I Will: Attitude

"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus." (Philippians 2:3-5, CSB)

Technically I was supposed to preach on Jeremiah chapter 2. I had told the team, hey, we're going to do Jeremiah chapter 2, we're going to talk about broken cisterns. There's a word there where God brings Israel into this judicial moment and says, why are you exchanging my glory for glories that are not glory? And he makes this joke about all the other gods from the east and the west, all these little g's. All these people are worshiping their gods and they don't give up their gods, and yet you have given up the God of the universe.

And I was like, oh, I'm going to preach it this week, and talk about my favorite thing, sin. The exchange of sin. Because really, if we understand it, most of our lives is this exchange. We have choices, and sometimes we make the choice to do the thing we know is wrong, and we come alongside Paul where he says, I know what is right but I do what is wrong. I think it's a beautiful thing to talk about, because it opens our eyes to the fact that we all have sinned, and it is something we need to hear.

But while we were in Copper Mountain this week, I don't know if you know this or not, but Alicia and I have a really bad problem with something. We are people watchers. And we enjoy it. I enjoy looking at people's faces, and how they smile or don't smile.

We were walking through Breckenridge, just trying to kill some time before dinner, and we sat down right in front of the Starbucks on Main Street, and we said, you know what, we're going to get some coffee and just sit here and enjoy people watching. And as we're watching people, there are dogs everywhere. I don't know what it is with Breckenridge and dogs. They made me miss my dog. And then this beautiful golden retriever came up, and the owner was like, you don't have to be friendly with everybody. And I said, well, he could be friendly with me. And she said, really? And she comes over with the dog and gives me treats, and he does all kinds of cool tricks, sit and give kisses. Those are the two I did. I love the kisses. A little wet, but worth it.

While we were sitting there, we were enjoying the different languages we were hearing. Russian, and Indian, and some Spanish.

It's funny that when it comes to profanity, sometimes it just is out there. I don't know about you, but in my younger days profanity was an adjective in my life. Every word I had, had to have some sort of profane word attached to it.

And I was sitting there, and there was an older gentleman on a bicycle riding up, and Alicia looks over at me and she says, you're working on your sermon this week. And I said, yeah, you know, sometimes you just can't turn it off. And I'm supposed to be on this retreat.

And all of a sudden we hear this honking of horns. Honking of horns this way, and honking of horns, and honking of horns. And then it was right in front of us. There was this older gentleman riding his bicycle up the hill, and a big old SUV behind him, and they were just laying on the horn. And as they went past this old man on the bike, they started yelling at him for being so slow on the main street. And of course they had profanities, and he had profanities.

And then it was really something, as I'm sitting there watching it. Have you ever noticed that whenever you're in a moment where there's conflict, you kind of pause, because you don't know what to say? There's a part of you that wants to rebut and rebuke and say, well, let me tell you. And that doesn't help me at all. And then what do you do? You stew on it in your mind, and you stew with it in your heart. And the next thing you know, it becomes a part of who you are.

And so as I'm sitting there studying for Jeremiah 2, going to talk about this exchange of sin, I said, you know what? We have an attitude problem at times in our life. And I have an attitude problem. And if I have one, and it's a human thing, then I know you have an attitude problem. Don't deny it. I know you do, because we're human.

The question is, if we go back to this word exchange, have you exchanged your attitude problem for the right attitude? Have you made the choice to glorify God in the way that you speak and act and do? Or have you chosen to live life self-glorifying you?

When I was a young kid, basketball was a big part of my life. We used to go out and play basketball all the time in Jane Lew, and everyone in the '90s had the same person who loved basketball. Who was your person? Michael Jordan. And I loved Michael Jordan, but I couldn't be Michael Jordan, because one, I'm not that good, and two, my best friend always chose to be Michael Jordan. In football he was Joe Montana. I was probably Barry Sanders or Emmitt Smith. That's who I would pick. And the Cowboys were cool back in the '90s. Now, not so much. Go Steelers. I actually moved from being a Cowboys fan to a Steelers fan at the time the Steelers lost the Super Bowl to the Cowboys. Go figure.

I was a Dennis Rodman fan. I loved Dennis Rodman because he was wild, and he was different than everybody else, and he was dominant. He wasn't the best shooter. He wasn't the best point maker. But he was a person who put all of his effort into getting the ball, and then getting it to Jordan. And I've always admired that.

And I can tell you from my life, most of my life trying to play basketball, I utterly failed at being a basketball player. And a lot of it is because of what I'm going to talk about. Pride. Pride. Arrogance.

I failed miserably at playing basketball. I went to my first basketball tryout and I failed miserably, because they wanted me to do layups and I had no clue what a layup was. They wanted me to do foul shots. I had no clue what that was. This was around sixth, seventh grade, and I failed.

So then I put every effort into being better. I started dribbling and learning how to do crossovers, and going through the legs, and going backwards, and becoming this magician of ball handling. And I worked really hard.

And then when I got to high school, my freshman year, it was my opportunity to join the freshman basketball team. I went to all the tryouts, and they had multiple tryouts because there were so many people. And believe it or not, as I am now, I was the fastest person there. I was the best dribbler there. Every single one-on-one matchup, I made it known to the coach. I don't care who is trying out. I want you to give me the hardest challenge. And I'm trying out, and I beat every single one of them one-on-one. I razzle-dazzled. I'm laying it up, and now I know everything. I'm foul shooting. I'm hitting my threes, except for if they were in the corners. I was horrible at that.

And close to the end of practice, almost every single tryout, I would hurt my ankle. I might have been the fastest kid there, but I was also the clumsiest kid there. I had weak ankles, and I would roll my ankle, and if I rolled my ankle I would fall down and hit my knee, and my knee would be sore, and now I couldn't walk. But every day I would show up the next day, taking the pain, pushing it away, saying, put me up against the best.

And on our final day of tryouts, practice was over, and we're waiting for the coach to come out and post who made the team. That's all it was. If your name wasn't on that paper, you didn't make it. And I was nervous. So I'm hobbling over to this paper on the wall that the coach had put up. And to my surprise, my name wasn't on it.

And I felt like it was the worst day of my life, because I already have other prideful issues in my life. One of them is that I don't like being rejected. I've lived my entire life trying not to be rejected. And my best friend, the guy that I beat one-on-one, made the team.

I had shown up early. I had stayed late. I had put the practice in. I had done everything that I was asked to do, and I dominated it. And here I am hanging my head as I'm walking out the door.

As I was gathering my things and walking out the door, the coach comes up and puts his arm around me and pulls me aside, and he begins telling me all the things he admired about my work ethic. He says, you were best at everything. Everything that I asked you to do. When you had to do suicides, when you had to run, when you did the laps around the gym, when you played one-on-one, you did absolutely amazing. Every match was an obstacle I put in front of you, and I wanted to see how you would react in those obstacles.

But before you leave, I wanted to tell you why I cut you. First, as you know, Matthew, you have never played organized basketball in your life.

And I hadn't. I grew up in a small town of Jane Lew, and all we had was the outdoor courts, where we would go and shovel the courts off in the snow, and they actually got us squeegees from the fire hall so we could squeegee the court.

And he was telling me, all the simple things, you did everything well one-on-one, but when you got into the team part of it, you didn't know what to do. You didn't know how to pass. You didn't know what man-on-man was. You didn't know any of the plays, the plays you would have learned in your younger years if you had gone to little league basketball.

Now, he's not blaming my mom or me for not being able to join little league, but that really bothered me, because I thought it was about dominating.

My second issue was this. He said, Matthew, you have the wrong attitude. He says, while you were playing, you got very prideful and you got very cocky. And a lot of times when you got cocky, you got injured, because you were showing off. And in your pridefulness you twisted your ankle. And every tryout that you've come out, you've done something in some way that you got injured. And I need a point guard who can stay healthy the entire season.

And so something that I learned that day is that you can have all the skill required to do something, but skill never trumps having the right attitude.

And I want to make this very clear. Our attitude determines our success and forges our future more than any factor in our life.

There's a book by John Maxwell, and it's about leadership and learning how to have a better attitude, and he says, never underestimate the power of your attitude.

I did. I underestimated, every single time, that my attitude would get in the way, that my pride would get in the way of something I was trying to accomplish in this life.

And Maxwell goes on to say, it is the advance man of our true selves. Its roots are inward, but its fruit is outward. It is your best friend, and it is your worst enemy. It is more honest and more consistent than your words and your experiences. It has an outward look based on your past experiences. It is the thing which draws people to us, or it is the thing that repels them. It is never content until it is expressed. It is the librarian of your past. It is the speaker of your present, and it is the prophet of your future.

So what we learn is that attitude is the key to many things God calls you into. Having the right attitude is the key to getting along with others. Having the right attitude is the key to living a Christlike life. It is the key to listening to the Holy Spirit. Having the right attitude is also having the key to hear him, to obey him, to walk forward into what it is that God is calling you into. And not just walking forward, but walking forward in an attitude that is joyful and peaceful.

One of the things we notice when we go to work is that if a worker has the right attitude, they will learn to do the job better, and then they will proceed to do the job cheerfully. We can go to work and be happy about it even when our job is the worst.

Now, I put that into practice one time. I used to work third shift, from eleven to seven, at the glue factory. And I would walk in every day at eleven and I would be the most cheerful person in the room. I would smile. All the guys are laying there, all scruffied up, and I've got to go shave, because you have to shave before you go to work. And they're sitting in there smoking their cigarettes, like, we've got to go to this hot box. And they would look over to me and say, well, Matthew, why are you so joyful?

Let me tell you about Jesus. Let me tell you about the experience I had this morning when I opened his word and I got reminded that God is faithful. Let me remind you that I don't have the perfect marriage, but I do have a perfect wife and an imperfect husband.

There's a story I hear oftentimes, and I'm going to apply it to my life. There's only two perfect people in this world. Jesus and my wife.

The husband and wife, when you think about marriage, have to have the right attitude. How do you handle difficult situations? You handle them when you have the right attitude, not only about each other, but also the right attitude about how you see God. You can respect your spouse with the right attitude when you're willing to love one another as Christ has loved the church.

But the thing I've learned is that the coach will always choose the athlete with the best attitude, even when they are not the best. And I think about that with employment too. The employer looks for the person who has the right attitude. Or the man or woman who is seeking someone to spend their life with.

Your attitude in life will determine how successful you are. Because even if you fail, your attitude says to have joy. Even if you fail at something, the attitude will be, get up, try again, do a do-over, redo, try to do something different with your life.

Your attitude in life determines your success.

Now, Paul is talking to the Philippians, and because of everything that we experience in life, we know somewhere deep within our hearts that we want to make sure that we are okay. And so what did my coach do? Paul puts the coach right back on me and says, listen, if you're going to live this life of no selfish ambition or conceit, you have to check your pride. You have to put it in check.

Some people would say, well, I would be happy in this life if all the jerks in my life weren't here. Right? And I don't know about you, but when you're driving down the interstate and that person cuts you off, or they drive around you and yell at you, what do you do? Well, if it wasn't for the idiots around me, I would have a perfect life. I would just be fine.

