Open House - Week 1

Amen. Amen, We're we're moving into our brand new series

today called open House. How many of you ever been

to an open house? Open house at school, open house

in your neighborhood. You just wanted to see that new

house that was built in you neighborhoods if it was

nicer than yours. Come on, somebody, amen, listen. Every time

we drive down the road, my wife says, Oh, that's

an open house, let's stop and see it. And I'm thinking,

why are we trying to buy another house? I like

mine just fine? Come and I got it broke in.

Come on, somebody, She said, we need a new mattress

because it does this in a minute. It's my shape.

I mean, it's taking me this long to put it

in my shape. I do want to tell you. We

were in Florida one time and we were driving through

this neighborhood of brand new houses, and you know, sometimes

you have to go to the bathroom. My wife had

to go to the bathroom. So there was this porta

potty on the side of the road and I saw

we pulled out. I said, just use that porta party

right there, because we wanted to keep driving around looking houses.

So she got in that Port. She went and got

into the Port of Party, and when she got in,

I thought it would be I thought it would be

a good idea to pretend like I left, come on now,

and so I get in the car. I didn't get

it across was already cause she got into Port Pliant

and we drove. But when we made the turn, there

were these kids selling lemonade. So me, being the person

full of blessing that I am, I wanted to support

them in their entrepreneurial endeavor. So I pulled in. I

pulled in and bought lemonade and talked for a little while,

and then got back in the car and pulled back around.

But I didn't realize how much time had passed. Come on, somebody,

I didn't realize how much time had passed. And when

I got back, she was standing on the side of

the road. She had flames coming out of her eyes.

Come on, somebody, I mean, listen. I want to tell

you I'll never do that again as long as I live.

No more playing in that manner, because I thought it

cost me my life that day. I really did think

that that would be the last lemonade I ever tasted,

because she was gonna kill me. But uh, you know,

but open house it's a great time. It's an experience

where you get to go and you get to meet people.

If you're a new parent and you're getting got a

kid going back to school, it's that open house. We

get to go meet the teachers and the other parents

and the other kids in classrooms and to get to

experience those new things. And that's what this series is

all about. It's about those moments where we open our

lives for the purpose that God created us for. It's

about intentionally finding people to build relationships with for the

purpose of bringing them to the Lord. You know this.

We read things in Scripture a lot of times and

we feel this immense weight of them because I don't

think we individualize them to our own lives. But let's

start today in Mark chapter sixteen, Mark chapter sixteen. Let's

start in verse fourteen, Mark sixteen fourteen. Since later he

appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table,

and he rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart, because

they did not believe those who had seen him after

he had risen, And he said to them, go into

all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.

He who believes and is baptized will be saved, but

he who does not believe will be condemned. Father, we

thank you for your word. It's the only change agent

on the face of the planet. And today I pray

that you bury your word at the very foundation of

our soul. Lord, that it would take root and germinate

and bring a harvest of grace and compassion, and purpose

and love and long suffering and kindness the likes of

which we've never let today be that pivotal moment of

change in our lives where we start living for a

kingdom purpose in Jesus' name. Amen. You know in uh

in Mark chapter in Matthew chapter twenty eight, we get

the same conversation of Jesus, but he puts a little

bit a little bit more with it. Matthew heard it

and remembered it a little bit different than Mark heard it. Now,

it's not it's not conflicting in any way. You have

to understand that, just like you. Sometimes when we when

we read the Bible, sometimes when we preach messages the

Lord speaks to us, we hear things just a little

bit differently than the person sitting next to us. Amen.

You know, I don't know how many times I've preached

a message. And I stand at the back door and

I shake hands, and when people leave, they say, old pastor,

thank you so much for that message. The Lord's been

dealing with me about. And you tell me what the

Lord's been dealing with you about. And I have, And

I spend the rest of the day try to figure

out if I mentioned that in my sermon or not,

because I don't remember saying it. But when the Lord

says something and speaks often it grabs our heart in

unique and individual ways. And it is like that with

the writers in scripture as well. They did not go

into a trance like a robot, like an autopen. Come on,

somebody who heard a lot about the autopen. It's not

an autopen where they just walled into a trance and

the Holy Spirit sketched out what they were supposed to say.

