Episode Transcript
[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.newlifegeillette.com Here is this week's teaching.
[00:00:27] Good morning, you guys excited to be in church today?
[00:00:32] Amen. Amen. We are starting a new series today, which I'm excited about. It's called Follower. We're going to spend the next few weeks walking through the life of Peter, maybe the most famous of Jesus disciples, and walking through his life and learning, asking the question, what does it really mean to be a follower of Jesus? So we're going to be in John chapter one. If you got a Bible, go ahead and open up there. John chapter one. While you're turning there, want to say good morning and what's up to everybody on Church 307, wherever you're watching from, from the prison, jail, anywhere in the state of Wyoming, we're glad that you're joining us this morning. And today. There's an important differentiation to make. We've said this before, sermons exist in an ecosystem. No sermon stands alone because there's a lot of stuff in the Bible. So a sermon kind of exists within the ecosystem of everything else we preach and everything else that's in scripture. Today we are talking about what happens after I decide to follow Jesus. We're talking about the change. Last week we talked about how in Christ we're new creations. The old is gone, the new is here. So now we're talking about after I accept Christ, what is it that kind of initiates? How do I engage in the process of change that the Lord has for me? So what we're talking about today comes after I decide to follow Jesus. So John chapter one, we're going to start reading in verse 35.
[00:01:57] Here's what it says. The next day, John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, look, the Lamb of God.
[00:02:06] When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, what do you want?
[00:02:12] They said, rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying? For the record, I think that's a funny thing to ask. If Jesus asked me what do I want, I wouldn't be like, where do you live?
[00:02:24] Come, he replied, and you will see.
[00:02:26] So they went and saw where he was staying and they spent that day with him. It was about 4 in the afternoon. Andrew, Simon, Peter's brother, was one of the two who had heard what John said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, we have found the Messiah. That is the Christ.
[00:02:47] He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, you are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas, which when translated is Peter. Let's pray.
[00:02:58] Jesus, we do and should and always will exalt you.
[00:03:04] You are above everything. And Colossians tells us that you're in everything and all things hold together in you.
[00:03:11] So we're here for you, Jesus.
[00:03:14] Jesus, let your word be what matters to us today. If there's any of my opinions in the sermon, stuff that's not consistent with your word, then let us notice it and reject it and say, no, that's not from you.
[00:03:26] But if there's anything in this sermon over the next few minutes that's consistent with your word and faithful to your character, planted deeply in our hearts because we want to be like you, Jesus. We love you.
[00:03:39] Amen.
[00:03:41] The Bible is odd.
[00:03:43] Did you know that some of you, the thing you needed to hear in church today was you're like, man, this book's weird. And you needed someone else to say it. There is a lot of odd stuff in the Bible. Some of you are still uncomfortable with the fact that I'm calling the Bible odd. The Bible is. The Bible is an odd book. In fact, the book is not even the right term for it. The Bible contains 66 books. It's more of a library. It contains 66 individual pieces of literature that were written over the course of between 2 and 3,000 years. It contains a bunch of different genres.
[00:04:13] All kinds of different stuff is in there, and there is some just weird stuff. There's a story some of you might have heard of in the Book of Numbers where a guy named Balaam is riding a donkey. Balaam is ignoring the Lord. So God opens the mouth of his donkey. I don't understand the mechanics of that, but he opens the mouth of his donkey and the donkey starts talking. God speaks through a donkey. Now, I recommend you read that in the King James Version.
[00:04:40] It's a lot funnier.
[00:04:42] Some of you don't get that joke. Go read it in the King James Version, not around your kids. You'll have to explain some stuff, but go read in the King James Version if you think that joke is not appropriate for church. My name's Grant Austin.
[00:04:56] There's another path. There's another verse.
[00:04:58] My favorite verse in the whole Bible. This is in the Book of Ezekiel. It says, very well. This is God talking very well. He said, I will let you bake your bread over cow dung instead of human excrement.