Well, the thing is, it seems like a good thing to say, but it's not always true. Listen. Attitudes are not caused by people or circumstances. Attitudes aren't caused by people or circumstances.

Now think about this. If you rewind life and go back to the garden, to Adam and Eve, they had perfect bodies. Think about their life. They would never die, because they had access to the tree of life. They had Dad walk around with them all the time. And they were in perfect union with the Father.

They never had to experience what it's like to get poison ivy or poison oak. They never had to experience what it's like to be shut up in your house because of COVID. They never had to experience the death of a loved one, or the potential death of a loved one. They never had to worry about being poor, whether they'll have enough. They never had to worry about being homeless. They never had to feel the things that we feel because of the fall. Loneliness.

Wouldn't that be amazing, to go through life knowing that you have the perfect relationship with the Father, and never feeling lonely, because you know the Father is always near? Or anxiety, or depression. One thing I've learned is that it is a human thing, that every single one of us struggles with loneliness, anxiety, and depression.

Nothing negative ever happened to them. And yet, in all of this goodness, what happened? Why were they unsatisfied? Why were they ungrateful? Why did they rebel?

Let me put that in perspective. They had all they could ever want, and yet they chose whatever it was, and not the Father.

King David is a curious person, because he comes years after the fall, and he comes with a different attitude. Because I think about David's life, and in the worst times of his life, he had the best attitude. In the best times of his life, he had the worst attitude.

Most of David's psalms in the Bible are written from his life when all the things that were happening to him were wrong. The Philistines are trying to kill him. King Saul is trying to pursue and kill him. He was running all the time. And yet in these moments, his attitude was what? One of praise and adoration to God. He had a trusting heart, that God's plan was going to be fulfilled, because God is faithful. That's one of the reasons I read the CSB, because it's always this continuous faithful love, faithful God, he in his faithfulness. He had a trusting heart. He had a yearning for God.

What happened in all the good times? There's war, and instead of going and fighting with his men, he was successful enough that he had the choice to stay behind and have other people fight the battles for him. What happened? He met Bathsheba and fell into this great sin. And we can look at the census, when he got to a moment of great growth and took a census to see how powerful he had become, and in his pridefulness there were people who died.

In the worst times of his life he had the best attitude, and in the best times of his life he had the worst attitude.

And then I began to think about what's another way, not just pride, but what's another thing that happens in our life. Entitlement. That I deserve something. It's an attitude killer. Entitlement is believing that everyone owes you because of something you have done.

Paul had this beautiful word, and to be honest with you, up until this message, I forgot about it. It's easy to forget the word sometimes if you're not focusing on it. Paul says, I'm a debtor. I'm a debtor. There is nothing that I can do to ever repay what Christ has done on the cross for me.

And so when you're a Christian, one of the first things that I think should come to our mind is that because of that great sacrifice of what Christ has done, and he continues to do, pouring out salvation to the ends of the world so that you and I can come to know the Father, so that we can be one in Christ as Christ is one in the Father.

And Paul begins to write, I am a debtor to Christ. I am a servant to others.

Entitlement is killed at the cross. When we pick up the humility of Christ, then the Bible tells us that we are robed in his righteousness. That is what every single life is commanded to do. To put your life on the cross and to kill it, for the blood to be applied, and for your life and your attitude to be renewed and to be made into the image of Christ.

Paul begins to tell the Philippians in this verse, he says, in humility consider others as more important than yourselves.

How important is attitude with the people around you? Have you ever been around someone who has a poor attitude and you're like, I don't want to be in this situation? In the oil and gas industry, man, those guys had a poor attitude, and I hated it. I hated it with all of my heart.

Maybe you can think of some time when you had a poor attitude. Maybe it's when you're driving down the freeway and someone cuts you off. Maybe it's when you've done something really nice for someone and they don't give you the recognition you felt like you deserved. Or maybe when you're riding your bicycle and all of a sudden that Yukon comes up beside you and starts screaming obscenities at you, and you start giving them the only sign language you have ever been taught.

I tell people there's only a little bit of sign language that I know, and it's that one. You know what it is.

Back in 2017 I was on my way to church, and I stopped at McDonald's, and they told me to pull up into the front to get my meal. You know how that is. You go and you're expecting your meal at that second window. You paid. Give me my meal, because you're fast food. And if your food is not fast, then you can't call yourself fast food, even if it's only five minutes. And they're like, just pull forward to that sign and we will bring you your food. I'm like, okay, I've got to go to church. I can't go to church hangry.

Well, the guy behind me didn't realize that they had told me to pull up to that sign, and his car was super long with a trailer. And he pulls up beside me, slams on his brakes, rolls his window down, slams on his horn, and he looks over at me and begins yelling at me and giving me sign language. And then he drives off.

And my first response was, man, if he was here, I'd give him a piece of my mind. But then Jesus was like, where are you going? I'm going to church. And I was like, man, you need Jesus. And then I was reminded, I need Jesus.

And then I got on the interstate and he cut me off. And then I started praying, Lord, give him a flat tire.

Or maybe there was a guy that drove past you at a hundred miles an hour. You ever have those people? I hope they get pulled over. Sometimes when people pass me, I'm waiting for them to be pulled over by a cop so I can go, ha ha, in Jesus' name.

Maybe it's when you go to the store and you walk up to the return desk and they won't take your return without a receipt, and you're like, well, I don't have a receipt. You know, we don't keep paper around here anymore.

When someone didn't give you something you felt like you deserved in return, what was your attitude like? And how does your attitude affect those who are around you? Because I can't tell you how many times I've been in the line waiting to return something and the person in front of me is arguing with them, and everyone in the line is just like, dude, just get out of the line so those of us who brought our receipt can get our money.

What about family arguments, when emotions run high and people resort to shouting and name-calling, and when people in your home begin to disrespect one another?

You see, humility begins with having respect. And what we do is, we have to be respectful to people.

And I love this thought. You don't know everyone's story. And if you don't know what people are going through, be respectful. Not everyone is holy. Not everyone is trusting in God fully. And not everyone has someone to walk beside them, to disciple them, to love them, and to show them. And not everyone has someone who shows them grace just as they show grace.

You see, Jesus tells the people, whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them, because this is the Law and the Prophets. This is literally the golden rule of the Bible. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Sounds profound, doesn't it? We all know it and we all believe it. But why do we have the wrong attitude for it?

Paul tells us in Romans 12:10 that you are to love one another deeply. He doesn't just say I should love you. He says I should deeply love you.

And if I can love my wife, and we can spend twenty-one years getting to know what that love means, and she can love me and all of my weirdness, like those times when I say, honey, I'm going to learn how to play the violin. And she goes, no, you're not. And I said, wow, honey, what deep love you have. So I bought a violin, and I didn't learn it.

You can't honor a person by smearing their name, or by lifting yourself up over them. You see, that's pride, and that's an attitude killer. You can't honor someone when you refuse to serve them. And humility means looking at yourself first.

Another attitude killer is negativity. All one ever does is focus on what is wrong.

You know something? I can tell you all kinds of things I find wrong with anyone. I can tell you all kinds of wrongs in this life. I can probably sit down with you, if you want me to, and I can tell you all of what I think is wrong with you. And I think you can do the same with me.

You know what's wrong? The fact that biscuits and gravy don't make you skinny. That's wrong. But that negative view doesn't stop me from having biscuits and gravy.

If something is wrong, first ask yourself, is it me? Am I the problem? Is it my attitude? I might be wearing the wrong lens in this situation. Maybe it's wrong because I set the wrong expectation. Maybe it's wrong because I feel entitled. Maybe it's wrong because I have a negative attitude.

You see, these are the things that we all have to ask one another when we are in a situation.

And then finally he says, look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

What would happen at work, or in your home, or when you're at the grocery store, if you had the attitude of kindness and gentleness and compassion? What would happen if your heart was calibrated by the Holy Spirit to see others as more important than yourself?

Now that I say that, I don't want you thinking that you should become worthless. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that when we see others, we've got to give them the benefit of the doubt, because they may not have been convicted the way you have been convicted on something.

And I learned that very young as a minister. Just because God has convicted my heart to not drink, or to not do drugs, or to not do something, doesn't mean that those I lead, or those I shepherd, or those I walk with, have yet to be there.

You see, one of the things you're going to notice about church is this. We all have fallen short of the glory of God. Every single one of us. And we all have a wrong attitude about something in our life.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and pretend I know what yours is, because that's not why I'm here.

He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on a cross. For this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

And listen to this. For it is God who is working in you, both to will and to work according to his good purpose.

Do everything without grumbling and arguing, so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God who are faultless in a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine like stars in the world by holding firm to the word of life.

So go today. Be light. Go shine.

Holy Ground: The Lord Is Near

Good morning. I want us to stay in Philippians this morning, and I want us to give it enough time to say what Paul is actually saying. Because I have been wanting to learn how to pray. I do not mean I have never prayed. I have prayed before meals. I have prayed at bedsides. I have prayed with people after church. I have prayed when I did not know what else to do. Most of my life as a Christian has been, when in doubt, pray. When you are in need, pray. When fears seem to be crashing on you like waves, pray.

But there is a difference between knowing prayer matters and knowing how to come before God when your heart is hurting. There is a difference between knowing what you are supposed to do and sitting there with something you cannot fix, something that has made you afraid, something that has brought you to the end of yourself, and wondering, “Lord, what do I even say?”

There was a moment at my last assignment that I still think about. It was during COVID, and there was a school board meeting in an auditorium. It was one of those rooms where you could feel what people were carrying. There was division. There was fear. There was anger. There were people hurting, and people were not seeing one another very well. I was asked to pray, and I remember asking God for His presence. I prayed for peace. I prayed for unity. I prayed for God to do what only God could do in a room like that. I do not remember every word I said. I do not know whether it was a good prayer. I just remember praying.

When that meeting was over, I walked out to our Pacifica. I got in, and before I drove away, I just sat there. I began to weep, and I prayed again for God’s presence. I believe God met me there. I do. I do not know if I was the only one who noticed His presence that night. I dunno. But I knew that I had been met by God.

And while I sat there, Luke 19 came to my mind. Jesus is looking over Jerusalem, and He weeps. He is looking at people He loves. He sees their pain. He sees their rebellion. He sees what is coming. He sees that they have missed the time of God’s coming to them. And Jesus weeps.

Jesus is not looking at them like they are a problem to solve. He is not standing at a distance, frustrated because people should

know better. He sees them. He loves them. He is near, and He cares.

That moment stayed with me, because I began to wonder what we do with moments like that. We have them. Something breaks open in us. A verse gets through the noise. We sense the weight of the presence of God. We know, somehow, that He is near. But then we can go back to life as if we did not just come face to face with the living God. We treat it like a kind gesture from God. He met me. He touched my heart. That was nice. And then we go back to tending the same fears, holding the same burdens, living as though nothing really changed.

