Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Hey, New Life Gillette 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.
[00:00:25] Want to say good morning to everybody joining us online at Church 307, to our friends down at the prison and at the jail, and before we jump into the service, to the sermon today. You know, something you might wonder if you, if you come to church a lot, is why we spend so much time singing. Especially if you're not really a musical person, if you're not the type of person who's going to, you know, sing as loud as you can to 90s country alone in your car, then you might wonder, at first off, I don't know why you're not that type of person. But if you're not that type of person, then you might wonder why we spend so much time singing in a service, why people lift their hands, things like that. All throughout human history, in pretty much every culture, music is something that's used to celebrate, to glorify something.
[00:01:10] All over the world, it pretty much transcends culture. All throughout human history, we have found ways to make music, to make art, to express glory and give honor to something. All throughout scripture, we are told to sing songs to the Lord, to lift our hands in praise. Scripture talks about giving God. These sound weird, but a way offering and a clap offering, because you're acknowledging something. So when we sing that his name is higher and his name is greater, there's something about it that's not just saying it, it's not just shouting it. Putting it in music is expressing it at this core human level that all cultures do. And something that we're commanded to do is to sing his praise. Just like there's that love song that you know was you and your 8th grade girlfriend's song. We have a song, we have songs we sing to give God glory, to give him praise. We choose to physically embody and to lift our hands and shout and clap to proclaim his goodness, because he is. And that's how we celebrate everything else. Tell me, dudes, if you kill a big elk, if you don't pump up your fist and clap and shout, right?
[00:02:24] I know, you know it's true. So we do the same thing to celebrate the goodness of.
[00:02:30] So before we even get in this morning, let's give the Lord a clap offering. Can we do that?
[00:02:35] His name is higher. His name is greater.
[00:02:40] We're Gonna be in Matthew chapter four today. If you got a Bible, go ahead and open up there. Matthew, chapter four.
[00:02:47] Every, a couple times a year at New Life, we set aside a Sunday to be come and become Sunday. Because here at New Life, if you've been here for a while, you know our mission, what we believe God has called us to do, is to invite people to come as they are to Jesus and become who they're created to be. Now, the cool thing is that that is the basic message of Scripture so we can turn all over the Bible and find stories and instructions and guidance for that. And we're looking at one of those stories today to ask, who are we as a church, and why does it matter that we have this mission? So if you are ready to jump in, say, let's get it nice. I like to hear that, even on Labor Day weekend. Matthew, chapter four, starting in verse 18. Here's what it says. As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. Come, follow me, Jesus said, and I will send you out to fish for people at once. They left their nets and followed him.
[00:03:51] Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father, Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. Let's pray.
[00:04:08] Jesus, this is your word.
[00:04:11] We thank you for it. We have already given you praise and honor because your name is higher and greater, and every throne and power and office and dominion bows to you.
[00:04:24] We're just acknowledging what we know to be true.
[00:04:27] Jesus, this morning, if there's any of my opinions in this sermon, would you let us notice them so we can throw them away? My opinions don't matter.
[00:04:33] But if there's anything over the next few minutes that's consistent with your character and faithful to your word, would you plant it in our hearts, Jesus, that we could become like you? Because that's why we're here.
[00:04:44] Because of you. We love you.
[00:04:47] Amen.
[00:04:49] I want to ask you a question.
[00:04:50] Have you ever been sitting in maybe a restaurant or a coffee shop? Something like that? And those songs. Come on. You know, the songs you can barely hear in a restaurant, but they get stuck in your head anyway. A song comes on and you didn't know you knew that song. You had forgotten about it. But all of a sudden, it's like you're in eighth grade at an Arcade again. You know, it just takes you right back. You find yourself just tapping along, you know? Or maybe. Maybe you're singing the words in your head. You didn't even know you knew the words to that song. But now every verse to Ice Eyes Baby is just going through your mind again and again. Yeah, that happens to me all the time.
[00:05:26] Maybe it was a song kind of like this one.
[00:05:38] We're just gonna let it play for a little bit. I just want you to know that we're just gonna enjoy. We're just gonna enjoy it. All right.
