Welcome to Your Life

So, on that little video, just recapping the year, sometimes you can almost forget everything that's happened in a year and not even remember the enormity of everything that's happened.

So, let me ask you this question.

When you look back at the year that was, do you generally feel a sense of encouragement or discouragement with the way things are headed?

And that's generally a leading question.

And I realize it may depend if you're a really optimistic person, you're like, it's awesome, it's all going well.

But I'm guessing most of us would be on the more discouraging side.

Certainly there have been health concerns throughout the year and differences that have become political, in some cases religious, around people's health positions.

And that's been maybe a little disheartening.

Certainly there have been some financial tremors and there were racial tensions.

There's increasing crime, according to some.

Others say that they're just comparing it to 2020 stats when everyone stayed home, so there isn't really an increase in crime.

And so people even argue about whether or not there's an increase in crime, and there's certainly political divide, and we could talk about probably some personal things.

Some of us say that's all out there, and that's all kind of beyond what I even am concerned about because right now I'm struggling to keep some things together in the midst of everything.

And so here's a simple question: How do you respond when things around us are discouraging?

Well, one option would be to simply ignore it, to simply say, I'm going to numb whatever emotions I have around it, whatever pain I have by either recreation or substance or something to try to ignore that.

I'm going to throw myself into work.

I'm going to do something that allows me not to think about it a lot.

For some, maybe it's obsessing about it.

This is the person who's constantly looking at the news, constantly figuring out what's going on and knows the latest about everything and is up to date about it because they just obsess about it.

For some of us, maybe there's a sense of despair.

You don't ignore it, you don't obsess about it, you just feel hopeless around it.

But what I'd like to suggest today is that God is a God of hope and he does not intend for people who follow him to live without hope, even in a discouraging time.

Let me just show you one of the Psalms.

This is Psalm 63, and this isn't the text that we'll be studying today, but I want to just give you a psalm here that speaks of the hope.

Here's what it says Psalm 63, beginning in verse 1 You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you.

I thirst for you.

My whole being longs for you in a dry and parched land where there is no water.

I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory, because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.

Your right hand upholds me.

Now I read that because this was a psalm that was written in a time of despair.

And the answer is I cling to you.

And here's my guess.

Even when I say that, even when I read that psalm, even after the introduction, that many of us glossed over a little bit.

And what I mean is I'm reading it and you start thinking about what's for lunch today?

You know, what am I gonna do later on?

And and part of the reason is because it's almost a little bit of a Sunday school answer to say cling to God, hoping God in the midst of this.

And here's what I mean.

If you've ever been in Sunday school, or you know, we don't call it Sunday school in our church, you know, we're too cool, I guess, for that, so it's Kidsburg, but yeah, you know, whatever it is.

And you ask the kids a simple question and you say something like, What color is the sky?

And the kids all think, well, the sky's blue, gray if you live in Pittsburgh.

But I know I shouldn't say blue or gray because I'm in church, I should say Jesus.

So the sky is Jesus.

And you're like, no, the sky, there, that was not a trick question.

And and sometimes what happens is when you have a spiritual mindset, you get these spiritual answers like, oh, it's it's hopeless out there.

Cling to Jesus, cling to God, hope in God.

And it's true, but sometimes it doesn't help us in the moment because what happens is we're we're we're hearing it and we're saying, ah, but but that doesn't change all of the things that are around me today.

And so what I'd like to do today is point you to 1 Thessalonians 5.

You heard it read, verses 16 through 25, and some verses that at first may not seem like they speak about hope, but they speak about welcoming, and I'm going to say three things into your life, but I believe that this is the posture of hope.

When you welcome something, what do you do?

You open your arms.

Somebody comes to your home, you welcome them, often with a hug, with an embrace, by saying, I extend myself to you.

And the opposite of welcoming something is to stand with your arms crossed and say, I'm not, I'm not reciprocated, I'm not interested right now.

And in 1 Thessalonians 5, 1 Thessalonians written to a church that was struggling in mock, Paul exhorts the Thessalonians to say, I want you to welcome these things into your life as you are experiencing some of the things that are disheartening, discouraging, maybe around you.

And so here's the first thing.

