The Worst Sinner: Week 2

My name is James Roberts, and it's a pleasure to

be here today preaching to you. I am about rady

after the second service to start my annual vacation. Those

of you who've been around here for a while, you

know that I take all my vacation at once, and

so I'll be doing a hunting here in Indiana for

a few weeks, and then I'll be going up to

Wisconsin for a week, and then with a few guys

from a church, I'll actually be going down to Texas

to do some boar hunting, which I don't know if

it's the best ideal on this earth because they kind

of hunt you while you're hunting them.

And we'll see how that goes. Now, while I'm gone, Andrew.

Miller will be the point person for our congregation. And

Andrew's been training and been leading, so this is a

great opportunity for him to grow. And also, you know,

if you've been having things that have bothered you, you're

frustrated with things that you just would love to sit

down and have a talk with the pastor about you

know what. That would be really good for Andrew's growth

if you did it. Get it all out during those

five weeks and then we'll have the whole church fix

by the time I come back, and then I could

have a clean slate to mess things up again, so

that again it's for his growth.

So anyways, typically when I go on vacation.

I'm kind of just barely, kind of putting along until

I can make it.

This year, it seems so different.

I'm actually going on vacation feeling like I'm going to

miss out.

God is doing such a work in our congregation.

And last year, you know, we gave this challenge at

the beginning of the school year that we want to

see a hundred people come to Christ. One hundred people

come to Christ during his school year. We're three months in.

Last weekend, twelve people made a commitment to Christ. We

give the Lord a hand.

So so far, just a school year, we have thirty.

People who have made a commitment to follow Jesus Christ.

That is awesome.

And also we just launched a widow's ministry we're working

in We got a big group of people training to

launch our Celebrate Recovery, and we're just doing a ton

of outreach in our community.

Homeless ministry just launched recently.

And so God is at work, and you know what,

one of my favorite things to do is come in

on Monday and hear all the praise reports. That's what

I'm gonna miss most over the next few weeks.

But I know You're in good hands.

Well, today, we're gonna continue talking about the worst sinner,

and we're gonna be talking about the life of Paul

as we continue to journey through the Book of Acts.

Will you pray with me God this week? We have

elections come Friday. Will you still be on the throne?

That's what we needed to know. We know you will be.

We know that ultimately, when it comes to this earth,

when it comes to your creation, that ultimately.

Everything bows down to You.

So whether we're disappointed or elated this week, we as

your followers of Christ, will take comfort in this. You

have always been in charge, and you will continue to

be in charge. We love our nation, we pray for

our nation. But God, our ultimate trust is in you. Now, God,

shape us with your word today.

In Jesus name Amen.

In nineteen sixty seven, the Senate Subcommittee got together because

they were really concerned with the huge wave of technology

that was storming America in the late sixties.

And are like, man, life's going to be different.

So they got real concern about what life in America

would look like by the year two thousand. So they

actually pulled together a subcommittee. They brought in all these experts.

They brought futurist in, scientists, even science fiction writers.

They brought the people in who are working on.

The computers, and they did this huge analysis, and they

did this huge study.

And here's what they decided.

The conclusion they came to was that the biggest problem

in America by the year two thousand was going to

be this what will we do with all of our

leisure time?

What will we do with all of our spare time?

Because they predicted that we would work twenty seven hours

a week, but only for twenty two weeks a year.

Has that happened to any of you? I know the

retirees who work more than that. They were all but

it was a horrible prediction, way way off. And in fact,

I think with each level of technological advancement, I believe

our life gets more complicated. I remember a few years ago,

IOW was kind of in one of those messy situations

when it came to communication. There was ten ways to

get a hold of me. Okay, there was you could

text me. You can call me, but I didn't answer.

You can leave a voicemail.

You could call the church, and then if you didn't

get a hold of me there you can leave a voicemail.

You could use my personal email, you could use my

church email.

And also there was a couple other ways.

You could go on to Facebook, or you can go

on the Facebook messenger.

And if none of those worked, just talk to my wife.

That's ten forms of communication.

And to be honest, there was days where I was

interacting with all ten and I'm like, this is not

making my life more simple, it's making it more complicated.

And at the same time, it's causing me to miss

some things that were time sensitive.

And so I went on a technological diet.

Okay, I got rid of Facebook mess I got rid

of I don't even have voicemail on my phone anymore.