They wrote it the way they experienced it and lived it,

saw it, and heard it, and that's the way they

wrote it. And in Matthew chapter twenty eight we get

just a little bit some more details to fill in

what Jesus was saying in March chapter sixteen. In Matthew

twenty eight, verse sixteen. It says, then the eleven disciples

went away into Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus has

appointed for them. When they saw him, they worshiped him,

but some doubted, And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying,

all authority has been given to me in heaven and

on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,

baptizing them in the name of the Father and of

the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to

observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo

I am with you always, even to the end of

the age. Amen. The first thing I want you to

understand about evangelism, about us, about us sharing our faith,

is that when Jesus shared this, he was not sharing

this with a group of people who thought they had

faith mastered. Every single one of them were doubting something

about the faith. They didn't have it all together. I

think so many times the enemy convinces us that because

we don't have all of our junk together, that we're

not worthy, that we can't do. We can't share our faith,

we can't serve, we can't lead, we can't do all

those things. But I want you to know that if

somebody had to have all their junk together, every pulpit

in America would be empty today. Amen, because I transparency.

You know, I still lose my temper when I'm driving.

Come on, somebody, with the best of them, I rode

rage like a champ. I just saw people roll their

eyes because y'all do it too. Come on, now, listen,

I still I still. I still aggravate my wife and

make her mad. I'm not as good of a son

to my mama as I should be, and I'm not

as good of a father to my kids as I

should be. I don't have it all together, and I

could allow the enemy to hold my purpose back from

me because I'm not there yet. But I'm drinking milk

and I will be there one day. Amen. For those

of you all have to remember those commercials. That's the

thing about it is that we are still growing in

our faith. And Jesus didn't say, hey, get to the

top and yelled down. He says, start up the mountain

and bring some people with you. And he says, hey, yeah,

I want you to go into all the world and preach.

But he's not saying all the world. He's saying, all

of your world. Go into all of your world. Go

into your work world, go into your family world, go

into your personal friendship world. Go into your world and

preach the gospel. But do more than that, make disciples.

I still remember just a few things from Bible College,

and one of the things I remember the most is

we were in a class and doctor Cox looked at

us and he said, hey, when does discipleship begin? When

does discipleship begin? And you know, we were all scholars.

I mean, you know, we're Bible schools to you. I

mean you know we know more than everybody else. And

you know, we came to the conclusion as a class

that discipleship begins at salvation, that when somebody gets saved,

the discipleship journey begins. And he informed us how little

we knew. Amen. He said, discipleship begins at the very

first conversation we have with someone, whether they're saved or not.

We should always be changing the environment around us, leaning

towards Jesus. And discipleship is about growing and learning and

becoming more like Jesus. And we should do that with

every single conversation we have. So without understanding this is

what Jesus is really saying. He said, listen, go affect

change by building relationships and having conversations with the people

you come in contact with. Every He may not be

calling you to go to the ten forty window. He

may not be calling you to go to China. He

may not be calling you to go to Laos. He

may not be calling you to go to all of

these volatile places that we hear. He may be calling

you to go to the grocery store and to keep

your eyes open so that you can begin intentionally having

and building relationships for the purpose of winning people to Jesus. Now,

I know you're saying, old Pastor, that's manipulation. I'm not

gonna go and have a com I'm not gonna just

build make somebody my friend just so I can lead

them to Jesus. You go and you build friendships for

selfish reasons. You know that person down the street that's

got a boat and you want to go fishing, So

you go and you be nice to I'm hoping you're

gonna get invited. Come on somebody. You know that person

that's in that hunting club that has guests and you

want to go hunting, So you go be nice to him,

you start building a real relationship. And we do it

out of selfishness all the time. So why not for

the kingdom good? Why not for kingdom purposes that we

develop relationships. And you're like, well, how do I know

if they're saved or not? Build a relationship and find out.