[00:05:09] That's in the Bible. Thanks be to God.
[00:05:13] This is. This is the word of the Lord. All right? There's a lot of weird stuff in there, and here's why this matters. Because I think most of us, especially if you grew up in church, but even if you just, like, have heard of the Bible, you think of the Bible and you think the Holy Bible, right, right here. It's in the name Holy Bible. And when we think of Holy Bible, we think that that means it has to be serious, right? It has to be just black and white instructions. It's very serious. There couldn't be any jokes in there. There couldn't be anything that's kind of tongue in cheek or that's meant to shock you or anything like that.
[00:05:45] We just imagine that it's. It's black and white, kind of like your 8th grade science homework. And that's how we read the Bible. We read this like it's homework. And I just have to memorize the information and then it'll be done. And then we wind up missing the beautiful, interesting, sometimes shocking things that the Bible actually says. And this story that we just read is an interesting and weird story. I don't know if you noticed it or not, but it's an incredibly weird story. So let's go back through it. It starts off with John the Baptist, who is a prophet. He is sent before Jesus to proclaim the that Jesus is coming and prepare people to receive Jesus. So John has disciples or followers that are listening to him. Jesus walks by and John says, that's him.
[00:06:31] That right there, that's the guy. He's the Messiah. So some of his disciples are like, well, if you're not the Messiah, and he is, I'm hanging out with him. So they leave and they go with Jesus. And then we get this really interesting side point in the story. That should be a whole other sermon that I'm not going to preach today. But Andrew, who's one of the people that realize Jesus is the Messiah, the first thing he does when he sees who Jesus is is he goes and gets someone he loves, his brother Simon, and brings him to Jesus. There's a whole sermon there about what we should do when we encounter Jesus. Because the right thing to do when I see Jesus for who he really is is to go get everybody I love and bring them to Jesus. Because if Jesus is true, then he's true for everybody and everybody needs him. But that's not the Point of this sermon. So Andrew goes and gets his brother Simon. Now, he's first called Simon Peter because of this story, because he's known to history as Peter, but his name is Simon. This guy has a name. That's a weird thing to observe, but it's important. He has a name. His name is Simon. That's what he's been called since he was a kid, right? Simon, Son of John. His dad named him Simon.
[00:07:37] He walks up to Jesus, and we don't know exactly maybe what wasn't written down. Okay? The authors might not have written down everything that was said. So Simon could have walked up to Jesus and they could have talked for a little bit. You know, he could have said, hey, I'm Simon. Jesus is like, hey, I'm Jesus. Oh, you're not a Chiefs fan? Praise me. Like, he could have said something like that.
[00:07:58] But we don't know any of that.
[00:08:02] This is what the story tells us. The story tells us Simon walks up before any other information is exchanged. Jesus says, you're Simon, but you will be called Peter.
[00:08:15] Minute one, he changes the guy's name. That's weird.
[00:08:21] That's a weird thing to do when you meet someone. Just to make sure we get this, this would be like if you came over to me at the 5 and 5 wall after the service and you're like, hi, my name's William. And I said, nah, you look like a Jeff.
[00:08:31] I think you're Jeff. That's going to be your name forever. Everyone's going to call you Jeff, right? This is a weird thing to do. And it changes in such a way that for the rest of history, it is now 2000 years approximately after this moment. And we're doing a series through the life of Simon. But we're not calling him Simon, we're calling him Peter. Because something changed in this story that changed his identity in such a way that history remembered him as a different person, different name than he had before he met Jesus.
[00:09:01] Now, I don't mean to just point out the obvious, but names are a big deal.
[00:09:05] Your name is how you interact with the world and how the world interacts with you. If someone wants to send you a silly meme, they type your name into their phone. That's how they think of you. If they want to call you, they call you based on your name. If you are in a yearbook, it's got your name underneath it next to your face. When someone sees your face, they think of a name. When you introduce yourself, you don't start with, I like long Walks on the beach and hunting. You start with your name. It's who you are, right? It's your identity. And the first thing Jesus changes about Simon is his name.