And if those of you who are wondering how do

you stop that, you just let that box fill up.

Well anyways, so today you can call me, you can

text me, or you can email me. That simplified my

life in significant ways.

See all this tech.

Everything that's going on in our life has made our

life more complicated.

And because we are kind of like in the middle

of this crazy stream.

Of technology, I think that we need to stop sometimes

and just say what's going on? Like, really, there's some

huge signs that we need to slow down. I need

to ask a question.

What's going on? Let me ask you something. Are we

more connected with each other today?

No?

Are we going deeper into our soul today? No? Are

we going deeper into our relationship with God as a

whole as Christians? Absolutely not.

Why because we have all these things feeding into our

life every single day, all these advancements is making our

life more complicated, not more simplified. So we have to stop,

as Christians specifically and say what is going on? Some

of the stories in the Book of Acts, Can we

reframe these for your mind?

I want you to reframe this.

See some of these stories from the Book of Acts

that we've been studying. It's God showing us what life

should be like today. Can everybody say today, Okay, here's

what I think people do. Everybody looks at the Bible

and they supposed to read the Book of Acts, and

they look at the Book of Acts and they said, oh.

Well, that was for them back then.

But this is the way things happen today that was

for them back then.

And let me tell you something.

If you look at the Bible like it was for

them back then, then let me tell you that misinterpretation

will cause you to miss out on some significant against

God opportunities in your life. You need to understand that

what God has shown us in the Bible, he's shown

us what He wants to do throughout all times. See

what God was doing back then, God wants to do today.

I'm wanna say that again, what God was doing back then,

God wants to do today.

So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna head into

chapter thirteen.

We're gonna hit the first three verses and see, we

have to understand and notice what's happening. Jesus at the

beginning of the Book of actsaid, all right, guys, I

want you to take my gospel and take it from

Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria, identity ends of the earth.

So they've been both basically focusing on Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

At chapter thirteen, we see the change moment of the

church and history. And today you were here because of

chapter thirteen.

Do you understand that.

Because from chapter thirteen and on we see this is

the story in the Book of Acts of God bringing

the God Gospel to the ends of the earth and

to the gentiles. All right, let's do this. So all

this begins with a call. Let's study the scripture today.

All right, here we go Acts thirteen. Now in the

church at Antioch, there were prophets teachers Barnabas, Simeon called Niger,

Lucius of Syreene Mannion, who had been brought up of

hair to Tetrarch and Saul says, while they were worshiping

the Lord in fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart

for me, Barnabas and Saul, for the work to.

Which I have called them.

So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their

hands on them and sent them off.

So here's what you see at the very beginning.

Today, you're seeing the beginning of the call for Paul

and Barnabas to go out into the world. Now they're

supposed to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

Now it starts with five guys. Okay, they're in Antioch

during his time, and the Spirit of God is at

work by the way the spirit of God is at work.

But they're worshiping their fast and they're seeking the Lord.

But here's what they're doing or saying, God, we believe

that you want to do so much more.

God. We believe that you have more for us. You

have more for this world, you have more for this kingdom.

And so they're crying out to God, and the Holy

Spirit says, I know things are good here, but I'm

about ready to send you somewhere else. You're gonna leave

here and you're gonna go out into the world and

you're gonna reach the gentiles, people who are not Jewish

by heritage. And so that's what they did. And the

rest of the Book of Acts is that story there.

Now here's what I want to do for the rest

of the day. I want to answer these couple of questions.

How do we hear from God today?

Number two?

How do you hear the Holy Spirit's call all your life? See,

the Holy Spirit is still calling people to himself.

He said, I still have something for you to do. Now.

By the way, if you don't believe that the Holy

Spirit has something for you to do, okay, then basically

you are just existing and surviving.

Instead of thriving and making a difference for the kingdom. Okay.

And by the way, he has something for every single

one of us. Now, what does it mean when we

use the word call two different ways to choose a

New Testament? Number One, it's used for that universal call

for all people to come to salvation and Jesus Christ,

that's not what we're talking about today.

We're talking about the second word for call.

The second way that they use call was basically it

was God calling you to do something specific that will

glorify Him and show people His goodness. So we've all

had the universal call, but we all, as followers of Christ,

have another call where we're going to take our lives

and we're going to bring God glory through it. And

it's gonna be something specific that he calls us to, Okay,

And it's an invitation for every single one of us.

So here's a question.