[00:05:44] Sing it if you know it and hurts you.
[00:05:49] All right, you can turn it off. We are no strangers to love. Anyway, you didn't know you were gonna get Rick rolled in church today, but you did.
[00:05:57] Or maybe it was a. So.
[00:06:10] I'm gonna let this play until it gets fully stuck in your head.
[00:06:13] We're just gonna let it go.
[00:06:18] Still going.
[00:06:20] This is awkward for me too, but we're gonna do it.
[00:06:26] All right, that's enough. You're good.
[00:06:27] The only reason.
[00:06:29] The only reason I play that song for you is because it's been stuck in my head for a month. Because approximately a month ago, my. My son spent some time with Pastor Corey's two sons in the car with him, and they showed him that song that I've done everything in my power to wash out of my brain. And then my son came back singing that song for a week straight. It's been stuck in my head. Now it's stuck in your head. Congratulations. Now, this is silly, but I want to make a point. And it's a point that we've made before at new life and that we will make again. And it's this. We don't notice what's normal when something becomes normal to us, when you've heard it so many times, we don't know that we know it.
[00:07:10] Now. This is important.
[00:07:11] It's possible for something to have so deeply influenced you or me that we don't know it's there, but it's still living in our mind. It's possible to have something. Have such an effect on us that we haven't noticed it in a while.
[00:07:29] But all it takes is a song to take us back to a different place. It's possible for even, actually an entire room of people to have the majority of us have the same song stuck in our head when we leave. Because something so silly has so affected our culture that we don't even know it's affecting us, but it's driving us from the inside. Now. It's not a big deal when it's a silly song that was made famous from the first viral YouTube video.
[00:07:58] But you can imagine that if a song can affect us that much, if a song can live in our minds at our subconscious level and come out when we're not prepared for it, what else can do that that's worth paying attention to?
[00:08:12] When something becomes normal, we quit noticing it. We quit paying attention to it.
[00:08:20] Now, this story in Scripture is a story like that. It's a story that's normal. I would bet if you grew up in church that you have probably heard this story preached on a couple hundred times.
[00:08:32] I bet if you. If you're not very familiar with the Bible, but you're a believer, I bet this story is one of the stories that you know or you're least familiar with. In fact, I would bet that if this is your first time ever in church, that when we read this story, you thought, huh, that sounds familiar. Because this story has infiltrated culture. We write songs about this. If we sing songs that say, I will follow you or make me a fisher of men, it's this story. If anyone's ever asked you, do you follow Jesus? Or if you've ever talked about sharing the gospel so that someone could follow Jesus, that language goes all the way back to this story. In fact, I'm wearing a shirt right now from a faith week at a fishing lodge in Canada that I went to this summer. And it's called Fishers of Men. We name conferences from this story. We write songs, we write poems. We make T shirts out of this. This is the type of story that has infiltrated us. And the problem is, if it's become normal, we don't notice it. Now, interestingly enough, this story is the first time Jesus ever calls a disciple. It's the first time he ever invites someone to follow him. You're here today, approximately 2,000 years later, on the other side of the world, because either you have decided to follow Jesus or your interest, or someone you care about is interested in you following Jesus. If this is the source material where the idea of following Jesus really originally comes from, then it's something we should probably notice, Right?
[00:10:05] We were doing good on the interaction earlier, right? Right.
[00:10:08] Yeah. So here's what I want to do for the rest of the sermon. I just want to look at three things. I want to ask you if you noticed three really, really important things about this story. You ready?
[00:10:21] Annie's ready. All right, here's the first one. Now, you can shout this out. Don't be afraid to answer this out loud if you know it. What did Jesus ask the disciples to do before they followed him?
[00:10:38] We're close, we're close, we're close. Anybody else?
[00:10:44] All the introverts are like, this is why I don't come to church.
[00:10:48] It's alright if you're an introvert, just don't answer close.
[00:10:53] Here's what it is.
[00:10:56] Nothing.
[00:10:59] He asked them to do absolutely nothing before they followed him. Did you notice that he didn't say, hey, I've got some really important teachings and I need you to prove that you understand my teachings before you become my disciple.