I do not think the question is only, “Have you ever had a moment with God?” I think the deeper question is, “What does it mean to live like you have met Him?”

That is where Philippians began to open up for me. Most of us know chapter 4, verse 6.

PHILIPPIAN S 4:6 “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

We know that verse. We quote that verse. We put it on pictures. We say it to one another when life gets hard.

But I have to be honest. When I read that verse, there have been times when I got anxious just reading it. I read, “Do not be anxious,” and I think, how? It almost lands like somebody saying, “Don’t worry. Be happy.” And I know that is not what Paul is saying, but when your heart is already overwhelmed, it can feel like one more thing you are supposed to get right. One more command you are failing at.

Because my worry is real. Your pain is real. The thing that keeps you awake at night is real. The grief is real. The fear for your child is real. The marriage that feels strained is real. The sickness is real. The decision you do not know how to make is real. The ache in your heart over something you cannot change is real. I do not ever want to stand in front of someone who is hurting and act like their hurt is not hurt, or their pain is not pain.

Paul is not doing that here. Paul is writing from prison. He knows what it is to suffer. He knows what it is to be uncertain about what comes next. He knows what it is to have people turn against him, to feel weakness in his body, to not know how things will turn out. So he is not saying, “Just push it down. Smile harder. Pretend you are okay. Pray better.” He is saying something deeper, and I think we miss it when we begin at verse 6.

Because that is what I had done for a long time. Anxiety would come, and I would tell myself, “Lay it down. Give it to God.

Pray.” And that is biblical. We are told to cast our cares on Him because He cares for us. But I began to realize that I was treating prayer almost like a procedure. Anxiety comes. I am supposed to get rid of it. I am supposed to lay it down correctly. I am supposed to pray long enough until I feel better. Then I would read, “Do not be anxious,” and it felt as though I had one more burden to carry.

But one day, while I was trying to learn how to pray, trying to lay down anxiety that honestly I did not know how to lay down, I looked one verse back. I had been staring at verse 6, “Do not be anxious,” but I had not stopped long enough at verse 5.

PHILIPPIAN S 4:5 “The Lord is near.”

And something clicked for me. My anxiety did not instantly disappear. The situation did not immediately change. I did not suddenly know what to do. But I saw that before Paul tells me what to do with my anxiety, he tells me where I am.

The Lord is near.

Then I began asking why Paul put that sentence there. Why does he say, “The Lord is near,” right between rejoicing, gentleness, anxiety, prayer, thanksgiving, and peace? Paul did not just drop that sentence into his letter for no reason. He has

been taking us somewhere all through chapter 3. So I started looking back.

Look at chapter 3, verse 8. Paul says, PHILIPPIAN S 3:8 “I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

Think about the man saying that. Paul had a résumé. He had a religious background. He had knowledge. He had discipline. He had morality. He had the kind of life that could make someone say, “I have done enough. I have earned my place.” But Paul says all of it is loss compared to knowing Christ.

He is not saying those things did not matter at all. He is saying they could not carry the weight of his soul. They could not save him. They could not make him right with God. They could not give him a righteousness he could stand on when everything else began to shake. Christ is of surpassing worth. Christ is better.

Then Paul says in verse 9 that he wants to be found in Him. Not found in his own righteousness. Not found in his own ability. Not found in his own record. Not found in how well he has done. Found in Christ.

That matters when you pray. When you come before God, you do not come hoping you have had a good enough week for Him

to hear you. You do not come hoping your words sound right enough. You do not come bringing your spiritual résumé and saying, “Lord, look what I have done.” You come through Christ. You are found in Christ. The righteousness you need is not something you build for yourself; it is something Christ gives when you trust Him.

Then Paul says in verse 10, PHILIPPIAN S 3:1 0 “I want to know Christ.”

There it is again. I want to know Him. Not only know facts about Him. Not only know what He can do for me when I need help. I want to know Christ. I want to know the power of His resurrection. I want to know Him when life is good, and I want to know Him when life hurts. I want to know Him in suffering. I want to know Him in uncertainty. I want to know Him.

Then Paul says in verse 12, PHILIPPIAN S 3:1 2 “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”

That is where the whole thing started opening up for me. Paul is seeking Christ. Paul is pressing on. Paul is not sitting still. But

he is not chasing Christ in order to make Christ love him. He is pursuing Christ because Christ has already taken hold of him.

Christ came after Paul. Christ saved Paul. Christ made Paul His own.

Paul is not trying to make God come near. Christ has taken hold of him.

Paul is not trying to earn the love of God. Christ has taken hold of him.

Paul is not trying to work his way into the presence of God. Christ has taken hold of him.

And then Paul comes into chapter 4.

PHILIPPIAN S 4:1 , 4 – 5 “Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, stand firm in the Lord.” Rejoice in the Lord. Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.

That is what comes before, “Do not be anxious.”

Paul is not giving an anxious person a command detached from the gospel. He is not saying, “Stop worrying.” He is reminding them of the Christ they know, the Christ in whom they are found, the Christ who has taken hold of them, the Christ in whom they are called to stand firm.

Then he says, “The Lord is near.”

I had been trying to lay anxiety down almost as though I was alone, trying to get rid of something inside of me. But Paul is showing us that before we ever form a prayer, before we know what words to use, before we can make sense of what hurts, we are already before God.

The Lord is near.

My pain is real, but it is not the only thing that is real. My anxiety is real, but it is not the only thing that is true in that moment. My questions may be real. My fear may be real. I may not know what comes next. But the Lord is near. Christ has taken hold of me. I am found in Him.

And that changes how we lay anxiety down. It does not mean that pain suddenly stops being painful. It does not mean that we learn a formula and everything becomes easy. It means I am no longer trying to empty my heart into a vacuum. I remember Jesus. I remember who He is. I remember what He has done. I remember that He has taken hold of me. And I bring what is real in me before the God who is already near.

There is a reason that can be hard for us. Go all the way back to Genesis 3. Adam and Eve are in a garden God has given them. They have life. They have abundance. They have one another. They have the presence of God. And then the serpent begins with a question: “Did God really say?” The serpent does not

begin by attacking the fruit. He attacks the character of God. He makes Eve wonder whether God is good, whether God is holding out on them, whether God can be trusted.

That is still the lie underneath so much of our fear and sin. God is not good. God is holding something back. I have to take control. I have to make my own way.

Adam and Eve take the fruit, and the first thing they do is try to cover themselves. They sew fig leaves together. Then they hear the Lord God coming in the garden, and they hide.

God is near, but they hide.

That is what sin does. It does not mean God has become absent. It means His presence now feels dangerous to us because shame has entered the room. We are afraid of being seen. We want to cover ourselves. We give God safe words, religious words, words that sound fine, but we keep the deepest part of us hidden.

But God comes looking for Adam. “Where are you?” He knows where Adam is. He is drawing Adam out. He is calling him to stop hiding and tell the truth.

That is the story of the Bible. God coming after hiding people.

Jesus did not come to teach us how to make better fig leaves. He came to deal with sin and shame. Adam took what the Father had forbidden. Jesus went into another garden and

prayed, “Not My will, but Yours be done.” Adam hid from God. Jesus stepped forward to meet those who came to arrest Him. At the cross, Jesus bore our sin and shame. Scripture says that Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.

That is why “The Lord is near” is good news. Because of Christ, the nearness of God is not a reason to hide. It is an invitation to come.

Then think about Moses. Moses is tending sheep in Exodus 3. He is not in a sanctuary. He is not in front of people. He is in the wilderness, doing ordinary work on an ordinary day. Then he sees a bush burning, but it is not consumed. God calls his name. God tells him to take off his sandals, because the ground where he is standing is holy.

Why was the ground holy? Not because there was something special about the dirt. Not because Moses had found a more spiritual place. The ground was holy because God was there.

Then God tells Moses, “I have seen the suffering of My people. I have heard their cry. I know their pain. I have come down to rescue them.” That is the God who is near. He sees. He hears. He cares. He comes down.

And then God calls Moses into it. Moses had been tending sheep. God calls him to lead people. The shepherd of sheep is

going to become a shepherd for a people who need to be delivered.

Moses does not leave that bush saying, “That was a nice moment.” He does not go back to tending sheep as though nothing happened. He surrenders his life to the God who met him.

And Moses is not suddenly confident. He asks, “Who am I?” He gives God reasons why he cannot do what God is asking. But God does not answer Moses by telling him how impressive Moses is. God says, “I will be with you.”

Moses asks, “Who am I?” God says, “I will be with you.”

That becomes the answer for us too. The question is not, “Am I enough?” The question is, “Is He with me?” And when God is with us, He does not merely comfort us for a moment. He calls us. He redirects us. He teaches us to depend upon Him.

And later, in Exodus 33, after Moses had seen the sea open and water come from a rock and God rescue His people, he said something I still think about. “If Your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.” Moses had learned that the greatest gift was not safety, or bread, or even the promised land. The greatest gift was God Himself.

And I think that is where prayer changes. It is not only, “Lord, give me what I need.” It becomes, “Lord, I need You. I cannot

move one step without You.”

Through Christ, we have been given something Moses could only look toward. Moses met God at a bush. Israel would meet God in a tabernacle. Then there was a temple. But Jesus came. And Jesus says in John 14 that the Spirit will be with His people and in them. He says that the Father and the Son will come and make their home with the one who loves Him.

Make their home.

The Holy Spirit is not merely a feeling that comes and goes. He comforts us. He convicts us. He breaks our heart. He strengthens us. But the Holy Spirit is not an emotion we chase in a service. The Spirit of Christ dwells in His people.

Paul says the church is God’s temple and God’s Spirit dwells in them. He says we are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. We are not holy because we are impressive. We are not holy because we had an emotional moment. Through Christ, God makes His home in His people.

The ground was holy because God was there. Our lives are meant to be set apart because the Spirit of God is in us. We do not leave the presence of God behind when we walk out of a worship gathering. We do not leave Him at the altar. We do not leave Him in one moment from years ago. Through Christ, His Spirit goes with us.

And that means we are not seeking a feeling this morning. We are seeking Christ. Paul said, “I want to know Christ.” That is the heart of this. We bring Him our needs, yes. We ask Him to help marriages, children, sickness, grief, fear, and decisions. But underneath every request is a deeper prayer: “Jesus, I want to know You. I want to trust You. I want to be changed by You.”

There will be times when you do not know what to pray. Romans 8 says the Spirit helps us in our weakness, because we do not always know what we ought to pray for. That is not failure. That is not God looking down at weak people with frustration. The Spirit helps weak people.

There are moments when you do not have a three-point prayer. You do not know whether to ask for healing or endurance, an open door or a closed door, a change in circumstances or strength to keep walking. Sometimes all you have is a groan, or the simple words, “Father, I do not know.”

And even there, the Spirit helps. The Father knows. Christ has taken hold of you.

So when we pray, we do not have to know every answer. We can come honestly and say, “Father, I do not know what to do, but let Christ be seen in me. Let Christ be magnified in this. Help me trust You with what I cannot carry.”