[00:09:41] So the first thing Jesus does to Simon is to change everything about him.
[00:09:48] The first thing Jesus does is to change everything about Simon and make him a totally different person.
[00:09:56] Now in preaching classes, you learn not to do exactly what I'm about to do.
[00:10:00] What you're not supposed to do is give away the big point, the end of a sermon in the middle, because then people will quit paying attention. You're supposed to build up some tension and give the big idea away at the end. But I'm just going to give the big idea away right now and hope you pay attention for the next 20 minutes.
[00:10:15] Jesus changes something about all of us and everything about some of us.
[00:10:24] Something.
[00:10:25] Jesus changes something about all of us and everything about some of us.
[00:10:30] Nobody. There is no person who follows Jesus and doesn't change.
[00:10:39] Not one.
[00:10:40] There's no human being who has ever followed Jesus, like, truly followed him. And I'm talking about after we get saved. We don't get saved by changing. Changing is not what saves us. It's the death and resurrection of Christ and his mercy to forgive our sins that saves us.
[00:10:55] But if we want to truly follow him, to become who we were created to be, everyone changes. We talked about this last week, that the old is gone, the new has come. If you're in Christ, you're a new creation. The old you, the addicted or the selfish or the consumeristic or the ashamed, or whatever version of you you were before. Christ is gone. It's not who you are anymore. There's this crazy story also in the book of Ezekiel, where we get a description of the new temple of the presence of God, dwelling with the people of God. And it says that if you walk in, if a person walks in one gate, if they walk in the north gate, they have to exit the south gate. If they walk in the east gate, they have to exit the west gate. Why? Because you cannot leave the presence of God the same way you came in.
[00:11:43] It's this tangible illustration of what the presence of God does to us. You cannot leave the presence of God. You cannot encounter God and not be.
[00:11:53] You will not leave the same way you came. If you want to come into the presence of God, you gotta be okay with change. And for some of us, that will change something. In fact, for all of us, it will at least change something in our lives, in the outward expression of our lives. It might Change who you date. It might change how you spend your money. It might change how much you drink. It might change a whole bunch of stuff. It might change who you forgive. It might change where you work. For all of us, that inward transformation will change something that's in our lives, that's visible.
[00:12:25] But for some of us, like Peter, everything will change.
[00:12:32] Everything will change.
[00:12:34] I'll encounter Christ, and it won't just change my work or it won't just change my worldview. It'll change absolutely everything about who I am. All of us will experience some sort of tangible, visible change when we follow Christ through following Christ, and some of us, it will change absolutely everything. That's the funny thing. There were 12 of these apostles, these closest disciples of Jesus. Only one of them, Jesus, changed his name.
[00:13:03] John, stayed John. Philip stayed Philip.
[00:13:07] Simon became something totally new on day one.
[00:13:12] I brought a prop.
[00:13:14] This is my son's skateboard. I will not do a kick flip.
[00:13:18] Don't ask.
[00:13:19] You don't want to call 911, and I don't want you to have to call 911.
[00:13:25] But I used to be a skateboarder when I was in high school, college. I was never any good at skateboarding, but I really tried. I mostly just like broke my arm and skint my knees and stuff, but I really tried. I had a friend in college who went semi pro, and I just hung out with him a lot so that people would think I was good. And then I just wouldn't try anything around him. And. And they would never know that I wasn't any good. But I used to love it. This is what me and my friends did all the time. And there was one thing in like 2005, there was one thing that you would call a skater that was the worst thing you could call a skateboarder. It was the last thing a skateboarder ever wanted to be called. If you're at a skate park and you say this word to someone, hands are getting thrown, a fight is getting started, you don't do it. Anybody know what that word was?
[00:14:08] Poser. Poser. Hey, I'm offended that you called me that, by the way.
