Following Jesus Changes What You Do Next | Jake Vayda

Have you ever taken one of those ancestry tests?

Uh, there's several out there, uh, dozens at this point.

Very lucrative business because people like me want to know my heritage.

In fact, I figured out by taking one of these tests that I am one-third Scottish.

Yes, you heard that right.

And immediately uh I started identifying with the people of Scotland.

My people.

I don't know why you're laughing.

Uh, this is what you do, right?

Immediately you start talking in an accent.

Just kidding, that's that's not.

Bought a quilt, all the things, the kilt.

Uh and I started looking into the history of my native lands, and what I found is uh a lot of things.

In fact, Scotland has a pretty amazing history.

In fact, what we know of Scotland is that uh it has been taken over many times by England, and it hasn't gone so great very often.

A lot of bloody battles in the history of my people in Scotland.

And one of those people a thousand years ago, his name was William Wallace.

He stood up and he's like, I'm sick of this.

Like, I I want change.

In fact, there's a movie made by a man named Mel Gibson called Braveheart.

And at the end of this movie, spoiler, he dies, and the last word out of his mouth.

Freedom! With his last gasp of air.

And that word has rung through history for hundreds of years.

In fact, it inspired the Scotland people with statues all with him all over the country.

And uh, here's what we know freedom still has power.

Right?

This word freedom, what comes to your mind when you say, when I say freedom?

Maybe for you, what comes to mind is freedom to decide what to do with your time.

Freedom to spend the money that I want, freedom to marry the person that I want, freedom to go to the country that I want.

I want freedom.

And this has been a tenant of our own country in America ever since the birth is freedom.

We desire freedom.

Now the question is: has it worked?

Here's what I know.

It's worked in the way that we have more freedom now than any generation before us.

Just go to the country, uh, go to the go to the grocery store, and you'll see that we have 40 different options for milk.

The freedom is unlimited.

Freedom to decide vocation, freedom to decide where to live, what to do with your money, who you're gonna marry.

We have more freedom than any generation in the history of our world.

Is it working?

Well, here's what we know: we have more anxiety than any past generation, more depression, uh, more loneliness.

We have a lot of freedom.

What are we doing with it?

Well, I wonder if maybe we've mixed up what freedom really should be.

Because I don't know about you, but my first inclination when it comes to freedom is freedom, so I don't have to follow nobody.

Right?

I'm a self-made man, pull myself from the bootstraps.

Like that's I don't want to follow anybody.

What if, though, freedom isn't following nobody, but it's finding the right person to follow?

Here's what William Wallace believed when he yelled that word freedom.

He didn't want freedom of any king.

He wanted a king of his own country.

At that point, uh, the English king was over Scotland.

He didn't want no, like um, he wanted a king that represented him and his own country, the right person to follow.

And, you know, I love this ancestry thing.

I also learned that I'm 25% British, so I don't know who I was supposed to be rooting for, anyways, but that's besides the point.

Jesus, he walks on the scene to a man named Levi, and he says, those two words that are hard for our generation to hear, follow me.

Follow me.

And Levi left everything and followed him.

Here's what we know: when you follow Jesus, dead things come alive.

When you follow Jesus, he makes something happen.

He allows you to become the best version of yourself.

He allows you to live and unleash your gifts in a way that builds the future.

You're more free than ever when you follow the person of Jesus.

So the question today that I would love to answer is this.

If you're taking notes, is this how do I follow Jesus?

Maybe you're an atheist in the room, maybe you're a first-time guest, maybe you followed Jesus for 30 years.

You're here because you're at least curious, or you've already committed to following the person.

How do we follow Jesus?

Today I want to give you three movements so you can make sure you're on the right path if you desire to follow the right person, the person of Jesus.

Hey, if you're here for the first time, I'm so glad you are here.

Uh we are a Bible-believing, Bible preaching church.

And as we jump in, we'll be in the passage in Luke, in fact, about this tax collector.

Here's where the passage picks up.

After this, he went out and he saw a man named Levi at his work collecting taxes.