That brings us back to Philippians 4.

PHILIPPIAN S 4:6 “In every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

In every situation. Not only when you feel spiritual. Not only when you have the words. Not only when you know what comes next. In every situation.

Bring Him the fear. Bring Him the grief. Bring Him the marriage. Bring Him the child. Bring Him the sickness. Bring Him the thing that keeps you awake. Bring Him the thing you have carried too long. Bring Him the part of your heart that you have been hiding.

Prayer is not a transaction. We are not trying to make God care. We are coming before the Father who already does.

And Paul says to bring those requests with thanksgiving. Thanksgiving does not mean nothing hurts. Thanksgiving remembers. It remembers who Christ is. It remembers that He has been faithful. It remembers that, even when we do not understand, the Lord is near.

Then Paul says that the peace of God will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. He does not promise that every circumstance immediately changes. Paul is writing from prison.

But he knows Christ. He is found in Christ. Christ has taken hold of him. The Lord is near.

That is peace. Not the absence of every trouble, but the presence of God in the middle of it.

So I do not want us to leave this morning merely talking about prayer. Paul says, “Present your requests to God,” and we are going to do that together.

I know where we are. We are in a cafeteria. There are tables, chairs, carts, children’s spaces, setup, teardown, all of it. This is an ordinary room. But Moses was in an ordinary place too when God met him.

We do not make this room holy because we came forward. We do not make the front of this room more sacred than your chair. But Christ is present among His people, and we are His body. So we can bring our requests together. We can seek Him together. We can pray together.

Maybe you need to bring something you have been carrying alone. Maybe you are afraid. Maybe you are tired. Maybe there is grief. Maybe there is sin you have been trying to cover. Maybe you do not even know what to ask for. You do not have to come with perfect words. You do not have to prove anything to anyone.

Come because Christ has made a way.

Come because the Lord is near.

Come because the Spirit helps us in our weakness.

Come because Paul, after all he had seen and done, still said, “I want to know Christ.”

You can come to the front. You can kneel where you are. You can find somebody and say, “Will you pray with me?” But let us not walk away from this ordinary room unchanged. Let us seek Christ together. Let us present our requests together. Let us come before the God who sees, hears, cares, and comes down.

Father, we come to You together. We bring You our fear, our hurt, our grief, our questions, our marriages, our children, our sickness, our need, and the things we do not know how to say. We do not come because we have earned our way into Your presence. We come because Christ has brought us to You. Teach us how to pray. Teach us to seek You, not only what You can do for us. Open the eyes of our hearts to see Christ. Make us people who know You, trust You, and live like Your Spirit dwells within us. And do not let us walk away unchanged. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Deo Volente.

Contrite Heart

Three Faithful Wounds Philippians 1:27-30 I want to invite you to open your Bibles with me, to Philippians chapter 1, verse 27. And I need to tell you something from the start: There's a part of me that doesn't want to preach this message. Because I don't want suffering to be part of your life, and I don't want it to be part of mine. But it is. There are people in this room right now who have suffered in ways I cannot imagine.

Some of you are walking through painful circumstances right now—in your body, in your family, in your marriage, in your mind. And I'm with you. That's why I needed this word this week. But there are also others of you—things are going well right now. And I thank God for that. But if life is good right now, hide this word in your heart today. Store it up. Because you're going to need it.

So let's hear straight from God's Word. Philippians 1:27-30. Now let me just stop right there. Paul is writing this from prison. He's in chains. And he says: It has been GRANTED to you—that word means grace—it has been graciously GIVEN to you not only to believe in Christ, but to suffer for Him. Suffering is a gift. Most of us don't want to hear that. We want Jesus plus comfort.

Jesus plus health. Jesus plus everything going according to our plan. But the Bible doesn't say that. Look with me to John 16:33. Jesus says: "In this world you WILL have tribulation." That's a promise. And we usually like to claim promises from Jesus. This is not one we often claim. And yet—somehow—Jesus ends that same verse with "But take heart, I have overcome the world." So the question is: how do we take heart when the world hurts us?

How do we see suffering not just as something to survive, but something God can actually use to shape us? And so I love to go back to old writings of simple ordinary people who lived like that. And,…. I found a woman who had a unique story about suffering. Her name was Julian of Norwich. Before Martin Luther's infamous moment in church history when he nailed the 95 theses to the door of a Catholic Church—200 years before that—there lived this woman.

While she was praying one day—and of course during this time the Catholic Church had all these things you had to do for prayer—the Lord appeared to her and said, "You don't have to have all this stuff to pray. All God wants and expects is that you should believe in Him and love Him with all of your heart.” So 200 years before Martin Luther would challenge the church on justification by faith, Lady Julian would write: If you love God with all of your heart and believe in His son, you will be all right.

She realized way before Martin Luther that we are saved by faith, not by our works. But, One day she became very sick and she laid on her death bed. She thought this was the end, and people began to gather because they thought she was going to die. So of course they began to do all the ritual things they did back then. Anointed her with oil, sprinkled water on her, all sorts of things the Catholic Church believed needed to happen on the death bed.

Her feet began to get cold and dead. It moved up from her feet to her waist. She was dying, and at this moment everything from her waist down was dead. So she began to cry out to God: "Lord, Lord, I am only 30 years old. I would hate to die and leave my work. Now, it's perfectly alright if you want me to die. I'll die, but think about it a little and see whether it wouldn't be a good idea if I lived, for I am still young.

I've got a long time on earth in the natural course of things, and if I die, I won't do much good. So, Father, just give me some attention.” She continued to die. But after her prayer, she was dying now from her head down. She writes: "My head began to die and I went blind. There was total darkness, and it began to settle down towards my heart, and I felt myself going.

Just when I was about to breathe my last breath, suddenly and instantaneously I was perfectly well. I know God did it, and it wasn't nature, but grace, because it came so suddenly and I was dying and I knew it.” Now, obviously I do not claim to know all that God does and I never will. But in my heart I believe that as death began to overtake her legs and brought darkness to her mind, and once death reached her heart, death was met with a heart burning brightly with affection for Christ, and it was so stoked by the coals of adoration that if Death was going to take her, it was going to take her with a heart burning for affectionate worship towards God.

As Paul puts it, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” I believe that… I believe that if she was going to die in that moment, it would have been gain for her… And perhaps—I don't know but… I imagine—at that last moment, death looked to the throne of grace. Yes, even death has a master named Jesus. And death said, "Lord, are you sure? There's much work to be done for the kingdom.

Lord, you don't find many hearts like this. Hearts with a burning desire to grow the kingdom. And for whatever reason, God spared her. I don't know why God spared her. I do not know why God spares some who cry out for mercy and not others. I can only imagine He does what He does because of grace. He knows more than I know. But her heart was not only burning with affection—that affection was leading her heart to be a faithful servant.

So why do I share her story? I share this story because I want to share her prayer. She prayed: "I want thee to wound me with the wound of contrition, and then I want thee to wound me with the wound of compassion, and then I want thee to wound me with the wound of very longing after God.” And God did. She lived a very long life, and people came from the north to the south and the east to the west, and they found a lady of compassion and a woman pursuing and longing for God.

Now, when I first read that prayer, I thought: That's crazy. Who prays for pain? But then I realized—she wasn't asking for suffering for suffering's sake. She was asking for wounds that would help her delight in God more. Remember what we talked about in week one? God's glory and our joy aren't competing. They collide. They become one when Christ becomes our greatest treasure. And I asked, what treasure in this life are you more prone to cling to that would be greater than a death, that leads to being in Jeuss’s presence?

Where death is a gain… So she's praying: Lord, Wound me with contrition so that…. I’ll treasure Jesus more than my sin. Wound me with compassion so I'll love people the way Jesus does. Wound me with longing so deep that only God can fill it. And I think…. She must have understood something we're still learning: that… Sometimes the very wounds that break us open are the ones that make room for deeper joy in Jesus.

Now, I could preach for hours on all three of these… so for your sake, and your sanity, for this week, I want us to just focus on one of these, so, lets look at this first part of her payer… the prayer for a contrite heart. Point One: The Wound of Contrition Julian prayed: "Wound me with the wound of contrition." And when I first read that, I thought she was crazy.

Who prays to be wounded? Who asks God to break their heart? But then I realized something. She understood what we often miss. Contrition isn't just feeling bad about sin. It's being crushed by the weight of it. Crushed enough to finally stop making excuses and come back to God. And there's a man in Scripture who knew exactly what that felt like. Turn with me to Psalm 51. Psalm 51 is one of the few psalms where we know exactly when it was written.

The heading tells us: "To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba." So we know the story. We know what happened. Let me read it to you from 2 Samuel 11: "It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful.

And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, 'Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?' So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her... Then she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, 'I am pregnant.'" So David panicked. He tried to cover it up. He brought Bathsheba's husband Uriah home from battle, hoping Uriah would sleep with his wife and think the baby was his.

But Uriah was too noble. Too honorable. He wouldn't go home to his wife while his men were still out fighting. So David did something even worse. He arranged to have Uriah killed. Sent him to the front lines. Made sure he'd die. Then David quickly married Bathsheba to cover the whole thing up. And here's how the Bible describes it—in one of the most understated sentences you'll ever read: "The thing that David had done displeased the Lord." Displeased.

That's putting it mildly. Could you imagine in your sin, you heard the Lord say, I am displeased… with what you’ve done. How different would we live if, every time we gossiped, lied, or spoke behind someone’s back, we felt that conviction? If we heard that voice? And that voice led us imedadtily to repentance? But here’s the thing — we can. That’s what the Holy Spirit does. Jesus said in John 16:8, “When He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” The Spirit takes what is displeasing to God and makes it heavy on our hearts — not to crush us, but to call us home.

But the question is… is your love for God, at a place that when you hear that conviction, it leads you towards change? But just like how Jesus promises the holy Spirit, to convict us, God sent the prophet Nathan to David with a parable that entices David to pronounce his own condemnation. Nathan told him a story—about a rich man who stole a poor man's only lamb. And David got furious.

He said, "That man deserves to die!" And Nathan looked at him and said, "You are the man!" Then Nathan asked, "Why have you despised the word of the Lord?" David broke. Right there. He confessed: "I have sinned against the Lord." And then Nathan said something astonishing: "The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die." Now stop right there.

What? This… infuriates me… when I read this book, and I see Uriah is dead. Bathsheba was raped. The baby is going to die. And Nathan says, "The Lord has put away your sin." Just like that? David committed adultery. He ordered a murder. He lied to cover it all up. He "despised the word of the Lord." He "scorned God." And the Lord just... "put away his sin"? What kind of a righteous judge is God?

You don't just pass over rape and murder and lying. Righteous judges don't do that. I remember this week, I was sharing the gospel with some guys. And nothing I said could persuade them that a murderer, or a child molester could be forgiven. Remember just a few weeks ago, I showed you a man that forgave a murderer for taking the life of his daughter? I struggled with that too.

