WEBVTT
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Hey, good morning.
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You can be seated.
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Happy Sunday.
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It's great to see y'all.
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I uh I lost a bet that he wouldn't know we made, but uh we me and some of the uh other pastors from the church went and ran a uh Spartan race yesterday, and Pastor John beat us all.
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So I gotta give I gotta give credit where credit is due.
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We tried our best, but we are old men and he's still uh young and fit.
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He's the man.
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So he uh he he got the dub yesterday.
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He was at the uh at the finish line, you know, with a full lunch, laying in a hammock, like, where you guys been?
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What are you doing?
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He did a great job.
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Um but uh I am uh I'm I'm thrilled to be here.
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These last couple weeks, if you uh have been here, you know that uh I've I've talked about rest.
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And I've talked about rest not as sort of the the absence of work or or the antithesis of work, but I've talked about rest as actually one of the works to which God has called us.
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And uh and and we've talked about how the practice or the discipline of rest actually uh doesn't just sort of help you know maintain our strength or you know our uh health long term, it's not just personally beneficial, it actually glorifies and demonstrates the nature of God uh to those around us.
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And uh and so we we've talked about that a lot.
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If you would like to hear me talk more about that, you can check out those two podcasts.
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It'll be that'll be great.
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But I um I knew when I came back from my uh the sabbatical I took this year that uh uh that that I needed to spend some time talking about rest as almost a sacramental discipline that we engage in as followers of God.
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But I uh I'll tell you that there was uh one of the more significant sort of conversations I had with the Lord over those weeks that I was away from the ministry of the church, uh revolved around this this one quote from uh from the Greek philosopher who lived uh about 400 years before Christ, named Heracletus, who who once said this He said, A man cannot step into the same river twice, because it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.
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And and I was one day I was I was out for a walk and I was sort of meditating on on that quote, just I don't know, it came came to mind.
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And uh and I was thinking about it and thinking about you know coming back, what's it gonna be like when I come back to the altar fellowship?
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I've been away for you know almost two months, and and you know, I haven't had a chance to preach a sermon, and I you know I haven't been sitting down giving counsel or or guidance to the people in the church, and I've missed those things.
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My heart has been longing for those things, but you know, is it gonna be the way that it was before when I come back?
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And and then God brought that quote to mind.
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And he said, just as a man uh cannot uh step into the same river twice because it's not the same river and he's not the same man, the Lord said uh so too can uh uh a man not pastor the same church twice because it's not the same church, and he's not the same pastor.
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And and so, sort of with that in in mind today, I I want to reintroduce myself to the community of the altar fellowship.
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Some of you have been here for a long time since this church was in my living room.
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Some of you, this may be your first time ever setting foot into this building, but I I want to take an opportunity to tell you to tell you my story, how God has carried me to this point.
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Uh just uh a couple weeks ago, um I uh had the opportunity to to remember when I first came to saving faith in God when I was uh it was the the week of my 19th birthday, just before I uh I turned 19.
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I was sitting on the steps of my college dorm, and uh and the presence of God met me there.
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And uh and so for now 20 years, God has faithfully carried me through life.
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He's faithfully protected me from destruction more times than I can begin to remember or enumerate.
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Um I'm so beyond grateful for the countless ways that he has defended me and protected me and strengthened me uh by his grace.
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And uh, however, I I need to go back maybe before that to tell you my story.
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You know, I was uh born to an amazing family.
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My dad was uh an elder in the church, and part of his story, some of you have heard before, part of his story is that my my father was born to a drug addict mother who didn't even know who his biological father was.
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It could have been any number of men.
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She lived in the projects in uh Indianapolis, Indiana, and uh didn't want to raise this kid.
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And so she gave him away to another woman who lived in the same projects who said, I'll I'll take him.
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And so uh and so my dad was raised in extreme poverty around gang violence and drug use, and uh watched as his siblings, half-siblings, cousins, a bunch of kids that he sort of grew up with got caught up in those things, and there was something inside of him that we maybe now would recognize in hindsight was just the grace of God, you know, kept him and protected him and made him look at all this destruction and say, no, no, no, that's that's not for me.
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And so uh he got to be pretty big, and and uh and so he used that to say, uh, you know, I'm gonna play football in high school.
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And then he had the opportunity to go play football in college, and so he went to a Christian university, Taylor University, gave his life to Christ, and uh uh and he died of of cancer when I was eight years old, uh, and he was only 40.
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And so my dad, you know, was very young, passed away of cancer, and left myself and my sister, um, who who at the time was two to grow up without a father.
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And and I, you know, I marvel at the amazing way that my dad changed the the course of my life.
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I mean, in one generation, he went from extreme poverty, drug addiction, and violence, to being an elder in our local church and a college professor.
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And uh, and in not even in you know, a whole long life, in 40 years.
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Uh, and I and I I just I marvel at the way that his determination really set my family up for a totally different experience.
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He broke generations of cycles, negative, downward, destructive cycles, so that I can't even imagine the life that my father was born into.
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And uh, and I'm grateful, I'm grateful for that.
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And I think some of you are cycle breakers too.
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That maybe you were born into a life that you wouldn't wish on your kids.
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And by the grace of God, your kids aren't even gonna imagine what you experienced growing up, right?
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And uh, and so what an awesome testimony that is.
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And my life is what it is today because of my father's choices.
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I'm grateful for that.
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But as I'm sure you can imagine, losing your father at eight years old is uh it's uh like a nuclear bomb in the middle of your whole world, man.
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You know, when you're an eight-year-old boy, your dad is supposed to be the strongest, smartest, most amazing man in the world.
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He's your your refuge, he's your shelter.
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I mean, your dad is like when you're eight, he's the closest thing to God you've ever experienced.
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And so, you know, to see my dad, I mean, wither away and uh and and die was like, where do I go, man?
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It just felt like the cruelty of life on earth was just put front and center for me.
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And I I uh I had a lot of questions, I think, that I maybe didn't even know how to express or articulate.
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Uh but I grew up in an evangelical free church.
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My family and I, we had moved.
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My dad had gotten a job at a university in Michigan.
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We'd lived for years in Oregon, so we moved from Oregon all the way, I don't know, a couple thousand miles over to Michigan.
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And uh two weeks after we moved, we found a lump on my dad's neck, and six months after that, he had passed away.
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And so uh you can imagine moving uh hours and hours and hours and hours away from hundreds, thousands of miles away from anybody that you know, any family, any friends, and then losing my my dad.
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It was we're sort of floating in this city, in this space.
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But my mom, the way she tells the story is that she knew God had called us there.
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He made a way for us to get to that city.
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He he supernaturally provided a home for us to buy when we got there.
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And so my mom said, I know God called us here, I'm not moving.
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And I'm I'm grateful for that decision because I was raised in a church there that uh is an evangelical free church.
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They call it uh, today they call it Grace Point Evangelical Free Church.
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And uh it still stands today.
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It was a wonderful church for the most part.
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You know, there were it the only downside is that there were people there, you know, and that's the weak spot of every church, I think, is the people.
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Um but but you know, people did sometimes what people do at this church, and I could tell you stories that would make you, oh, what a you know, what a terrible church.
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But it wasn't a terrible church.
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There were godly people there who impacted my life in a really meaningful way.
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Now, if you're not familiar with the that denomination, the evangelical free church, it's uh they're just Baptists, you know, more or less.
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Like they're just Midwestern Baptists, but they uh it's it's a church that just really highly esteems the Word of God.
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And uh and and they they do have sort of independent government instead of sort of answering to some kind of regional director or overseer, each church uh really self-governs, but they find unity on their statement of faith, a foundation of a common statement of faith that is just a regular sort of evangelical Protestant statement of faith that I think all of us would agree with.
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And um, and I'm grateful for that church because all I remember, I couldn't tell you a single sermon anyone ever preached, but to this day I still quote verses that I learned at that church.
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That in all of my ministry, I remember shortly after I began to step into ministry and started to kind of share the gospel, so much of what I would say to people came from things that I had memorized from the Bible because I was trying to get a jolly rancher at Iwana when I was 11 years old.
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And uh, and that was it.
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They would just they would get us together, we'd play games, and then they would bribe us with candy to learn Bible verses.
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And can I tell you, the word of God does not return void?
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And, you know, like David said, I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
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And so, countless times in my life, having hidden the word of God in my heart was the thing that fortified me against sin and temptation.
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It was the thing that kept me from going that last step over the edge to destruction or outright rebellion against God.
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I listen, I did a lot of rebellion, rebelling against God, but I wrestled with the word of God because it had been hidden in my heart.
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Thank you, Jolly Ranchers, in the evangelical free church.
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And so I like I'm grateful for that sort of mainline regular vanilla church upbringing.
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I really am.
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And frankly, you know, I shifted later in life, and I'll I'll get there to like a really charismatic uh community.
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And as fun as that is, I I think if that's all I ever had, I might have been in trouble.
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And we'll talk about that.
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But a huge part of my life growing up in that evangelical free church was was soccer.
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I was a real serious soccer player and you know, got to travel um all over the world and play and uh got to do some some really cool things, ended up playing in in college and had some great opportunities doing that.
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And um, and so that took me to college.
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Um I went to, I started my first couple years, I went to uh Catholic University in uh Minnesota, southeastern Minnesota called St.
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Mary's University.
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And uh and it was there, actually on the steps of my my dorm there after the summer of my freshman year that the presence of God met me.
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I was sitting on the steps of my dorm studying a book about Buddhism, and I was reading about this moral ethic that Buddhism holds.
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And it was interesting because I realized, you know, the Buddhism teaches you ought to be generous and humble and kind and patient.
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And uh, and I was familiar enough with other religions, Taoism and Islam and Judaism, that that would all teach you that you need to be generous and kind and patient, loving and humble.
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And I thought, oh, this is great.
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You know, there's this sort of universal moral standard.
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And and that's good, you know.
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I'm finding truth, and I I don't necessarily it doesn't need to be the Christian truth, it doesn't need to be the truth that my mom taught me growing up.
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Like, maybe the only reason I'm a Christian is because I was born into a Christian home.
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Maybe you've heard that objection.