[00:14:13] That hurts my feelings. Poser. You never want to be called a poser, because as skateboarders, we actually did it, right? We went to the hospital for this kind of stuff, right? I watched one of my friends throw himself down like 12 stairs and crack a couple ribs and then heel and then go do it again, like, just so he could do it.
[00:14:33] We put in the work, right? We were Taking risks. We were working hard at it. We had scars to prove it. And when I was in high school, it was cool to dress like a skater, right? Everybody was shopping at PacSun and Hot Topic and wearing vans and etnes and circa shoes. You remember those shoes that had tongues that were like 8 inches thick? I think they're cool again, but we used to wear those one time. Actually, this has nothing to do with my sermon. One time, I was wearing these circa shoes that had these giant, thick tongues, and my mom ran over my foot with the car. Didn't even hurt.
[00:15:02] Buy skate shoes, guys. Buy them.
[00:15:06] We actually did it. And other people just dressed like it, right? They were trying to be cool and look like it, and we hated that. We couldn't. Couldn't stand it because they were calling us. We wanted to be known for actually doing what we said we were going to do. There were all these other people just pretending, posing as if they were skaters. And it would drive you nuts if someone called you a poser. And there was a way that you could tell who was a poser. This sounds very judgmental, because it is.
[00:15:34] There was a way you could tell by looking at someone in a second whether they were a poser or not. Some of you guys have hobbies like that. If you're a hunter, you watch a show that's got a hunting scene in it, and you can tell whether anybody on set that day had ever been hunting. And the answer is always no. They're always, like, tromping through the woods like fairies. Spooky. Like, there's no way that there's a deer that's just going to stand there. But. Or maybe you're a big. You ride a lot of horses. So you watch a show and you see people riding horses, and you can tell exactly who's not actually a rider because they don't sit in their saddle. Right. You know, with skateboarding, you could tell. Anybody know by their shoes. Who said it? You could tell by their shoes. Yeah, you could tell. You could look at a skateboarder's shoes, and you would know in a second whether they were actually a skater or not. And here's why. If you're going to skateboard, you would ollie. Ollie is the term for jumping on a skateboard. You would ollie and an ollie. To execute that move, you would have to. With your back foot, you would slam the board down as hard as you could. The goal is to make the board pop up into the air. And when you would do that, you would slam the board down and Jump. And in order to make sure the board doesn't just fly up vertically, but it goes horizontally and you can catch it, you would slam it down and slide your foot up the board like that, which would draw the board up under your feet horizontally so that you could catch it with your feet and slam it back down on the ground. And that's how you would ollie. So you jump up into the air and slide your foot like that. And if you wanted to do a kickflip, you'd slide your foot. If you did a heel flip, you'd slide your foot. You were always sliding the edges of your shoes around the grip tape. And grip tape on a skateboard is basically sandpaper. Now, most people who ride boards have one foot that's normally forward. They ride in the same stance most of the time. So you could tell a skateboarder would have one shoe.
[00:17:25] There was always the outside of that shoe, the outsole. This part would be polished smooth and the fabric would be all ripped up from the grip tape. For the record, I grew up to be a poser.
[00:17:39] 15 year old me would be horrified. But I think that's just a commentary on who you think you're going to be when you're 15. Doesn't really play out.
[00:17:46] But you could tell, right? You could look at someone and you would look at someone's shoes. I've walked up to people before, looked at their shoes and said, oh, you must skate. I used to skate. It's always right because those marks are only made by skating.
[00:18:06] Just being a human and having been a pastor for a while now, I've come to believe that a lot of us think that we can tell visually. We can tell by looking at somebody whether they need something changed or they need everything changed.
[00:18:28] We think we can look at them, we can spend 10 minutes with them, hear a little bit of their story, and we can tell that person. Full renovation. That's not painting the walls, repairing some drywall. That is bulldozing it to the foundation and rebuilding. But that other guy, that girl up there, oh, she's pretty good. She just needs a little, little touch up if she's going to become who God created him to be. We think we can look visually and tell who's who.
