B.L.E.S.S. // Praying and Listening

I'm going to be in Luke 18 and we're starting a new series entitled Bless, and this comes on the heels of vision Sunday last week and I got to say I learned something about our church last week.

I learned that you really love hot, fresh donuts from a donut truck.

How many of you love the donut truck?

That's right.

That's right.

I also I see some of you guys have the merch.

We gave out the T-shirts.

Some of you guys have that outright.

We got gave up the, the merch last week.

It was awesome, it was a great Sunday and while we had a good time with that, vision Sunday was not just about the donuts or the merch.

It really was about our vision to be a church community where every person, every one of us, is making Jesus known in the ordinary and everyday places of life.

That we would be a church community where we are making Jesus known, every person is making Jesus known in the ordinary and everyday places of life.

And what's really cool is that even just this past week, I people already talking to me saying, hey, I was out, I was at the barber and I was getting my haircut and I started talking to them about Jesus.

I was like, oh, that's really cool.

Started talking to your guy about Jesus, this other person.

They were at a place this week that I don't really like.

They were at the the doctor's office Not a fan doctor's office and they said there was two people that were sitting there and we just checked out a couple of conversations and I was able to tell them a little bit about what Jesus has done for them and how he died for them and I was like that's super cool, like I've I've done that at doctor's office.

Yeah, and it's really cool that like conversations are already happening and we said that our goal as a church is to have 500 gospel conversations over the next 90 days, 500 over the next 90 days.

And we actually have a display in the lobby I don't know if you guys saw that with the ping pong ball representing every conversation we have with somebody, and I think there's already like 20 or 30 ping pong balls in there, which is awesome.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

That.

That that's that's awesome.

And it's like these are people that we're going to talk to, that, we hope, people that are going to spend eternity somewhere, and we have the opportunity to have conversations with these people.

Now we're going to do over this these next few weeks, as we're in this series called bless is we're going to talk about how do we have these conversations with people.

You might be out here thinking that you're like I would never like talk to my barber about Jesus.

If I'm in the doctor's office, like I'm just scrolling on my phone, like I'm like how do I talk to somebody?

How do I have a conversation?

This is actually what this series is all about, and we're going to do a case study on somebody that was really good at this.

His name is Jesus.

We're going to do a case study on Jesus, and not just what Jesus said, but what Jesus did, and I really want I really want everybody to remember this.

Okay, you really got to remember this and we're going to talk about the next few weeks, but you really got to remember this.

So there's this acrostic, it's called bless and it's going to help us remember how do we have conversations with people, and bless is actually the name of the series.

Obviously and I know I'm really creative here Okay, here it is Bless.

This is a joke.

What is bless?

We begin with prayer, we listen to people, we eat with them, we serve them and we share a story.

We begin with prayer by praying for them, we listen to them, we eat with them, we serve them and we share a story, and this is what we're going to talk about over the next few weeks.

This takes us to Luke, and I got to give you guys context for, for what's happening here Is Jesus is about to pick his 12 apostles, 12 of them.

Now.

These are the guys, the people that are going to take his message of his death barrier and resurrection and they're going to take it forward after he ascends up to heaven, like it's going to be up to them, like it is their responsibility, of these 12.

He's about to pick these guys.

Now would you agree with me?

This is a pretty important job to like that.

They have pretty important job.

So Jesus is about to go about picking these 12 guys.

How do you even go about picking 12 people?

You know Jesus does.

He starts with praying.

Now, if it's me, what I would have a tendency to do is I have a tendency to maybe skip past the prayer part or maybe say a quick prayer, and then I'd go to local synagogue and I would look for some obvious first round draft picks to come and join the team.

Like I want you, yeah, yeah, you look pretty smart, you, yeah?

Or or what Jesus could have done about Jesus.

I may have gone to the local synagogue and said, all right, everybody, jesus to.

I am about to start my ministry.

I need 12 people, 12 people that I'm going to use to change the world.

I'm going to start accepted resumes.

If you want to come and join the team, come on, send me your resume.

Deadline six o'clock Friday night.

If you're wondering, I'll be reviewing resumes.

On overlooking the sea of Galilee, why I do a miracle of making one fist turn into 10.

Okay, and I'll pick my 12 from there.