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That man, if you were born in Afghanistan, you would be a Muslim.
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And and maybe that's true, but that doesn't make Islam right.
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And maybe the reason that I'm a Christian is because I was born in a Christian home, but that doesn't make Christianity wrong or right.
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And so we've got to ask ourselves like what stands up to reason?
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What actually is a coherent worldview with the observable nature of humanity and the documented history of our species.
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And so what happened is as I was studying these other religions in college, I began to find that all of them essentially or fundamentally agreed on what it is to be a decent person, what it is to be ethical or moral.
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But there was this nagging thought.
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Maybe you've heard me talk about this before.
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Here's the nagging thought.
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Everybody agrees.
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Lao Su, who's sort of the figurehead of Taoism, you know, Buddha, Sidhardakotama, you know, who's who's the figurehead of Buddhism, you know, Moses is the figurehead of Judaism, uh, Jesus of Nazareth, obviously, the figure figurehead of Christianity.
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All of these people sort of agree on this moral standard, you need to be loving, kind, generous, and humble.
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Here's my problem, though.
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I haven't been.
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And I'm looking at this like all of history's greatest religious and philosophical teachers agree this is how you were created to live.
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And I'm having to wrestle with the fact that I haven't lived like that.
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That if there is a God, and that God did create me to live this way, I'm in serious trouble with that God.
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And here's the problem that I had as I was studying other religions.
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It's that Lao Su and Buddha, even Moses, they don't offer adequate answers for the problem of what we would call sin.
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I rebelled against God.
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God has a standard to which I've been called, and I have lived far below that standard.
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I had been selfish and deceptive and hateful and arrogant more times than I could begin to count.
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But then I remembered one of those verses that uh that I that I uh memorized to to earn a Jolly Rancher in the evangelical free church.
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It says in uh the book of Isaiah that as a lamb before its shears is silent, so he opened not his mouth.
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The Bible tells us that God laid on him the iniquity of us all.
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And I realized that where Christianity differs from every other sort of moral framework is that in Christianity there's an answer for sin.
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Everyone can tell you this is how you ought to live.
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Even atheists or agnostics, they'll agree in maybe the basic fundamentals of what morality looks like.
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The problem is there is only one answer for the universal experience of immorality, our human dysfunction.
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And that one answer is that the blood of Jesus was shed for the remission of our sins.
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And so I was sitting on the steps of my dorm, you know, out at St.
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Mary's University in Winona, Minnesota, and in that place it was like I'm reading this book about Buddhism, and I'm just shaking with like, but what about the answer?
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There's got to be an answer for my sin.
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Okay, this is great, but like, what about the fact that I am not moral?
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I am not good.
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And if there is a God who is good and who made me for good, I have rebelled against that God countless times.
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And it was like the presence of God met me on those steps.
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And it felt like he pinned me to the ground.
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And and I explained it to a friend of mine once that it was like waking up on a waking up in a room full of strangers, where it suddenly I became aware that I wasn't alone.
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And I I wouldn't call it maybe a warm, fuzzy feeling.
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It was like, oh, there is a God and he sees me, and everything is laid bare before him.
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And I'm I am and I always have been totally vulnerable before him.
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But then this comforting thought came that he has kept me, he's preserved me, he's loved me, he's cared about me, and he brought me to this moment.
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And he and I argued for a while there on the steps of my dorm.
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You know, it wasn't like, wow, Lord, I surrender.
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It was like, Lord, I don't know if you can handle me.
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He wasn't intimidated by my sin.
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He wasn't disgusted or repulsed by me.
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He said, Man, I can I can even use somebody like you, Maddie.
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And uh, and so in that moment, I would say that I was marked by God.
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I was ruined for anything else.
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And, you know, people sometimes they share their story, like from that moment on, I, you know, chased after Jesus with all of my heart.
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And I've got to tell you, that's that was not my experience.
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I I would love to say that all of my old habits immediately disappeared.
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That's not true, but I will tell you this all of my old habits lost their flavor.
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I tried to go back to the sin I was living in before that night.
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I did, and and I succeeded at times.
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But instead of being proud of myself, I was disgusted with myself.
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I'd been ruined.
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The way I explained it once is that it felt like sin was like a shirt that had shrunk in the wash.
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I just couldn't get it on anymore, you know.
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And I tried, but it just it just didn't fit me like it used to.
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And uh, and I'm still in that process, you know, I'm still in a process of learning to to uh you know honor God with the choices that I make, to control, you know, impulses that are contrary to his will for my life, and and to surrender more fully day by day to his best and his highest calling for my life.
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But I uh, you know, I then just a couple months later, I ended up dropping out of that school.
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I went back to the Midwest, went back to Ohio, where my mom was living with uh her new husband, my stepdad, which is like awkward for both of us, I think.
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And uh he's great.
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Uh I was not, like I was still just a stinky kid, you know, and and but I moved into his house for a little bit, went to another college for a semester, and was just trying to figure my life out.
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And God began to shake me over those next maybe six months, and he began to confront me over my half-hearted commitment that I was committed to him in word, but my deeds, my actions, my habits, my choices in secret, they they weren't honoring him.
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And and I was trying to give God lip service, but God looks at the heart.
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And uh And he saw that there were that my heart still had Maddie on the throne of my life.
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And uh and so over those six months, he began to really nail me down about my sin, about my compromise.
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And uh and and one of the things is I would come closer to him as I'd spend more time at church.
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I would go to church and just ask Christians, like, tell me what God has done in your life, and tell me your favorite Bible verses, and I would do everything I could to learn more about him.
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And during that season, as I got closer to God, he began to reawaken this passion that I had for music.
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And uh, and so I uh, you know, I uh was kind of playing in a band part-time, and uh and then I heard about this band of guys from Sioux City, Iowa, from Western Iowa, that had this band called For Today, and they weren't big and nobody knew who they were, but they love Jesus and they're they're gonna go on tour soon.
00:22:53.200 --> 00:22:54.559
And I was like, that's what I need.
00:22:54.640 --> 00:22:58.240
I need guys that love Jesus, and I feel like I need to go on tour.
00:22:58.319 --> 00:22:58.799
I don't know why.
00:22:58.880 --> 00:23:00.160
I just I just gotta go.
00:23:00.319 --> 00:23:03.359
And so I uh sent a MySpace message to this guy.
00:23:03.519 --> 00:23:10.000
This is an ancient relic, to this guy named David Morrison, and I was like, hey man, would you let me join your band?
00:23:10.240 --> 00:23:20.240
And he said, Well, let's do like a 30-day uh you know trial period where I can, you know, you can come out, we'll do some rehearsals, and then we'll we'll do a short tour and then we'll see how it goes.
00:23:20.319 --> 00:23:21.680
And it went pretty well.
00:23:21.759 --> 00:23:33.599
We ended up touring the world uh for 10 years, uh playing our music for millions of people all over the planet and uh and just having an amazing time.
00:23:33.759 --> 00:23:37.680
And every night we would, between songs, we would preach Christ.
00:23:37.920 --> 00:23:43.440
And every night the Spirit of God would draw people to Himself.
00:23:43.839 --> 00:23:52.240
We would see people saved all over the world, countless thousands of people make decisions for Christ in bars and in nightclubs.
00:23:52.480 --> 00:24:00.400
Now, during this time, we were all sort of reading the Bible for ourselves, we're trying to figure this stuff out, and uh, and we got introduced to like Holy Ghost people.
00:24:01.519 --> 00:24:04.240
Remember, I was raised in the evangelical free church.
00:24:04.480 --> 00:24:07.599
We the Holy Ghost never made it out of our doctrinal statement.
00:24:07.759 --> 00:24:13.440
Like we, you know, we maybe acknowledge the Holy Spirit on paper, and that's that's David.
00:24:13.519 --> 00:24:15.759
You went to a Nazarene, you know about that, yeah.
00:24:16.160 --> 00:24:26.640
You know, so we we appreciate the Holy Spirit in theory, but in practice, he's just like he's a little too unpredictable, so we'd rather he just stay stay in our textbooks, you know.
00:24:26.880 --> 00:24:37.519
Um, but the uh, you know, we got out there in the trenches and people started like coming and saying, Hey, my my baby was born without Achilles' tendons.
00:24:37.680 --> 00:24:41.519
Would you would you pray that God would restore those?
00:24:41.680 --> 00:24:47.599
And and then we'd be like, I mean, I guess Jesus and his guys did it in the Bible, like, let's try.
00:24:47.680 --> 00:24:48.799
Like, we didn't know any better.
00:24:48.880 --> 00:24:55.599
And and so we would pray, and then suddenly, like, this baby would have Achilles tendons where she didn't when we started praying.
00:24:55.680 --> 00:24:58.240
You know, people would come and say, I'm blind.
00:24:58.480 --> 00:25:01.039
Can you pray for God to like fix my eyes?
00:25:01.200 --> 00:25:04.319
And blind eyes would open, and people would stand up out of wheelchairs.
00:25:04.400 --> 00:25:09.440
And so we're like preaching Christ, and this is what you read in the book of Acts, we're preaching the gospel of grace.
00:25:09.680 --> 00:25:17.039
The Bible says that God bore witness to the preaching of the gospel of grace by granting signs and wonders to be done by the hands of the apostles.
00:25:17.200 --> 00:25:21.359
And so I'm not saying that I'm, you know, Peter or Paul.
00:25:21.519 --> 00:25:28.799
What I'm saying is that God loves the gospel, and when we preach the gospel, it it impacts people's lives in in real ways.
00:25:29.119 --> 00:25:34.559
And so we were preaching the gospel, and God was uh doing things that only God could do.
00:25:34.640 --> 00:25:39.440
And so we got really kind of embraced by like very hyper charismatic people.
00:25:39.519 --> 00:25:51.839
And I don't know that there's a denomination that we, you know, like we had the I grew up in the evangelical free church, but then for our 10 years in the band and even beyond, we are we uh became like Holy Ghost people.
00:25:51.920 --> 00:25:53.119
We I speak in tongues.
00:25:53.440 --> 00:25:58.960
I uh have no problem if we start laying hands on people and they start falling over, I'm perfectly happy with that.