If you accidentally make a friend of somebody that's a believer,

you don't go to hell for that. If you accidentally

become a Christian's friend, you're still okay. But if in

the course of that building a relationship you find their struggles,

you find those places where the enemy is beating them up,

you can come alongside them and you can offer support

and accountability and love and point them towards the one

who brought you through your mess and all of the

struggles that you've had, and has set you as a

city on a hill. That's the great thing about serving

our Lord is that he blesses every part of our lives.

You know, it used to be, especially here in the

Southeast United States, that you could just build a church,

not even build a church, you could rent a building

and put a sign out and open the doors and

people would come. People would just come to see what

was happening. But that attractional model of church is gone.

That that doesn't work anymore. People lost, People don't just

wander into a church anymore just to see what's happening.

That's that is a thing of the past. Amen. Now

people that are shopping for a new church may do that,

come on, but that is over. And the reason is

because send your email. I'm about to say something. Y'all

gonna get mad, and it's okay if I make you mad.

Sometimes the best way to get your problem solved, if

you're mad about something I say from the pulpit, is

to send an email to Clay a seastone dot TV.

That's the best way to get your problem solved. Because

if I say it from here, I'm probably not gonna

apologize for it. Amen, But I want you to understand

that right here where we live in the country, in

this country, the United States of America, we live in

a post Christian culture. We may have been a country

founded on the Gospel, but we are no longer a

country of the Gospel. We we live in a very secular,

empty culture right now, and it has affected everyone who

lives there, and that that whole attractional church model where

if we just sing good enough, and we just greet

good enough, and we just smell good enough, come on

somebody that people are gonna come. That's over. So let

me ask you this. If it's over, are we just

gonna come and continue to get together until law a

lot of us get so old that we die in

the building's empty. And if that model of church is over,

that must mean we are reverting back to something. And

I want to tell you something, The attractional model of

church is not scriptural. That whole model where we say, oh,

just come and see what we're doing, is not scriptural

at all. As a matter of fact, that model of

church came into being because professional ministers pastors thought you

weren't good enough at it. So we took on the responsibility.

Maybe because we didn't think you were doing it. We

took on the responsibility, but we just simply looked at

congregations and we said, hey, you know what, we can

win people to Jesus better. And Jesus looked at us

and said, okay, buddy, we'll let you do it on

your own power. If you want to do it by yourself,

do it by yourself. And As a result, the power

of the Church of Jesus Christ has see out of

our four walls and many places. We've become a country

club that occasionally has the wind of the dove as

it passes by. But we don't have those deep, strong

encounters with Jesus the way we used to, because we

have tried to talk people into the gospel. But anything

you can talk somebody into, the devil can talk them

out of. What we need to do is go back

to what we see in the New Testament, and that

is to build strong relationships so people can see the

Jesus in you and experience your journey and it becomes

their experience as well, and they have a grace collision

and they truly verifiably meet Jesus because they see His

love in you and flowing through you. Four steps to

being an effective evangelist. Now, listen, when I use the

word of angelists, I really just mean witness. Let me

tell you the difference an evangelist. You're sitting at the table,

the waitress comes to the table. If you're an evangelist,

you look at her and you say, if you died

right now, do you have the assurance of knowing you'd

go to heaven and she never comes back to the

table and you thirst to death. Right, that's a that's

that's the call of an evangelist. Not all people are

called to do that. As a matter of fact, most

people are not called to do that. We're all called

to be witnesses, and that is just simply building relationship

and sharing our story. Check check check, yep, got got it.