[00:11:13] So here's a book. I just need you to read it, watch a couple YouTube videos, then take a quiz online. And then once you prove that you are fluent in these ideas, then you can come follow me. No, that's not what he said. He said, come follow me. In fact, it says he just saw them and said, come follow me. He didn't say, hey, look, guys, you're fishermen. And I heard the jokes you were making when I walked up and you got to quit making those before you come follow me. Right? He didn't say, hey, words with four letters. You got to cut those out before you're going to follow me. I know what you guys talk about on those boats, you know what I'm saying? He said, come follow me.
[00:11:48] They didn't have to do anything before they followed him. The invitation was just, come follow me. When I was in high school, I had a friend that went to our church. His name was Kevin.
[00:12:00] I grew up in Jamestown. I went to high school in Jamestown, North Carolina, which is kind of this rural urban interface. The town I lived in was a bedroom community. There's a lot of farmland and stuff. But we shared a border with High Point in Greensboro, which was pretty urban. And Kevin grew up in a neighborhood that had a lot of crime, a lot of drugs, a lot of gang activity, pretty violent place.
[00:12:23] He came from a pretty rough background, but he started coming to church, he and his friend, we all three became pretty close. His friend Stevo. So me and Kevin and Steve O would hang out at church.
[00:12:32] And Kevin had come to church very regularly. He came to Sunday mornings, he came to youth group. He was there pretty much every time the doors were open.
[00:12:40] And he'd been coming to church for about a month or so. And finally I said, hey, Kevin, are you a Christian?
[00:12:46] Are you gonna follow Jesus? Like, are you ready to make that decision?
[00:12:50] And he said, well, you know, I want to, but I know I'VE got to work on some things first.
[00:12:58] Here's why I tell you that.
[00:13:00] Because the constant temptation. Listen, listen. The gravitational pull of our culture is going to be to tell you and every single one of us that if you want to come to Jesus, you got to do some stuff first.
[00:13:15] You got to get some stuff figured out.
[00:13:18] You want to come to Jesus, you want to go to church? Well, the church is full of those good people. And since church is full of good people, you've got to get your life right first. Before you go there. Those people, they're going to know your reputation. So you better get that cleaned up. In a small town like Gillette, they've seen all the Facebook stuff about you. So you better get that cleaned up before you come here.
[00:13:35] This is the constant temptation. It's the constant. See, Kevin had been in church for a month and he had heard all the sermons about, Jesus loves you exactly as you are. He loves you unconditionally. And he heard the songs he'd sang, the songs about Jesus, unconditional love. But still, even though he had heard it probably eight to ten times at that point, there was still something inside him. It's the lie of the enemy that says you have to clean yourself up first. You're not ready yet. You can't come to Jesus yet. You got to clean your life up. But what did Jesus tell them to do before they followed him?
[00:14:07] Nothing. Nothing. Because Satan wants us and he wants all the people we care about and all the people we love to think they have to get clean before they come to Jesus. Why? Because if you have to get clean first, you'll never come to Jesus.
[00:14:20] He wants us to constantly think, oh, I wouldn't fit in there.
[00:14:24] They wouldn't like me there. Oh, I've got some secrets that I'm not ready to talk about yet, so I can't come to church. He wants to constantly tell us that over and over and over again because then he can just keep us away. Then we'll never start following. Because the thing is, you will never be able to clean yourself up enough to follow Jesus. Can I be real with you? You'll never be able to clean yourself up enough to come to Jesus. There's always going to be some secret or some sin or some struggle or some doubt or some thought that Satan's going to use to lie to you and say because of that, you're not welcome. But Jesus tells us over and over and over again, just come, follow me. Come follow me. Come as you are. Did you know there's no other way to come to Jesus than exactly as you are.
[00:15:01] There's no other way to come to Jesus than exactly as you are. No person has ever come to Jesus any other way than exactly as they are. No one has. Billy Graham didn't come to Jesus any other way than exactly as he was. No person in human history has come to Jesus any other way than exactly as they were.