If all of us have this call, why do we

feel so disconnected from that call in our life from God?

Why do we feel so connected from that call in

our life from God? See, some of us experience and

I noticed this in Christianity.

I think a lot of us experience these God moments

are these events we go on this trip, or we

go on this trip, we go to.

This revival, or something cool happens, and we experience God's

movement in little chunks throughout different periods of our Christian journey. Okay,

that is just experiencing events. What I'm talking about is

where you were moving day in and day out, week

by week, month by month.

Year by year, in the calling of God, so that.

God can work through you day by day, week by week,

month by month, year by year. Not so much just

an event here or an event there. Okay, That's what

I'm talking about today. And we feel so disconnected from

God because we often just chase after those moments. And

by the way, this figuring out what your call thing is,

it's not easy. It's not easy, and I want to

talk about how it's not easy today.

Okay.

See, when I got a call in the ministry when

I was seventeen and a half, it was very clear

God called me to lead a church, to be a

senior pastor.

Did you guys know that.

It took over twenty years from that call to the

time I became a senior pastor. And let me tell you,

there was a several times where I came to this

fork in the road where ministry didn't go the way

that I.

Thought it was going, and I did not know what

to do next.

One specific time was when my church plant was canceled

because of the recession.

I looked around for all kinds of jobs.

There wasn't any jobs and a Church of God that

fit kind of my you know, gift setting. At that time,

I'd been an associate pastor for a couple of years.

I did not want to go back into Yeth ministry, and.

I was so confused.

I'm like, God, do you want me to be a

senior pastor, a discipleship pastor?

Do you want me to do this or that?

Do you want me to be a horribly untalented worship pastor?

What do you want me to do?

And I was at this fork in the road, and

I think a lot of us get to these forks. Well,

we just don't know what God wants us to do.

Maybe you're in the middle of your career, but you

don't know how to connect your career to your calling.

Some of you are maybe going through a midlife crisis.

Some of you are maybe not ready to retire. You

just don't know what God wants you to do. Some

of you are just a blank slate.

You're like, God, I'll do whatever you want me to do.

I just need to know what you want me to

actually do. And these forts in a road, they're hard

for us, especially for those of us who want to.

Do God's will.

And I remember very distinctly I was so discouraged. It

was like a black cloud over my life that this

forkun road. I didn't know what to do. And I

was in a cabin in Kentucky. If you ever need

a Lord to speak to you, go to Kentucky, anyways.

And I'm upstairs in this bedroom by myself, and I'm

calling out on God and I'm so desperate, liked, I

need to know what do you want me to do?

I will do whatever you want me to do. And

then it was a moment in my life.

I'll never forget it upstairs in that room where I

felt like I spoke deeply into my spirit.

Here's what I believe you spoke to me, James, who

took the gospel from you?

Who took the gospel from you?

And I was like no one, Lord, And then I

felt a calling just be faithful and He'll figure out

the details.

So just keep.

Moving forward, keep walking in the gospel, keep being faithful,

and God will figure out where, when, and how I'm

gonna be. And here's what I want to tell you

all today, simply this. The call for every one of

us is to simply move forward with God.

So if you.

Don't know what the call is in your life today,

what you can do today is continue to move forward

with God.

Now, when we look at Paul and Barnamus moving.

Forward, they're gonna do whatever it takes to follow God.

But let me tell you there's two ways for us

to move forward, and we're going to study these today

for the rest of the time. Two ways to move

forward and figure out God's call in your life. Number One,

you need clarity. Other words, you need to know what

your call is.

Two.

I know a lot of people who have clarity, but

they're stopped at a certain point because they struggle with courage.

It takes clarity and it takes courage. Okay, And so.

For us today, what we're gonna do, and let me

tell you something, We need you to figure this out,

every single one of you.

Why because God has brought us together as.

A community and you know what, we need you to

figure out what God has called you to do in

this church, in this community, in your neighborhood, because we

have been brought together and we need each other to

figure out what our call is so that we together

can make an impact in the community.

So here's what we're gonna do right now.

We're just gonna simply go back to the text and

we're gonna look at it again and we're gonna see

how they move.

Forward with clarity. Okay, let's look at this again.

Says Now, in the Church of Antioch, there were prophets

and teachers barnabas Semeon called Niger, Luciareen, Mannion and Saul,

It says here while they were worshiping the Lord and

fast and the Holy Spirit says, So, how do we

move forward with clarity?