I'm back. Uh. What we have to understand is that

the first thing we have to do is take personal

responsibility as a witness of Jesus Christ. It's our personal

responsibility to share our faith and listen. I just let's

just do it. I mean, we're all here, we all

love each other, we're all friends. Raise your hand if

that feels scary to share your story, to just start

talking to people about Jesus. I mean, I mean it does, right,

how many of you you? But once you find out

somebody goes to church, you start sharing your story because

it's not Yeah, I mean, that's yeah fat man's evangelism.

You know what I mean. We already see it's good,

so we eat it, and we eat a lot of it. Yeah,

but see that that's not what God is calling us to.

Sometimes he calls us to do the hard things, to

do the uncomfortable things. But Jesus already knew that was

going to happen. So this is what he told us.

He said, listen, they don't hate you, they hate me.

They're not rejecting you, they're rejecting me. He already knew

what a struggle was going to be, so he told

you the truth behind it is not that they don't

like you. They don't like him. So you have to

take the personal responsibility and understand that it's your job

to share the gospel, not everywhere you go, but at

least somewhere you go. The second is build that personal relationship. Listen,

just just be nice. Just take a little time out

of your day to show that you care about people.

You know. I just I have watched, I have watched

so many times where we do that little part where

I say, go shake somebody's hand and hug somebody's neck,

and I watch, and here's the reality. You go shake

hands with the people that go to group with you.

Whoever you cluster with is the same people you go

and shake hands with. You know, we used to everybody

used to say, oh, we need to start doing church

dinners again. We needed a church wide dinner. Some of

y'all maybe feel that way. We're not going to because

here's why we do these big meals, and we do

all this work, and then you sit with the same

people you sit with in church. So it's not a

church why dinner. It's just that everybody's in the room together,

but you're still in your groups. You have to move

beyond that and start opening your life up to new experiences.

And not everybody has to be like me. Everywhere we go.

I'm always listening for a conversation I can get involved in. Now,

you just get involved, Calvin. You don't need a reason,

you just you just jump in there. But I'm always

listening and I will. We were at we were at

a Florida State softball game and these ladies were talking

behind us and they said something, And as soon as

they said something, I said, Hey, I got some information there.

I'm going to jump in this conversation. So I jumped

in the conversation. I started having a conversation. We were laughing.

We get in the car, Laci and Ag said, why

do you always have have to talk to other people

when we're out in public. God just made me this way,

and you don't have to talk to everybody, but you

need to talk to somebody. You need to pick somebody

that that that is that can tolerate you and that

you can tolerate and start building a friendship. And if

you don't know how to build a friendship, it looks

kind of like this, Hey, how are you today? I'm

doing good too, you know, I just I just wanted

you to know that that I appreciate all the work

you do around here. Or I just noticed that you

know you Why do you use that tide detergent? You know,

if I thought about using tide detergent, I just see

it right there, your bug. I've always thought about using

tide too, but I always thought they break me out.

Do you have sensitive skin? I'm got kind of sensitive skin,

I mean, and they're like, no, I don't have sensitive skin.

I'm like, oh, okay, so so I should probably just

keep using game why I don't know hides on sail.

Oh yeah it was hides on sale. I got a

sensitive billfold too, And just start talking and Jesus will

care you where you need to be. And then you

just switch it over. You say, oh, does it get you,

does it get your clothes clean? Yeah? Yeah, get you close.

You know what the preacher was saying another Sunday at church,

he was saying, the blood of Jesus washes away here.

Would you believe that? I'm like, well, yeah, that's not

your that's not your target for evangelism, right. They're like, no,

I don't believe that mess. Yeah, I'm I'm still figuring

that out myself. But I keep going cause let me

tell them, those people love you, they support you. They've

helped me through so many things. I mean, I had

an ingrown tone down, I had to have surgery, and

I was limping out and Pastor pulled over and said, hey,

how you doing. He stepped on my foot, But I

still appreciate that. We're built to do life together. So

start doing life with somebody. Just start having a conversation

with you, knowing that the intentional point of that is

to eventually lead them to Christ. And then there's going

to come a moment where you get to share your

personal story. You take the personal responsibility to build a

personal relationship so you can share your personal story about

your walk with Jesus, that thing that changed your life

forever that moment where Jesus stepped into a situation and

he not shown up, everything would have fallen apart for me.