I'm just going to say simply, this is verse 16 through 18, to welcome life as it comes.

The verses simply say this: rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

And this is something that, again, if if somebody tells you just give thanks in everything, you say, Are you kidding me?

Do you know what I've been through?

Do you know what hardships I'm experiencing right now?

And yet, here is the exhortation to say, in everything, find a reason for thanks.

In everything, rejoice, pray constantly or about everything continually, because God is doing something in our midst.

God is doing something in your midst.

And this mindset to say, I welcome life as it comes, says that sometimes God is doing something that I can't see and I can't understand.

And in fact, what I might think or perceive as being a negative, God may actually be using in a way, even though it is negative, I'm not saying it's not negative, but God may be using it in a way to bring about greater positives than we even can understand at the moment.

And so there's a mindset when you have faith that says, if God is good and if God is in control, then I can welcome life as it comes, even if right now it's not pleasing to me.

There's an old story, I think I've told this a time or two around here, but it's about a man who lived in a village, an ancient village, and one day his horse ran away.

And in the ancient villages to have a horse was your economic livelihood.

And all the villagers came around and they're like, Oh, you're such an unfortunate man that your horse ran away.

And the old man in the village said, Well, we'll see.

A few days later, his horse came back with three wild horses with it, and all the villagers were like, You're such a lucky man, fortunate man.

You now have three horses, four horses.

You can do more than you ever thought.

And he said, Well, we'll see.

A few days later, his son was out riding one of the new horses, and he was bucked from the horse and broke his leg.

And all the villagers were saying, Oh, you're so unfortunate.

And again, the man said, Well, we'll see.

A few days later, the military came through and were conscripting all of the young men who lived in the village to military service.

And all the villagers said, You're so fortunate.

And again, he said, We'll see.

Do you see the mindset?

We sometimes have a mindset that says, This event took place, it means all of this.

Instead of being able to say, I can take a view that says, if God is good and if God is in control, then I can choose to accept life as it comes to say, God, whatever you send, I'll accept.

Not that I really have a choice, but but my mindset will be to say, God, I accept what you send because I believe that you're good and I believe that you're in control.

And so whatever is disheartening, personally or globally in this world, is not something that is beyond your hand.

And I realize that that's not always easy to hold on to in the midst of something that's difficult.

But if you and I can welcome life as it comes, then we'll have a state of mind that isn't destroyed by every difficulty.

I remember I've uh when I was first working as a pastor, I was serving this little church in Chicago as the youth pastor, young adult pastor, recreation person, slash, slash.

It was one of these multi-jobs where you did it did everything, uh part-time custodian.

I mean, it was the whole thing.

And and the first person, first couple that kind of invited me in to their marriage train wreck.

I'll never forget it.

It was a couple that had been coming to the church, and the guy had been cheating on his wife.

She found out, she came over and talked with my wife and me about it, and then I went and talked to the guy, and they ended up staying together.

And a few years later, we saw them after we had moved and taken a new role.

And and when we saw them, I'll never forget what she said to me.

She she she looked at me.

My wife and I were with them as a couple, and she looked at me and she said, you know, I would never go through that again.

I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

It was the hardest pain of my life.

But then she said this.

She said, But God has done something in our marriage that has made our marriage better than it ever would have been without that.

And as a young kind of person doing ministry, it flew in the face of some of my natural way of thinking, but but it reminded me of this truth.

And I'm not suggesting that everyone needs to stay in a marriage when there's been unfaithfulness.

There's certainly a time to say enough and I'm done.

I'm not suggesting that.

She chose to stay, but she was able to look back and say, what was horrible, even though I wouldn't want to go through it again.

God used in a way that was good.

Do you have a mindset today that says I'll welcome life as it comes because I don't have the sovereignty or the wisdom to see all that's happening, and God does, and I can trust his goodness.

So that's the first thing to welcome into your life.

Here's a second thing.

And I'm going to say that we need to welcome the convicting work of the Holy Spirit into our lives.

And this is in verses 19 through 24.

It says this, do not quench the spirit.

And clearly, this word for quench is just a word that means to extinguish a fire.

And so it's speaking about the work of the spirit.