Jesus says, Come along with me, and he did.

He walked away from everything and went with him.

Levi gave a large dinner at his home for Jesus.

Everyone was there, taxmen and other disreputable characters as guests at the dinner.

The Pharisees and the religious scholars came to disciples and what is this?

Eating and drinking with misfits and sinners.

And Jesus heard about it.

Spoke up.

Who needs a doctor?

The healthy or the sick?

Let's read this last part together.

I'm here inviting outsiders, not insiders, an invitation to a changed life, changed inside and out.

The first movement, if you desire to follow Jesus, is this, if you want to write it down, access.

We give Jesus access.

The prayer that we pray is this you're welcome here.

Have you ever met someone who was just elite friend material?

Within the first couple seconds, they're passing all the green flags.

You're like, okay, I feel like we could get along.

This is great.

And then you start hanging out with them a little bit, and you know, they're not awkward about paying half for the check.

This is good for the bill.

You know, they actually text you back in a reasonable amount of time.

You're like, okay, this could be elite friend material here.

What do you do with someone like that?

You don't keep them at an arm's length distance.

You give them access a little bit more to your life.

Maybe a couple of your other friends.

See how your friends think about this new friend potentially.

Do they get along?

Right?

Maybe you invite them into a hobby that you do.

Maybe even jump into one of the, you give them access to your life.

Levi saw a lot of green flags in this person of Jesus so much so he gave this guy, Jesus, access to his life.

Not only access, but he like opened the door to his literal home.

It says, Yeah, you're welcome here.

He gave him access to his friend group, right?

He invited all these people, all the people that he knew, to his house so they could meet the person of Jesus.

Levi gave them access.

Now, this is exciting and it makes sense.

And I can give Jesus access to the things I'm proud about of my own life.

I'll give Jesus access to my future, to my accomplishments, to the things that I did right.

But giving Jesus access to the things that I'm not so proud about, I'll skip on that.

You know, like, hey, Jesus, you can come into my house.

Don't go in the closet, right?

There's a couple skeletons in there.

You don't want to see it, right?

It's pretty dark in there.

Uh just stay in the living.

Also, don't go into my the primary bedroom.

It's not really great in there, or the back.

Like, you just need to stay here, right?

This is what I'm most proud about.

It's easy to give Jesus access to the things that we're proud about.

It's hard to give Jesus access to things that we're a little ashamed about.

The sins that we've committed, the mistakes that we've made, the things we wish we didn't say, the things we didn't say that we wish we would have said.

Levi gave him full access.

It's funny when when I journal, I journal my prayers.

It's helpful for me to process out loud, like through writing.

So I do this, and uh it's easy to always journal about the things I'm proud about, but then I always pray a prayer at the end.

Uh Holy Spirit come are the three words that I say.

Uh the Holy Spirit is uh Jesus' helper, it says, that helps us understand and have a relationship with God and hear his voice.

So I pray this.

It's almost like praying, you're welcome here.

You have access to my full life.

And immediately the things that come to my mind aren't my accomplishments.

Like I'm a little frustrated.

The things that come up to my mind aren't the things that I that I would tell my friends about in blow, you know, go uh being excited about no, the things that come up.

Maybe I said something I probably shouldn't have said to my wife.

Probably should write that down.

Maybe I didn't actually trust God with my feature and I didn't sleep well because I had anxiety about I probably should write.

What is Jesus doing here?

Why every time that I pray that I encounter God, maybe even in worship for you, do some of the negative stuff come up?

Is Jesus trying to like wag his finger at me?

Right?

Like to shame me for all the areas that I'm not proud about.

Here's what I know when I do pray that Holy Spirit come and I write all the things that I'm not really proud about, trying to give Jesus access, I always feel a little bit better afterwards.

I wonder if Jesus isn't trying to condemn the parts that I'm not proud about.

I wonder if he's actually trying to heal the parts that I'm not proud about.

But here's the frustrating part.

Jesus often won't heal what we won't reveal.

Jesus is a gentleman.

He's not going to kick the door open.

That's not how it works.