It happened in a dorm room at Emmanual College, where

I was there and questioning everything about life. The guy

who I was friends with saw the strain I was

under as I walked across the quad, and he came

and he sat down beside my bed in my dorm room.

He began to pray over me. I'd never heard such

sincere things said about me, and I don't know when

it happened, but I got out of the bed and

I knelt down beside Randy and we began to pray.

And in that dorm room, I literally verifiably met Jesus

and it changed everything about my life. I don't open

with that. That's for close friends. It's for people who

I've invested in so that they care enough to know

why I am the way I am. That's what building

a personal relationship so I can share my personal story

looks like. And then when you share that story and

you make a personal invitation and listen, everybody hears at

a different mastery with ripture in their life. So you

may not be able to lead someone in that prayer.

You may not be able to walk them through scripture

to that moment of a grace collision. But you can

invite them to group, you can invite them to church.

You can make that invitation somewhere somehow, But you have

to come to the place where you've built the relationship

with the intention of a personal invitation for someone to

hear and meet Jesus. And if we don't do that,

we will lose the battle in our culture today. If

we don't start doing this, we will lose the battle

that culture is bringing to our doorstep. And it's your responsibility.

So you guys can come and get ready. Now let

me give you a deep theological dive here about how

you share the Gospel with somebody. The first thing you

need to do is you need to tell them when

you come to that place and you invite and you

tell them you're they're gonna look at you and they're

gonna be like, I don't know why you think I'm

so I don't know why you think I'm so bad

that I need Jesus. Well, here's the thing. You just

look at him and say, I just want you to

know sin is not exclusive to you. Sin is not

exclusive to you. We were all born into it. And

I tell you another thing too, the love of God,

it's not exclusive to me. He died for the entire world.

He didn't just die for me. And I know it

looks like I got my stuff together and that God

has shown me all this favor. But I want you

to know that's not exclusive to me. That's for all

of us, and so is salvation. Salvation is a free

gift to all of humanity. And it's not that we

think you're less than it's not that I think that

there's something wrong with you. It's that I've experienced God's

grace and I want you to have that same experience.

And that is all you need to know. That we're

all sinners, that Jesus died for humanity, and that his

blood washes away sin. That's all somebody needs to know.

That's all they need to know to come into a

grace collision with Jesus. In Proverbs chapter twenty seven, verse five,

it says open rebuke is better than love. Carefully concealed,

faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses

of an enemy are deceitful. He says, Listen, when you're

a friend, you can say hard things to people when

you've taken the time to build a friendship, a relationship,

it's on that platform where you have built that relational equity,

that relational collateral that then you can then have hard conversations.

The problem and the reason most of us give up

on sharing our faith is we don't want to invest

long enough to make an impact because when we have

it built a friendship, all people do is hear judgment,

and judgment is not the purpose. Salvation and a grace

collision with Jesus is the purpose of everything we do.

And when we do that in the context of relationship,

so much easier for people to hear. You know, I

know some of you have had bad experiences share your faith.

I know some of you the devil beats uping because

you don't feel like you're worthy. But I don't want

to tell you God chose you for such a time

as this and such a place as this, that He

has strategically and purposefully placed you where and when you

are to make a difference. Time is growing closer to

the end, and it's our responsibility to make as big

of a difference as we can. So your homework this

week is to just go identify a person you want

to start having a conversation with that will lead to relationship,

that will lead to you sharing your story, that will

lead to you making an invitation. Just identify that person.

Come on now, just identify that person and start praying

for it. Just identify them and start praying for them.