00:25:59.119 --> 00:26:02.240
Um, you know, I uh I love the Holy Spirit.
00:26:02.400 --> 00:26:09.599
I think the Holy Spirit in many ways is the defining characteristic of uh any church or culture or even individual.
00:26:09.759 --> 00:26:13.759
The way we relate to the Holy Spirit defines the way we walk with God.
00:26:13.920 --> 00:26:14.400
That's right.
00:26:15.119 --> 00:26:22.640
And uh and if we say, Holy Spirit, you're too unpredictable, you're too weird, you stay over there, that will change the way that we interact with God.
00:26:22.799 --> 00:26:24.960
It'll change the way we walk with God on a daily basis.
00:26:25.039 --> 00:26:28.880
But if we say, Holy Spirit, use me, I belong fully to you.
00:26:29.119 --> 00:26:35.200
Lead me where you want me to go, empower me to do what you want me to do, that changes the way we walk with God, right?
00:26:35.440 --> 00:26:43.279
And so I'm grateful, very, very grateful, for that time in my life that I was around these super charismatic, you know.
00:26:43.440 --> 00:26:45.839
I would like, I hung out at churches for a long time.
00:26:45.920 --> 00:26:51.279
We were part of a church in Mobile, the church that sent us up here that had a prophet on staff.
00:26:51.599 --> 00:26:53.680
So it's like that's a different world for me.
00:26:53.759 --> 00:26:56.960
The evangelical free church did not have any prophets on staff.
00:26:57.200 --> 00:27:01.359
Um but man, we were I was like so grateful for that time.
00:27:01.519 --> 00:27:29.039
But I I need to say this as well since planting this church, I have always felt this sense that maybe a part of my calling and why God allowed me to walk through what I walked through in life is because he called me to maybe uh maybe help teach charismatics why we do what we do, and to to help marry the spirit and the word in a way that I hadn't really seen in my life growing up.
00:27:29.920 --> 00:27:38.400
It tended to be, and this may be the case for many of you, that churches would choose, we either love the word or we love the spirit, but it's very rare that you'd find a church that loves both.
00:27:39.519 --> 00:27:43.839
And uh and so I I want us to be a church that loves both the spirit and the word.
00:27:44.480 --> 00:27:44.720
Right?
00:27:44.799 --> 00:27:50.000
I want us to, the Bible says that God is seeking those that will worship him in spirit and truth.
00:27:50.400 --> 00:27:50.720
Right?
00:27:51.119 --> 00:28:01.680
And and we don't this this idea that we have to choose the spirit or the truth, that's a problem, and that's a false dichotomy the enemy has uh presented to the church.
00:28:01.759 --> 00:28:11.279
That you've got to decide, are you gonna be crazy charismatics who don't care at all about the Bible, or are you gonna be cold, dead, you know, Bible scholars that don't care about the Holy Spirit?
00:28:11.359 --> 00:28:15.359
I refuse to make that decision because I think those two go together.
00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:26.640
And uh and so in in 2016, the Lord, I had uh, I have three pages of notes.
00:28:26.880 --> 00:28:29.440
I don't think I'm gonna even get to the end of page one today.
00:28:29.599 --> 00:28:31.359
So we I'll be back here next week.
00:28:31.440 --> 00:28:31.920
Don't worry.
00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:34.880
But we're I promised my plan, I had a plan today.
00:28:34.960 --> 00:28:36.400
I was gonna teach scripture to you.
00:28:36.480 --> 00:28:38.799
Like we were gonna go through uh Luke.
00:28:38.880 --> 00:28:41.440
They they've got Luke 34, like I'm ready.
00:28:41.519 --> 00:28:43.920
Uh 24, excuse me, Luke 24.
00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:51.599
Um, we'll get there eventually, but um, we are gonna take communion today, and if I insist on teaching this, we're not gonna have time for that.
00:28:51.759 --> 00:29:04.400
So uh in 2016, I left for a tour as I had before, and the Lord uh it just felt different.
00:29:04.880 --> 00:29:09.440
And and I did something that I think a lot of people do.
00:29:09.599 --> 00:29:11.680
My wife and I we were talking about it just this week.
00:29:11.839 --> 00:29:20.880
That sometimes when when God begins to move in your life, maybe you're feeling like, man, there's I think God is calling me away from this job.
00:29:21.119 --> 00:29:23.839
Or I think God's calling me away from this city, or or whatever.
00:29:23.920 --> 00:29:29.839
You know, when when the Lord is moving something in your heart, this is what I did, is I started to go, what's wrong with it?
00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:30.640
Oh, come on.
00:29:30.880 --> 00:29:34.720
The Lord began to shift my heart away from the band.
00:29:34.799 --> 00:29:39.200
And and and and so I spent a month saying, All right, God, what's the problem?
00:29:39.359 --> 00:29:42.400
There's got to be one of the guys in the band must be in secret sin.
00:29:42.640 --> 00:29:43.839
I need you to reveal to me.
00:29:43.920 --> 00:29:46.079
Like there must be, so I'm real suspicious.
00:29:46.160 --> 00:29:48.240
I'm looking at everybody, what's the problem?
00:29:48.400 --> 00:29:50.480
What are you doing secretly that's making this bad?
00:29:50.559 --> 00:29:52.000
Why does God hate this thing?
00:29:52.160 --> 00:29:53.599
And here's what I found out.
00:29:53.839 --> 00:29:56.640
Sometimes there's nothing wrong.
00:29:56.960 --> 00:30:00.559
God just said to me, Maddie, you just completed what I called you to do.
00:30:01.759 --> 00:30:10.000
In 2007, when I called you to this band, I had a time frame in mind, and that time frame is over.
00:30:10.240 --> 00:30:15.920
I love you and I love this band and I love what you've done, but Maddie, your assignment here has been completed.
00:30:16.559 --> 00:30:21.119
And so I was able to sit with the guys in the band in 2016 and say, guys, I love you with all my heart.
00:30:21.200 --> 00:30:26.160
This has been one of the greatest privileges I have ever had, but God is calling me away.
00:30:26.319 --> 00:30:31.440
And for the better part of a year that year, everybody would ask, Well, what are you leaving for?
00:30:31.519 --> 00:30:32.880
You know, is there a problem in the band?
00:30:32.960 --> 00:30:35.279
Is there, did you get some better job offer somewhere else?
00:30:35.359 --> 00:30:36.240
It's like, no.
00:30:36.640 --> 00:30:36.960
No.
00:30:37.599 --> 00:30:40.640
God said, it's run its course.
00:30:40.720 --> 00:30:43.200
This is this is my time to finish.
00:30:43.359 --> 00:30:44.559
And so that's what we did.
00:30:44.640 --> 00:30:46.960
We finished in at the end of 2016.
00:30:47.039 --> 00:30:50.720
And people would ask me, What are you gonna do when you finish the band?
00:30:50.799 --> 00:30:56.640
And I said, I'm gonna take my wife on a date and I'm gonna take my kids to the park, and then I will start praying about what comes next.
00:30:57.200 --> 00:30:58.319
And so that's what we did.
00:30:58.480 --> 00:31:12.880
We uh we finished in 2016, and then all through 2017, I did some traveling to preach at conferences and crusades and saw God move in an amazing way, and I was preaching at all these evangelistic events like I had been for many years, and I kept preaching about these two things, man.
00:31:12.960 --> 00:31:18.480
I I would preach at these big evangelistic events where everybody else is preaching about signs, wonders, and miracles.
00:31:18.559 --> 00:31:30.559
They're preaching the gospel, they're calling people to confess their sin, to get right with God, and I kept talking about worship and family, and I realized I don't know if I fit on the evangelist circuit.
00:31:31.759 --> 00:31:49.440
And so in 2019, and in 2018, excuse me, I was sitting in uh my spiritual father's church down in Mobile, and uh and just praying one morning at uh his men's prayer gathering, and I heard the Lord say, Maddie, it's time to gather the family.
00:31:49.680 --> 00:31:57.279
And I knew immediately that that's what uh that that what that meant is that we were gonna plant a church.
00:31:58.079 --> 00:32:25.839
That I'd traveled all over the world, I'd preached the gospel to millions of people over the 10 years prior to that, and 99% of them maybe were encouraged or annoyed, and uh 99% of them, you know, the left with like some some some more information or or something, you know, maybe they were inspired or uplifted in some way, but there would just be this one percent of people that that they they heard what we've called in the past the voice within the voice.
00:32:26.000 --> 00:32:37.599
There was something about the way God expressed himself through me that would draw them, and they would they would buy all my books and they would watch all my videos and they would travel for hours to come and you know hear me preach.
00:32:37.680 --> 00:32:41.839
If I was preaching anywhere close to them, these people would really seek out our ministry.
00:32:41.920 --> 00:32:50.960
Many of them moved down to Mobile to try to be a part of our lives, but we were real guarded with our time because I traveled so much, and so we weren't doing a lot in the way of discipleship.
00:32:51.039 --> 00:33:07.519
But when God said, Maddie, it's time to gather the family, I knew that's now it's time to bring people into our life, to bring people into our home, to bring people to our table, to open our schedule up and to pour our hearts and our lives into those that God would send us.
00:33:07.599 --> 00:33:14.640
And so in 2019, we moved to the least likely place on our list, Johnson City, Tennessee.
00:33:15.680 --> 00:33:21.759
And uh and we launched a church in our living room called the Altar Fellowship.
00:33:22.160 --> 00:33:35.279
And uh, and for seven years I uh uh had the privilege of serving as the pastor of a church plant in Johnson City called the Altar Fellowship.
00:33:36.160 --> 00:33:42.559
And I realized over these last couple months that it sounds like I'm about to tell you I'm quitting and I'm not.
00:33:45.440 --> 00:33:46.000
I'm not.
00:33:46.079 --> 00:33:47.599
I want to break the tension here.
00:33:47.839 --> 00:33:57.920
Uh I realized over these last couple months that I am not the pastor of a small church plant in Johnson City anymore.
00:33:58.319 --> 00:34:05.359
I've been given the privilege by God to be the senior pastor of a pretty large church in Johnson City, Tennessee.