Good, they didn't do that, you know.

It went about picking his 12, started praying and he prayed.

They began this really massively important thing of picking the 12 who would have the responsibility to take his message on, started by praying for them.

Luke, chapter six.

It says this.

In verse 12 of Luke six it says during those days, he that's Jesus he went out to the mountain to pray and spent.

What are the next two words?

He spent all night.

Oh, jesus spent all night in prayer to God.

That's a lot of praying.

All night.

This isn't like okay, I'm just going to say a quick prayer and I'm Jesus, I'm going to go and pick now.

He prayed all night and then verse 13,.

When daylight came, he summoned his disciples.

This is Jesus.

He summoned them, he called them.

You can read in John one about his summit, how he summoned them as well and he chose 12 of them.

And he chose 12 of them whom he also named apostles Of.

Verse 14 it says Simon, whom he also named Peter, andrew, his brother, james, and John, philip, bartholomew, matthew, thomas, james, the son of Alpheus, and Simon called the zealot, judas, the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

He chose the twelve and eleven of the twelve of these people that he chose would go on and change the world.

How did he go about picking them?

What did he do?

Well, he began with prayer.

He began with praying for these people, and if we're going to be people that are going to make Jesus known to others, it's going to begin with us praying for people.

Last week was really cool on Vision Sunday, as we encouraged you to think about people in your life.

Maybe you're a neighbor, maybe a coworker, maybe a friend, maybe a family member, maybe a barista, maybe that waitress that you see all the time, somebody that you know of that doesn't yet know Jesus.

And last week was so cool, as many of you were writing down the names of those people to pray for Now.

Maybe you weren't here last week or maybe you didn't get a chance to do this.

What I really want you to do is stop for a second right now and I want you to think.

Who in your life doesn't yet know Jesus?

Who do you do life with?

Who in your family?

Who in your neighborhood?

Who at your gym?

Who doesn't know him?

Listen, I want you to do.

I want you to start praying for that Many of us.

Last week, when you actually went through a devotional how do we pray for people?

You might think, okay, at the end of the devotional how do I actually pray for people?

This is how I want to encourage you to pray for people.

One you can pray that God would soften up their hearts and their eyes would be open to the need of Jesus.

Pray, hey, god, would you soften up their hearts and open up their eyes?

Pray for opportunities to make Jesus known to them.

God, would you allow me to have opportunities Then, when I have those opportunities.

Would you pray that I would have boldness?

I don't know about you guys, but I think there are sometimes in my life where God opens up doors for me to talk about Jesus, but I'm just not bold enough to do it.

I'm kind of like, ah, and what we want to do is we want to pray that God would soften hearts, open eyes, god would open up doors and then God would give us boldness to make Him known to people.

I have a friend that just over a year ago they really weren't open to having spiritual conversations at all, conversations about Jesus but in the last year some things have happened to them and they've experienced some things, some hard things in life.

And now me and this individual like we have I don't know if I would say regular, but we've had probably like three or four good conversations about God and spiritual things over the last several months and what's happened is this person whose heart at one time was not softened, now they're in a completely different place in life and what's happened is God has used circumstances to soften their hearts and change their hearts.

And here's what I'm learning.

I'm learning that I can't change people's hearts, but I can pray for their hearts to be changed.

You guys realize that we can't change anybody's hearts.

I would like to think that I can.

We would, sometimes we try to, but we can't change anybody's hearts.

What we can do is we can pray for somebody's heart to be changed, and here's what I've learned, too Is in the process I'm learning this is I'm praying for people.

What's happening is not only can God change their heart, but as I'm praying, god has a tendency to change my heart too.

So I no longer see that person that I'm praying for is maybe like a project, or I no longer see them, maybe by some label, as like their political affiliation or their sexual orientation or I know, but as a person whom Jesus died for.

And in the process of us praying for people, what God often does is God changes us, but it begins with us praying for people, and Jesus began with prayer, and we want to be people.

If we're going to make Jesus known, we got to be people that are praying for others.

And in the process of praying for them, we have to look for people as they're speaking.

We have to look for opportunities to listen to them, and there's a book it's called Jesus is the Answer.

It says that Jesus asked 307 questions.

He asked 307 different questions and he only answered three of them.

