, but the band is going to lead us in 2/3 of a song. [00:34:12] One of my favorite worship songs, Christ be magnified. But as we are singing this song, what I want you to do is to pray about what seat does God have for you at the table? [00:34:24] Is God calling you to the vocational ministry seat to be a pastor, to be a missionary, to be a kids pastor, be a youth pastor? Is God calling you to that? [00:34:36] Is God calling you to be a leader in your community, to take responsibility for what happens in your community? Is God calling you to be a janitor and to be the best janitor? And to have. When you. When you clean a toilet that's a heavenly toilet, It's. Is God calling you to be. What is he calling you to be? What seat is God calling you to break a generational cycle? Is that the seat you need to sit down at? The seat Seat of. My kids won't know anything like what I knew. [00:35:01] My family will be different. The divorce stops here. The addiction stops here. The alcoholism stops here. The abuse stops here. My family will be different forever because I'm going to become who God's created me to be. What seat is God calling you? [00:35:15] And then after we worship, you're going to have a chance to publicly respond and say, no, this is the seat God's called me to and I'm going to do everything in my power to become who he's created me to be. Let's stand and pray. [00:35:34] Jesus, you are good and you have something for us to become. [00:35:40] You love us in spite of our sin, and you love us through our sin, and you'll take us through our sin and our struggle and our pain to the other side. [00:35:48] Jesus, give us the confidence and courage to actually believe that the old is. Is gone and live like the new is actually here. Jesus, we won't be perfect. We'll keep making mistakes. We know that. We'll let one another down, and we'll let you down, but we won't let you down. We won't sin because nothing changed. We'll sin because we are doing our best to become who God's created us to be, and choosing to believe that who we were is not who we are. [00:36:17] We might fail along the way, but we. We will not stay where we are. [00:36:22] Give us the courage, Jesus, and meet us as we worship. Amen.