Love is always a choice.

Jesus is waiting for you to give him access to the dark area so that he can heal it.

Jesus often won't heal what you won't reveal.

I wonder, is there an area of your life right now where the door is shut?

Is it your finances?

You're ashamed of the debt that you have?

Is it your marriage and the brokenness that's left unresolved?

Is it your vocation?

Where is a door that you're just keeping locked?

Jeez, you can access everything else, just not here.

The first step of following Jesus is we give him access like Levi.

But the second thing that's interesting about Levi's story is this.

And this is a little bit hard.

We give him access, but then we have to give him authority.

Here's the prayer.

You have the final say.

I might be stepping on some toes here.

I don't know about I don't know about this, right?

You can have access, but I'm not giving you like your opinion here.

What would it have been like to have Jesus at your dinner table?

You know, um do you ask Jesus to pray for the food?

That's kind of weird.

I don't know.

Dude.

Did Levi do that?

Like, is he gonna bless the food?

Is he gonna multiply it?

He's done that before.

Maybe he's gonna Also, like, how much does he know about everyone at the table?

Like all these questions come to my mind with Jesus sitting there.

Here's what's not in the scripture, but me just inferring using my imagination.

I wonder if Jesus was just sitting there laughing, maybe even cracking a couple jokes.

Like, what would Jesus be like at a dinner table?

I I bet he'd be asking a lot of questions.

He probably knows the answers to the questions, but I wonder if he'd just be curious about how we process and find solutions ourselves through just talking out loud.

I bet he'd be smiling a lot, being focused.

Like, what would Jesus be like at the dinner table?

The dinner table, I don't know what your dinner table is used for, but ours is used for eating.

Two thousand years ago, the dinner table was used for eating ordinary things.

But it's amazing.

When you give Jesus not only access but authority to ordinary things, he transforms it into something extraordinary.

That's what Jesus does.

He did it with a kid who had just a loaf of bread and he fed thousands.

He did it with a woman who was uh rejected and he transformed an entire city.

He did it with water and he turned it into wine.

Jesus takes ordinary things and turns it into extraordinary transformation, not only for the person, but for the people around the table.

It's interesting.

If you give Jesus authority, here's what I promise.

Jesus, you have the final say, he will take the things in your life and multiply it in ways you can't even think or imagine in your wildest dreams, it says in Ephesians 3.20.

And we see here a dinner table, and he used it to transform the lives of all of these disreputable characters, as the Bible says, tax collectors and uh uh people who are outsiders, not insiders, as it says.

Have you given Jesus the final say over your life?

Now, if you're an atheist or if you're someone brand new to faith, don't worry about this.

You know, the first step is access, but maybe even a Christian for a couple decades, a couple of years, a couple of months, and this is the part that's hard.

To say, Jesus, your opinion about my money is more important than what I hear on TikTok.

Your beliefs about the world are more important than the deeply beliefs that I have.

It gets hard when your beliefs are a little bit different than Jesus, when your urges are different than what we read in the Bible.

Where is it for you?

You haven't given the final say.

And that's why I'm man, I'm just so excited about baptisms.

Because it's people giving Jesus authority over everything, and that's where the transformation comes.

So let's continue.

It's cool.

We give Jesus access, we give him authority, and then Jesus does something.

Jesus activates us.

If you're writing it down, here's the third way that we follow Jesus.

Uh, activation.

Use me, here's the prayer, to bring others near.

Use me to bring others near.

He activates you.

And here's the thing: activation usually isn't a drudgery.

It's not something I have to do.

Activation is like, I'm excited about this, and I'm gonna bring others close to it.

You get this.

You have a friend who has an aura ring, and they're telling all the friends about the REM sleep that they had last night and the exact amount of hours.

They're activated.

You got a friend who's cold plunging, and now he's forcing you to come at 6 a.m.

to sacrifice your body with him every single day.

All right, this is this is you the Padres start winning, and all of a sudden your friends, yes, come on, right?

Revolves around game day, right?

If you're activated, if you love something, if you like it, you're immediately gonna bring other people into it.