So he asked people questions 307 times in the Gospels.

He only answered three of them.

What did Jesus do?

He listened.

He listened to people and there's a story in Luke 18 where there was a blind man and he needed healing and his eyes were physically healed, but his heart was also spiritually healed and Jesus listened to him in the process.

And I want you guys to see how Jesus listened to this man, because how Jesus listened to this man changed this man.

It says in Luke 18, verse number 35,.

It says as he approached Jericho.

So this is Jesus.

Jesus approached Jericho.

Jesus approached Jericho.

Jesus approached Jericho.

Let's try that again.

We got to wake us up this morning.

I don't know if it's the rain.

I'm up here.

I'm like.

I feel like I'm all by myself.

Somebody help me.

Okay, jesus was approaching Jericho.

There we go, let's go.

He was approaching Jericho.

He had people to see, he had places to go.

At this point, jesus had gone virally.

All Jesus was famous.

Everybody wanted to get around Jesus.

Everybody wanted to take a selfie with Jesus.

Everybody said I just want to be near him, I want him to do something for me.

He approached him.

There was a blind man that was sitting by the road begging.

To get this picture.

It's a blind man, he's sitting here, he's begging, he's begging.

He can't see, he doesn't know what's going on.

He's sitting by the road begging.

And then it says, verse 36, he's hearing a crowd passing by.

I don't know if you can see, you can only hear he's hearing this crowd passing by.

He inquired what was happening, what's going on.

Why is all this commotion happening?

Look what they said to him Jesus of Nazareth is passing by, jesus is passing by.

And look what it says that the blind man did.

So he called out Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

He wasn't just asking to be healed physically, he was recognizing the identity of Jesus.

He was saying he's the Son of David, meaning he's the Messiah, he's the forgiver of sin, he's the Son of God, he's the way, he's the truth, he's the life Verse 39,.

Then those in front of him told him to keep quiet.

So, blind man sitting here, those are in front of him were like shh, be quiet.

There have been somewhere and somebody's just kind of really loud or shh, you're ruining my moments.

They told him keep quiet.

But look what he does, guys.

He's sitting here.

He keeps crying all the more.

I don't know, but I think he did it louder this time.

That's what I would have done.

I'd have been like, oh, you want me to be quiet?

Okay, son of David, have mercy on me.

Am I the only one?

There's been times like somebody's told me, like, don't do this.

So I'm like, oh, you don't want me to do it?

Okay, I'm going to do it twice as loud.

Am I the only one that's ever done anything like that before?

Okay, there's seven of you.

The rest of you guys are lying.

You guys are lying.

I know you guys are really holy people.

I'm not worthy.

Son of David, have mercy on him.

And look what Jesus does.

Who's on his way?

What's that city?

He's on his way to Jericho.

Okay, he's on his way to Jericho.

What's that next word?

It says he stopped Stop.

Jesus is really busy, bro.

He got lost on going on.

I mean, he's Jesus, son of God.

He stops.

And he commanded that.

He.

Who's he?

The prime minister over there that's in the bath and nobody has time for it.

Everybody's like shh, you're messing up our moment.

Everybody's like pfft.

He commanded him.

He said hey, what do you want me to do for you?

Ask some questions.

What do you want me to do for you?

And look what it says.

He says Lord.

He said I want to see.

And it says the next verse Receive your sight.

Jesus told him your faith has saved you.

Instantly he could see and he began to follow him.

He began to follow Jesus, glorifying God.

All the people when they saw it who's?

All the people?

The people that were like shh, be quiet.

All the people when they saw it, they gave praise to God.

And it says here his faith has saved him.

Now the word saved scripturally means delivered.

This man was not just delivered from his physical impairment of blindness, but spiritually he was delivered because of his faith.

It says this in Luke.

In another place it says Jesus came to seek and to save those who were lost.

Jesus came to seek and to deliver those who were lost.

And the way we're delivered from the penalty of our sin, which is separation from God in a place called hell, the way we're delivered from the penalty of our sin is by having saving faith.

Everybody say the word saving faith, the words saving faith together Ready.

Saving faith, saving faith.

Now I just want you to know is that there's a difference between having faith and having saving faith.

There's a difference between having faith and having saving faith.