[00:15:21] I'm not trying to get metaphysical on you here, but you gotta understand something. Tomorrow doesn't exist yet. And by the time we get there, it will be today.
[00:15:29] The only thing you have is as you are.
[00:15:32] Cause tomorrow you will be who you are.
[00:15:35] So if you're telling yourself, you know what? I gotta get some. Tomorrow I'll think about coming to Jesus. Tomorrow maybe I'll work on that and I'll give my life to Jesus. Here's the thing. Tomorrow doesn't exist because it's always today.
[00:15:46] You get it?
[00:15:49] There's always gonna be something. The only thing you have is right now. The only thing you have is today. It's not gonna happen when things get better. It's not gonna happen when the depression goes away. It's not gonna happen when you start making more money. It's not gonna happen after the divorce, going to happen now.
[00:16:03] Because now is the only thing that exists.
[00:16:06] The only way you can come to Jesus is exactly as you are. And the primary temptation of the enemy, the primary lie of the enemy, is to constantly every person you love, every person you care about who doesn't yet know Jesus. Do you know what Satan is telling them? He's telling them, you're not good enough yet.
[00:16:21] And he's clever. He'll say, you're not good enough yet.
[00:16:24] Because he knows as long as we decide to follow Jesus in the future, we haven't decided yet. That's all he cares about, that we haven't done it.
[00:16:34] You know what? He'll. You know the lie he'll tell believers, though, those of us who have decided to follow him.
[00:16:41] He'll start causing us to forget that we came to Jesus exactly as we were too.
[00:16:46] He'll start to lie to us and we'll say stuff like, oh, man, you know what? I don't know if I should be around that type of person. I really. I don't know if that person should be in a small group with me. You know, they've got some stuff going on. I don't really know if I want to sit in a row with that. I don't know if that person would fit in. I would invite my neighbor, but I just don't think my neighbor would really fit in at church.
[00:17:06] He'll convince us that we didn't come to Jesus as we are, because we're different now. Everyone else has to become like us before they come to Jesus. So you know what we wind up doing? We wind up not inviting anyone to come follow Jesus. So we wind up doing his job for him.
[00:17:21] We want to do the enemy's job for him. Because if his job is to keep people away, if I'm not inviting, then I'm doing his job.
[00:17:28] If I'm telling people they can't come to him yet, then I'm telling them the same thing he's telling them now. Look, I know it got real heavy when I said that, but did you hear that? Jesus invites you exactly as you are.
[00:17:43] That's the antidote. Jesus loves you exactly as you are.
[00:17:47] Exactly as you are. You do not clean up. Listen, we as a church, our mission is to invite people to come as they are to Jesus. Why? Because our city and our state and our nation and our world is full of people who do not yet follow Jesus. That song we were singing earlier, it said, all who've come before us and all who will believe. Listen, someday there is going to be eternity. There is going to be heaven filled up with people that you are praying for right now, that you're inviting to Jesus right now. There are people that will be in eternity with us who are not believers. And they're your neighbors, they're our friends. They're Albertsons with us. They're going to the store with us. They're working with us. And they will believe. We are a come as you are church. And listen, that's the thing that we're not going to compromise on. That's the thing we're not going to talk about. It's not up for debate. We're a come as you are church. Because if you're a church, then you're come as you are. You can't be any other type of church. When you stop being come as you are, you start being something else. Because the only way Jesus ever invites people is exactly as they are. And we are Jesus people. We're not a country club. We're not trying to act like us, talk like us, look like us. We are Jesus people. And Jesus says, come exactly as as you are. It's the only way. It's the only way anyone comes to Jesus.
[00:18:56] When we stop doing that, we stop doing what he called us to do, and we might as well shut the doors and go home and I'll do something else on Sundays. Amen.
[00:19:04] Where I come as you are. Church.
[00:19:07] Here's the second thing. I want to know if you noticed. Did you notice what Jesus told them would happen after they followed it?
[00:19:21] Something great. Guess, though, what would happen after.
[00:19:29] I'll make you fishers of men.