Two ways, all of us. If we want to get

clarity about.

What God wants us to do in our life, we

need to have community. And on the other hand, we

need to have communion. We need to and we get

that clarity through those two things. See, God calls us

to be surrounded with people who will give us clarity.

And let's look at these five guys. They're all from

different backgrounds. Barnabas was from Cyprus, so he's from.

The Mediterranean area.

Simeon, well, he's from the deepest part of Africa. Lucius

is from northern Africa Manian by the way, he's a Greek.

But he also happened to be King.

Harris's best friend growing up, and some say he was

his falster brother. So he comes from this crazy background.

And then you got Paul, who's from Israel. So you

got Jews, Gentiles, Africans, Europeans, different economic backgrounds, different races,

but they all come together. And what do we see

in a t they're prophets and their teachers. And God

uses these men to grow each other and sharpen each other.

And we all need these prophets and teachers in our life. See,

if no one is speaking into your life, you are

missing out on some great God opportunities.

If no one's speaking.

Into your life, you're missing out some great God opportunities. Now,

why these two people we need in our life prophets

and teachers.

Well, prophets, they're truth tellers.

They're the people who will look at your life and say, ah, man,

what you're doing is messed up or you're thinking that

is not of God. They hear from God. They're not

fortune tellers. Okay, they're truth tellers. So we all need

these people in our life that have the permission to

speak truth.

In our life. Okay, let me tell you.

I'm so thankful that I got some prophets in my life.

And here's how I can tell this from God. One

first of all, when they come into to me is

full of grace. Secondly, they want good for me, they

want good for the church. And then also I can't

sniff out in an agenda of their own. So it's

purely for God and for me and for the Kingdom

that they come to me.

Just this past week, I got.

A half hour phone call from one of the prophets

in my life.

And here's what they wanted to talk to me about.

I made a decision and they said, all right, you

made a good decision.

You didn't make a great decision. Here's why you did

not make a great decision. And they walked me through.

All the ways and all the consequences of it not

being a great decision. And then, graceful lady, they talked

to me about how to walk it back to a

great decision, and by the grace of God, by the

end of the week, we're at a great decision.

Okay, I believe it's gonna produce fruit. But this person.

Called me up and said I need to talk to

you about some and I listen, and I thank God

after that conversation because they spoke into my life. Also,

we need to have teachers in our lives. These are

the ones that can go deep with you. They could

teach you the deep things of God's Word and they

could teach you the deep things of God.

And we need both of these in our life.

And we need those who will speak directly to us

and speak deeply into our lives.

See, we need people, especially these teachers.

Who will tell us what we need to hear, not

what we want to hear.

Do you hear me? Every one of you needs somebody

who will tell you what you need to hear, not

what you want to hear.

Tim pastor Tim Lucas, plays a big role in my

life in that he has a gifted discernment and he

observes things, but he knows the deep things of God.

So I really trust him.

And so Tim, there's been a few times in my

life where he has said something to me that literally

changed the course of my life. You know, growing up,

I came from an angry household, an angry neighborhood, an

angry school.

I was surrounded by angry all the time. So here's

what I did.

I decided that I was going to lighten the situation

in every situation I'm in, so I always try to

make everybody laugh all the time, Okay, because I just

wanted everyone to lighten up.

Well.

Over time in my psyche, something built up in me

that I believed as an absolute truth. I believe that

it was my job to make people laugh. And so

in any meeting, any room I went into, my main

purpose of going into that meeting in that room was

to make people laugh and enjoy themselves, to feel good

about themselves by the end of that meeting.

And here's what to said.

It caused me some problems because I don't know if

you know this, but when you're always trying to make

people laugh, sometimes you make an idiot of yourself. Sometimes

you get in trouble, sometimes you offend people.

And this has been going on in my life for

a long time.

And we were driving in Pittsburgh. We were on the

way to the Robinson Mall and I'll never forget this.

And Tim looked at me and he says, James, you

do know that it is not your job.

In life to make people laugh.

Now that might not be significant to you, but when

someone told me that that's not my job, that burden lifted.

Off of me. Now you might again, and I think

that's a big deal. But here's a thing.

Here's what God was wanting to do with that statement.