Sometimes I have conversations with people like, yeah, I have faith.

Cool, right, that's awesome.

When you say faith, a lot of times what we mean is we mean intellectual belief.

I intellectually believe in God, or I intellectually believe in, I have faith in the universe, or I have faith in science, or I have faith in whatever this is over here.

I just I intellectually believe it.

But just because we have faith doesn't mean that we have saving faith.

Jesus says this about how to have saving faith, how to have eternal life.

He says in John 3,.

He says the one who believes, believes, meaning trust in the Son, in Jesus, has eternal life.

But the one who rejects the Son, who rejects me, will not see this eternal life.

Then the wrath of God remains on him.

So the way we have saving faith is by believing, by trusting in the sun.

Let me illustrate this because I really want some dots to connect here, because some of you, you're trying to figure out Christianity, you're trying to learn some of these things and this is massive for us, okay.

So I got this stool over here and this stool is going to represent Jesus.

This stool is going to represent Jesus.

This stool is going to represent Jesus.

Now, what a lot of us do and this is not a bad thing, this is a good thing is we experience a hard time in life, we experience something difficult and we're like I'm going to start leaning on Jesus a little bit because I need some help.

I need to kind of lean on him.

He needs to help me.

Maybe we think, man, I need to pray, so I'm going to pray to Jesus.

Help.

Well, really, I don't need help.

They need help over there.

Help them, because if you help them, I'm going to get help.

Help.

So we lean on Jesus and while this is good, this is not saving faith.

Saving faith is me putting my complete trust, me giving him my life and trusting him, my soul for my eternity.

It's my complete faith in trust in him.

We use the word sometimes you might hear the word in Christian circles in biblical is believer, I'm a believer.

What being a believer means?

It doesn't mean that we intellectually are sent to.

Yes, I believe that Jesus.

I believe that this stool is real.

Jesus is real.

No, no, it's not just that, it's.

I am completely trusting in him for my eternal destiny.

This is what it means to have saving faith.

You might be in the room and you're like I'm leaning on Jesus.

I kind of trust Jesus, but I also trust this over here, like I you know I did this back in the day.

I'm a pretty good person.

I trust that's not saving faith.

Saving faith is completely trusting in Jesus alone.

In Jesus alone for the forgiveness of your sin and for your eternity.

And you might be here right now and you've never made the decision to trust in Jesus alone to be your Lord and Savior.

And can I say today can be that day.

Maybe you're here and you're like kind of been thinking about this.

I would like to learn more about it.

If you let us know through the QR code or that's around you or the green card in front of you, let us know and me or Edgar or one of us will connect with you and tell you more about what does it mean to have this saving faith in Jesus?

Because this is what it means to begin to follow him and, as this man in the story in Luke 18, he has this saving faith.

We see Jesus listening to this man.

He's listening to him.

Now, I don't know if you guys are like me, but listening sometimes for me is kind of hard.

How many people in the room?

Let's scratch that.

How many honest people in the room?

Let's say Nate?

Sometimes not very much, but sometimes I struggle listening a little bit.

Yes, yes, see that hand nice and high, nice and high.

Word of prayer.

Time of tell you guys how bad, how much I struggle with this at times.

This past week I was talking to somebody and somebody sharing some things with me and I interrupted them.

And then what I said was I said I know I apologized for interrupting.

I said I'm sorry, I shouldn't have interrupted.

That moment I should have zipped my lip and said nothing else.

But I apologized for interrupting and then I just went on and said what I wanted to say.

It gets worse.

That morning I had been thinking about the importance of listening and how vital this is, and then somebody told me something and I'm like hold on, let me stop you right here.

Oh, I'm sorry for interrupting.

And then I went on and said something Come on, nate, will you ever get it?

Listening can be hard sometimes.

Some of you guys are.

You know, I saw it See, some of you guys like looking at the person next to you, like you know, you need help with this listening thing.

We struggle with this.

I had a friend.

He's been a pastor for a while and he recently got a what he calls a spiritual director, which is somebody that helps him in his emotional health and his Christian life, really discipling him in emotional health and in his Christian faith, which is a beautiful thing.

And my friend, he's well connected, he knows lots of people.

He's talking about this spiritual director and how his spiritual director has greatly impacted his life.