[00:18:53] And it always falls along the same lines. We look at people who have the visible scars, visible mistakes or sins in their life. And we always imagine that those people who have the really public mistakes or sins are the ones who need the full everything change.
[00:19:10] Oh, that person's been through a few divorces. Yep, God's got a lot of work to do on them.
[00:19:16] We look at someone who struggles with addiction and we think, yep, 100% change. We look at someone who struggles with their sexual identity or their gender identity and we think, yep, God has to change every stinking thing about that person for them to become who they were created to be. I know God forgave them, but he needs to change. And we imagine that just by looking at it. And then we look at other people who don't have those public sins and mistakes. We look at someone who's like a pretty typical middle class person, you know, and we say, oh, haven't had a bunch of divorces, you know, pretty normal family, they're doing okay financially. They probably just need a little bit of change.
[00:19:52] God probably just wants to change a little bit in their life. They're like basically who they were supposed to be already. They just might need to start tithing or something. Just a little bit of change in them. Funny thing is, if we imagine that about other people, we will always look at ourselves and then assume we don't need everything to change.
[00:20:12] Oh, well, of course God wants to change something in my heart, something. I'll let God change something.
[00:20:19] But I'm not the type of person who needs everything changed.
[00:20:22] The reason why we think that is because we can all think of someone who's worse off than us, right?
[00:20:28] We can all think of somebody that.
[00:20:31] Well, yeah, I mean, I've made some mistakes, but I didn't make the mistakes, she did.
[00:20:36] So, I mean, God really needs to work on her and I'm, I need a little, I need a little work. Can always think of somebody else. Well, I mean, I've, you know, I've had a couple too many to drink, but I'm not an alcoholic. I mean, that guy over there, that guy really needs some work. I just need a little adjustment, you know, that guy needs open heart surgery. I just need to go to the chiropractor, you know, I just need a little adjustment in my life.
[00:21:00] But the thing is, there's no way to tell.
[00:21:03] We think that I would be able to tell that I'd be able to look at you, you'd be able to look at me, and we could tell, but you can't.
[00:21:11] There's no way. There's nothing in the story that indicates to us that Peter needed this kind of transformation before he met Jesus. There's nothing in the story that indicates John was just a better guy than Peter and that's why he got to keep his Old name. There's nothing in the story that indicates that whatsoever.
[00:21:29] We can't tell who is going to need everything in their life changed and who. Jesus is just going to change something.
[00:21:40] So it leaves us with a question. If I can't tell, if I can't even look in the mirror and be confident of what God is going to change in my life. Now, there are some things God's obviously going to change. There are some things that are clearly sin, clearly that God definitely wants to change, right? That we know. But there are a whole lot of things that, that I'm pretending aren't sin. I'm sure it's true. In my life right now, I'm sure it's true that I look in the mirror and there are things I'm pretending aren't sin. I'm pretending are no big deal or I'm hoping, or no big deal.
[00:22:08] And I'm hoping God doesn't want to change. So if we can't tell, if I can't tell in myself or you, then it leaves us with an important question we have to ask. It's this question right here.
[00:22:17] Will I let Jesus change anything that he wants about me?
[00:22:24] Now, that's not necessarily a super profound statement, but it's an incredibly important question. If I'm going to be a follower, it's an incredibly important question. Will I let Jesus change anything he wants to change about me and anything means anything?
[00:22:42] Would I let him change my career?
[00:22:44] Would I let him change who I date?
[00:22:48] Would I let him change what I do with my money?
[00:22:52] Would I let him change where I spend my weekends? Would I let him change what town I live in?
[00:22:58] Would I let him change my name? He's probably not literally going to change our name, but would I let him change the way I view myself and other people? Would I let him change my politics?
[00:23:07] Which, for the record, this is always worth pointing out, anytime in church we say the word politics. If you're on the left, you think I'm talking about the right, and if you're on the right, you think I'm talking about the left.
[00:23:16] Would I let Jesus change my politics?
