God's Power in Ordinary People

Good morning, everybody. My name is Drew. I'm the pastor here at Hope Heights. It's great to have you here. It's great to have you in the room worshiping with us. If you are visiting, we're really, really thrilled you can be here. Hopefully you get the opportunity to connect to an actual Hope. Real Hope person. That's the real gems here at Hope are the people. So check that out. I haven't done a lot of reviews, but I've been thinking about how reviews work this week as we wrap up our series in the Book of Acts. The way you get to a review is that you kind of have an expectation for something or you think you know what it's going to be. You experience something, right? And then you get to share how that went. And we live now. It seems like a normal thing. I can even say, have you ever given a review? And everyone knows what that means, right? You all think about, like, Facebook, Marketplace, or I don't know where people are getting reviews. Google. It wasn't probably long ago and you go like, review, like in the paper. But now this is such a part of our life, the way I choose things. Just yesterday, I chose a restaurant to eat at with my dad in an area I'm usually not in. And we're like, how do we know where to go? And we're like, there's. It was in Wisconsin. So there were six bars in this one town of a hundred people. And which one has good food? And so we looked it up on Google and they told us and it was true. It was. It was tasty. If you're ever in Landon Station, Linden Station, go to Norms. They have great burgers. It was true. How we get there is we have an expectation and it is fulfilled or not, right? So it made me look up, like, what are some times this doesn't happen? Which probably happens all the time in your life. Applebee's might be a place. This does happen for people. This guy ordered this salad and it did not turn out like he hoped. I'm gonna. It's gross. I'm gonna change it. This happens, right, all the time with food. You see the picture when you think about it, you're like, there's no way that's a real picture. And that's what you actually get. The thing you expect, the thing you hope for doesn't happen, and it changes your opinion. You might not even head back to this place because you go, oh, man, there's like one tiny scoop or whatever that is. Brisket, not the big Pile. Or maybe this happens in ordering. This happens all the time on Amazon, right? You get something, you pay $109.99, which seems like a lot of money for a bear. I might want to question that one. And then you get this demon bear in the mail, right? I love the review. Says, legs are awful. Yeah, they are. There's a person in there for sure. They shipped you a person. I love this one. This person wrote, I planted carrots for the first time. Like, is this what they're supposed to be? Like, all stalk, all planted, tiny little. Oh, that's a sad. Sometimes we even, right, we kind of plant something. We get something going, growing, and then the actual fruit of it is not even close to what we hoped for. That's very real life. Maybe not a carrot, but in very. Maybe more significant ways. I love this one. This person bought socks that are wool and then found out they're only 3.3percent wool. Sometimes it's just advertised, right? You're like, oh, people want nice, cozy wool socks with C cushion boots, right? Boot socks. And then they get them and they realize, oh, they're just polyester socks with a little bit of wool. How much wool do I have to have to say it's wool, right? How much meat has to be in it to call it a burger? This is just one of my favorite things to look up to, make me laugh. When people try to make recipes off Pinterest and then they look not like they think, right? You think you're getting into it. This person tried to make rat cookies, which I think just making rat cookies, you might be already setting yourself up for. Why are you making cookies look like rats? I love it. That's what you'd expect, though, actually, maybe from that. Just piles of cookie dough. There's so many of these, right? These ways that we see this happen. This is an actual review. Nancy Guthrie, who even so we've been hearing from in the Book of Acts, she's a biblical scholar teacher. She said she. Her and her husband were talking about restaurants to go to, and they heard about this great steak place in town. And her husband said, we should probably read some reviews. And this was one of the first reviews they heard. There are four types of people who give Star Steakhouse. She did say, we changed the name of it so that we wouldn't publish a book with a bad review in it. There's four types of people who will give Star Steakhouse anything higher than two stars. Those. Those on Star Steakhouse's payroll. Makes sense. Those born without taste buds, those rating the service and not the food, and those who simply feel sorry for Star Steakhouse and never give low ratings. This is the rest of the review. Come on down and try our steaks. They say we have expensive food and a great atmosphere, and we've been open for decades. Everyone says we're good. I have actually never talked to anyone who is satisfied with the steakhouse. I know and saw people walk away disappointed, dumbfounded at how this business, this