Like, God, thats not right.. And you know what? I resonate with those guys’s skepticism. I really do. I would be outraged at God's behavior here—except for one thing. The apostle Paul shared my outrage. And he explained how God could be both righteous AND the one who justifies murderers and rapists and liars and, yes, even child molesters. Here's what Paul said in Romans 3:25-26. And I need you to hear this because this is one of the most important sentences in the entire Bible: "God put Christ forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.

This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." Do you see what Paul is saying here? The outrage that we feel when God seems to simply pass over David's sin—that would be good outrage if God were just sweeping David's sin under the rug.

But He's not. God isn't ignoring the sin. God is looking ahead. Down through the centuries. From David's time all the way to the cross. To the death of His Son, Jesus Christ, who would die in David's place. David's faith in God's mercy—his faith in God's future redeeming work—unites David with Christ. And its the same faith that as we look back to the cross, unites us, in our sins to Christ.

And in God's all-knowing mind, David's sins are counted as Christ's sins. And Christ's righteousness is counted as David's righteousness. And God justly passes over David's sin. The death of the Son of God is outrageous enough. The glory of God that it upholds is great enough. That God is vindicated in passing over David's adultery and murder and lying. Thats the beauty of the cross… At the cross, every sin is either punished or pardoned—but it’s never ignored.

The reason God could forgive David is because Jesus would one day be crushed for David’s sin. God’s righteousness was not compromised; it was magnified. Now that—that is the objective reality of how David is forgiven. That's the theology. That's how it works. There’s my attempt at systematic theology… I hope I didn’t close you. But here's where we need to get back to Julian's prayer. Why would she pray: "Wound me with the wound of contrition”?

Because she understood something David discovered in the ashes of his sin. Look at what David wrote in Psalm 51, after Nathan confronted him: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Notice what David says: "Against you, you only, have I sinned." Wait—what? David sinned against Bathsheba. Against Uriah. Against their families. Against the nation. But David says: "Against you, you only.” Here's what he's realizing: All sin is first and foremost against God.

When I gossip about you, I sin against you—but I sin against God first. When I lie to my spouse, I sin against them—but I sin against God first. Every sin is ultimately a statement to God: "I don't trust you. I don't love you enough. I think I know better than you.” And that's what contrition is. It's not just feeling bad that I got caught. It's not just regretting the consequences.

It's seeing my sin for what it really is, It’s this—cosmic treason against a good and loving King. I think, Our culture has lost this entirely. And, I'm not just talking about our culture out there, in the world—but our church culture. The culture Christians have created in the church building, in their small groups, even in their prayers. Its so easy for any person to just reduced sin to: "Did I hurt someone?" or "Did I break a rule?" But that's not deep enough.

Think about how we talk about sin: We say "I messed up" instead of "I sinned” We say "I made a mistake" instead of "I rebelled against God” We talk about "bad choices" and "poor decisions" like we're analyzing a business strategy that didn't pan out. We've sanitized it. Made it manageable. Turned it into a self-improvement problem instead of a God problem. And here's what happens: We start thinking that as long as we're "pretty good people" who "don't hurt anybody," we're fine with God.

We compare ourselves to whoever's doing worse and think, "Well, at least I'm not like them.” But that's not how David saw his sin. He didn't say, "Well, compared to other kings, I'm doing okay." He said, "Against you, you only, have I sinned.” C.S. Lewis said it this way: "We are not just dealing with crime and punishment. We're dealing with honor and shame, with relationship and betrayal.” When you betray someone you love—someone who has given you everything—"Oops, my bad" doesn't cut it.

What they need to hear is: "I'm horrified by what I've done to you. To us.” That's contrition. And we've lost it. We’ve lost it in our faith. And Julian prayed for it because she knew: until my heart breaks over what my sin does to my relationship with you, God, I'll keep going back to it. I’ll keep justifying it. Let me make this really practical. How do you know if you're actually contrite—or just sorry you got caught?

Here's the test: Are you more upset about the consequences or the betrayal? When you're caught in a lie, are you thinking: "How do I fix this mess?" Or are you thinking: "How did I just trash my integrity and hurt someone I love?” When you look at your phone usage, your spending, your anger—are you just annoyed at yourself? Or are you grieved that you're treasuring these things more than Jesus?

You see, Contrition isn't self-loathing. It's not beating yourself up….. It's clarity. It's finally seeing clearly: "This thing I thought would satisfy me is destroying me. And it's keeping me from the One who actually loves me.” So why would Julian pray for this? Here's why: Because without contrition, we never truly taste grace. David writes in Psalm 51:17: "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Notice—God doesn't despise it.

He treasures it. Why? Because a contrite heart is a heart that has stopped pretending. Stopped performing. Stopped managing the PR campaign of your life. It's a heart that comes to God empty-handed and says: "I have nothing. I am the problem. But I'm yours.”….. teach me, Oh God. And friends—that's the only posture in which you can truly receive grace. As long as you're minimizing your sin, you're minimizing God's grace.

As long as you're comparing yourself to others ("Well, at least I'm not like them"), you're cutting yourself off from the scandalous, lavish, undeserved love of God that should overwhelm you. It's like this: Imagine you owe someone $100, and they forgive the debt. You say, "Oh, thanks!" and move on. But imagine you owe $10 million—and you know it. You can't sleep. You can't pay it. You're ruined. And then they tear up the paper and say, "It's gone.

You're free.” How would you feel? You wouldn't just say "thanks." You'd weep. You'd be undone. You'd spend the rest of your life overwhelmed by their generosity. That's what contrition does. It shows you the true size of your debt. And when you see that—and I mean really see it—and then see that Jesus paid it all, grace doesn't just make you happy. It ruins you. In the best possible way.

Jesus said in Luke 7: "He who is forgiven little, loves little." The flip side? He who is forgiven much, loves much. Julian wanted to be wounded with contrition because she wanted to love Jesus more. And you can't love Him fully until you see how much you've been forgiven. So here's my question for you today as the worship team comes up: What are you avoiding looking at? What sin are you downplaying?

What are you rationalizing? What have you perfected the art of not thinking about? Maybe it’s: The way you speak to your spouse when you're frustrated. Or The bitterness you're nursing toward someone who hurt you., today, yesterday, 10 years ago… Or The lies you tell yourself about your spending, your eating, your screen time. The things you watch online. Or The pride that makes you need to be right, need to be noticed, need to be in control And you've gotten really good at not letting it bother you.

Do you know what that represents? A hard heart. Its spiritual numbness. Can I tell you what that is? That's self-protection. You're protecting yourself from the wound of contrition because you think it will crush you. But listen: The wound of contrition is not meant to crush you. It's meant to crack you open so grace can flood in. That’s what David discovered. After everything—after the adultery, the murder, the cover-up—he wrote: "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me...

Restore to me the joy of your salvation.” Did you catch that? Joy. Contrition led to joy. The wound led to healing. The breaking led to restoration. Why? Because when you stop hiding and start confessing, you discover what David discovered: God doesn't reject contrite hearts. He runs to them. Let me invite you to pray Julian's prayer with me. Not out of guilt. Not out of obligation. But out of desire for more of Jesus.

"Lord, wound me with the wound of contrition.” Not because you want to feel terrible about yourself. But because you want to feel the full weight of grace. Because you're tired of the shallow spirituality that never quite touches the deep places. Because you want to love Jesus the way Mary loved Jesus—when she washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair, and Jesus said, "She loves much because she's been forgiven much.” Maybe you pray that this week.

Maybe you get alone with God and you stop managing the narrative. You stop explaining yourself. And you just say: "God, show me my heart. Let me see what you see. Wound me with contrition—not to destroy me, but to free me.” And then—here's the promise—when you're broken open like that, you'll discover what David discovered:] The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end.

They are new every morning. And next week? We'll talk about the second wound—the wound of compassion. Because here's the beautiful thing: when you've been forgiven much, you start forgiving much. When you've received ridiculous grace, you start extending ridiculous grace. But that starts here. With honest, broken, contrite hearts that finally stop hiding and come home. *

Citizens of Heaven

I want to invite you to open your Bibles with me to Philippians 1, and find with me verse 27. 27 Just one thing: As citizens of heaven, live your life worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or am absent, I will hear about you that you are standing firm in one spirit, in one accord,[f] contending together for the faith of the gospel, 28 not being frightened in any way by your opponents.

This is a sign of destruction for them, but of your salvation—and this is from God. 29 For it has been granted to you on Christ’s behalf not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him, 30 since you are engaged in the same struggle that you saw I had and now hear that I have. Have you ever wondered what stories heaven will tell in the age to come?

When Jesus returns, when judgment is over and mercy has had the final word—when sin, sickness, and sorrow are gone forever and the world is made new—what will we talk about then? Sometimes I just dream about that. I wonder what life will be like. Maybe we’ll gather around a fire on a cool Colorado evening, under a sky so clear you can see the stars breathe. Maybe we’ll walk through a grove of aspens turned gold—not by the sunlight, but by the glory of God—and we’ll tell stories.

Stories of grace. Stories of faith. Stories of how God carried us, changed us, and used us. One day, we’ll tell stories of the grace of God—stories that trace His hand through all of redemption’s history. We’ll tell stories about His power and mercy in the lives of His people—especially the ones who dreamed and prayed and worked and struggled and sacrificed for the sake of the gospel. We’ll look back, maybe with tears in our eyes.

I know the Bible says every tear will be wiped away—but I think those are the tears of pain, not the tears of joy. Because some tears belong in heaven. The kind that fall when you finally see what God was doing all along. The kind that come when you realize He was faithful in every season—even the ones that felt like silence. Those will be tears of gratitude, not grief.

And I think they’ll roll down our faces as we remember how patient He was with us, how He never gave up, how He kept drawing us back until His love became the thing we couldn’t live without. And maybe we’ll sit out back—under cottonwoods and mountain air—and we’ll tell a thousand stories of how God made us willing to risk something for His name. Stories of how the Spirit nudged us to love a neighbor, or to share our faith, or to forgive when we didn’t want to.

Stories of how He turned our fear into obedience and our obedience into joy. And I’m convinced that all the things that seemed so loud and important in this world—the arguments, the politics, the headlines—will be completely forgotten. But every quiet moment of faithfulness, every act of mercy, every prayer for a friend, every time you worked with integrity or loved with purpose… those will be remembered. Those will be sung about in the kingdom forever.

And maybe, just maybe, when we stop for coffee in the new creation—there won’t be TVs showing breaking news or celebrity gossip. They’ll be showing the highlight reels of redemption— clips from the Book of Life—moments when ordinary people trusted an extraordinary God, and their faith became part of His eternal story. And all of this isn’t just imagination—it’s rooted right in Scripture. In Revelation we’re given a glimpse into the future of God’s people: “And they sang the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, ‘Great and wonderful are Your deeds, Lord God Almighty!’” That means the songs of eternity—the ballads of the new creation—will be about the works of God.