[00:19:31] Come follow me and I will make you. Now, the words there are important. It's not come, follow me and you will learn how to. It's not come, follow me and you'll figure it out.
[00:19:43] Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men.
[00:19:49] Here's the thing.
[00:19:51] You cannot separate and skip to the next slide. You cannot separate coming to Jesus from who we're becoming.
[00:20:00] You can't separate coming to Jesus from who we're becoming.
[00:20:04] That's another temptation that we have, is we want to do what preachers in the south, where I grew up call fire insurance. Meaning we want to come as you are because we don't want to go to hell.
[00:20:14] But we're not interested in any change, Right? We just want to make sure that when the reaper comes knocking, we go upstairs, not downstairs. Right?
[00:20:23] And we're not interested in changing. But that's the thing. You can't separate coming to Jesus from who you're becoming.
[00:20:30] My son is 10, and he is suffering the same thing I did. My dad is a pastor, and he.
[00:20:36] I was his primary sermon illustration. And now my son is, too. And he's about two years away from hating this a lot. But right now, we're okay.
[00:20:44] My son has a dramatic streak. That's what I should say. My son has a penchant for drama, which he gets from my wife.
[00:20:53] And that's a joke. If you know the two of us at all, you know that one of us is dramatic and it's not her, but my son, you know, he's 50% me. That's the most frustrating thing about being a parent, is I did it.
[00:21:08] And he, like me, doesn't like to do stuff that's hard.
[00:21:13] Left to my own devices, I take my ball and go home. If I can't win, I don't play. That's why I don't disc golf or real golf. I'm not any good at it, and I don't want to lose, so I just don't play.
[00:21:23] And my son is like that.
[00:21:25] He wants to be good at something immediately or not do it. If it takes a lot of hard work, he doesn't really want to do it. Resilience is not necessarily his favorite thing.
[00:21:35] I take him hunting sometimes, and about the time he feels cold, about the time you get there is when he wants to go home.
[00:21:42] Here's the thing. My dad. I was the same way. Still have a tendency to be the same way, if I'm being honest. But my dad saw that and taught me hard work.
[00:21:54] My dad taught me how to practice. My dad told me over and over again, look, as long as you give your best, you're always a winner. Even if you don't win, you have to give your best. That's the only thing you're responsible for. He told me that over and over and over again so that I learned eventually that if success matters, I'm going to have to be willing to do some hard work along the way. That if success is something I want in life, failure is going to be part of it. You don't get much success without a large degree of failure along the way. You don't accomplish anything meaningful unless you're willing to do some hard things. I learned that. And I've realized that it's now my responsibility to teach my son that right.
[00:22:32] Because I see what it would be like if he never learned resilience.
[00:22:37] I see what it would be like if he never learned hard work.
[00:22:42] If I don't care about who he's becoming, then my love for him right now isn't going to prepare him for the future. Do you see now? It would be a lot easier for me to just let him quit everything.
[00:22:57] It'd be a lot less dramatic for me to just never, never cause a stink when he wants to quit.
[00:23:06] But my calling and my responsibility as a parent is not to have a primarily peaceful home.
[00:23:13] It's to help him become the man he was created to be.
[00:23:16] That's my responsibility as a dad, because I love him. And I hope what you can see is that. Is that if I didn't care about who he was becoming, but I only cared about how comfortable he was right now, it wouldn't be very loving, would it?
[00:23:29] Because I would be choosing peace and comfort over his future.
[00:23:36] In other words, you can't separate coming to Jesus from who you're becoming.
[00:23:40] You can't separate coming to Jesus from who you're becoming.
[00:23:44] Jesus loves us exactly as we are. But you can't separate the come, follow me from the and I will make you. You can't separate those two things. They go together. Listen, Jesus loves you in the addiction. Jesus loves you in the anger. He loves you in the pride. He Loves you in the midst of the pornography. He loves you in spite of the divorce. He loves you in the midst and in spite of all of it. But he loves you too much to let you stay that way.