God was wanting me to go deeper in my meetings

with people. See the meetings I would go into with

people and disciples were always surface level. But God wanted

me to go deeper and help people go to the

deeper things of God. But you can't do that if

your main goal is to laugh. And it was a

life changing moment. But only a close friend like that,

someone trusted, can say to me, you know what.

You need to change your behavior.

And so we all need people in our life. See,

here's the thing. We need people in our life because

here's what.

We do naturally.

And tell me if you maybe haven't done this in

the last few months. We surround ourselves with the media

that we like. We surround ourselves to people who think

like us. We only read stuff that we agree with.

And so what happens is we get into the circle and.

We're never challenged. We're never challenged. And here's the thing.

See, we need the truth spoken to us in love

because that's vital for our growth. The truth spoken to

us in love. It's vital for our growth. And here's

the question.

Do you have that? Do you have people speaking into

your life? Number two?

Not only do you need community, but we also need communion.

We need communion. And that's what the Holy Spirit. That's

what the Holy Spirit tells us what to do in life. See,

some of us just go through life and the Holy

Spirit doesn't speak into our life every day. We see

here that they're fascining. They wanted God more than they

wanted bread, and they were.

Desperately seeking God.

And how often do you just stop in life and

just say God, I desperately want to know you, God,

I desperately want to do your will. God, I desperately

want to hear from you.

Is he delights in speaking to us?

When do we take time to be silent and say God,

I want to hear from you. There's a book that's

pretty popular right now called the ruthless Elimination of hurry.

And basically, here's a thing we all hold up busyness

as something valuable.

We love when people ask us, hey, how are you doing,

and we're.

Like, I'm busy, and we hold it up like a trophy.

I'm a busy.

Isn't the weird thing about our culture? Like our culture

awards busyness. But in this book it says we're so

busy that we really don't spend time in the presence

of God as a result of this busyness in our lives.

Matter of fact, he uses this analogy in the book.

Back in the day, Christians they used to be like

scuba divers.

They would go down deep to find the deep things

of God to hear dee from God.

Nowadays Christians are more like jet ski writers. We just

skim the surface. Then there's this great quote from the book.

It says that the average iPhone.

User touches his or her device two thousand, six hundred

and seventeen times a day. That's according to Business Insider.

A matter of fact, they said the younger generations, you

might be able to double that, Okay, And so it

says what would my life be like if God touched

my mind as frequently as I touched my iPhone.

That's a wake up call to us. Friends.

See, the reason we don't hear from the Holy Spirit,

and the reason we don't hear the Holy Spirit telling

us what to do is because we don't give the

Holy Spirit the time to speak into our lives.

We need to step back and say, what's going on?

What is going on?

So many of us don't have clarity because we don't

have community and we don't have communion with God.

But God delights to give this to you. Now.

Okay, so we talked about how to get clarity. You

get clarity through relationships communion with God.

But now is the next part. That's the hard part.

For a lot of people.

They know what they're called to do, but you've got

to have courage to do that. Now, how do we

get courage, especially when we're scared, we're worried, we don't

know the future. We get courage through confrontation and consecration.

Confrontation and consecration. See, God wants to confront us in

our life and then consecrate us to move forward.

Let us again look at this verse.

It says, while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting,

the Holy Spirit said, all right, here he goes. Here's

the consecration part. Set apart. I want to consecrate Barnabas

and Saul, so set them apart.

Okay.

Four, And here is the confrontation part. Here's why I

want them set apart. They're gonna be set apart for

the work to which I have called them, so that

after they had fastened and prayed, they placed their hands

on them and sent them off.

Now here's what I want to understand.

We hear this word called in here to go do

the work that I have.

Called them to do.

This word called in the Greek is in the perfect tents.

Okay.

So when we see a word in a Greek that's

in the perfect tins, it simply means this that is

not new news.

Paul's heard this before.

Okay, this has already been told to Paul before. Matter

of fact, if we remember a couple of weeks ago

we talked about soon as Paul received Christ, he heard

his call. And let's go back to turn to Acts

twenty six real quick, because here we see Paul he

is defending himself to King Agrippa.

But every time Paul was under the microsope. What does

Paul do? He goes back to his testimony again. I

said this last week.

You don't need to have a seminary degree to share Jesus,

just tell your story.

That's what Paul did. Let's look at this.

Paul recounts his calling. He says this about noon, King Agrippa.

As I was on the road, I saw a light

from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and

my companions. Oh, we all fell to the ground, and

I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic.

Saul, why do you persecute me?