And he said and I was asking him about him and he said this gentleman is the most present person I've ever experienced in my life.

He's the most present person I've ever experienced in my life and, naturally, knowing my friend, he's educated, he's got himself together.

This guy's the real deal.

I said you know lots of people.

What makes this person the most present person in your life you've ever experienced?

He said this man listens to understand.

He doesn't listen to respond.

He listens to understand and not to respond.

He listens to understand and not to respond.

And I think that if you were to ask people that spent time with Jesus physically with Jesus in the first century.

I think they would say a lot of the same thing that he listens.

Even James, the half brother of Jesus, tells us this.

He says my dear brothers and sisters, understand this.

Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger.

Listening, tart, tart.

Most of us raised our hand, some of us raised the person's hand next to us.

How do we do this?

When you look in Luke 18 at this interaction that Jesus had with the blind man, I think there's some practices that Jesus did that can allow us to be a better listener, and my hand goes up first for this.

In fact, what I want us to do is we're going to wrap this up as we're going to end with another acrostic, which we don't usually do, an acrostic based on how Jesus interacted with people to teach us how to listen to people better.

This is what letter L starts stands for in this acrostic.

It's listening without judgment or assumptions.

This is probably pretty obvious in the story that Jesus to Jesus, that this man was blind, but Jesus didn't assume that this man wanted his blind eyes open.

He asked him what do you want?

And a lot of times what could happen when we're having a conversation with somebody, when we're interacting with people, we can make assumptions and judgments about this person without even listening to their heart, so we can assume things about them or we can come to judgments about them.

Or we can come to conclusions about somebody over here without even listening to their heart and you might say oh well, I already know them because I've lived with them, because I know that person, but how do you not know that God might be doing something in them that you don't realize?

And what can happen sometimes is we're talking to somebody, we're listening to them, but while we're listening to them, we're having judgments or assumptions in our minds.

And what listening is is listening, is me suspending my assumptions and suspending my judgments so I can understand and hear that person.

This is what Jesus did.

He listened to this man.

Jesus inquired with questions.

In the story, jesus asked the man what do you want?

A lot of times, when we are talking to somebody, rather than making statements about ourselves to them, we should ask them questions about them.

So, for example, if I'm having an interaction with somebody, it's a conversation, but instead they say something, instead of me constantly going talking about myself.

What we should do is we should lean into them and ask them questions about them.

Now, this is what that requires us to do.

That requires me to get my eyes off of me and onto them.

That requires me to be curious enough about their life to want to lean in to learn about them.

You might say, like, okay, I asked them questions.

What does this even look like?

Am I supposed to bring out a notebook?

Like, what does this even do?

Okay, here's some questions you can ask, as you're listening to somebody, to inquire more about them when they say something, instead of saying, oh, you went there, well, I went over here and it was twice as good as that.

What was that like?

How did I make you feel?

What are you going to do with?

What are you doing?

How's this going?

I know you're quiet.

What we do is we get our eyes off of me, and maybe off of what happened here, and I just inquire about them.

I listen to them.

I don't assume judgments.

I inquire with questions.

Let her ask I stop what I'm doing In the story of Jesus.

Jesus, in this story here, jesus was on his way to Jericho.

He is busy.

What he could have done is he could have been like blind man I'm going to heal you, you're healed, you're good, I'm over here.

What he could have done is he could have said he could have on his way, he could have been like he looked at him.

He could have looked at him half a second out the corner of his eye, given him like half a second of time, and then gone and kept on going to Jericho, talk to more important people.

You see what Jesus did.

He stopped.

He was present.

He wasn't in a hurry, he wasn't thinking on to the next thing, he wasn't thinking I have 27,000 things to do when I get to Jericho.

He stopped.

Could it be that the reason why we have such a challenge of listening is because we're always in a hurry and until we learn to stop what we're doing, we won't be able to listen.

Well, what if that thing over there can wait five minutes?

What if it's okay that we don't get to that?

What matters is this person in the moment.

And we have to do because you have to stop what we're doing.

There's tea.

We have to try to understand that person.

You notice that Jesus here.

He first asked the question.

He first said what do you want me to do?

What do you want?

He was trying to understand him, and what listening is about.