The story of Moses leading God’s people through the sea. The story of the Lamb who conquered death and set the captives free. And woven through those songs will be the stories of all the saints—men and women like you and me. Because none of God’s works will ever be forgotten. I sometimes think, I love books. Will I be able to read? And I say I bet you can.. theres the book of life, and I dream that God has this library of the history of the world and the saints who have completed their course in life to magnify Jesus.

We’ll be able to open The history books of heaven will tell a different story than the ones we read here. The great ones won’t be politicians or celebrities or influencers. They’ll be the missionaries and the moms and dads and students and teachers who quietly lived for the glory of Jesus. And I think of heaven and I ask, what is the The weapons of that kingdom? I bet it won’t be power or politics—but the gospel.

And how hot was weaved into ordinary lives like yours and mine, to make much of Jesus. the most beautiful stories won’t be about fame or success, but about faith. Stories of how one person dreamed up a simple way to share the love of Christ—and had the courage to follow through. Just a moment where the love of Christ, has consumed the heart and mind of th person, that they felt and heard the voice of God say, go, and they simply took their ordinary life and shared life with someone.

Thats very biblical… isn’t it?? Remember the woman in Bethany who poured out her perfume on Jesus? It was a small act. Hidden. Overlooked by most. But Jesus said, “Wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”If He wanted her story remembered for all eternity, don’t you think yours will be too? The way you chose forgiveness over bitterness.

The way you prayed for someone who hurt you. The way you gave when no one noticed. The way you stood firm when the world told you to sit down. Those are the stories heaven will tell. And the most thrilling tales of all will be the stories of how the gospel spread—how unbelief was conquered—through ordinary, unlikely people like us. You and me. As we said last week, we come from different lives and different stories, yet we’re all threaded together by the same, Christ centered gospel.

And as the Spirit of God pulls on that thread—he draws us closer to Christ and to one another—we become the church. A living tapestry, woven with many colors, marked by both beauty and blemish, but stitched together by grace. And when the light of Christ shines through it, the whole thing becomes radiant—not because we’re perfect, but because He is. Heaven is going to be amazing… and yet, in this world we will have trouble.

Have you faced trouble in this world? You have and I have… Paul was facing it too… Paul is writing this from prison. He's in chains. And he tells the Philippians something remarkable: "It has been GRANTED to you"—that word means grace—"it has been graciously GIVEN to you not only to believe in Christ, but to suffer for Him.” He's talking about a specific kind of suffering here. He's talking about persecution.

Opposition. The cost of standing firm for the gospel when the world pushes back. He says, "You're going through the same struggle you saw I had"—beatings, imprisonment, threats. This is suffering FOR Christ. Suffering because you belong to Him. Suffering that comes from outside—from a world that doesn't want to hear the truth. And Paul says this kind of suffering is a gift. Why? Because it means you're actually living worthy of the gospel.

You're not blending in. You're not playing it safe. You're standing firm against the world culture, and the world notices. That's one kind of suffering the Bible talks about. And it's real. Some of you in this room have experienced it—maybe rejection from family, maybe losing friendships, maybe being passed over at work because of your faith. And heaven will tell those stories. Stories of how you stood firm when everyone else sat down.

Stories of how you loved Jesus more than comfort, more than approval, more than ease. But There's Another Kind of Suffering There's suffering FOR Christ—when the world opposes you because you follow Him. And then there's suffering FROM Christ—when His holiness confronts your sin and breaks your heart. One comes from outside. The other comes from inside. One is persecution. The other is conviction. One is the world rejecting you. The other is you finally seeing yourself clearly—and being crushed by what you see.

And here's what I've discovered: Both kinds of suffering can be gifts. Both can transform us. But they work in different ways. Suffering FOR Christ purifies our courage. It refines our witness. It proves our love is real. But suffering FROM conviction? That purifies our hearts. It breaks through our pride. It makes us honest before God. And that's what I want to talk about today. Not the suffering that comes from standing for Jesus.

But the suffering that comes from finally seeing yourself clearly in the light of His holiness. The older writers, the ancient mystic called these "holy wounds." Pain that doesn't just hurt us, but humbles us. Pain that cracks open our self-sufficiency and makes room for grace. Let me show you, There’s a woman from the 14th century who understood this better than most of us ever will. Her name was Julian of Norwich.

Two hundred years before Martin Luther challenged the church on justification by faith, this woman discovered the same truth. While praying one day—during a time when the Catholic Church had complicated rituals for everything—the Lord appeared to her and said something revolutionary: "You don't have to have all this stuff to pray. All God wants and expects is that you should believe in Him and love Him with all of your heart.” She realized, centuries before the Reformation, that we are saved by faith, not by our works.

And one of the things she talked about was how we should love the Lord until that love became like a burning bush, flaming in our hearts. One day, when she was only 30 years old, she became deathly ill. As she lay dying, with people gathered around preparing for the end, something remarkable happened. Her feet began to grow cold and lifeless. The paralysis moved up from her feet to her waist.

She was dying. So she began to cry out to God: "Lord, I am only 30 years old. I would hate to die and leave my work. Now, it's perfectly alright if you want me to die. I'll die, but think about it a little—I'm still young, and if I die, I won't do much good. So, Father, just give me some attention.” She continued to die. But after her prayer, she was dying now from her head down.

She writes: "My head began to die and I went blind. There was total darkness, and it began to settle down towards my heart, and I felt myself going. Just when I was about to breathe my last breath, suddenly and instantaneously I was perfectly well. I know God did it, and it wasn't nature, but grace.” I believe that as death reached her heart, it found a heart burning so brightly with affection for Christ that God said, "Not yet.

I have more work for this one to do." And He spared her. And after God spared her life, Julian prayed a prayer that gets to the heart of what I'm talking about today. Listen to this prayer of this woman…: "I want thee to wound me with the wound of contrition, and then I want thee to wound me with the wound of compassion, and then I want thee to wound me with the wound of very longing after God." Now when I first read that, I thought: That's crazy.

Who prays for pain? Who prays to be wounded? But then I realized—she wasn't asking for suffering for suffering's sake. She was asking for wounds that would help her delight in God more. Wounds that would break through her pride, her self-sufficiency, her sin. Wounds that would make room for deeper joy in Jesus. Today, we're going to focus on just one of these wounds. The wound of contrition. Turn with me to Psalm 51.

This is our main text for today. This is David's prayer after the prophet Nathan confronted him about his affair with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah. And what's stunning about this psalm is its honesty. David doesn't minimize. He doesn't make excuses. He doesn't compare himself to other kings. He just breaks. Listen: "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” This is what Julian was praying for. This is the wound of contrition. Not suffering because the world opposed him. David wasn't in prison like Paul. He was in a palace. He was the king.

He had everything. But his sin had caught up with him. And the pain he's feeling isn't persecution from outside. It's conviction from inside. It's the crushing weight of seeing what he's done—not just to Bathsheba, not just to Uriah, but to God. Look at verse 4 again: "Against you, you only, have I sinned." Wait—what? David, you sinned against Bathsheba. You sinned against Uriah. You sinned against their families, your family, the nation.

How can you say "you only”? Here's what David understood: Yes, sin damages people. Yes, sin has consequences in relationships and society. But at its core, every sin—no matter who it hurts horizontally—is first and foremost a vertical offense. It’s a cosmic treason against God. That's what contrition is. It's not just feeling bad that you got caught. It's not just regretting the consequences. It's seeing your sin for what it really is—rebellion against a good and loving King.

I think we've lost this. Not just in our culture out there, but in here. In our church culture. We've reduced sin to: "Did I hurt someone?" or "Did I break a rule?" But that's not deep enough. Think about how we talk about sin: We say "I messed up" instead of "I sinned." We say "I made a mistake" instead of "I rebelled against God." We talk about "bad choices" like we're analyzing a business strategy.

We've sanitized it. Made it manageable. Turned it into a self-improvement problem instead of a God problem. And here's what happens: We start thinking that as long as we're "pretty good people" who "don't hurt anybody," we're fine with God. We compare ourselves to whoever's doing worse: "Well, at least I'm not like them.” But that's not how David saw his sin. He didn't compare himself to Saul or to other kings.

He looked at God's holiness, and he broke. C.S. Lewis said it this way: "We are not just dealing with crime and punishment. We're dealing with honor and shame, with relationship and betrayal.” When you betray someone you love—someone who has given you everything—"Oops, my bad" doesn't cut it. What they need to hear is: "I'm horrified by what I've done to you. To us.” That's contrition. And we've lost it.

Let me make this practical. How do you know if you're actually contrite—or just sorry you got caught? Here's the test: Are you more upset about the consequences or the betrayal? When you're caught in a lie, are you thinking: "How do I fix this mess?" Or: "How did I just trash my integrity and hurt someone I love?” When you look at your phone usage, your spending, your anger—are you just annoyed at yourself?

Or are you grieved that you're treasuring these things more than Jesus?\ Contrition isn't self-loathing. It's not beating yourself up. It's clarity. It's finally seeing: "This thing I thought would satisfy me is destroying me. And it's keeping me from the One who actually loves me.”So why would Julian pray for this? Why would anyone ask God to wound them with contrition? Because without contrition, we never truly taste grace. Look at Psalm 51:17: "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” God doesn't despise contrite hearts.

He treasures them. Why? Because a contrite heart has stopped pretending. Stopped performing. Stopped managing the PR campaign of your life. It's a heart that comes to God empty-handed and says: "I have nothing. I am the problem. But I'm yours." And that's the only posture in which you can truly receive grace. As long as you're minimizing your sin, you're minimizing God's grace. As long as you're comparing yourself to others, you're cutting yourself off from the scandalous, lavish love of God.

It's like this: Imagine you owe someone $100, and they forgive it. You say, "Thanks!" and move on. But imagine you owe $10 million. You can't sleep. You can't pay it. You're ruined. And then they tear up the paper: "It's gone. You're free.” You wouldn't just say thanks. You'd weep. You'd be undone. You'd spend the rest of your life overwhelmed by their generosity. That's what contrition does. It shows you the true size of your debt.

And when you see that—really see it—and then see that Jesus paid it all, grace doesn't just make you happy. It ruins you. In the best possible way. Jesus said in Luke 7: "He who is forgiven little, loves little." The flip side? He who is forgiven much, loves much. Julian wanted to be wounded with contrition because she wanted to love Jesus more. And you can't love Him fully until you see how much you've been forgiven.

Remember where we started? Dreaming about the stories heaven will tell? Here's what I believe: Yes, heaven will tell stories about people who suffered FOR Christ. People who stood firm under persecution. People like Paul in prison, writing letters of joy while in chains. But heaven will also tell stories about people who were wounded BY conviction. People who stopped hiding. People whose brokenness became the doorway to grace. They'll tell the story of a woman in Bethany who washed Jesus's feet with her tears.

And Jesus said, "She loves much because she's been forgiven much." That story has echoed for two thousand years. They'll tell the story of a king who committed adultery and murder, but then fell on his face and cried, "Create in me a clean heart, O God." And God did. And David's psalms have ministered to billions. They'll tell the story of a 14th-century woman who prayed to be wounded so she could love Jesus more.