00:34:06.240 --> 00:34:15.199
And um, and I recognize that this isn't the house, this isn't the church in my house where my son Carver is taking a nap upstairs during service.
00:34:15.840 --> 00:34:21.840
Um this isn't the church in the little wedding venue in downtown where there's one bathroom per gender.
00:34:23.280 --> 00:34:24.800
Two bathrooms total.
00:34:25.679 --> 00:34:34.800
Um there's you know, and uh and those bathrooms are all made out of cardboard so everybody can hear what you're doing in there.
00:34:35.760 --> 00:34:40.159
This is uh this is a different thing entirely.
00:34:40.480 --> 00:34:51.679
And and I feel like a part for me of of this reintroduction, and again, I really had like a lot of teaching I was gonna do today, and this we're just going slower than I expected.
00:34:51.920 --> 00:35:17.679
Um I I have had the sense that um that part of this reintroduction for me is for me to say this the person I am today, as I introduce myself to you as the senior pastor of the altar fellowship, is uh is not the person I was when we planted this church.
00:35:18.400 --> 00:35:23.119
The what my family needs of me is different than it was then.
00:35:23.440 --> 00:35:38.079
When my oldest boys were what, seven and nine years old, maybe younger, six and uh and and uh eight, and uh and Carver was one when we moved here, you know.
00:35:38.159 --> 00:35:41.039
I I uh the demands on our time are different.
00:35:41.280 --> 00:35:43.360
My boys are all in sports.
00:35:43.840 --> 00:35:47.920
What my wife needs from me is different than it was when we started this church.
00:35:48.000 --> 00:36:01.679
And I I had this dream that uh when we started the church, I would, you know, if a new family came in, we'd be able to take them out to dinner that night and uh that week, I mean, and and get to know them and hear their story.
00:36:01.760 --> 00:36:04.880
And and I've done that by the grace of God with many of you.
00:36:05.039 --> 00:36:10.239
Uh, but it's been a burden for me, if I'm honest, these last couple years that I just can't do that.
00:36:10.400 --> 00:36:13.519
It's like we did it with Cody and Rose, and you guys showed up to our house.
00:36:13.679 --> 00:36:16.159
We were like, let's get together and get to know you guys.
00:36:16.239 --> 00:36:24.079
I know I remember taking uh Michael and Sarah Lynn Bryan out to dinner, and we had Cody and Keisha Gollic over, and I made them a salad.
00:36:24.159 --> 00:36:28.719
I think Miss Candace made something delicious, but she used to trust me with the salads, and so I made a big old salad.
00:36:28.880 --> 00:36:30.559
You know, we had them over to our house.
00:36:30.800 --> 00:36:50.480
You know, some of these couples that have been around since the church was very small, when it was in our house, they've been in our home, they've been in our life, we've eaten lots of meals together, but I realized that the uh the best thing I can be in service of this church is a great husband to my wife and a great father to my children.
00:36:51.840 --> 00:37:06.800
And one of the dangers, I think, and and I can speak from experience now, one of the dangers that faces pastors of larger churches is this constant pressure from the accuser that says you're not doing enough.
00:37:07.440 --> 00:37:17.039
You have to meet more people, you have to eat more meals, you have to go to more of the, you know, baseball games of the kids in the church, you have to go, you know, visit more people.
00:37:17.199 --> 00:37:30.480
And and here's the reality that I think I want us to explore as a family is it would be a dangerous thing for any of you to think that the work of the ministry is only my responsibility.
00:37:31.840 --> 00:37:40.000
The book of Ephesians teaches us that God has given some to be pastors for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry.
00:37:41.519 --> 00:37:44.320
And so, what's the point of having a pastor in your life?
00:37:44.480 --> 00:37:48.559
It is so that you can be equipped to do the work of the ministry.
00:37:49.519 --> 00:37:54.239
God has put me in your life, not so that I can do ministry so you don't have to.
00:37:54.559 --> 00:38:14.320
God has put me in your life to help put the tools in your hands and then light a fire under your rear end to say your family needs you seeking God, your workplace needs you seeking God, your neighborhood needs you seeking God, your city needs you seeking God, your nation and your generation desperately need you seeking God.
00:38:14.480 --> 00:38:27.760
And if you are full of the presence and power of God because of your intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit, it will bring transformation not just to you and your household, it'll bring transformation to this whole world.
00:38:29.519 --> 00:38:31.760
That is why we are here.
00:38:31.920 --> 00:39:00.000
And and I want to provoke you into that today and forever, but I also need to tell you that I am uh that I also need to tell you that if if the way you get provoked toward that is by having you know unfiltered, unrestricted access to me, there's a big problem, I think, with your relationship with God.
00:39:00.639 --> 00:39:05.920
It is God Himself that is our source and our strength.
00:39:06.159 --> 00:39:12.000
And if you thought that I could be your source or strength, friend, I love you, but you're sorely mistaken.
00:39:12.159 --> 00:39:17.599
I I'm uh I might be a good pastor, but I'm a really bad savior.
00:39:19.280 --> 00:39:43.039
And so I hope that more than ever you will fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith, that you'll chase after him with all of your heart, that you will make him your hope and your strength and your joy and your exceedingly great reward, and that in him you will find rest and peace that you can share with a restless and chaotic world.
00:39:44.559 --> 00:39:45.119
Amen.
00:39:45.440 --> 00:39:51.039
So this morning, I've got at least two more sermons to preach out of this.
00:39:51.280 --> 00:39:53.360
Okay, as we there's never enough time.
00:39:53.599 --> 00:39:54.239
Sorry.
00:39:54.800 --> 00:39:59.599
This morning we are gonna finish by receiving uh the Lord's Supper.
00:40:00.480 --> 00:40:12.719
On the first Sunday of every month, uh we have the privilege of being able to uh to come into communion with God and each other by receiving the elements.
00:40:12.800 --> 00:40:27.920
And Jesus gave uh instituted this practice at the Last Supper with His disciples when he took the uh uh the bread and broke it, and he said to them, This is my body broken for you.
00:40:28.400 --> 00:40:30.159
Do this in remembrance of me.
00:40:30.400 --> 00:40:40.000
And and then he uh took the the cup and he filled it with wine and he said to them, This is my blood of a new covenant.
00:40:42.000 --> 00:40:46.000
And as often as you drink it, do so in remembrance of me.
00:40:46.639 --> 00:41:12.719
And this I think is for us an invitation to come into uh collective meditation or collective contemplation that we can experience by way of our corporate focus or our corporate uh contemplative priority, fellowship or communion with Jesus by way of these elements.
00:41:13.440 --> 00:41:45.119
Understand, we are here today as redeemed people, as sons and daughters of God, not because of our efforts, not because of the home into which we were born, not because we prayed some magical prayer, but because Jesus, God, became a man and hung on a cross under the full weight of my guilt and yours, and with his own broken body and shed blood, made atonement for our sin.
00:41:45.760 --> 00:41:54.239
Took upon himself the full weight of the wrath of God so that we could be accepted as God's beloved sons and daughters.
00:41:55.519 --> 00:42:03.920
And uh so if I could get the elders to come forward and prepare the elements, I I want to, as they're doing that, to remind you.
00:42:04.079 --> 00:42:18.800
Uh Paul reminds the church in Corinth to uh to be discerning, to be careful, to not drink uh the the wine or eat the bread in a way that uh that is dishonoring to God or that is out of order.
00:42:19.039 --> 00:42:19.760
What does that look like?
00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:25.440
I would say this this is something that is reserved for those who have truly put their faith in Jesus.
00:42:25.760 --> 00:42:38.639
If you cannot say with absolute confidence that Jesus is your Lord and your Savior, then I'd ask you to please refrain from taking the uh the elements this morning.
00:42:38.960 --> 00:42:46.880
If that is the case, if you can't say this morning with absolute confidence that Jesus is your Lord and Savior, listen, come talk to me.
00:42:46.960 --> 00:42:50.159
I'll I'll take a break from whatever I'm doing to have that conversation with you.
00:42:50.320 --> 00:42:55.039
We can deal with that and make sure that you're right with God right now.
00:42:55.199 --> 00:42:57.840
There's nothing in the world more important than that.
00:42:58.239 --> 00:43:22.320
However, for the rest of us, I would tell you if you if you have unconfessed sin, if you have unforgiven hurt or offense, that if there are areas of your life that God has been tapping on that you have not yet surrendered, I would tell you deal with God before you come forward to receive these elements.
00:43:24.000 --> 00:43:27.840
So you don't need to come forward when it's your sections time to come forward.
00:43:27.920 --> 00:43:42.480
You come forward when uh when your heart is right, and you're able to, as the scriptures say, to discern the body and blood of our Lord, to really see Jesus in this moment clearly.
00:43:53.519 --> 00:43:56.400
So the way that we'll do this is we'll have our security team.
00:43:56.480 --> 00:43:58.639
I know that they're in the back, they're gonna dismiss you.
00:43:58.960 --> 00:44:05.519
I think starting in in the back and have you uh come forward and you'll take a piece of the the bread.
00:44:05.599 --> 00:44:14.159
And the reason that we have you do that is because I think it's important that you understand the body of Jesus wasn't broken by the Romans or the Jews.
00:44:14.559 --> 00:44:17.599
The body of Jesus was broken by you and me.
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That it was our hand that tore his flesh that day on the cross.
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It was our hand that shed his blood that day on the cross.
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And uh, and so as you tear a piece of the bread, he'll then dip it in the in the wine and uh and then uh receive it.
00:44:43.519 --> 00:44:57.039
But let's make sure that we do this prayerfully, meditatively, and with honor as we come together into a time of corporate meditation on the blood of Jesus shed for us.
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You can come forward when you're ready.
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Thank you for tuning in to this service from the altar fellowship.
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We pray that you are impacted powerfully by this message.
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If you have been personally affected by our ministry and you would like to partner with the altar as we work to establish the kingdom of heaven, please visit our website at www.eal.
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Hey, good morning.
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You can be seated.
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Happy Sunday.
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It's great to see y'all.
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I uh I lost a bet that he wouldn't know we made, but uh we me and some of the uh other pastors from the church went and ran a uh Spartan race yesterday, and Pastor John beat us all.