It is hard for you to kick against the goats

than I asked, where are you, Lord? And he says,

I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. The Lord replied,

now get up, stand on your feet. I have appeared

to you to appoint you as a servant and as

a witness of what you have seen and will see

of me. Here's what he says, and here's his calling.

I will rescue you from your own people and from

the gentiles. I am sending you to them to open

their eyes and turn them to the darkness.

To Light and from the power of Satan to God, so.

They may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among

those who are sanctified by faith in me.

That was his call.

I'm sending you out to the Gentiles the moment you

heard Jesus. Now, why would God call Saul to go

reach the Gentiles. First of all, Oh, he's a Pharisee.

He hates anyone who does not love the law of God.

Gentiles do not care about the law of God. Two,

he's an Israelite. He did not like the Greeks and

the Romans.

Yet God calls him to the very people that he

does not like. Why would God do that? Because, let

me tell you something.

Often in our calling, there's a confrontation where we have

to confront.

Some of the things in our past.

Paul's calling, he had to confront his hatred for the Gentiles.

Some of you, when God calls you, God's going to

call you to confront some things that you're ashamed of,

because God's going to say that very thing that you've

been hiding away, You've been keeping it hid, you've had

it locked away. That thing is a thing that I

want you to minister to others who struggle with that

same thing, that thing that you're embarrassed about, that you

don't like to think about, that thing that you're ashamed of.

That's the the very thing that I want you to

go and reach other people who.

Struggle with that very thing.

And an interesting God often uses our pain for his

glory and we want to hide things away, But God says, listen,

if you receive the power of God, the forgiveness of God,

the transformation of God, and if I was able to

do that work in your life, in your painful situation,

don't you think.

Other people need to hear that? So often you're calling

is going to confront the things you struggled with in

the past.

Your ministry is often well comes out of your misery.

That's the way it is. Dave Rover was a young man.

And he had a bright life and it was gonna

be a good life. He was over in Vietnam serving

and he had a grenade in his hand and the

grenade blew up, mangled his hand and scarred up his face,

and his recovery progress was incredibly long. During that time,

he suffered with depression, self worth. He just simply thought,

look at me, my life is over. But during his

recovery process, he started to go deep of God.

And then God says, Dave, I'm going to use your scars.

To help other people who have wounds and have scars

in their life. I'm going to use your depression to

help other people who suffer with depression. I'm going to

use your lack of self worth to help go and

help people who don't have self worth, those people whose

lives has mangled them up. Those are the people I'm

going to send you to. He started speaking in schools

and at events and in churches, and over the next

many decades, he went out and helped people know Jesus

and their lives were transformed.

Why because he was not afraid to show his scars.

He had to confront his past so he could move

into his calling. Now here's the thing, here's what you

need to understand here. It's very fascinating. From the time

Paul heard his calling, it was ten years before he

fulfilled it, ten long years. Now, a lot of us,

God calls us into something and we're like, oh, that

means to Maro on Monday, I start this ministry.

Nope, I've seen it happen once. Or twife.

But typically there's a period where God's got to shape you.

Paul went away for three years to Galatia, Holy Spirit

train him. Then for many years he watched the other

apostles and got trained years in Tarsus. And here's the thing.

Paul was on the sidelines for the first ten years

of this church. Okay, But you know, when you have

a call, you move forward. But sometimes God keeps you

on the sidelines on purpose because sometimes he's working on

some things in your character. Maybe God's wanting to grow

you more, maybe he's setting the stage for you when

you finally get to that place, or maybe before he

gives you a platform, he needs to know it's going

to be all about him and not about you. See,

some of us have to confront our character before we

can go into our calling.

You know the story of John the Apostle.

You know, he was thirteen or fourteen years old, youngins

when he was a disciple of Jesus, thirteen or fourteen

years old, and he was like Jesus's favorite. At the

Last Supper, he kind of leaned his head on Jesus's shoulder.

He was in a privileged circle. He was one of

the top three disciples. And at the cross, when Jesus

was dying, he looked at John and he says, John,

will you take care of my mama?

I need you to take care of my mama.

And so for the next thirty years of church history,

we never hear of John. Only one time we hear

of John, that's when he was walking to go pray

with Peter. Other than that, John disappears for thirty years.

Do you know what John was doing for thirty years.