And her writings have drawn countless people into deeper communion with God. And friends, they'll tell your story too. So here's my question: What are you avoiding looking at? What sin are you downplaying? What are you rationalizing? What have you perfected the art of not thinking about? Maybe it's how you speak to your spouse when frustrated. Or the bitterness you're nursing. Or the lies you tell yourself about your screen time, your spending, your habits.

Or the pride that makes you need to be right, need to be noticed, need to be in control. And you've gotten really good at not letting it bother you. That's spiritual numbness. That's self-protection. You're protecting yourself from the wound of contrition because you think it will crush you. But listen: The wound of contrition is not meant to crush you. It's meant to crack you open so grace can flood in.

That's what David discovered. After everything—the adultery, the murder, the cover-up—he wrote: "Restore to me the joy of your salvation." Did you catch that? Joy. Contrition led to joy. The wound led to healing. The breaking led to restoration. Why? Because when you stop hiding and start confessing, you discover what David discovered: God doesn't reject contrite hearts. He runs to them. Let me invite you to pray Julian's prayer with me.

Not out of guilt. But out of desire for more of Jesus. "Lord, wound me with the wound of contrition." Not because you want to feel terrible about yourself. But because you want to feel the full weight of grace. Because you're tired of shallow spirituality. Because you want to love Jesus like Mary loved Him—with tears of gratitude for being forgiven much. Maybe this week you get alone with God and stop managing the narrative.

You stop explaining yourself. And you just say: "God, show me my heart. Let me see what you see. Wound me with contrition—not to destroy me, but to free me." And when you're broken open like that, you'll discover: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. And someday, in the age to come, when we're sitting around that fire under aspens turned gold by God's glory, we'll tell these stories.

Stories of how God wounded us to heal us. How He broke us to make us whole. How contrition became the doorway to joy. Some will tell stories of suffering FOR Christ—standing firm under persecution. Others will tell stories of being wounded BY conviction—and finding that those wounds led them home. Both kinds of suffering. Both gifts of grace. Both paths to deeper joy in Jesus. And next week, we'll talk about the second wound—the wound of compassion.

Because when you've been forgiven much, you start forgiving much. When you've received ridiculous grace, you start extending it. But that starts here. With honest, broken, contrite hearts that finally stop hiding and come home. Amen.*

Thoughts on Being Us

First, I want to say how grateful I am that you’re here. I know many of you rearranged your lives, gave up time off, maybe even missed work to be at this retreat. That kind of sacrifice doesn’t go unnoticed. I personally don’t take it lightly. And I believe God doesn’t either. There’s a phrase I’ve been holding onto as we enter into this time together: “The soil you plant in matters as much as the seed you plant.” And is true. We need good soil. Without good soil, no matte what we plant, what we try to accomplish, if we are not cultivating the soil that we plant in, nothing will take root. When someone asks, what is Falcon Community all about? What do we say? Whenever we talk about a vision or mission statement, I love how the church approaches it. If we were a company, or any organization or institution, we’d have to get together and decide, “What’s our vision going to be? How are we going to define our mission?” Then we would put together a process for coming up with the right vision and mission. But I need us to understand something… God gives those things to us.. Now, here’s the thing.. today and tomorrow were going to spend time I pryer and worship and decreeing not so much what is the vision and mission, but how were going to word it go make it unique to what God iscalling us in. Why? Because our king has already given us a mission and vision. It hasn’t really changed in 2,000 years. So what’s vision? Vision is what your eyes are fixed on. Vision is how you see the world; the lens through which you look at everything. And we sometimes think visioning is thinking about what we want and we say things like, “Well, our vision is to have this many thousand people.” “Our vision is to have this many campuses.” Or “Our vision is to do this or that.” When we say things like that, we show that it’s possible for the church to lose our pursuit of Christ, replacing it with pursuit of success—however we may define that—in the church. But here’s the dangerous thing. We can have 20,000 people, but not have Christ. We can have crowds at a hundred campuses, but not have Christ. We can have all kinds of things that will get us on all kinds of lists of successful churches in our culture, but not have Christ. We should not want any of that. We should want Jesus. I think of Paul in Philippians 1 and 3, “I want to know Christ. For to me to live is Christ. He’s my life. My eyes are fixed on Him. I want to know Him, enjoy Him, love Him, exalt Him.” And this is not just individually—it’s what we want as a church. So our vision must be Christ centered. To see God glorified all over falcon and Colorado Springs. That seems pretty basic, but I believe this is very different from how much of our church culture is driven. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the term “consumer Christianity,” but it’s a label given to a mentality in American church culture that says if you want the church to be successful, then make church as comfortable as possible for the consumer (i.e., the Christian). Build places and programs where people can conveniently come. Give them a nice latte when they walk in the door. Provide state-of-the-art entertainment for their children while you treat them to a smooth service that leaves them feeling good when they drive away in a timely fashion. Variations of that vision, engineered for the savvy Christian consumer, have been multiplied across the landscape of our country. And they work! Crowds come and their vision is realized. But what happens when our vision changes? What happens when our gaze is not fixed on making sure crowds feel comfortable, but on making sure God receives glory? Suddenly our priorities start to transform. More than we want to appeal to people’s self-centered preferences, we want to awe people with God-centered praise. More than we want men and children and women to be impressed by the services we can manufacture, we want them to be amazed by the God they cannot fathom. And the last thing we want to do is raise up people who are casual in worship—as they sit back and enjoy lattes. No, we want to raise up people who are captivated, awed and mesmerized by the greatness of God in such a way that we will gladly lose, not just our lattes, but our very lives making His glory known in the world. Now, that’s a different way to approach church. It leads some to ask, “Well, what’s so wrong with the lattes?” I mean, pastor, didn’t you say you wanted a coffee shop in our church? Yes, I said that and I do want that… Someone might rightfully ask, “Isn’t it good to cater to people’s preferences, particularly people who don’t know God? Don’t we want to be sensitive to those who are seeking after God?” That’s a great question. Without doubt we want to see as many people in our communities as possible come to Christ. But then I think about what the Bible says. We read Romans 3, where the Bible makes it very clear that there is no one who seeks God. In our hearts, we are running away from God. But the Bible tells us that God is seeking worshipers (John 4) and that Jesus came to seek the lost (Luke 19). So it’s clear that Jesus has been seeking sinners for thousands of years. He’s pretty good at it—far better than any attractions or allurements we could ever assemble .So if we really long to see people come to Christ in the church, then what shall we do? Let’s make our community together as God-centered as possible. Let’s do everything we can to put the wonders of God’s glory, holiness, majesty, justice, kindness, wrath, grace—and all the glorious attributes of God we saw last fall—on display in the church every single week in everything we do. We want to show people the most biblical, holistic, clear, comprehensive, captivating vision of God we possibly can. And when we do, we can trust Him to do the seeking. So where’s my heart in all of this… Well first, lets understand this… Jesus has all authority over this church. Not me,us. He must be our center. He is the king. He has all authority over nature… he walks on water and calms the storms. He has all authority over, nations. He has all authority over disease. He speaks to the blind, and heals the lame to walk. He has all authority over demons. They do whatever Jesus tells them to. He has all authority over sin. His authority gives us the ability to resit sin and temptation. And He has all authority over death. Jeuss is Lord. And that must be - without compromise - our center. And if there is one thing the gospel denies is for us to submit our lives to HIs withtity over all. Listen, No one decides to make Jesus Lord. Jesus is Lord regardless of what anybody decides. Regardless of what you decide, Jesus has died on the cross. He has risen from the grave. He is Lord. Philippians 2:9–11 makes it clear: “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth. Every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” That pretty much covers it. The question is not whether or not you or I will make Jesus Lord. The question is will you submit to His Lordship now, or will you submit to His Lordship when it is too late? So what does that mean for me as your pastor? And the truth is—my heart is relational. I care deeply about people. I care about walking with people through joy and through pain. I care about names, not just numbers. I believe ministry moves at the pace of relationship, not results. But even more than that, I believe God is calling me—and calling us—to be a people who are deeply rooted in presence and boldly committed to mission. I carry a burden not just for the people who already know Jesus—but for those who don’t. Not just for the sheep in the fold—but for the ones still lost in the dark. Not just for a healthy church—but for a multiplying one. I am a church planter at heart. Not just in strategy or title—but in spirit. I believe God has called me to seek the lost, to disciple the found, and to equip the faithful to go. And I don’t believe that calling is mine alone. I believe it belongs to all of us. I believe this church is a sending church. A planting church. A disciple-making church. Even now, while we’re still mobile, still stretching, still growing—God is preparing us to send and to scatter and to reach. Over the course of the next two days, were going to discern how that looks. And remember, its not about preference, but presence. We all have an idea and a desire for the church to go to the next step. But that next step doesn’t come from our ideas, but from our centering on Christ, and trusting and believing that he will work through us to accomplish His will and to build his kingdom. Now, for the staff. My expectation comes form the book relational leadership. The book I gave you, and I’ll have one for you Pua soon, is a mirror for us to see if we’re becoming the kind of people who can carry the weight of God’s work at Falcon.Let me be clear—these aren’t preferences. These are postures. They aren’t about performance. They’re about presence. The kind of presence that reflects the character of Christ. We all have ideas and dreams for what the “next step” of our church should be. But hear me—the next step doesn’t begin with better ideas. It begins with deeper surrender. It starts by centering on Christ. Trusting that He will lead. And believing that He will work through us—as we walk in unity, humility, and dependence. So let me walk you through the expectations I’m holding myself to—and that I’m asking you to hold, too.

Be Generous–Grateful We give because Christ gave. We lead from a place of gratitude, not grumbling—thankful for the privilege to serve and quick to pour out what’s been poured into us.

Be Outgoing and Overflowing We initiate connection. We don’t wait for people to come to us—we go to them, and we serve out of the overflow of what Christ is doing in us, not the fumes of burnout.

Embrace Passionate Creativity We don’t do things just to get them done. We bring the best of ourselves to the table—energy, thought, joy—because the church is worth our holy imagination.

Embrace a Balanced Work Ethic We work hard, but we rest well. We don’t idolize ministry, but we don’t coast either—faithfulness looks like showing up and following through with integrity.

Be Extremely Flexible Ministry will never go according to plan. So we stay open-handed, flexible in schedule but firm in spirit—willing to pivot for the sake of people and the purposes of God.

Embrace a Green-Apple Attitude We’re not overripe. We’re not bitter. We stay fresh, teachable, and full of joy. A green apple still has room to grow—and so do we.

Embrace a God-Can Faith We don’t lead with fear. We lead with expectation, believing that God is able—abundantly able—to do more than we can ask or imagine.

Be a Lover of Laughter We take God seriously—but not ourselves. Laughter is holy when it comes from joy, and joy is strength when it flows from trust.

Embrace a Lifesaver Mentality We’re not here to build comfort; we’re here to pull people out of the deep. Every conversation, every Sunday, every meeting could be someone’s lifeline.