[00:24:10] He loves you in the addiction, and he wants you free from the addiction. He loves you in the broken marriage, and he wants a healed marriage. He loves you in the shame, and he wants you to live in freedom. He loves you in the depression and he wants you to find joy in the Lord. He loves you in all of it, and he has something for you to become. And that's the thing. He constantly loves us as we are. If we go fail and fail and fail and fail over and over and over again, he still loves us as we are. And he's constantly saying, I have something for you to become. I have something better. I have growth. I have transformation. Come as you are and become who you're created to be. What does that mean at New life? It means we don't separate. Come as you are from become who you're created to be. The two things go together.
[00:24:50] If you're here today, you're accepted exactly as you are. And if you go through this week and you make the biggest mistake of your life and you come back next week, you'll still be accepted exactly as you are. And we will still not apologize for challenging you to become who you're created to be. Because God has something better for you. He loves you too much to not make you resilient. He loves you too much to not give you strength. He loves you too much to not transform you and make you into the person you're created to be.
[00:25:16] You can't separate who you can't separate coming to Jesus as you are from who you're becoming. Listen. We do not change because before we come to Jesus, we change because we come to Jesus.
[00:25:30] We do not change before we change because we come to Jesus.
[00:25:36] Here's the last thing.
[00:25:38] Did you notice what Jesus was doing when he met Peter and Andrew and James and John?
[00:25:46] Anybody remember? You can shout it out.
[00:25:49] He was walking. Who said walking? He was walking.
[00:25:53] In verse 18, it says, as Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he was on a walk by the beach.
[00:26:03] See, our tendency, My tendency, your tendency, all of our tendency is to imagine that the real work of ministry happens when there's a big event next week. We have our kickoff party and we have kickoff Sunday, and we're gonna come wearing jerseys. And if you don't like sports, then you're gonna come wearing something that Makes fun of sports fans, probably, or just, you know, not wearing anything related to sports, just normal.
[00:26:25] And we're going to share the gospel.
[00:26:29] And we actually have people fasting and praying starting next weekend, all through the weekend to ask the Lord to move. Not just next Sunday, but throughout this school year. We're going to preach the gospel. We believe people's lives are going to be changed next week. We believe it's going to be a powerful moment. And then we're going to have a kickoff party where there's going to be a mechanical bull and a dunk tank and all that kind of stuff, and it's going to be a lot of fun. We're going to have a blast.
[00:26:50] But our temptation is to think that that's where God moves. God moves. When there's a sermon and there's the band sounding really good and the lighting's right and the smoke machines and people come forward, that's when God's moving. When God's moving, when people bring up the cards and we all clap. Or we'll think, oh, if we want God to move in Gillette, we got to get a really good preacher to come to Gillette. If we want God to move in Gillette, we got to get a really good worship band to come to Gillette. And then when we have a revival night, we'll put on an event, and then God will move.
[00:27:21] But here's the thing.
[00:27:23] Jesus left preaching. He had just been teaching, and he was on his way to do more teaching. But he called the disciples as he was just walking along the beach, which means they wouldn't have been at the big event if somebody hadn't invited them in their normal life.
[00:27:39] We believe we have a mission as a church to invite people to come as they are and become who they're created to be. And we believe that if we're part of this church, if this is our community, if you're a new lifer, that we live our lives on mission, that we are part of the mission. Do you know what that means? That means as you're walking, you're inviting people to come as they are and become who they're created to be. It means as you're at the oil field, you're inviting people to come as they are and become who they're created to be. As you're going to the PTA meeting, as you're walking the halls of Thunder Basin or Campbell county, as you're at soccer practice, as you're walking your dog around the neighborhood, as you're going to a play date at the park. As you're going through life, as you're walking through life, you're inviting people to come as they are and become who they're created to be. Because God doesn't just move through big, powerful moments. He moves through everyday people who say, mission is my mission and we have to change the population of hell and the gospel has to saturate Gillette and people need to come as they are and become who they're created to be. When you and I, when you and I take responsibility for the mission, God moves every day. He moves at Albertsons and he moves at Smith's and he moves, he moves everywhere you go because the Holy Spirit is in you. And you are carrying the mission as you are going.
[00:28:49] As you're going.