business is still in business. The word steak is in their title, but I would guess there are not steaks actually at the place. Worst steaks in town, maybe the world. Absolutely flavorless. The cheeseburgers were even bad. The salad, ugh. The potatoes, awful. The shrimp barf. I'd rather eat my way across the lawn than eat at this place again. So one star, which is appropriate for that review. They obviously didn't like their steakhouse. Why would that happen? Because this, I think, is a great example of this. Because they thought, wow, steakhouse. If it's just called a steakhouse, it's going to be amazing. We're going to save up. We're going to go out for a special dinner. We're going to have these tasty steaks, steaks I could never even have at home with, like, the tastiest sides. It's gonna be this great fancy experience. And then if you get there and the food's not great, the service isn't great, maybe it's one of those steakhouses that's, like, really old, so it smells like your grandma's house. And so you're like, oh, this wasn't what I hoped for. So what you hoped for did not follow through. And you probably won't go back. You even will maybe tell your friends about this place and say, don't. Don't go there. It's not giving you what you hoped for. This is something we experience all the time in all of life. I'm guessing you have experiences like this or even are thinking of things that are a little more serious, a little more consequential in life than this. One of those things I think we get is if we review the church, I guess we all have moments where we go, I expected this, and I did not get that. They say they have fantastic stakes, and they do not. Right. They say they're, like, care about me. Maybe I feel like they don't. The people there are supposed to be awesome and wholesome and nice and perfect. They're supposed to be all cleaned up and together. I didn't experience that. I think this is a very real experience that we have. Probably today someone will have this here, today in this room. They will go. That's just not what I thought or hoped for. I don't know. It's this reality, I think, of what we expected and what we thought we were getting and maybe even leaving and going, like, what am I? What. What came about from that? I think the Book of Acts has helped us think this about this as we end our series here now we. We did a series. We've been doing 16 weeks. Congratulations, you made it. We're at the end of our 16 weeks in the Book of Acts. We've seen all sorts of incredible things happen that happened thousands of years ago in the early church as God started his church. This the story of Christ coming, rescuing people dying, rising, change in the world, and then the story of him starting his church, his family and what that looks like. I think Acts, if we actually read it and see what happens and see who stars in it and what it brings, might help us review the church, I think, and even who God is. Well, the problem we have, I think, is we're reviewing the church, the people in the church, with an expectation that we actually should be putting maybe on the Lord or putting other expectations on the Lord. So my hope today is that we're going to take a few minutes to just be encouraged, reminded what God has done in the Book of Acts and reminded that it's really important that we're reviewing the right things and the right person. I think that might change. It actually changes very real life, very on the ground every day, every moment. If we're actually doing this with the right expectations and the right understandings. And I think this happens because of like this. I have some pictures that help illustrate. This is an image of the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit, God himself, working in all these ways. We see him in the Book of Acts. We represent it as like flames, like fire, right? Which I like. There's this heat to it and this excitement to this energy to it. He's healing people. There's people who are preaching in front of crowds and thousands of people's lives are changed forever. We see people raised pretty much from the dead. We see people travel through dangerous places and make it out alive. At the end of Acts, we see this story that we didn't get to talk through here on Sunday, but hopefully you get to read through the story of this ship wrecked up. Paul's on, and there's all these over 200 people on the Ship. And they should. Someone should have died. Someone shouldn't have made it out. And they all made it out. The Lord provides for them. We see these incredible things that God does. They call them these signs and wonders. Throughout Acts, we see this main character of the Holy Spirit, God moving through people. Over and over. We hear people go, oh, they must be gods. And they say, no, no, no, we're not gods. We're just people, just ordinary people. In fact, that language is even used like in Acts 4. They're ordinary people. So we see this happen, but it's really hard. And we haven't done a great job always in church history of this, in the Book of Acts. In fact, the Book of Acts used to be called like the Acts of the Church. There was a season in church. Maybe even your Bible says this. The Acts of the church were originally. It's just really