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So I gotta give I gotta give credit where credit is due.
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We tried our best, but we are old men and he's still uh young and fit.
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He's the man.
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So he uh he he got the dub yesterday.
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He was at the uh at the finish line, you know, with a full lunch, laying in a hammock, like, where you guys been?
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What are you doing?
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He did a great job.
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Um but uh I am uh I'm I'm thrilled to be here.
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These last couple weeks, if you uh have been here, you know that uh I've I've talked about rest.
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And I've talked about rest not as sort of the the absence of work or or the antithesis of work, but I've talked about rest as actually one of the works to which God has called us.
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And uh and and we've talked about how the practice or the discipline of rest actually uh doesn't just sort of help you know maintain our strength or you know our uh health long term, it's not just personally beneficial, it actually glorifies and demonstrates the nature of God uh to those around us.
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And uh and so we we've talked about that a lot.
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If you would like to hear me talk more about that, you can check out those two podcasts.
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It'll be that'll be great.
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But I um I knew when I came back from my uh the sabbatical I took this year that uh uh that that I needed to spend some time talking about rest as almost a sacramental discipline that we engage in as followers of God.
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But I uh I'll tell you that there was uh one of the more significant sort of conversations I had with the Lord over those weeks that I was away from the ministry of the church, uh revolved around this this one quote from uh from the Greek philosopher who lived uh about 400 years before Christ, named Heracletus, who who once said this He said, A man cannot step into the same river twice, because it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.
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And and I was one day I was I was out for a walk and I was sort of meditating on on that quote, just I don't know, it came came to mind.
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And uh and I was thinking about it and thinking about you know coming back, what's it gonna be like when I come back to the altar fellowship?
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I've been away for you know almost two months, and and you know, I haven't had a chance to preach a sermon, and I you know I haven't been sitting down giving counsel or or guidance to the people in the church, and I've missed those things.
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My heart has been longing for those things, but you know, is it gonna be the way that it was before when I come back?
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And and then God brought that quote to mind.
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And he said, just as a man uh cannot uh step into the same river twice because it's not the same river and he's not the same man, the Lord said uh so too can uh uh a man not pastor the same church twice because it's not the same church, and he's not the same pastor.
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And and so, sort of with that in in mind today, I I want to reintroduce myself to the community of the altar fellowship.
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Some of you have been here for a long time since this church was in my living room.
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Some of you, this may be your first time ever setting foot into this building, but I I want to take an opportunity to tell you to tell you my story, how God has carried me to this point.
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Uh just uh a couple weeks ago, um I uh had the opportunity to to remember when I first came to saving faith in God when I was uh it was the the week of my 19th birthday, just before I uh I turned 19.
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I was sitting on the steps of my college dorm, and uh and the presence of God met me there.
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And uh and so for now 20 years, God has faithfully carried me through life.
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He's faithfully protected me from destruction more times than I can begin to remember or enumerate.
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Um I'm so beyond grateful for the countless ways that he has defended me and protected me and strengthened me uh by his grace.
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And uh, however, I I need to go back maybe before that to tell you my story.
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You know, I was uh born to an amazing family.
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My dad was uh an elder in the church, and part of his story, some of you have heard before, part of his story is that my my father was born to a drug addict mother who didn't even know who his biological father was.
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It could have been any number of men.
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She lived in the projects in uh Indianapolis, Indiana, and uh didn't want to raise this kid.
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And so she gave him away to another woman who lived in the same projects who said, I'll I'll take him.
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And so uh and so my dad was raised in extreme poverty around gang violence and drug use, and uh watched as his siblings, half-siblings, cousins, a bunch of kids that he sort of grew up with got caught up in those things, and there was something inside of him that we maybe now would recognize in hindsight was just the grace of God, you know, kept him and protected him and made him look at all this destruction and say, no, no, no, that's that's not for me.
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And so uh he got to be pretty big, and and uh and so he used that to say, uh, you know, I'm gonna play football in high school.
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And then he had the opportunity to go play football in college, and so he went to a Christian university, Taylor University, gave his life to Christ, and uh uh and he died of of cancer when I was eight years old, uh, and he was only 40.
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And so my dad, you know, was very young, passed away of cancer, and left myself and my sister, um, who who at the time was two to grow up without a father.
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And and I, you know, I marvel at the amazing way that my dad changed the the course of my life.
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I mean, in one generation, he went from extreme poverty, drug addiction, and violence, to being an elder in our local church and a college professor.
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And uh, and in not even in you know, a whole long life, in 40 years.
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Uh, and I and I I just I marvel at the way that his determination really set my family up for a totally different experience.
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He broke generations of cycles, negative, downward, destructive cycles, so that I can't even imagine the life that my father was born into.
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And uh, and I'm grateful, I'm grateful for that.
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And I think some of you are cycle breakers too.
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That maybe you were born into a life that you wouldn't wish on your kids.
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And by the grace of God, your kids aren't even gonna imagine what you experienced growing up, right?
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And uh, and so what an awesome testimony that is.
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And my life is what it is today because of my father's choices.
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I'm grateful for that.
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But as I'm sure you can imagine, losing your father at eight years old is uh it's uh like a nuclear bomb in the middle of your whole world, man.
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You know, when you're an eight-year-old boy, your dad is supposed to be the strongest, smartest, most amazing man in the world.
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He's your your refuge, he's your shelter.
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I mean, your dad is like when you're eight, he's the closest thing to God you've ever experienced.
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And so, you know, to see my dad, I mean, wither away and uh and and die was like, where do I go, man?
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It just felt like the cruelty of life on earth was just put front and center for me.
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And I I uh I had a lot of questions, I think, that I maybe didn't even know how to express or articulate.
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Uh but I grew up in an evangelical free church.
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My family and I, we had moved.
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My dad had gotten a job at a university in Michigan.
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We'd lived for years in Oregon, so we moved from Oregon all the way, I don't know, a couple thousand miles over to Michigan.
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And uh two weeks after we moved, we found a lump on my dad's neck, and six months after that, he had passed away.
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And so uh you can imagine moving uh hours and hours and hours and hours away from hundreds, thousands of miles away from anybody that you know, any family, any friends, and then losing my my dad.
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It was we're sort of floating in this city, in this space.
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But my mom, the way she tells the story is that she knew God had called us there.
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He made a way for us to get to that city.
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He he supernaturally provided a home for us to buy when we got there.
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And so my mom said, I know God called us here, I'm not moving.
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And I'm I'm grateful for that decision because I was raised in a church there that uh is an evangelical free church.
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They call it uh, today they call it Grace Point Evangelical Free Church.
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And uh it still stands today.
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It was a wonderful church for the most part.
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You know, there were it the only downside is that there were people there, you know, and that's the weak spot of every church, I think, is the people.
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Um but but you know, people did sometimes what people do at this church, and I could tell you stories that would make you, oh, what a you know, what a terrible church.
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But it wasn't a terrible church.
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There were godly people there who impacted my life in a really meaningful way.
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Now, if you're not familiar with the that denomination, the evangelical free church, it's uh they're just Baptists, you know, more or less.
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Like they're just Midwestern Baptists, but they uh it's it's a church that just really highly esteems the Word of God.
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And uh and and they they do have sort of independent government instead of sort of answering to some kind of regional director or overseer, each church uh really self-governs, but they find unity on their statement of faith, a foundation of a common statement of faith that is just a regular sort of evangelical Protestant statement of faith that I think all of us would agree with.
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And um, and I'm grateful for that church because all I remember, I couldn't tell you a single sermon anyone ever preached, but to this day I still quote verses that I learned at that church.
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That in all of my ministry, I remember shortly after I began to step into ministry and started to kind of share the gospel, so much of what I would say to people came from things that I had memorized from the Bible because I was trying to get a jolly rancher at Iwana when I was 11 years old.
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And uh, and that was it.
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They would just they would get us together, we'd play games, and then they would bribe us with candy to learn Bible verses.
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And can I tell you, the word of God does not return void?
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And, you know, like David said, I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
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And so, countless times in my life, having hidden the word of God in my heart was the thing that fortified me against sin and temptation.
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It was the thing that kept me from going that last step over the edge to destruction or outright rebellion against God.
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I listen, I did a lot of rebellion, rebelling against God, but I wrestled with the word of God because it had been hidden in my heart.
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Thank you, Jolly Ranchers, in the evangelical free church.
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And so I like I'm grateful for that sort of mainline regular vanilla church upbringing.
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I really am.
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And frankly, you know, I shifted later in life, and I'll I'll get there to like a really charismatic uh community.
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And as fun as that is, I I think if that's all I ever had, I might have been in trouble.
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And we'll talk about that.
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But a huge part of my life growing up in that evangelical free church was was soccer.
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I was a real serious soccer player and you know, got to travel um all over the world and play and uh got to do some some really cool things, ended up playing in in college and had some great opportunities doing that.
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And um, and so that took me to college.
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Um I went to, I started my first couple years, I went to uh Catholic University in uh Minnesota, southeastern Minnesota called St.
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Mary's University.
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And uh and it was there, actually on the steps of my my dorm there after the summer of my freshman year that the presence of God met me.
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I was sitting on the steps of my dorm studying a book about Buddhism, and I was reading about this moral ethic that Buddhism holds.
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And it was interesting because I realized, you know, the Buddhism teaches you ought to be generous and humble and kind and patient.
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And uh, and I was familiar enough with other religions, Taoism and Islam and Judaism, that that would all teach you that you need to be generous and kind and patient, loving and humble.
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And I thought, oh, this is great.
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You know, there's this sort of universal moral standard.
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And and that's good, you know.
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I'm finding truth, and I I don't necessarily it doesn't need to be the Christian truth, it doesn't need to be the truth that my mom taught me growing up.
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Like, maybe the only reason I'm a Christian is because I was born into a Christian home.
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Maybe you've heard that objection.
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That man, if you were born in Afghanistan, you would be a Muslim.
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And and maybe that's true, but that doesn't make Islam right.
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And maybe the reason that I'm a Christian is because I was born in a Christian home, but that doesn't make Christianity wrong or right.