Be Holy-Spirit Reliant We don’t move forward unless He leads. We pray more than we plan, we listen more than we talk, and we walk by faith—not by formula.

Be Pro-Jesus and Anti-Sin We don’t flirt with compromise. We lift up Jesus without apology and we fight sin in our own lives first—because purity is not optional in leadership.

Be an Intercessor for God Prayer is not preparation for the work—it is the work. If we’re not praying for our people, we’re not really pastoring them.

Breathe Proactive Loyalty We don’t just show up for each other—we fight for each other. We cover each other in grace. We protect the culture of unity. We stay in the room when it gets hard. So that’s my heart. That’s what I long to see in us—not just as a staff, but as a people. And I would defiantly ask the board to encompass these values as well. As we together move forward as one in Christ, and one in another… for the sake of the community we live in. Amen? *

Faithfulness

In the prayerful Scripture that we’ve been studying over the past few weeks in I Thessalonians. Paul prays, 23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We’ve learned that holiness begins with God’s peace. His Peace means wholeness and completeness. It’s sufficient, it’s all we need. His peace brings with it atonement and Atonement is the only ground of salvation, and that it is sufficient for every individual in the world today.

After we receive this peace through the atonement of Jesus Christ, we then are sustained by His grace. Receiving His grace is an everyday process. We learned that His grace is sufficient, we learned that this grace is transforming us from one degree of glory to another, and in the process of this graceful transition, Jesus is manifesting himself within us to the praise of His glorious grace. That grace is through faith in Jesus Christ alone.

He must serve us first, and serve us daily. Before we can ever rightly serve others. But then Paul finishes his prayer with one trustworthy reminder… he writes: 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it. It’s an amazing reminder in our lives when we can say “God is faithful” and “we can wholeheartedly trust in Him.” There are times when as a minister I got to make tough decisions and even in the midst of those tough decisions, I must believe with a trusting heart that God is faithful.

Because, Faithfulness and trust go hand in hand but what we learn is that when it comes to trust and faithfulness, fear is standing in clear opposition as the chief enemy and divider of faithfulness and trust. Fear is the great immobilizer. Fear is what paralyzed the Israelite army before Goliath. An entire army stood still, over fearing one man. Fear from the disciples is what woke Jesus up in the middle of a storm.

Fear caused Peter to deny Jesus during the passion and fear has been the thorn in the side of the church that desires to move forward, but can not and will not because it has been paralyzed by fear. And when we let fear go unchecked in our lives, and we give it more rope in our lives and we place fear on our mantle of truth rather than faith… Fear will guide our thoughts, our decisions, our actions and even will decrease how much faith we put in Jesus Christ.

Paul says, The one who calls you is faithful. And he will do it. So the question isn’t, “is God faithful.” The question we must ask this morning is this, How do I trust in His faithfulness and walk in it by faith and not by fear? Let’s start with this: We recognize God’s faithfulness through a local church body living out His faithfulness towards one another. Meaning, “We overcome our fear and remain faithful by reassuring one another in the local church.

There are four main cords to the rope of faithfulness within the local church? Living a life of Gratitude - I am thankful for you. I mentioned a few sermons ago, I had begun to place at the end of my text messages and emails, Grateful. I am grateful. As I said, I do that on purpose. I am purposely living out and seeking to live a life of gratitude. It takes time.

The Lord is changing my attitude from selfishness and pride to one of being grateful and thankful. And that’s the first step of gratitude.. be intentional and put into practice. Trust me, when most people hear words of encouragement. The tone of their voice changes, their attitude changes. Recently, an Eighteen year-old photographer and student, Shea Glover, decided to "film “what I thought was beautiful." Without intending to, she has conducted an amazing social experiment on the effect of simple positivity and a compliment.

The reactions of those she videoed were perfect! Every person came into that photo shoot with what looked like a fake smile. As if they were hiding something. And they were… they were hiding their happiness, they were hiding their confidence. But during the shoot the photographer would say to them, you’re beautiful… and then she captured something amazing… with those three words, you are beautiful their face changed from uncertainty to raptured joy.

It’s so amazing to me how a little encouragement can become a chain reaction of praise and thankfulness. The Bible reminds us that “Gentle words bring life and health; a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.” Pr. 15:4 “Kind words are like honey–sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.”pr. 16:24 A person's words can be life-giving water; words of true wisdom are as refreshing as a bubbling brook. Pr. 18:4 Unceasing Gratitude is what cultivates unity.

Gratitude helps people feel more positive, it builds a foundation of understanding and it builds confidence in one another to improve relationships. When it comes to unity and fellowship, Gratitude is what begins to build the threshold of relationship. It’s the porch to intentional relationships. If we’re looking for people to be a part of our live and to let us into thier lives, I begins with letting them know that the are worthy.

It begins by letting them know they matter and that they belong. Why not begin to build that doorway, the doorway into each other’s loves with appreciation. Fear in our life will have a way to exit when the door of gratitude is lived out within community. The second cord of faithfulness lived out within the church is fellowship. John piper writes: Fellowship is a mutual bond that Christian’s have with Christ that puts us in a deep, eternal relationship with one another.

So after gratitude, I am thankful for you. We put the practice of fellowship into place, I want to spend time with you. When alicia in 2004 began talking. That relationship began by spending 3 months on the phone encouraging one another. We would spend hours talking to one another through AIM, and we would video chat through MSN Messenger. She would have a bad day and I would be there to encourage her, and vice verse.

But the one thing that I believe drove our relationship closer was the desire to spend time in fellowship with each other. In the Greek language there is an interesting word called, Koi-known-ya. Koi - known - ya. Simply, koi-known-ia means fellowship. But it’s deeper than just fellowship. In the book of acts chapter 2 verse 42 that we read at our annual meeting. It says: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship (koinonia), to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” But you can also find that word in two other places in the NT…

the 2nd book of Corinthians 9:13. “They will glorify God because of your submission flowing from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution (koinonia) for them and for all others.” in Philippians 3:10 he writes: “That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share (koinonia) his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” Acts focuses on relationship among believers, Corinthians used fellowship to express generosity within community, and Paul used koinonia to describe what connects us as a local body to God and what we share with one another, our faith in Christ.

So, koinonia can be simply defined like this: koinonia is Fellowship that is lived out in relationship between God and those of us who believe in Jesus and share new life with each other through Christ. It’s being intentional about showing up. Being present with one another. I love the fact that we can record our sermons and services online. I love the fact we can go live and give the world a taste of what we do here…

But it doesn’t and should never replaced intentional fellowship within these walls. We can’t as a local church live out koinonia by not being present and showing up to work out our salvation, to live out grace and forgiveness, and actively be people of gratitude with one another. Fear of fellowship will always drive us away from each other. Fear will always look for the individual to walk alone. But walking in fellowship will always build the foundation for a living community that seeks unity through the shared new life of being in Christ.

Thirdly, conquering the fear of faithfulness takes intentional empathy towards one another. There is one truth I have held near my heart as a christian and as a pastor. And it’s this: The world will never understand what we do and why we do it. There is no way the world can empathize with our calling to walk obedient lives to Jesus Christ and also to be led and to trust in the Holy Spirit.

However, one mark of our faithfulness should be, that within the fellowship of the church should be able to empathizes with one another. The world might not understand our faith, but we should as a family of faith be able empathize with one another. What empathy does is that it connects us to one another so that we know were not alone when we struggle. Empathy couples us to one another and we walk this faithful life in unity.

My favorite sociologist Brenee Brown once wrote: “Empathy has no script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of ‘You’re not alone.’” Isn’t that what Jesus teaches us in our life? He tells us, my presence is with you.. You’re not alone. A few months ago I preached on compassion and there was a moment where Jesus had landed his boat and saw a large crowd, and he had compassion on them because they were like a sheep without a Shepard.

He said they were people confused and helpless. That means they were people who seems to be beaten down by life and every time they tried to get up they were beaten down again. And so, Jesus had compassion on them. What greater message than this, I Jesus, the Nazarene, from the town of the least of these, through the line of David, the least of the brothers of Jesse. I see you and My presence is with you…

You’re not alone. Compassion is like taking the Spiritual fruit of kindness (being friendly, generous and considerate), coupling it with empathy (the ability to understand and share the feelings of another) and that leads us to living out compassion… which means to suffer with another. I Know what you are going through.. you’re not alone. You see, compassion, Changes the way we live for God and for one another. There is no right or wrong way when it comes to compassion.

Just be present to bring presence. Just show up. Kerry Willis in his book Showing up said, “what we want is the privilege of relationship in our community.” If our primary purpose is to carry the presence of Christ in our lives, shouldn’t we be carrying him to others so that he can manifest himself within us and through us. Meeting the needs of our community, and our neighbors is the key that unlocks many more opportunities to love, to be a friend and to be there.

The only wrong way to compassion is not showing compassion at all. And that’s fear. Fear will drive you away from being compassionate towards others. Finally and lastly, blessing is the final part of casting the fear of faithfulness away from our lives. Gratitude, I am thankful for you. That’s the threshold, the porch and door into faithfulness. Fellowship, I want to spend time with you. That’s laying a solid foundation for unity.

Empathy, I know what you’re going through. That is intentionally walking in life and relationship with one another and understanding the walk and being compassionate towards one another. And blessing is saying, you are a blessing to me. How encouraging it is to receive a card from someone in the church, or a phone call from a pastor, or a text from myself, or a phone call, letter, email, text or visit from anyone in the church saying.

I’m praying for you. This week the Lord laid on my heart a family that’s very close to my heart. I texted them, I don’t want to sound weird, but I miss you. And i did. I fervently prayed for them to know the love of God this week. Yes, Shepards miss their flock. For those of you not here.. and watching online. you are missed and you are loved. Don’t make it a habit to stay at home, don’t make it a habit to not live out your faith within community.

Whether here or some were else, find a community to live your faith out in. And learn to see them as a blessing, not as a curse. Otherwise we will fall into the trap of fear, and disunity and unfaithfulness. It’s very easy for us to disconnect than to connect. It’s easier to live for ourselves and not for community. Do not let the enemy tell you that you do not belong.

Sometimes to overcome fear we need more than just compassion, gratitude and fellowship. We need to be reminded that those we love are blessings to us. You want a blessing… great. reach out to someone in the church. God has already provided you with a blessing, do we see others as a blessing? A church will grow not because of fancy programs. It will grow when we realize that Jesus has been the greatest blessing to us all, and we want to intentionally share him with one another.

Yes, That’s living out a life of faithfulness. For the most part, fear is what keeps us from living faithfully. Fear will always paralyze any effort for faithfulness. And fear within the people will eventually starve the people spiritually. So, as you leave here today ask yourself…. Where does my hope lie? Because if your hope is anchored in Christ, and you are attached to that anchor through, gratitude, fellowship, compassion and blessing, you will have nothing to fear.

Because 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it. If his name is faithful, let our name be grateful. Amen. *