the Acts or the continued story of God. But we turn the story kind of into like a movie. And we want to hear about are these amazing people and all the things they do. And then we might start going, well, then I got to do what the people in Acts do, kind of forgetting the fire that's actually made it all happen. And so our story actually becomes all strong people and people who can get the job done and who can fight for it, and people who are suffering and how they got through their suffering. It becomes about people who can pray really well. And so things happen. It becomes a bit of the work of the people, really. It becomes a story of, like, superheroes. This is very much how I saw, I think, all of scripture. I would open my Bible, the little bit I did as a kid, and I go, okay, tell me stories of the superheroes of faith. And then I left going, now I got to be a superhero of faith. And I often felt like I can't be a superhero of faith. I don't, do I. I can't be this, like, Superman who changes people's lives and communities lives. And so there's this real tension here, right? And if you expect one of these, then you're going to. It's going to change how you review things. It's going to change how you feel, how you. What you experience. It's going to change who you're looking to. And I think for myself, I would look to myself a lot. Can't you figure this out? Can't you teach in a way? Can't you heal in a way? Can't you get it together so that you could be one of these people instead of seeing A story that I think is actually the story of X. People say, like, don't meet your heroes, right? That's like the phrase. If someone meets someone famous, there's even like a hashtag for that. You can watch people talking about meeting their favorite people. Because often that story is, I met my hero and they were like a regular person. You're like, I don't know what you expected, but we expected that when you met this celebrity or this athlete, they were somehow going to, like, be different or even change you. And they're just another person, right? They're not superhuman. They're really an ordinary person. And this is, I think when we walk into the Book of Acts, if we're not careful, then we might leave at the end and go, oh, cool. Crazy stuff from a long time ago. No way that could happen today. No way that is happening today. No way that I could be a part of that. Not what I thought it would be. It might even make you think, if you're looking for heroes, you might come to a church and go, those seem like kind of broken people too. No superheroes at that church. Be a great review for our church. No superheroes here. And so this is my hope. We're going to look at the beginning of Acts, the real beginning and the last verses in Acts, just to be reminded that it's the same God doing the same stuff that he promised to do, that we didn't get duped, we didn't get tricked, we didn't have, like, bots creating reviews about who God was and what he does. And then it's not. Doesn't actually happen. We have a God who's still the same God, who's still doing the same thing as we. As we get, I think, our expectations and the story here, right? So actually we've seen all sorts of things from the Holy Spirit move, right? People healed, incredible things. A man named Paul changed. And this is who we actually get to see at the end of the Book of Acts. One of the stories we follow through the Book of Acts is a man named Paul who later actually writes a lot of the books, which are letters to the churches he helped plant. And it's incredible. We're going to end. We're going to end with this last moment. Where is Paul at the end of the Book of Acts. But we're going to start with this moment with Jesus and his people. The beginning of the Book of Acts is kind of like the end of the book of Luke, which is the story of Jesus's life, his birth all the miracles he did, him proclaiming this good news, his death for us, his resurrection, and then eventually his ascension. That's what this picture is of. And Jesus says this as he's leaving us. He says, he kind of gives this statement, this mission. He says, here's what's going to happen. He says, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you. And you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all of Judea and Samaria into the ends of the earth. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna leave, I'm gonna be on my throne in heaven, but as part of the Trinity, you're not being left alone. In fact, I'm leaving in my spirit. And I will come and dwell in all of you who believe God himself will be in us. We don't have to go to like a temple to be in this holy place. He's gonna be right here with his people in the holy place. The fact we meet here in this room, this is a holy place. We have. God's presence is right here today. And it was then he says, this Holy Spirit is going to come, which we see at Pentecost. He's going to come to you and then you all will be witnesses. You get to go and carry like your temples, God's presence. You get to carry that to people. And not just here in Jerusalem, around our Jewish friends, brothers and sisters, but even farther out to like God fearing people who maybe are sympathetic, understand us, we still kind of understand the