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And so we've got to ask ourselves like what stands up to reason?
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What actually is a coherent worldview with the observable nature of humanity and the documented history of our species.
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And so what happened is as I was studying these other religions in college, I began to find that all of them essentially or fundamentally agreed on what it is to be a decent person, what it is to be ethical or moral.
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But there was this nagging thought.
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Maybe you've heard me talk about this before.
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Here's the nagging thought.
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Everybody agrees.
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Lao Su, who's sort of the figurehead of Taoism, you know, Buddha, Sidhardakotama, you know, who's who's the figurehead of Buddhism, you know, Moses is the figurehead of Judaism, uh, Jesus of Nazareth, obviously, the figure figurehead of Christianity.
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All of these people sort of agree on this moral standard, you need to be loving, kind, generous, and humble.
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Here's my problem, though.
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I haven't been.
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And I'm looking at this like all of history's greatest religious and philosophical teachers agree this is how you were created to live.
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And I'm having to wrestle with the fact that I haven't lived like that.
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That if there is a God, and that God did create me to live this way, I'm in serious trouble with that God.
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And here's the problem that I had as I was studying other religions.
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It's that Lao Su and Buddha, even Moses, they don't offer adequate answers for the problem of what we would call sin.
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I rebelled against God.
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God has a standard to which I've been called, and I have lived far below that standard.
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I had been selfish and deceptive and hateful and arrogant more times than I could begin to count.
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But then I remembered one of those verses that uh that I that I uh memorized to to earn a Jolly Rancher in the evangelical free church.
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It says in uh the book of Isaiah that as a lamb before its shears is silent, so he opened not his mouth.
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The Bible tells us that God laid on him the iniquity of us all.
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And I realized that where Christianity differs from every other sort of moral framework is that in Christianity there's an answer for sin.
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Everyone can tell you this is how you ought to live.
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Even atheists or agnostics, they'll agree in maybe the basic fundamentals of what morality looks like.
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The problem is there is only one answer for the universal experience of immorality, our human dysfunction.
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And that one answer is that the blood of Jesus was shed for the remission of our sins.
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And so I was sitting on the steps of my dorm, you know, out at St.
00:18:14.160 --> 00:18:22.559
Mary's University in Winona, Minnesota, and in that place it was like I'm reading this book about Buddhism, and I'm just shaking with like, but what about the answer?
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There's got to be an answer for my sin.
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Okay, this is great, but like, what about the fact that I am not moral?
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I am not good.
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And if there is a God who is good and who made me for good, I have rebelled against that God countless times.
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And it was like the presence of God met me on those steps.
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And it felt like he pinned me to the ground.
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And and I explained it to a friend of mine once that it was like waking up on a waking up in a room full of strangers, where it suddenly I became aware that I wasn't alone.
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And I I wouldn't call it maybe a warm, fuzzy feeling.
00:19:05.440 --> 00:19:11.519
It was like, oh, there is a God and he sees me, and everything is laid bare before him.
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And I'm I am and I always have been totally vulnerable before him.
00:19:19.759 --> 00:19:30.240
But then this comforting thought came that he has kept me, he's preserved me, he's loved me, he's cared about me, and he brought me to this moment.
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And he and I argued for a while there on the steps of my dorm.
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You know, it wasn't like, wow, Lord, I surrender.
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It was like, Lord, I don't know if you can handle me.
00:19:41.759 --> 00:19:43.920
He wasn't intimidated by my sin.
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He wasn't disgusted or repulsed by me.
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He said, Man, I can I can even use somebody like you, Maddie.
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And uh, and so in that moment, I would say that I was marked by God.
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I was ruined for anything else.
00:19:59.519 --> 00:20:06.400
And, you know, people sometimes they share their story, like from that moment on, I, you know, chased after Jesus with all of my heart.
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And I've got to tell you, that's that was not my experience.
00:20:09.200 --> 00:20:13.200
I I would love to say that all of my old habits immediately disappeared.
00:20:13.519 --> 00:20:18.319
That's not true, but I will tell you this all of my old habits lost their flavor.
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I tried to go back to the sin I was living in before that night.
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I did, and and I succeeded at times.
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But instead of being proud of myself, I was disgusted with myself.
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I'd been ruined.
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The way I explained it once is that it felt like sin was like a shirt that had shrunk in the wash.
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I just couldn't get it on anymore, you know.
00:20:42.480 --> 00:20:47.440
And I tried, but it just it just didn't fit me like it used to.
00:20:47.759 --> 00:21:07.839
And uh, and I'm still in that process, you know, I'm still in a process of learning to to uh you know honor God with the choices that I make, to control, you know, impulses that are contrary to his will for my life, and and to surrender more fully day by day to his best and his highest calling for my life.
00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:14.480
But I uh, you know, I then just a couple months later, I ended up dropping out of that school.
00:21:14.720 --> 00:21:24.000
I went back to the Midwest, went back to Ohio, where my mom was living with uh her new husband, my stepdad, which is like awkward for both of us, I think.
00:21:24.160 --> 00:21:27.119
And uh he's great.
00:21:27.359 --> 00:21:37.200
Uh I was not, like I was still just a stinky kid, you know, and and but I moved into his house for a little bit, went to another college for a semester, and was just trying to figure my life out.
00:21:37.359 --> 00:21:53.119
And God began to shake me over those next maybe six months, and he began to confront me over my half-hearted commitment that I was committed to him in word, but my deeds, my actions, my habits, my choices in secret, they they weren't honoring him.
00:21:53.519 --> 00:21:58.160
And and I was trying to give God lip service, but God looks at the heart.
00:21:58.960 --> 00:22:05.839
And uh And he saw that there were that my heart still had Maddie on the throne of my life.
00:22:06.079 --> 00:22:11.920
And uh and so over those six months, he began to really nail me down about my sin, about my compromise.
00:22:12.160 --> 00:22:18.720
And uh and and one of the things is I would come closer to him as I'd spend more time at church.
00:22:18.880 --> 00:22:26.240
I would go to church and just ask Christians, like, tell me what God has done in your life, and tell me your favorite Bible verses, and I would do everything I could to learn more about him.
00:22:26.400 --> 00:22:32.640
And during that season, as I got closer to God, he began to reawaken this passion that I had for music.
00:22:32.799 --> 00:22:53.119
And uh, and so I uh, you know, I uh was kind of playing in a band part-time, and uh and then I heard about this band of guys from Sioux City, Iowa, from Western Iowa, that had this band called For Today, and they weren't big and nobody knew who they were, but they love Jesus and they're they're gonna go on tour soon.
00:22:53.200 --> 00:22:54.559
And I was like, that's what I need.
00:22:54.640 --> 00:22:58.240
I need guys that love Jesus, and I feel like I need to go on tour.
00:22:58.319 --> 00:22:58.799
I don't know why.
00:22:58.880 --> 00:23:00.160
I just I just gotta go.
00:23:00.319 --> 00:23:03.359
And so I uh sent a MySpace message to this guy.
00:23:03.519 --> 00:23:10.000
This is an ancient relic, to this guy named David Morrison, and I was like, hey man, would you let me join your band?
00:23:10.240 --> 00:23:20.240
And he said, Well, let's do like a 30-day uh you know trial period where I can, you know, you can come out, we'll do some rehearsals, and then we'll we'll do a short tour and then we'll see how it goes.
00:23:20.319 --> 00:23:21.680
And it went pretty well.
00:23:21.759 --> 00:23:33.599
We ended up touring the world uh for 10 years, uh playing our music for millions of people all over the planet and uh and just having an amazing time.
00:23:33.759 --> 00:23:37.680
And every night we would, between songs, we would preach Christ.
00:23:37.920 --> 00:23:43.440
And every night the Spirit of God would draw people to Himself.
00:23:43.839 --> 00:23:52.240
We would see people saved all over the world, countless thousands of people make decisions for Christ in bars and in nightclubs.
00:23:52.480 --> 00:24:00.400
Now, during this time, we were all sort of reading the Bible for ourselves, we're trying to figure this stuff out, and uh, and we got introduced to like Holy Ghost people.
00:24:01.519 --> 00:24:04.240
Remember, I was raised in the evangelical free church.
00:24:04.480 --> 00:24:07.599
We the Holy Ghost never made it out of our doctrinal statement.
00:24:07.759 --> 00:24:13.440
Like we, you know, we maybe acknowledge the Holy Spirit on paper, and that's that's David.
00:24:13.519 --> 00:24:15.759
You went to a Nazarene, you know about that, yeah.
00:24:16.160 --> 00:24:26.640
You know, so we we appreciate the Holy Spirit in theory, but in practice, he's just like he's a little too unpredictable, so we'd rather he just stay stay in our textbooks, you know.
00:24:26.880 --> 00:24:37.519
Um, but the uh, you know, we got out there in the trenches and people started like coming and saying, Hey, my my baby was born without Achilles' tendons.
00:24:37.680 --> 00:24:41.519
Would you would you pray that God would restore those?
00:24:41.680 --> 00:24:47.599
And and then we'd be like, I mean, I guess Jesus and his guys did it in the Bible, like, let's try.
00:24:47.680 --> 00:24:48.799
Like, we didn't know any better.
00:24:48.880 --> 00:24:55.599
And and so we would pray, and then suddenly, like, this baby would have Achilles tendons where she didn't when we started praying.
00:24:55.680 --> 00:24:58.240
You know, people would come and say, I'm blind.
00:24:58.480 --> 00:25:01.039
Can you pray for God to like fix my eyes?
00:25:01.200 --> 00:25:04.319
And blind eyes would open, and people would stand up out of wheelchairs.
00:25:04.400 --> 00:25:09.440
And so we're like preaching Christ, and this is what you read in the book of Acts, we're preaching the gospel of grace.
00:25:09.680 --> 00:25:17.039
The Bible says that God bore witness to the preaching of the gospel of grace by granting signs and wonders to be done by the hands of the apostles.
00:25:17.200 --> 00:25:21.359
And so I'm not saying that I'm, you know, Peter or Paul.
00:25:21.519 --> 00:25:28.799
What I'm saying is that God loves the gospel, and when we preach the gospel, it it impacts people's lives in in real ways.