This is what we see with Levi.

He starts following this person of Jesus.

He gets a little excited, he starts inviting all of his friends to his house.

You know what this word is?

It's called witness.

To bear witness, I have an aura ring and I love it.

I'm gonna bear witness and tell some of it.

Cold plunging, the Padres, we bear witness every day of our lives to a TV show.

Would you bear witness to the person of Jesus?

This is what Levi did.

And bearing witness just simply means helping to be a bridge between the person and the thing that you're asking or inviting them into.

But I say this word, and you're like, I don't know.

Like I don't I don't have all the answers about this whole Jesus thing yet.

Like I uh, you know, do we need to take, you know, have these people fill out a like a religious test before they come to church?

Like, I don't know.

Uh and I you're like, how do I even right?

You have all these questions that come to mind.

Notice what Levi didn't do.

He didn't at the door hand everyone a pamphlet as they were coming in, design this beautiful pamphlet, right?

He didn't argue with them, he didn't have them do any tests.

What was Levi's role?

An invitation.

That was it.

Isn't it interesting how a relationship almost always uh precedes receptivity?

Right?

You know someone, they like you.

It's a lot easier to just naturally invite them.

He just invited the people that he loved into something that he loved.

That's all that witness is.

I wonder if Jesus has you placed as a coworker on the basketball court, in your family, at your dining table right now, to simply invite.

Not to know all the answers, but to bear witness to the thing that you're already bearing witness to all the time in all the other spheres of life.

This is what Levi does.

He bears witness.

I want to invite uh the band to come up.

I love this verse in Romans 10, 14.

It says, How then can they call on the one they've not believed in?

How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?

And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?

Right?

How can the people that you love get access to Jesus if it's not for the person that he's already placed in their lives?

I also wonder were the people that Levi invited to the dinner table, how many of those got baptized?

How many of those have found freedom from addiction because they simply met the person of Jesus?

How many of those were stuck in vocation, found their identity, and then it turned to the person of Jesus?

And how many of those went back to Levi with tears in their eyes and said, Thank you for inviting me?

How do we follow Jesus?

We give him access, we give him authority, and then he activates us.

As we jump into this last song in the next couple of minutes, I was thinking about a picture.

In fact, do you remember the last time that you it was like a blast from the past, like a memory of just, whoa, this is crazy.

For me, it happened about 10 months ago, and I was touring this building, and this building was roughly a hundred years ago built.

Some of these old churches, man, they got closets and rooms that you're like, whoa, there's so many things to explore here.

And I'm walking around, and uh before we moved here, I I found a closet.

In that closet was a picture.

In fact, this was the picture that I found.

I'll actually put it on the screen.

Exactly where you're sitting thirty-three years ago that this picture was taken.

And I thought it was amazing to see a thriving church here in this building all those years ago.

It was amazing to see just the faces and knowing what a a neighborhood church, it changes the neighborhood.

Have you ever experienced that like a neighborhood church?

It just changes the neighborhood.

In fact, there's some actual stats about how a neighborhood church changes the neighborhood.

Harvard Research followed more than 5,000 young people, those who are regularly attending a neighborhood church, had 18% more likely to report greater happiness and one-third less likely to elicit drugs as a young adult.

What about mental health?

The mental health of the community, is it better?

When weekly church uh dropped attendance by 10%, deaths by suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol-related diseases increased.

Did you know that economics?

Hey, what about money?

Uh a thriving local neighborhood church brings$1.7 million to local economic uh uh uh the economy of the of the neighborhood.

This is this is just stats, but we don't need stats to know how this neighborhood church has not only changed the neighborhood but changed you.

Can you think of a time when you were low and someone maybe even in this church reached out?

Can you think of one of the darkest moments of your life and you weren't connected to a local church?

Is there a moment maybe even in this service where you encounter Jesus maybe for the first time all week and in a in a in a real way?

A neighborhood church changes the neighborhood.

And I get to see this picture 33 years ago of this church.

And my prayer is like, God, would you do it again?

Here in this building.