If you're an advanced student and you want to go

ahead and start having those conversations, Bill now right, jump

ahead and do next week's homework. But I want you

to identify the person and start praying for them every

single day. It could be the person you by coffee

from at the convenience store. It could be that clerk

that works the cash register at the grocery store. It

could be somebody that works in the cubicle next to you.

Maybe you're in the service industry and you go to

the same person's home every week or every month. It

could be one of those people. Listen. It could be

your neighbor down the street. Listen. If you've got an

unsaved loved one, it can be one of them, and

you deepen the relationship with that family member for the

purpose of leading them to Christ. But church, please start,

Please start, because it's the basic level of anointing. And

when you start serving Jesus, that anointing will destroy the

yoke of the enemy in your life, and you bringing

them the freedom will set you free too. It's the

way the kingdom works. You know. Maybe you're here today, Owen.

You don't even know Jesus yet, you've never accepted Christ

as your Lord and savior. Where somebody made an invitation,

so you came, you found us online. Whatever you know,

Jesus loved you so much that he gathered these people

here today just for you. All these people could be

at the lake, at the beach, in the mountains, at

home the holiday weekend, but they chose to be here.

And God brought us here because he loves you. He

brought us here so that we could be the expression

of that love he showed two thousand years ago. Were

of his own volition, no one could have taken the

life of the Savior. He freely laid it down, and

in that process he was beaten beyond human recognition. For you,

they put the instrument of his death. In today's terms.

He would have carried his own electric chair through those

dusty streets of Jerusalem, as people were screaming, spitting him,

hurling insults at him. He walked up to an elevated

point just on the city's edge, and he laid himself

down on a cross, and he had nails hammered through

his hands and feet, and he was lifted for all

to see, and his blood as it ran down that

cross pulled in that sandy sum is there to be

applied to your life, to wash away your sin and

make you a brand new creation. All the guilt and

all the shame, and all of those things washed away

in a moment by the blood of Jesus on every

head bowed and every eye closed. If you're here today,

you want you want to give your life to that

person that laid his life down for you. Fast. You

just slip your hand up and say that's me, Pastor,

pray for me. I need Jesus. I don't want to

leave feeling the way I came in feeling. Nobody knows,

but all of that dirtiness, shame or feel Slip your

hand up, put it right back down, Say that's me, Pastor,

Pray for me. Pray for me. Amen, I see that hand.

There's somebody else you know, maybe you're here and amen,

I see that hand. Maybe you're here and you want

to come back to Jesus. You feel like there's things

that have come between you and him, sin that has

infiltrated your life and taken over it. You want to

lay that down and you want him to wash you clean,

brand you again. Today. Slip every hand, say that's my pastor.

I'm ready to come back to Jesus. I'm ready to

make a stand. I'm ready to draw my line in

the sand. I am ready for everything God has. I'm

coming back to him with a reckless abandon. Amen, I

see that hand. Every I opened, Everybody standing to your

feet for our alter team would come and get ready.

Here's what the Bible says. The Bible says that if

you confess me before men, I'll confess you before my

father in heaven. If you deny me before men, I'll

deny you before my father. This is where our faith

actually becomes faith when we make a public display of

our faith. So, on the count of three, if you

raised your hand, I want you to step out and

make your way to the front. Don't look around to

see if anybody else is moving. This is not about popularity.

This is about faith. It's on the count of three.

If you raised your hand, I want you to step

out and come one, two, three, step out and move

right now. Come on, come on, everybody that raised their hand,

come on. Don't let the enemy steal this from you.

Come on, come on, come on. Amen Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen,

Amen Amen, Come on brother, Amen Amen Amen. Cathy, will

you come come pray Kathy either both forgot Kathy was

stacked up behind Kathy over there. Amen. I need some

help over here too. Amen. Father, We thank you for

the miracles that are being done right now. We love

you and we thank you Church. We're gonna worship. The

band's gonna sing, and I want you to worship like

not only your life, but these lives depend on create

a habitation for the Lord to dwell in. I believe

he's not done. There's still miracles that will happen in

this place today. Pastor Clay