00:25:29.119 --> 00:25:34.559
And so we were preaching the gospel, and God was uh doing things that only God could do.
00:25:34.640 --> 00:25:39.440
And so we got really kind of embraced by like very hyper charismatic people.
00:25:39.519 --> 00:25:51.839
And I don't know that there's a denomination that we, you know, like we had the I grew up in the evangelical free church, but then for our 10 years in the band and even beyond, we are we uh became like Holy Ghost people.
00:25:51.920 --> 00:25:53.119
We I speak in tongues.
00:25:53.440 --> 00:25:58.960
I uh have no problem if we start laying hands on people and they start falling over, I'm perfectly happy with that.
00:25:59.119 --> 00:26:02.240
Um, you know, I uh I love the Holy Spirit.
00:26:02.400 --> 00:26:09.599
I think the Holy Spirit in many ways is the defining characteristic of uh any church or culture or even individual.
00:26:09.759 --> 00:26:13.759
The way we relate to the Holy Spirit defines the way we walk with God.
00:26:13.920 --> 00:26:14.400
That's right.
00:26:15.119 --> 00:26:22.640
And uh and if we say, Holy Spirit, you're too unpredictable, you're too weird, you stay over there, that will change the way that we interact with God.
00:26:22.799 --> 00:26:24.960
It'll change the way we walk with God on a daily basis.
00:26:25.039 --> 00:26:28.880
But if we say, Holy Spirit, use me, I belong fully to you.
00:26:29.119 --> 00:26:35.200
Lead me where you want me to go, empower me to do what you want me to do, that changes the way we walk with God, right?
00:26:35.440 --> 00:26:43.279
And so I'm grateful, very, very grateful, for that time in my life that I was around these super charismatic, you know.
00:26:43.440 --> 00:26:45.839
I would like, I hung out at churches for a long time.
00:26:45.920 --> 00:26:51.279
We were part of a church in Mobile, the church that sent us up here that had a prophet on staff.
00:26:51.599 --> 00:26:53.680
So it's like that's a different world for me.
00:26:53.759 --> 00:26:56.960
The evangelical free church did not have any prophets on staff.
00:26:57.200 --> 00:27:01.359
Um but man, we were I was like so grateful for that time.
00:27:01.519 --> 00:27:29.039
But I I need to say this as well since planting this church, I have always felt this sense that maybe a part of my calling and why God allowed me to walk through what I walked through in life is because he called me to maybe uh maybe help teach charismatics why we do what we do, and to to help marry the spirit and the word in a way that I hadn't really seen in my life growing up.
00:27:29.920 --> 00:27:38.400
It tended to be, and this may be the case for many of you, that churches would choose, we either love the word or we love the spirit, but it's very rare that you'd find a church that loves both.
00:27:39.519 --> 00:27:43.839
And uh and so I I want us to be a church that loves both the spirit and the word.
00:27:44.480 --> 00:27:44.720
Right?
00:27:44.799 --> 00:27:50.000
I want us to, the Bible says that God is seeking those that will worship him in spirit and truth.
00:27:50.400 --> 00:27:50.720
Right?
00:27:51.119 --> 00:28:01.680
And and we don't this this idea that we have to choose the spirit or the truth, that's a problem, and that's a false dichotomy the enemy has uh presented to the church.
00:28:01.759 --> 00:28:11.279
That you've got to decide, are you gonna be crazy charismatics who don't care at all about the Bible, or are you gonna be cold, dead, you know, Bible scholars that don't care about the Holy Spirit?
00:28:11.359 --> 00:28:15.359
I refuse to make that decision because I think those two go together.
00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:26.640
And uh and so in in 2016, the Lord, I had uh, I have three pages of notes.
00:28:26.880 --> 00:28:29.440
I don't think I'm gonna even get to the end of page one today.
00:28:29.599 --> 00:28:31.359
So we I'll be back here next week.
00:28:31.440 --> 00:28:31.920
Don't worry.
00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:34.880
But we're I promised my plan, I had a plan today.
00:28:34.960 --> 00:28:36.400
I was gonna teach scripture to you.
00:28:36.480 --> 00:28:38.799
Like we were gonna go through uh Luke.
00:28:38.880 --> 00:28:41.440
They they've got Luke 34, like I'm ready.
00:28:41.519 --> 00:28:43.920
Uh 24, excuse me, Luke 24.
00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:51.599
Um, we'll get there eventually, but um, we are gonna take communion today, and if I insist on teaching this, we're not gonna have time for that.
00:28:51.759 --> 00:29:04.400
So uh in 2016, I left for a tour as I had before, and the Lord uh it just felt different.
00:29:04.880 --> 00:29:09.440
And and I did something that I think a lot of people do.
00:29:09.599 --> 00:29:11.680
My wife and I we were talking about it just this week.
00:29:11.839 --> 00:29:20.880
That sometimes when when God begins to move in your life, maybe you're feeling like, man, there's I think God is calling me away from this job.
00:29:21.119 --> 00:29:23.839
Or I think God's calling me away from this city, or or whatever.
00:29:23.920 --> 00:29:29.839
You know, when when the Lord is moving something in your heart, this is what I did, is I started to go, what's wrong with it?
00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:30.640
Oh, come on.
00:29:30.880 --> 00:29:34.720
The Lord began to shift my heart away from the band.
00:29:34.799 --> 00:29:39.200
And and and and so I spent a month saying, All right, God, what's the problem?
00:29:39.359 --> 00:29:42.400
There's got to be one of the guys in the band must be in secret sin.
00:29:42.640 --> 00:29:43.839
I need you to reveal to me.
00:29:43.920 --> 00:29:46.079
Like there must be, so I'm real suspicious.
00:29:46.160 --> 00:29:48.240
I'm looking at everybody, what's the problem?
00:29:48.400 --> 00:29:50.480
What are you doing secretly that's making this bad?
00:29:50.559 --> 00:29:52.000
Why does God hate this thing?
00:29:52.160 --> 00:29:53.599
And here's what I found out.
00:29:53.839 --> 00:29:56.640
Sometimes there's nothing wrong.
00:29:56.960 --> 00:30:00.559
God just said to me, Maddie, you just completed what I called you to do.
00:30:01.759 --> 00:30:10.000
In 2007, when I called you to this band, I had a time frame in mind, and that time frame is over.
00:30:10.240 --> 00:30:15.920
I love you and I love this band and I love what you've done, but Maddie, your assignment here has been completed.
00:30:16.559 --> 00:30:21.119
And so I was able to sit with the guys in the band in 2016 and say, guys, I love you with all my heart.
00:30:21.200 --> 00:30:26.160
This has been one of the greatest privileges I have ever had, but God is calling me away.
00:30:26.319 --> 00:30:31.440
And for the better part of a year that year, everybody would ask, Well, what are you leaving for?
00:30:31.519 --> 00:30:32.880
You know, is there a problem in the band?
00:30:32.960 --> 00:30:35.279
Is there, did you get some better job offer somewhere else?
00:30:35.359 --> 00:30:36.240
It's like, no.
00:30:36.640 --> 00:30:36.960
No.
00:30:37.599 --> 00:30:40.640
God said, it's run its course.
00:30:40.720 --> 00:30:43.200
This is this is my time to finish.
00:30:43.359 --> 00:30:44.559
And so that's what we did.
00:30:44.640 --> 00:30:46.960
We finished in at the end of 2016.
00:30:47.039 --> 00:30:50.720
And people would ask me, What are you gonna do when you finish the band?
00:30:50.799 --> 00:30:56.640
And I said, I'm gonna take my wife on a date and I'm gonna take my kids to the park, and then I will start praying about what comes next.
00:30:57.200 --> 00:30:58.319
And so that's what we did.
00:30:58.480 --> 00:31:12.880
We uh we finished in 2016, and then all through 2017, I did some traveling to preach at conferences and crusades and saw God move in an amazing way, and I was preaching at all these evangelistic events like I had been for many years, and I kept preaching about these two things, man.
00:31:12.960 --> 00:31:18.480
I I would preach at these big evangelistic events where everybody else is preaching about signs, wonders, and miracles.
00:31:18.559 --> 00:31:30.559
They're preaching the gospel, they're calling people to confess their sin, to get right with God, and I kept talking about worship and family, and I realized I don't know if I fit on the evangelist circuit.
00:31:31.759 --> 00:31:49.440
And so in 2019, and in 2018, excuse me, I was sitting in uh my spiritual father's church down in Mobile, and uh and just praying one morning at uh his men's prayer gathering, and I heard the Lord say, Maddie, it's time to gather the family.
00:31:49.680 --> 00:31:57.279
And I knew immediately that that's what uh that that what that meant is that we were gonna plant a church.
00:31:58.079 --> 00:32:25.839
That I'd traveled all over the world, I'd preached the gospel to millions of people over the 10 years prior to that, and 99% of them maybe were encouraged or annoyed, and uh 99% of them, you know, the left with like some some some more information or or something, you know, maybe they were inspired or uplifted in some way, but there would just be this one percent of people that that they they heard what we've called in the past the voice within the voice.
00:32:26.000 --> 00:32:37.599
There was something about the way God expressed himself through me that would draw them, and they would they would buy all my books and they would watch all my videos and they would travel for hours to come and you know hear me preach.
00:32:37.680 --> 00:32:41.839
If I was preaching anywhere close to them, these people would really seek out our ministry.
00:32:41.920 --> 00:32:50.960
Many of them moved down to Mobile to try to be a part of our lives, but we were real guarded with our time because I traveled so much, and so we weren't doing a lot in the way of discipleship.
00:32:51.039 --> 00:33:07.519
But when God said, Maddie, it's time to gather the family, I knew that's now it's time to bring people into our life, to bring people into our home, to bring people to our table, to open our schedule up and to pour our hearts and our lives into those that God would send us.
00:33:07.599 --> 00:33:14.640
And so in 2019, we moved to the least likely place on our list, Johnson City, Tennessee.
00:33:15.680 --> 00:33:21.759
And uh and we launched a church in our living room called the Altar Fellowship.
00:33:22.160 --> 00:33:35.279
And uh, and for seven years I uh uh had the privilege of serving as the pastor of a church plant in Johnson City called the Altar Fellowship.