Sometimes in the Bible, the Holy Spirit is seen as fire, sometimes as wind.

It's in different ways, but but there's clearly a sense here of saying, don't extinguish the work of God in you, the spirit of God's work in you.

And then it says this do not treat prophecies with contempt, but test them all.

Hold on to what's good, reject every kind of evil.

Then it says this may God Himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through.

May your whole spirit, body, and soul be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, this is a packed little section, but there are a lot of things that are significant here.

First, if you have hit a point in your spiritual life where you feel a little dead, a little bored, a little bit like what's going on, I can almost guarantee you that you have stopped responding to the Spirit of God.

You have quenched the work of God in you in some substantial way.

And what happens for some of us is we don't understand or realize the convicting work of the Spirit anymore.

Now, in the New Testament, the work of the Holy Spirit is to convict us of sin.

This is what we learn in John chapter 16.

John 16 · chapter mention

If you read John 16, you'll read about the work of the Holy Spirit and how he shows us our sin.

This is what opens this up to the gospel originally.

So what happens is one day we're living and we're saying, I'm good, I'm okay, I'm better than other people, and then the work of the Holy Spirit shows us that we aren't good enough and that we need a savior.

And then we see Jesus, and that's the initial work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, drawing us to God, showing us our sin, showing us the need for a savior.

But there's an ongoing work of the Spirit that continues to convict us of sin.

And when we thwart that work of God in us, what happens is we get dead to hearing the voice of God, to recognizing the voice of God.

And what happens is all of a sudden, we don't respond to what God does in us anymore.

Now it says here, don't treat prophecies with contempt.

Historically speaking, there are generally two trains of thought, and there's nuances to this, I'm oversimplifying clearly, but there are generally two trains of thought in terms of biblical interpretation when it comes to prophecy.

Some people see this as an immediate revelation of God, that God reveals something to you in the moment and you speak it as a way of saying, I now have something from God that I'm sharing.

That's one view.

The other view, and I take more this view, the second view, is that prophecy is working through and applying the text of Scripture generally to people.

Now you may say, why does that matter?

And I'm not going to go down this rabbit trail right now, other than this, and that is in the second view, the view that I take, you're tying what is prophetic to the actual revealed word of God, not just something you say.

And if you're interested, there's a podcast on our website that we did last year when a bunch of people were saying that they prophesied that Donald Trump would return to office.

Like Christian people were making these prophecies that clearly didn't come true.

And we talked about prophecy and spent 45 minutes kind of diving into these views and how it works.

And if you search that in the search bar, you can find that for more information on that.

But but here's why I want to just just spend a moment on this.

When I say welcome the convicting work of the Holy Spirit into your life, what some of us do is we shut down the application of God's word in our lives by either not being around people or inviting anybody to speak into our lives, which is the application of Scripture.

This is why small groups are such a key focus here.

Because you can come and hear, and I can do my best to say, here's the application.

But sometimes when you're in a group and you have people and you can talk about what's actually going on, people can say, well, here's a verse that applies and talk about the implications.

Now you get the chance at that point to say, is this of God?

Is this really what God says?

And it's a step beyond scripture in the sense that it isn't like a clear, this is what the Bible says.

So for example, uh, I think the Bible says very clearly that Christians are not to um negate the Sabbath day, okay?

It's a Ten Commandment.

Now, most people would say that's transferred to Sunday kind of a thing, and there's different ways to apply it, okay?

And all I'm saying is you can't argue that that's one of the Ten Commandments.

It's like in the Bible, but you can debate what it means all day long, but sooner or later, if you're in a group of people and they say, I think at a minimum, it means that you set aside some of the day to worship God or some of your normal work so that you're not just on a treadmill of work.

What they're doing is they're applying the word and speaking prophetically into your life.

Okay, does that make sense?

But here's again what happens, and I've seen it over and over, and that is people withdraw from community because they don't want anybody to tell them anything.

People step away from church because when they come to church, they feel conviction and they say, I don't want conviction.

What you're doing is you're quenching the work of the Holy Spirit in that moment, and you're saying, I do not actually want to let the Spirit of God speak to me, because I don't want to hear or be convicted of some change in direction in me.