[00:23:18] Whatever they are, whatever I think I'm right about right now, would I let Jesus change it?
[00:23:26] As we go through the life of Jesus, there's something that you'll notice because Peter was really close to Jesus, so we'll see it in Peter's interaction with Jesus. But if you were to read the Gospels, it'd be obvious. And this Jesus spends a lot of time with people with A lot of public, visible sins. He hangs out with thieves, prostitutes, sinners. One of his disciples, Matthew, is a tax collector. Tax collector was like the worst job a Jewish man could do. He was an outcast in society because he was working for the oppressors, taking money from his people. He was working for the Romans. The Romans were the worst.
[00:24:00] He would have been the outcast of society. Is one of Jesus disciples, one of his 12 apostles. Actually one of the leaders in his disciples. Jesus spends a lot of time with this type of people to the point that he was called Friend of Sinners. That was his nickname, and we put that in songs and stuff, but it was derogatory at that time. It wasn't a compliment. It was, this guy hangs out with the worst kind of people. Can you trust someone who spends time with those types of people? That was the reputation Jesus had. He was a friend of sinners.
[00:24:30] There's a reason for that. I think it's because if you've hit rock bottom and Jesus says, I want to change everything, you might be ready for everything to change, right?
[00:24:51] If you have an identity or a reputation that you're not proud of and Jesus says, I want to change everything, then that might sound like an awesome invitation that Jesus wants to change everything. So the people that had been outcasts and the people that thought they were hopeless and they didn't have a chance anymore flocked to Jesus because Jesus loved them and he forgave them and he gave them a second chance. And he's saying, I'll change everything about you.
[00:25:13] So they were excited about that sort of invitation. And that's true. And let me say this. If you have gotten to a point in life where you realized your way is not working and you need to let Jesus change anything he wants to change. If you have gotten to a point where you realize that how you've been living your life, that you have to give it up and let Jesus change whatever he wants. That's actually a sign of maturity.
[00:25:38] Praise the Lord for that, right? God doesn't want us to hit rock bottom. But if you've hit rock bottom, he will use that to give us something better. He will use that to transform our lives, to show us that he has something better for us and for many of us, if we've hit rock bottom, we've come to a place where, like Jesus, if you want to change everything, do it.
[00:25:57] What's harder is that there are a lot of us who haven't hit rock bottom who actually kind of like the life we've made for ourselves.
[00:26:07] We're pretty happy with the amount of money we make and the job we have and the place we live and the reputation we have. We're pretty content with our Internet search history and our bitterness towards our parents. And we're pretty content with having a fine but not great marriage and all this kind of stuff that no one can see from the outside. But if you look on the inside, you can see we're pretty content with it. We're happy with the life we have. And the idea of change doesn't seem good. And the funny thing is, when we build these sort of reputations for ourselves, we always build them up as if we're kind of above other people.
[00:26:41] You know, I worked for everything I have.
[00:26:45] You know, I made money the hard way. Nobody gave it to me. I didn't get any handouts. And you know what? I don't think anyone should get a handout because I worked hard for everything I've got. And if I didn't need help, you shouldn't need help either. I learned how to invest. I worked hard. I had a savings account. And we start to build ourselves up. I'm financially successful. I'm financially stable. Other people aren't. I am. Look what I did. Or maybe we define ourselves by our physical abilities, by our physical performance. You know what? I worked hard. I care about my health.
[00:27:14] I played sports in college, and then I didn't just let it go afterwards. I've worked hard. And we. And we brag. We think highly of ourselves. Because I can run a marathon. I can pack an elk out 20 miles. I can do whatever I need to. Other people can't. I can look at what I've accomplished. Or maybe you grew up in the church and you didn't make all the mistakes other people made. Maybe you look at other people and you're thinking, I didn't party in high school. I didn't sleep around in college. I did all the stuff I was supposed to do that those people got what they deserve. I didn't do it. Look at the life I have for myself right now. We have a tendency to do this. What we do is we build this identity up for ourselves, but we build it on being above other people.