Listening is not about me putting energy into trying to get that person to understand me.

Listening is about putting energy into me, trying to understand them.

Listening is not about me saying, okay, okay, I hear them talking, they need to understand me.

How can I say this in such a way where they'll just that's not listening.

Listening is not.

Okay.

They said this, so okay, okay, I know what I'm going to say here.

Listening is right now.

I want to try to understand them, and here's a question that you can ask yourself as you're learning to listen, as we're learning to listen, is how can I better understand what this person is feeling and thinking?

How can I better understand?

Now, you might think, you might think they're impossible to understand, or you might think that person is wrong, what they're saying and where their position is, and there's just no, I can't understand them.

Listening doesn't mean agreeing with them.

Listening means understanding them.

There's a difference.

So, for example, okay, I've seen it out with a couple of friends it was three weeks ago, I think and they're not followers of Jesus and they're just in their mind.

They're very secular and wonderful people, great people, but we're talking about spiritual things and Jesus got brought up and they do not have a Christian worldview of Jesus at all.

Okay, like not at all.

We believe very, very different things and, as we're talking about things in the moment, I found myself wanting to say something at certain times, and I don't know if it was the Holy Spirit or whatever.

Something in me was like just zip your lip and understand them.

And here's what happened at the end of that.

We were talking for like an hour about this.

It was really neat, is they said, this was really great.

We should have more conversations like this, more, and I get this wrong a lot, like I shared.

So what listening is?

Listening doesn't mean that you agree with a person.

It just means that you're understanding them.

That are each listening is being engaged in the moment.

There's a ton of people around Jesus, like there was a bunch of people around him.

He's walking to Jericho, there's, you know, all these things happening, but he stops in the moment and he engages with the blind man.

And if we're going to listen to people, we have to engage in the moment.

Okay, so this is what this looks like for Nate For me to engage in the moment, my phone has to be down.

I cannot be on my phone because I'm not engaged in the moment.

But this also looks like eye contact, boom eye contact.

I'm looking at somebody's square in the face.

I can't really be engaged in the moment.

If I'm talking to you and I'm like this I have to be here and what we have to do we're going to be listening to people is we have to engage in the moment and we have to be there.

Now this is hard, especially for some of us that have like a little ADD.

You know what I'm saying?

Like ADHD people, it's like squirrel, right, right, it's hard.

But to listen, well, we have to be there and then let her in.

We need to not interrupt, like I did last week.

If we're going to listen to somebody, we have to not interrupt them.

You say but I want to help them.

Like the way I can help them, I know exactly what the answer is to their problem.

I experienced this.

I just need to tell them this right now and then they're going to get.

You want to help them?

Then listen to them, because listening is the language of love and when we learn to listen to people well, it allows people to perceive that we love them.

Well, and when we're in a conversation with somebody, if we have a tendency, like myself, to interrupt, we got to, because then we can actually listen, so people can be seen and so people can be heard.

And this is what we're going to find, guys, that's what you're going to find when we begin to pray for people like really pray for people we know that don't know Jesus when we start to listen to them like really actually listen to them, it's going to allow us to have meaningful conversations with them.

Like we're going to be able to get past the what's the weather like this week?

Right, staying on the surface, you know things that like don't really matter that much, like what about the football game last?

Actually, that doesn't matter.

That's a bad analogy.

That was a bad one.

Well, it's trying right Now.

You know what I'm saying, though.

Like it allows us to actually have meaningful conversations below the surface, about real life.

And then you might be surprised, but conversations about spiritual things, about Jesus, can emerge from that.

But it begins with us praying for people and listening to people.

As God opens doors, we can talk about Him with others.

And this matters so much because, as we said last week, when the gospel is shared, lives are changed, and when lives are changed, families are changed.

And when families are changed, communities are changed.

And when communities are changed, the world is changed, and we can get to be a part of this.

We get to be a part of what God wants to do in people's lives.

But it begins with us, well, sharing the gospel Before then praying for people and listening to people, and over the next couple of weeks we're going to talk some more about how do we have conversations with people.

And this is what I know, and this just excites me so much Is that God is going to use you over the next few weeks and months.

Is that God's going to use you to have these conversations with people and together we're going to be able to make Jesus known?

Let me pray for you.