And I wonder in the last 12 months if God is setting the stage for something.

Let me give you three stats about what's happened here in this building and the pews that you're sitting in.

This past year, we've had 60 baptisms all time.

We've had 60% attendance growth year over year.

And here's my favorite one: 344 first-time guests just this year alone.

I wonder if God is setting the stage for a neighborhood church that changes the neighborhood again.

And it's exciting.

And many of you were a part of simply inviting somebody else, just like Levi.

And in a 15-minute driving radius, which is what we'd consider, you know, around your neighborhood, maybe in your neighbor, there's about a half a million people in a 15-minute driving radius.

Do you know how many of those, you know, maybe attend Create Church if you do the math?

About 0.03%.

So what does that mean?

99.7% of your neighbors are looking and searching for something.

Now, some of those might go to other churches, but I'm guessing that number doesn't go down drastically.

99.7%.

Then I look at this picture, I'm like, God, would you do it again?

What if you're setting the foundations for a harvest for the people that you love?

I wonder who invited you here to create church.

So here's what I want to do.

I want to do a three-week initiative with this series called At the Table.

Here's the goal: one person, one prayer, one invite.

In fact, this is based off of that verse that we read of Jesus saying this.

In fact, could we read this together one more time?

Luke 5.32.

I'm here inviting outsiders, not insiders, an invitation to a changed life, changed inside and out.

This is Luke 5.32.

And here's what I know: Jesus loves the people in your life way more than we do.

And there's a burden on Jesus' heart for the 99.7% of people.

And my hope and prayer today, as I was praying this morning, is that uh we would mobilize as a church to also have a burden to stand in the gap for those who don't have what you have.

So this week, would you set an alarm at 5.32 p.m.?

Maybe you could bring out your phone and do it right now.

Set an alarm at 5.32 p.m.

And would you pray for one person?

Here's what I believe could happen.

You memorize this verse and you pray, and it could just simply be help them today, right?

Maybe you ask them what their prayer requests, but you can be praying on behalf of them, stand in the gap, contend for the person.

But here's what I know I think God wants to give you his heart for his people in his neighborhood, here in San Diego.

There's been 350 invites that have come to this church, and this is how God's blessed our church.

And I wonder if God's not done.

So as we sing this next song, God moved in 1933 or 1993, but before that, this was a field, and the church got together and built this building.

That's how the churches used to be built back in the day.

God is still doing the exact same thing.

He's gonna build his church through his people.

Maybe not a physical building, but the culture of the church.

So would you stand with me?

I'm I'm just not okay with God moving in my parents' generation.

That's something I'm just not okay with.

He moved in 1993.

He moved in my grandparents' generation when he built this.

I'm just talking about this land right here, and I wonder in 2026 if he wants to move again.

I'm not satisfied with God just raising dead things to life in 1993 when that picture was taken.

I'm not satisfied when he built this of creating dead things out of.

I want Jesus here to do miracles in our lives, to transform our marriages, to heal us from addictions.

This is the life.

We're not trying to just do church, we're trying to make a movement happen, but Jesus does it.

So as we sing this last song, um, would you consider what it looks like for you to be mobilized, to have a heart, to stand in the gap for the people that you love, but Jesus loves even more.

I wonder what God could do if He's done what He's done in the last 12 months, to do what He could in the next 12 months.

So I'm gonna pray, God, God, we thank you for the generation before us.

I don't know their names, I don't know their faces, I don't know anybody that picture, but God, I thank you that we stand on their shoulders today, the people who literally built this building, and Lord, I, man, I just in 30 years from now, when another person comes in, and God, would would they see a picture of us?

They won't know our names.

But God, would they remember the faithfulness of this generation like we're doing for the generations before us?

God, would they look back and say, man, we stand on their shoulders and their invites and their broken hearts for the people that they love.

So Lord, I pray right now, God, would you give us a burden for your people.

The half a million people that live close to us, our friends and our family.

God, so we're just saying right now, would you have it all?

We give you access, we give you authority, and we pray in this room right now, would you activate us to bring others near?