culture there. But even the ends of the earth, the ends to the places where people worship very different things, where they have very different lifestyles that you think they would never ever want to worship this God. We're going to go all the way. Jesus says this, this is kind of the great Commission, the great mission of it. And he says really three things that are important here that we just looked at, right? You're going to receive this power. This power. We get to see, we see this all over the Book of Acts. It's a story of God's power. But this is this picture of Pentecost, this first moment when the Spirit of God comes. People from all over the world are in this place together and they talk and they can understand each other. It's this movement of the Spirit showing the power of God, a miracle that could only happen with God. It's this picture of what God does. He unifies people, he brings them together. He changes people. And so first you're going to see God's power and his work that's going to come and dwell in you. And then because that comes and dwells in you, you're going to be my witnesses. In Acts 4, we hear they're called ordinary people who had been with Jesus. How in the world did you heal this man? I don't understand. These are just uneducated, ordinary people who'd been with Jesus. That's what does it. People have been with Jesus and the Spirit is changing them. And we see at the end of that story in Acts 4 that they're told, stop talking about Jesus or might end your lives. And they meet in a room and they pray that they could continue to talk about Jesus. How does that happen? Not because these are giants in the faith as much as these are faithful people to a God who they have heard a God say, I have power. I can change lives. I can save all people. And they saw it happen, and they went, five stars. This God's real. How can I not tell people about him? And so I know it's the one thing we're asked not to do, but it's the one thing we do. And so we see this boldness. These ordinary people, who we cannot forget, are filled with God's power, his work within them. And the other thing Jesus says that will happen is that we're going to go to the ends of the earth. You're going to go everywhere at any time. There are no boundaries, bounds to the gospel, which is different. A lot of religion, a lot of even culture and people groups are very like, who were you born into? What kind of things do you like to do? Your ethnicity and your geography. Every time, especially this time in history. And so that's who you are. You're identified with those things. And Jesus goes, you can now be identified. Your identity is in me, not those things first. And so we can go anywhere with this thing. That's, like, unheard of. There's no bounds to this. And this is where we find Paul at the end of acts. So for 27 chapters, 28 chapters, we see this happen. God's power at work in people in so many different ways. Reread Acts like five times this summer. Every time it's like, more encouraging. Holy cow. God is doing miraculous things through just ordinary people. We're seeing people get saved, lives changed, communities changed. There's so much that I go, this is what I want right now, right here for my people. Oh, God was doing it then. And at the end of it, we still see the same thing happening. We showed up, we saw God do this, and he actually did it. There was an expectation, actually probably did it in a way we don't even understand. He could do it. And so we find Paul, who was a man whose life was changed dramatically. We find him actually in like, kind of house arrest in Rome, the end of the earth. And we see literally the last two verses of the book of Acts confirms that what Jesus said he was going to do, he has done. And this is just in the life of this one person named Paul. There's tens of thousands of other people just in the book of Acts over these few years that the same thing is happening to. But let's just. Paul himself shows that these things are true, that our God has done this in the life of this person here. So this is Paul, our friend Paul. Paul, let me read this passage. For this is Acts 28:30 to 31, just kind of ends here as he's. He's in a house here for two whole years. Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. So Paul had been arrested years before this in Jerusalem, and he eventually been moved. He actually was on this ship as a prisoner. But in there, God had spoken to him and he helped, like, tell them they'd be safe and that God would protect them. And he does. They go to Malta, and in Malta, he's able to heal someone. And a snake bites him. It doesn't hurt him. It's wild. You got to read this and all of that. He's still a prisoner. He gets to Rome and he's still kind of on house arrest. There's this kind of like, we're not totally sure why he's arrested, but leaders in Jerusalem wanted him arrested. And so he's on essentially house arrest in this place. People come to visit him. We see letters from Paul later in the New Testament that are at this time. He's hanging out. People come. He gets to share the gospel. He gets to send letters and messages to people. People. So this is where Paul is, right? Two years, Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance or without an end or a bound. It's really. Luke here is letting us know the thing Jesus said, you're going to receive this power. It's going to change you. And then you're going to be a witness. You're going to get to go and say, you have to hear about this Jesus. You have to hear about this God who rescues and saves and changes lives, and it's going to go far. You wouldn't believe how far it's going to go. We find Paul, a man who was earlier, not that long ago, killing Christians. His job was to drag them out of their homes. He was saying, I got to stop this thing. And God meets him and changes him. That's the Holy Spirit. He's received the power of the Holy Spirit. We see a real change in him. It's clear it's not just Paul going, I think they'll pay me more. I'm willing to switch. I'm getting some offers. A headhunter called me and he's like, hey, you want to work for the Christian guys? And he's like, what can they offer, right? He's not just moving. He's not just moving between Boston Scientific and Medtronic, right? It's not the Twin Cities pattern. We all know. He's going, this is what you're fighting against. And now God has changed you. Now you're part of that and you're welcoming people in. He goes from being a death bringer to a life proclaimer. He goes from working for God's favor to receiving God's grace. He goes from boasting about his life and all of his accolades and his history, and he goes to someone who's aware of his sin, who needs Jesus. He's aware how ordinary he is and how extraordinary God is. He's willing to risk his life for the Gospel. He finds joy now in his suffering. Instead of running from suffering, he's arrested and imprisoned. But as free as he will ever be, he goes from being bound by sin to free by grace. A man who has seen, received the power of the Holy Spirit. And we've seen him as just an ordinary he. In fact, at one point, he's in his town and they heal a person who couldn't walk. And they start walking just like Jesus does. Jesus power through them. And they say, you must be Hermes and Zeus. Remember this story? Just assuming you must be gods. And they go, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're just ordinary people who have come with news about a very extraordinary God. We'd love for you to turn to him. I love here the language here actually is that he's in a rented home, a home that is not his own. So a translation of this is that Paul spent some years in a home that was not his home, unhindered to share the Gospel. It's this cool picture, like he knows and we know Paul you're just here for a little bit, and then one day you'll be in your real home. It's really his picture of all of us. You're kind of just on vacation in a way. You're kind of in another land. In another way. You're just an ordinary guy out of place, but in a place that while you're here, you're going to tell people about this incredible home that they could have, this incredible father that they could have also here. The language that he welcomes all who came to see him is that he welcomes anyone from any place, which is also really, for us, that might feel like, oh, of course, if you put it, like really, really put boots in the ground, you go like, well, I don't. I wouldn't really welcome anyone. But he's saying people from all backgrounds, from all religious backgrounds, from ethnic backgrounds, from anywhere. Anyone who's willing and wants to. He's seen over and over God bring people to hear the gospel. And he said, I want to hear it. This is also him believing that just anyone. This is for anyone and everyone. This isn't just for a certain group of people. He's in Rome now. He's down the street from the Emperor. He's met with kings. And in all that, he hasn't gone, man, I'm a big deal. I'm sitting in my rented home getting to share the gospel with people with boldness. And I don't get to. There's no end to this. There's no bounds to this. And we get to see this ends of the earth just in where he's at. He's in Rome. He's. He's where Kind of the end of the known world at the time. Time. He's met with all these people in all these places, Gentiles from all different regions. We see that after that, he goes all over his. There's churches in cities all over the world that never would have talked or hung out. They would have. In fact, some of those people groups would have been violent and even enslaved one another. And these are people now who are united in Christ. We literally get to see him sitting at the end of the world, at the end of the earth, proclaiming the gospel. Acts 1:8 happened. Jesus said, hey, come to me and you're going to see this happen. And we get to see at the end of Acts, it happened by the Spirit's power. Ordinary people, even this Paul has got to bring the good news to the end of the world. And so the hope would be right. It Delivered even more than we could ever imagine. My hope would be that someone experienced this. Paul could have hopped on Google and all that time in his house and he could have given a little review, right? I've heard this place could change my life, and it did. The Spirit's power met me in the darkest, farthest place from God. The people, surprisingly sinners like me, cared for me and pointed me to Jesus. I'll be back. Just like