He was taking care of mama. He was taking care

of mama. And I want to say something right now

that some of you, those of you who are in

a season, you're raising up kids, and you think that

you're on the side eyelines.

Absolutely not.

God has you doing what He has you doing, because

that's an important part of your formation and your children's formation.

Sometimes God puts us on the sidelines. But why he

has us on the sidelines. He's shaping us.

And so we don't see him for thirty years. We

don't see this guy, Jesus's buddy for thirty years.

And here's the thing. During that time, Paul does his thing.

Peter is this thing.

All these apostles they're becoming famous and doing these great

ministry things.

But then here's John on the sidelines.

But let me tell you something about eighty seventy John

appears on the scene. And when John appears on the scene,

he becomes the most important.

Voice in the whole church.

He writes the Book of John, he writes the Three Letters,

then he writes the Book of Revelation. And also for

his last twenty years of his life, he does this

amazing major, major ministry. Now he had a whole back

for thirty years because.

He had to take care mama.

But let me talk about what happened to him during

the time he took care of mama, Because I want

to take you back to when he was thirteen or

fourteen years old. He's hanging out with Jesus and we

have some people who reject Jesus.

And John has this great idea. He goes, hey, Jesus,

they rejected you.

How about you call down fire from heaven and burn

them up. Let's kill these people who rejected you. He

literally made their request send fire upon them.

Thirty years later, what is he known for?

Beloved, Love one another, Love one another, love one another.

While he was on the sidelines, God was.

Chiseling him into the prophet of Love, the Apostle of Love.

Sometimes we got to confront some things in our life

to be ready for our calling.

And then lastly, today here it is.

I got a page in a half left, got consecration. Okay,

here's the part of consecration. It says that the Holy

Spirit says, set apart for me, and see, we have

to be able to be set apart by God.

See, Paul was doing a lot of things.

But then God says, I want you to do this

one thing and for some of us, in order for

you to fulfill the calling in your life, you need

to eliminate some things in your life. Some of you

young families right now need to hear. This busyness is

not helping you. It is hurting you. It's not helping

your family. It's hurting your family. And if you want

to be a family that brings glory and honor to

God and at a much more significant level, you're gonna

have to make some tough decisions and eliminate. You can't

say yes to everything. Okay, silence.

Everybody.

Okay, I guess I need to read that book.

I'm just telling you, I see some of you. And

then this is the thing.

I love all the young families in our church, but

I often see just the tiredness in your eyes, and

some of you, I feel like you're just like a

zombie walking through these years.

And there's more for you.

But you just got to say no to some stuff, okay,

and you gotta allow the Holy Spirit because that's not

my job. I just want you to pray about it, okay,

And let me tell you something. I know this is

hard to figure out what God's calling is and to

take those steps and have courage.

You know.

I love Pittsburgh. I love the church I was at

leaving the United Methodist Church. It was crazy, hard, it

was scary. But let me tell you something. I have

been on an adventure ever since. A lot of people

believe that if you follow God.

It'll be born. But let me tell you something.

If you actually hear from God and then do what

he tells you, you're gonna have the adventure of your life.

All Right, as we close thee I got three questions

for you. We're gonna pray about these right now before

we head into communion.

One are you aware of God's call in your life? Two?

What clarity do you need from the Holy Spirit? Number three?

If you got clarity, how are you going to move forward?

Encourage so you know what the Holy Spirit wants to

talk to you today. So just go ahead and get

comfortable and let's just take a few moments to speak

to the Holy Spirit.

Now let's pray.

I'm gonna shift into a time of communion. So go

ahead and grab out your the elements. If you don't

have your communion elements, just raise your hand. The ushers

will be born happy to hand those out to you.

And we take communion because Jesus.

Call us to and he says, I want you to

take some time when you're together as a family to

think about what I did for.

You on the cross, and how I gave my life

for you.

And so the bread part represents his body which was

broken for us. It took our punishment because of our sin,

and so we remember the pain.

And the punishment of Christ when we eat this. So

let's go ahead and take the bread together. Jesus said.

That the wine represents the blood of his body, which

was poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

So before I take the wine, I always take time

to ask.

For forgiveness of my sins. So let's take a moment

now and ask for the forgiveness of our sins. Jesus,

thank you for forgiveness, Thank you for your love, thank

you for your mercy. Thank you for dying on the

cross for us and God, Thank you for raising your

son and overcoming death so that we may have hope.

Now, family, let us take the Jews together.