[00:28:51] You know, when we have a, when we have a Sunday where lots of people follow Jesus, we've had those and I believe we'll have a lot more or we get to celebrate lots of people deciding to follow Jesus.
[00:29:01] It's easy to come to a Sunday like that and listen to somebody preach a sermon and think, oh, wow, God really used Pastor CJ God really used Pastor Mark. God really used Sawyer and lives got changed today. But here's the thing.
[00:29:15] If on a Sunday morning somebody decides to follow Jesus, God didn't use the preacher to change their life. He used the person who invited them to church to change their life.
[00:29:27] He used the person who had been praying and fasting for them for years to change their life.
[00:29:33] He used the person who had been texting them and inviting them for the last six months. And you'd been blowing them off over and over again and finally you decided to show up and it was the day he used you.
[00:29:42] As you were going through life, as you were going through life, as you're going. We carry the mission, my friends.
[00:29:53] We are committed to be a come as you are and become who you're created to be church.
[00:30:01] We are committed to this. We are committed to carrying this mission into Gillette so that the gospel saturates our community. So that we know for a fact that there is not one person in this city who doesn't have somebody praying for them, somebody inviting them to church, somebody sharing the gospel with them. We are committed to that. And we're not going to stop until it happens. And we're going to do everything we can to make sure because God has called us to it, we are going to see gospel saturation in this community. And the way it's going to happen is not just a Bunch of big Sundays and big events. It's going to happen when we, as the people of God, say, this is my mission. I'm living my life on mission. As I'm living my life, I am on a mission to see the Gospel of Jesus change lives. To see people who don't think they're welcome in the church come as they are and become who they were created to be. That's how the change is going to happen. It's not going to happen by this room just filling up. It's going to happen by us. Every single one of us. You and me, living our lives every day on mission.
[00:31:03] To invite people to come as they are to Jesus and become who they're created to be. So this is what I'm asking you to do. It's a really practical thing.
[00:31:10] Next week, we're gonna preach the gospel. Next week is kickoff Sunday, and we do a lot of fun stuff, and we're gonna have a good time in the afternoon. But we're starting a series that's gonna take us through the fall. That's called While I Breathe. I hope.
[00:31:23] And this series is about the unshakable hope that we have in Jesus.
[00:31:28] That if Christ actually rose from the dead, that there is absolutely nothing that can shake the hope that we have.
[00:31:33] And you and I both know that our community needs that hope.
[00:31:37] Now, you and I have both seen all the headlines every February that tell us our community needs that hope.
[00:31:44] So next Sunday, we're planting a flag in the ground that says if Christ actually rose from the dead, then there's nothing that can shake our hope.
[00:31:51] I want to. I want to challenge you to bring somebody with you.
[00:31:55] Text them right now.
[00:31:57] Live your life on mission. Your neighbor, your co worker, your friend. Bring them next week. Take them to Lulabelle's before or after church. Bribe them if you've got to. Get them here. God's going to use you to make the difference in their life. It won't be the Sunday morning that makes the difference. It'll be us living our lives on mission. Like I said, there's going to be a group of us fasting and praying next weekend for not just this event, but for the school year of ministry. If you'd like to be part of that, come talk to me after the service. I'll help you get connected so that you can join that group that'll be fasting and praying for the weekend. But that's the challenge.
[00:32:31] Don't wait for somebody else. There are people, you know that if I invited them to church. They have no interest in coming because I'm not part of their life.
[00:32:40] But if you invited them, they'll show up because you are.
[00:32:46] Let's live on mission together. Let's pray.
[00:32:51] Jesus, we love you.
[00:32:53] Jesus, we thank you that we can come as we are to you that you don't expect us to change first, that you don't expect us to clean ourselves up. But Jesus, we also thank you that you don't leave us the way we used to be. We thank you that you have something better for us than who we used to be.
[00:33:17] Jesus, would you empower us first off to accept your love? But God, would you motivate us with the mission? Would we look at our community and our friends and our family and see the deep, unshakable love you have for the world around us? And would that motivate us to invite people to come as they are and become who they're created to be to live the mission? We love you, Jesus.
[00:33:41] Amen.