And one of the ways that our current culture gets around this is by uh a sense of self-righteousness.

Let me explain.

I was away for a good chunk of the fall, and while I was away, I didn't really have much internet.

I had very limited cell service, and some of that was very intentional, so that I wouldn't just be constantly in my same uh train of thought.

One of the things that shocked me a little bit, shocked my system when I came back and started uh um engaging in internet and TV again, um, which even saying that I'm like, why have I?

Um but um but one of the things that that has struck me was the amount of outrage that exists in the media over everything right now.

I talked a little bit about this last week, but but but the what happens is, especially if you if you watch any cable news or you you read different websites that are on different sides of an issue, is they don't just say, well, here's a point of view.

It's I have a point of view, and everyone over there is absolutely idiotic and ridiculous.

But you and me, because we think the same, we've got it figured out.

But here's what really struck me.

I listened to you know some news podcast things I listened to, read some websites, and then I went and did the same thing with some of the Christian podcasts and and websites that I go to.

And do you know what is existing on the Christian websites too?

Outrage.

Oh, those people, they're the bad ones, they're awful.

And here's here's my takeaway.

Why do we do that?

Because if I can say somebody else is bad, somebody else is stupid, somebody else is an idiot, then what can I do?

I can say, I'm good, I don't need to ever be convicted of anything.

Because other people are the problem.

Do you see how that works?

And so what happens is we don't end up responding to the work of the Spirit.

We quench it because of how we handle outrage in our own lives.

And sometimes what that means is that we end up just simply saying, God, I'm not going to listen to what you've already convicted me of.

In Psalm 19, there are a few words that are used for sin.

This is Psalm 19, verse 12 and following.

Psalms 19:12

It says, But who can discern their own errors?

Forgive my hidden faults.

Keep your servant from willful sins.

And the word errors, there is a word that connotes this idea of mistakes, unintentional, inadvertent things that we do.

Hidden faults means something that's hidden or concealed.

But then there's a third category, presumption or defiance.

And one of the things, if we want to be the people God has intended us to be and be hopeful, that we need to do is welcome the convicting work of the Holy Spirit into our lives.

Now, it isn't just sin.

Notice that it says, May the God of peace sanctify you.

Sanctify is a word that means set apart.

So to be sanctified means you're set apart for God's purposes.

And clearly that happens by responding to the Spirit.

Spirit's convicting work in our lives and saying, God, I'm going to stop some of the sinful things.

But there's also a sense in which being set apart for God's purpose means that we're used in ways that God wants to use us.

And sometimes what that means is that God's going to prompt us, call us to do something, say something, live in a way that doesn't make perfect sense to us because we're stepping out.

In fact, uh sometimes I mentioned this earlier, if you you're a little uh bored with your Christian experience, it's at this point.

Sometimes it's around sin.

Sometimes it's because you have have not tried the things that God has asked you to do.

Every time God calls you to something, you're like, I could never do that.

I just take the Sabbath example.

I could never take a day off work.

My work would never get done.

I would never be enough.

Well, well, what happens if you say, okay, God, I will take you at your word and believe that as the Maker, I have a day in me that should be set aside for worship, for for friendship, for restoration, for rest, not just for production.

Do you see?

So sometimes it's like, I don't want to, but but if you took everything God says seriously, it would change you.

But but but there's also at times that this prompting that the Spirit of God will do in you through scripture, through the voice of people interpreting it and speaking into your life, where it will call you to something that may be part of your adventure.

This fall, uh, my wife and I went to a family wedding.

It was our nephew who was getting married in the Detroit area.

And we used to live in Michigan, so we know the roads going to Detroit.

And we were driving my wife's parents with us to the wedding.

They're a little older and don't want to drive that far anymore.

They'll drive closer, but they said this is too far.

Evidently, somewhere in the last couple years, I got the designation non-designated driver with my father-in-law because I guess I drive um faster than he prefers somebody to drive.

And so I was uh not driving, I was sitting in the in the backseat, my wife was driving, and I love this.

After this trip, she became also a designated non-driver.

She evidently drives uh the speed limit as well and is just too fast, but I digress.