[00:27:54] Which when you need to lean on someone, makes it difficult, right?
[00:28:00] It's a long way down to lean on someone. If I think I'm above you.
[00:28:07] If I think, well, I didn't need help, you shouldn't either. What happens when I do? Because that's the secret, right? Is we all do we imagine that these identities, that these positive identities and reputations we build for ourselves are stable and they're unshakable. But what we don't understand is just like scripture talks about how fickle and temporary wealth is, we can be really happy at our financial success. And then we invest in something that's supposed to be a home run, but it goes belly up. And all of a sudden that stable identity we built for ourselves is gone.
[00:28:43] Now we can think that, be proud of our physical performance and then all of a sudden you blow out your knee and you used to run marathons, but now you can't run a mile. And then what do you do? Then who are you?
[00:28:53] Who are you if that, if that positive identity goes away? Because we would all like to think that it's really stable, but it's just not, unfortunately.
[00:29:01] And that's why scripture says things like two are better than one.
[00:29:05] Because if one falls down, the other can pick him up. But two can't walk together if one's above the other. Right?
[00:29:12] That's why scripture says a quarter of three strands is not easily broken. Because we need other people, we're eventually going to need help. There's no such thing as a self made man or woman. That is a myth. We are all made in the image of God. And James chapter one says every good gift comes down from the Father of Lights, comes down from heaven. So there's no such thing as a self made person.
[00:29:34] So when I need other people, what does that mean? It's also why scripture says stuff like pride goes before the fall, because it's a long way down.
[00:29:47] So for those of us who maybe haven't hit rock bottom yet, this is the hardest question to ask.
[00:29:53] Will I let Jesus change anything?
[00:29:58] Because we've still convinced ourselves that what we're doing is working.
[00:30:04] And until we realize that it might not be or might not let him change it, I just want to give you the invitation.
[00:30:14] Skip rock bottom if you can.
[00:30:17] Let Jesus change it. Now I want you to do something really cheesy with me to close this out. I want you to hold your hands like this, like you're driving a Harley, right? Like.
[00:30:29] Yeah.
[00:30:31] This is the posture of not letting Jesus change whatever he wants. Imagine it like this.
[00:30:38] I'm holding on to something. Jesus, you could change this, but I'm going to keep holding on to everything else. Jesus, you could change that, but not. But not this. I'll give you this to change, Jesus. I'll give you this part of my life, Jesus. But I'm still holding on to everything else. This is the posture of withholding from Christ. It's the natural posture for most of us, for me, certainly.
[00:31:01] Now, I want you to turn your hands over.
[00:31:04] This is the posture of a follower. See, we don't know what Jesus is going to change. We don't.
[00:31:11] I might have some good ideas. There might be some things that are clearly sin that he's definitely going to want to change. But besides that, I don't know.
[00:31:17] So what do I do?
[00:31:20] I open my hands and say, change whatever you would like to change, Jesus.
[00:31:27] Take whatever you would like to take, Jesus.
[00:31:30] I won't hold anything back.
[00:31:33] And you need to know. Scripture says it is his kindness that brings us to repentance.
[00:31:40] He's merciful and gentle. He doesn't come down, come in and bulldoze things that don't need to be bulldozed.
[00:31:47] He doesn't wreak havoc in our lives on purpose.
[00:31:53] He changes what we need changed.
[00:31:56] So once again, the question we have to ask is, will I let Jesus change anything he wants about me?
[00:32:06] Let's pray.
[00:32:09] Jesus, I have a lot of things that I would like for you to not change about my life.
[00:32:14] I have a whole list.
[00:32:18] I ask that you would give me the courage to let you change anything you would like.
[00:32:25] And God, as you change things, we will see that you are good and kind and that you only change what needs to be changed.
[00:32:35] That you change what is good for us to change.
[00:32:38] So Jesus, give us the courage to open up our hands and let you change anything or everything because we trust that you are good and we love you. Amen.