00:33:36.160 --> 00:33:42.559
And I realized over these last couple months that it sounds like I'm about to tell you I'm quitting and I'm not.
00:33:45.440 --> 00:33:46.000
I'm not.
00:33:46.079 --> 00:33:47.599
I want to break the tension here.
00:33:47.839 --> 00:33:57.920
Uh I realized over these last couple months that I am not the pastor of a small church plant in Johnson City anymore.
00:33:58.319 --> 00:34:05.359
I've been given the privilege by God to be the senior pastor of a pretty large church in Johnson City, Tennessee.
00:34:06.240 --> 00:34:15.199
And um, and I recognize that this isn't the house, this isn't the church in my house where my son Carver is taking a nap upstairs during service.
00:34:15.840 --> 00:34:21.840
Um this isn't the church in the little wedding venue in downtown where there's one bathroom per gender.
00:34:23.280 --> 00:34:24.800
Two bathrooms total.
00:34:25.679 --> 00:34:34.800
Um there's you know, and uh and those bathrooms are all made out of cardboard so everybody can hear what you're doing in there.
00:34:35.760 --> 00:34:40.159
This is uh this is a different thing entirely.
00:34:40.480 --> 00:34:51.679
And and I feel like a part for me of of this reintroduction, and again, I really had like a lot of teaching I was gonna do today, and this we're just going slower than I expected.
00:34:51.920 --> 00:35:17.679
Um I I have had the sense that um that part of this reintroduction for me is for me to say this the person I am today, as I introduce myself to you as the senior pastor of the altar fellowship, is uh is not the person I was when we planted this church.
00:35:18.400 --> 00:35:23.119
The what my family needs of me is different than it was then.
00:35:23.440 --> 00:35:38.079
When my oldest boys were what, seven and nine years old, maybe younger, six and uh and and uh eight, and uh and Carver was one when we moved here, you know.
00:35:38.159 --> 00:35:41.039
I I uh the demands on our time are different.
00:35:41.280 --> 00:35:43.360
My boys are all in sports.
00:35:43.840 --> 00:35:47.920
What my wife needs from me is different than it was when we started this church.
00:35:48.000 --> 00:36:01.679
And I I had this dream that uh when we started the church, I would, you know, if a new family came in, we'd be able to take them out to dinner that night and uh that week, I mean, and and get to know them and hear their story.
00:36:01.760 --> 00:36:04.880
And and I've done that by the grace of God with many of you.
00:36:05.039 --> 00:36:10.239
Uh, but it's been a burden for me, if I'm honest, these last couple years that I just can't do that.
00:36:10.400 --> 00:36:13.519
It's like we did it with Cody and Rose, and you guys showed up to our house.
00:36:13.679 --> 00:36:16.159
We were like, let's get together and get to know you guys.
00:36:16.239 --> 00:36:24.079
I know I remember taking uh Michael and Sarah Lynn Bryan out to dinner, and we had Cody and Keisha Gollic over, and I made them a salad.
00:36:24.159 --> 00:36:28.719
I think Miss Candace made something delicious, but she used to trust me with the salads, and so I made a big old salad.
00:36:28.880 --> 00:36:30.559
You know, we had them over to our house.
00:36:30.800 --> 00:36:50.480
You know, some of these couples that have been around since the church was very small, when it was in our house, they've been in our home, they've been in our life, we've eaten lots of meals together, but I realized that the uh the best thing I can be in service of this church is a great husband to my wife and a great father to my children.
00:36:51.840 --> 00:37:06.800
And one of the dangers, I think, and and I can speak from experience now, one of the dangers that faces pastors of larger churches is this constant pressure from the accuser that says you're not doing enough.
00:37:07.440 --> 00:37:17.039
You have to meet more people, you have to eat more meals, you have to go to more of the, you know, baseball games of the kids in the church, you have to go, you know, visit more people.
00:37:17.199 --> 00:37:30.480
And and here's the reality that I think I want us to explore as a family is it would be a dangerous thing for any of you to think that the work of the ministry is only my responsibility.
00:37:31.840 --> 00:37:40.000
The book of Ephesians teaches us that God has given some to be pastors for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry.
00:37:41.519 --> 00:37:44.320
And so, what's the point of having a pastor in your life?
00:37:44.480 --> 00:37:48.559
It is so that you can be equipped to do the work of the ministry.
00:37:49.519 --> 00:37:54.239
God has put me in your life, not so that I can do ministry so you don't have to.
00:37:54.559 --> 00:38:14.320
God has put me in your life to help put the tools in your hands and then light a fire under your rear end to say your family needs you seeking God, your workplace needs you seeking God, your neighborhood needs you seeking God, your city needs you seeking God, your nation and your generation desperately need you seeking God.
00:38:14.480 --> 00:38:27.760
And if you are full of the presence and power of God because of your intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit, it will bring transformation not just to you and your household, it'll bring transformation to this whole world.
00:38:29.519 --> 00:38:31.760
That is why we are here.
00:38:31.920 --> 00:39:00.000
And and I want to provoke you into that today and forever, but I also need to tell you that I am uh that I also need to tell you that if if the way you get provoked toward that is by having you know unfiltered, unrestricted access to me, there's a big problem, I think, with your relationship with God.
00:39:00.639 --> 00:39:05.920
It is God Himself that is our source and our strength.
00:39:06.159 --> 00:39:12.000
And if you thought that I could be your source or strength, friend, I love you, but you're sorely mistaken.
00:39:12.159 --> 00:39:17.599
I I'm uh I might be a good pastor, but I'm a really bad savior.
00:39:19.280 --> 00:39:43.039
And so I hope that more than ever you will fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith, that you'll chase after him with all of your heart, that you will make him your hope and your strength and your joy and your exceedingly great reward, and that in him you will find rest and peace that you can share with a restless and chaotic world.
00:39:44.559 --> 00:39:45.119
Amen.
00:39:45.440 --> 00:39:51.039
So this morning, I've got at least two more sermons to preach out of this.
00:39:51.280 --> 00:39:53.360
Okay, as we there's never enough time.
00:39:53.599 --> 00:39:54.239
Sorry.
00:39:54.800 --> 00:39:59.599
This morning we are gonna finish by receiving uh the Lord's Supper.
00:40:00.480 --> 00:40:12.719
On the first Sunday of every month, uh we have the privilege of being able to uh to come into communion with God and each other by receiving the elements.
00:40:12.800 --> 00:40:27.920
And Jesus gave uh instituted this practice at the Last Supper with His disciples when he took the uh uh the bread and broke it, and he said to them, This is my body broken for you.
00:40:28.400 --> 00:40:30.159
Do this in remembrance of me.
00:40:30.400 --> 00:40:40.000
And and then he uh took the the cup and he filled it with wine and he said to them, This is my blood of a new covenant.
00:40:42.000 --> 00:40:46.000
And as often as you drink it, do so in remembrance of me.
00:40:46.639 --> 00:41:12.719
And this I think is for us an invitation to come into uh collective meditation or collective contemplation that we can experience by way of our corporate focus or our corporate uh contemplative priority, fellowship or communion with Jesus by way of these elements.
00:41:13.440 --> 00:41:45.119
Understand, we are here today as redeemed people, as sons and daughters of God, not because of our efforts, not because of the home into which we were born, not because we prayed some magical prayer, but because Jesus, God, became a man and hung on a cross under the full weight of my guilt and yours, and with his own broken body and shed blood, made atonement for our sin.
00:41:45.760 --> 00:41:54.239
Took upon himself the full weight of the wrath of God so that we could be accepted as God's beloved sons and daughters.
00:41:55.519 --> 00:42:03.920
And uh so if I could get the elders to come forward and prepare the elements, I I want to, as they're doing that, to remind you.
00:42:04.079 --> 00:42:18.800
Uh Paul reminds the church in Corinth to uh to be discerning, to be careful, to not drink uh the the wine or eat the bread in a way that uh that is dishonoring to God or that is out of order.
00:42:19.039 --> 00:42:19.760
What does that look like?
00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:25.440
I would say this this is something that is reserved for those who have truly put their faith in Jesus.
00:42:25.760 --> 00:42:38.639
If you cannot say with absolute confidence that Jesus is your Lord and your Savior, then I'd ask you to please refrain from taking the uh the elements this morning.
00:42:38.960 --> 00:42:46.880
If that is the case, if you can't say this morning with absolute confidence that Jesus is your Lord and Savior, listen, come talk to me.
00:42:46.960 --> 00:42:50.159
I'll I'll take a break from whatever I'm doing to have that conversation with you.
00:42:50.320 --> 00:42:55.039
We can deal with that and make sure that you're right with God right now.
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There's nothing in the world more important than that.
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However, for the rest of us, I would tell you if you if you have unconfessed sin, if you have unforgiven hurt or offense, that if there are areas of your life that God has been tapping on that you have not yet surrendered, I would tell you deal with God before you come forward to receive these elements.
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So you don't need to come forward when it's your sections time to come forward.
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You come forward when uh when your heart is right, and you're able to, as the scriptures say, to discern the body and blood of our Lord, to really see Jesus in this moment clearly.
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So the way that we'll do this is we'll have our security team.
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I know that they're in the back, they're gonna dismiss you.
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I think starting in in the back and have you uh come forward and you'll take a piece of the the bread.
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And the reason that we have you do that is because I think it's important that you understand the body of Jesus wasn't broken by the Romans or the Jews.
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The body of Jesus was broken by you and me.
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That it was our hand that tore his flesh that day on the cross.
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It was our hand that shed his blood that day on the cross.
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And uh, and so as you tear a piece of the bread, he'll then dip it in the in the wine and uh and then uh receive it.
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But let's make sure that we do this prayerfully, meditatively, and with honor as we come together into a time of corporate meditation on the blood of Jesus shed for us.
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You can come forward when you're ready.
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Thank you for tuning in to this service from the altar fellowship.
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We pray that you are impacted powerfully by this message.
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If you have been personally affected by our ministry and you would like to partner with the altar as we work to establish the kingdom of heaven, please visit our website at www.eal.