So I'm sitting in the backseat, my wife's in the front seat, she's driving, my father-in-law's in the front seat, I'm in the backseat with my mother-in-law, and my wife says, Hey, could you pull up on the GPS the directions so that so that we know how to get to the hotel we're going to and everything?

And again, I had a general idea because I'd lived in the area of where we should go, and I pull up the GPS, and when we come to a fork in the road where you take one highway this way and one highway this way, it told us to go the highway that was completely counterintuitive and took us in a direction that was at best tangential to where we wanted to go.

Have any of you had this experience?

And I'm sitting there thinking, this makes no sense to me.

But I'm just sitting in the back seat chilling.

I'm like, hey, GPS says go this way.

You know, you guys knock yourselves out on this trip.

You do it how you want to do it.

So so so we took the GPS route.

It went out and around and came back to the hotel.

And later I had to go pick up one of our sons from an airport because he was flying in to be at the wedding.

And I took the road that I would have gone on, and it was completely packed with construction, and the GPS had taken us out and around and saved us probably an hour of torment sitting in a construction jam.

Now, here's my point.

Sometimes the Spirit of God will prompt you to something that when you're sitting there makes no sense to you.

You'll say, No, no, no, I need to go there.

Why am I going out here?

But it is the work of God sometimes to do things that don't make sense to us, to achieve his purposes in and through us that are better than you and I can understand.

So, 1 Thessalonians 5 says, Welcome life as it comes.

God, whatever you send, I'll accept.

It tells us to welcome the sanctifying work of the Spirit into our lives.

God, whatever you ask, I'll do.

But there's one more thing that I think this text encourages us as we uh start into this year, and that is, I believe, that it encourages us to welcome others into our lives.

And we see this because here's what it says: verse 25.

It says this in 26, brothers and sisters, pray for us.

Simple exhortation saying, pray for those engaged most in ministry.

Not that everyone shouldn't be engaged in ministry, but Paul's saying, pray for us.

We're in a spiritual battle.

There are things going on here.

And then he says this greet all God's people with a holy kiss.

Now, there are some people who like this verse and not for good reasons.

You know, this is the junior high boy who's like, I'm just doing what the Bible says.

It's like, no, no, no, okay.

If you go into the lobby and try to greet somebody with a holy kiss, that is not culturally appropriate.

Just so we're clear.

Okay, in our culture, holy kiss does not mean exactly what it meant then.

And this is one of the actually great examples of how easy it is to interpret cultural maxims in the Bible.

To greet each other with a holy kiss in that culture meant to welcome people into your life, to say, you are welcome here.

We have an affection for you, an affinity for you.

And so people would just kind of culturally, and you've probably seen this in the Middle East, kind of do the dap kiss on both sides, and that was a holy kiss.

It was a symbol, much like a handshake was pre-pandemic, of saying, you're welcome here.

Now, by the way, it's a fist pump, is the new handshake.

That's probably a good change overall, but I digress.

The thing that you know when you read this is that's not saying that every time you meet somebody, you should kiss them.

It's saying every time you meet people, extend warmth to people.

Now, why do I say welcome others into your lives?

Sometimes, and again, Paul was writing to a church that was in a little bit of a muck.

Sometimes what happens is you can be in a situation where you say, I'm just going to hunker down with the people that are in my immediate circle already.

And to welcome people into your lives means to say, I'm going to welcome new people that God brings in the coming year into my life.

In fact, for some of us, some of our best friends are people that we hardly know or haven't met yet.

I mean, think about how cool that is.

To say maybe the best friend that you will have in the next five or ten years of your life is somebody who you don't even consider to be a friend yet.

But some of us will miss that because we don't welcome people into our lives.

So welcome people into our lives may mean to welcome people into our lives that we've uh kind of said they're dead to me.

Do you know what I mean when I say dead to me?

It means, in essence, I've written somebody off.

Some of us have written people off.

Maybe somebody who did something, said something, and we've just said, I you can't be in my life anymore.

Maybe we need to rethink that and and practice forgiveness and welcome people back into our lives.

Now, again, there are times for boundaries, there are times to say, you can't do to me what you did to me, so therefore you don't have access to me.

I'm I'm not talking about that scenario.

But there are times that that we never made it official, but we just got hurt and got petty, and so we've written some people out of our lives.

Maybe we need to welcome them back into our lives.

Maybe we need to welcome people who are different from us.

Or welcome people who haven't trusted Jesus to our lives.

Some of the stats about people who become Christians having all of their friends become Christians are overwhelming, and sometimes just saying, How can I welcome people to my life who don't have the same hope that I have?

What would be different about how I'd live if I did that?

You see, people bring heartache, but they also bring joy and depth to our lives.

There's a song that uh came out this year, and I I know I quote music a fair amount, but I do that because they're kind of like the poets of our day.

And this is from the band Howdy, and my kids keep me a little more current than I would be otherwise.

Um and this band had a song that came out this last year called Magnolia Tree.

And in it, the lead singer, Charlie Martin, has has basically said that this is a song about his dad and about the relationship that was strained between he and his dad.

And one point he sings this he says, Never really met my friends.

We knew each other from a distance.

Ask about him, and I miss him.

Think about it and I miss it.

Road our bikes to the tom thumb, hot summers where I come from.

Cold bud in a solo cup, fresh air on the radio, in the shade of the back porch.

Mama said she's mad at you.

After dark on the hi-fi, is it gonna be alright?

Crank it up to ever long.

Always was your favorite song.

Air drums in the living room, early memories of you.

And then the chorus comes back.

Magnolia tree, you said you could see you in me.

I was surprised.

I could have used you in my life, but you were blind.

You were blind.

So somehow he feels abandoned by his dad, and then he holds on to these memories.

And what he says about the song at one point is he says, This is a song about choosing to accept the best in somebody who's let you down, and say, I've chosen instead of saying they weren't there or they did this or this wasn't right, to say, these are the good things that I can celebrate.

And do you know what Howdy does in this song, in a sense, is they practice, greet each other with a holy kiss.

Because he's saying to his dad and to anybody who has daddy issues, which is 90% of most people, that it is good to say, I can celebrate what's good without having to sacrifice anything else that's significant.

And so here's my question today.

And that is, do you have a closed or open posture as you approach this year?

Are you willing to say, God, I'll accept life as it comes.

Whatever you send, I'll accept.

Are you willing to say, I will welcome the convicting work of the Holy Spirit, God, whatever you ask, I'll do.

And are you willing to even say, God, whoever you send, I'll welcome into my life?

Because those are the postures of hope.

The postures that say, in essence, my arms are open, and I believe that God is good even when things may not always feel like it.

And as a church, my hope is that as we go through this coming year, that we would be people who welcome life as it comes collectively, that instead of being overwhelmed and despairing over the muck of our world, we would say, but there's a God who's in charge.

And we don't have to be hopeless in the midst of this.

I my hope is that as a church, we'd be attentive to the opportunities that God puts in front of us.

This Christmas Eve reminded me, not that I needed to be reminded, but it reminded me that a church is meant to be outward-facing.

And I think during COVID, sometimes it was easy to become inward-facing, to say, we're just trying to kind of take care of the people that are already here.

But but the call of the church is to say, how can we be outward facing?

And are we going to be attentive to the opportunities that God gives us?

And then are we going to welcome people who are different, who think differently, behave differently, people that that that could become some of our best friends.

And so personally, there's a challenge to say, will you be a person who's welcoming of these things?

But also corporately there's a challenge.

And the reason that you and I can be welcoming to people and to God's sanctifying work and to life as it comes is because God has been so welcoming with you and me when we don't deserve it.

The message of Christianity is not try harder, do better so that God will accept you.

It's it's it's you are at the end of your trying.

And God has done for you, done for me what I can't do in Jesus Christ.

He's welcomed me, he's welcomed you when you didn't deserve it, and now he says, Will you welcome life, welcome my work, and welcome others.

And I believe that if we collectively live this, this year we can see God's hand in great ways in the year ahead.

And I believe if you individually can live this, that you will see and experience hope, whatever your year has started like.

God, I ask today that we would see your faithfulness and your goodness, your sovereignty, and be able to celebrate and savor that whatever we're walking through or experiencing.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.