Jesus. I'll be back. So this, this is really what the church gets to be. The book of Acts reminds us of what the church is and what it still is. Because after Acts 28 comes a whole lot more years of the same thing happening in many, many, many, many people's lives and in many of our lives sitting in this room, right? And so we become this place, right, where we see the power of God saving work in ordinary people to all places. I want to encourage you even all places in just geographic. All places are to the darkest, hardest places, to the heart of the person. You thought, there's no way that person's ever going to come near Jesus. Jesus can get anywhere he wants and he will. And so where can he go? Anywhere. And what skills does a person need? You need to be ordinary. I think I can scan. Yep, you all look pretty ordinary. I love you for that. How will this work? Well, God's power, his grace, his kindness, his convicting, it's without bounds and he can do it. I think what this looks like in my life is that I will say, yeah, but I don't know if I can do that. Whether that's share the gospel, whether it's move towards maybe someone who's harder to move towards, maybe it's even believe this is true. That's a great first step. Do I even believe this good news is true? And then do I even believe that God actually could go anywhere and change anyone? And I don't think I can do that. Well, you're right, you can't do that. Because we can't skip the first part of this. This power that comes from God can do it. It's too hard. I would need a miracle for this to happen. If you picture like, picture a person that you think they're not maybe geographically in a place that is the end of the earth, but considering like the church and what they feel about it or what they've experienced in it, they are at the end of their. If you picture it's way too hard, it need a miracle. You're right, it would need a miracle. It would need, like a God who's powerful enough to get there and change there. They're too far. They're too consumed. They're too broken. They're too hurt. They're too scary. It would take way too long. For you, yes. For me, yes. But not for our God. And it might be you. You might be the person, right? I'm too broken. I'm too consumed. I'm too far. I'm too hurt. He can get there, and he's got there. And the book of Acts tells us, you want a God who's willing to move towards and run after the lost sheep. We got 15 stars. He does it and he keeps doing it. It's worth it. I think it's really important. It's really important that we, I think, are thinking of this and understanding God's the one doing this work, that we get to join. It changes who you are. If you're putting this on yourself, it changes. We went to Chicago a few years ago and we were doing those boat tours. So I was looking at reviews of which company, and one of the reviews said it rained and we got wet. It ruined the tour. Don't recommend because that wasn't the boat tour's fault. I don't know. I also saw a review from Minneapolis. Like, I was reviewing, like, places to visit. And one of the Minneapolis said it was cold and snowy. I hate the cold. I will never go back here. Like, you had to know it was going to be cold coming here. It had to be winter, as if it's always cold and snowy here. You stay wherever you are, then we don't need you. So that was ordinary, sinful Drew speaking in that moment. This is the. I think we're reviewing it wrong. We're going, oh, God. I met some people and they weren't really kind. And so you're not kind. I was. I was hanging out with some Christians and this happened. And now that's who you are. And forgetting, like, those are ordinary, broken people who are pleased. We're praying the Lord would change us. Instead of going, actually, let's look at the work of our God. This is our hope. Now. Next week we're going to start a series that we're going to do all summer that we're calling the Cloud of Witnesses. And this is our hope, is we're just going to keep looking at the story of ordinary sinners in scripture and seeing how God works through these people are. Have these incredible stories, and they're people I do want us to look up to for their Faith and their love for Jesus and the Lord. But they're still people who by the power of the Spirit, have been changed. They're doing the work of God at the to the ends of the earth. All summer we're going to hear about people throughout scripture who are doing this. I'm really looking forward to hearing all these. And all of this, all of this. It is only possible because of what God has done. And we cannot forget in the end. Right? This is all we have, is this good news of this person named Jesus. I'm going to show you a very, very well known verse that you probably know. I don't want you to discount. I don't want you to go, John 3:16. Come on, Drew, you got to know more verses than that. I'm personally sharing this because summer is when you see this more often. Right. You're at a Twins game. Still got free tickets to that or whatever else. Right. And you see the John 3:16. We still see them popping up. Maybe not as much as we used to. Yeah, yeah. God still loved the world. Listen to this, though. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. This is very good news. It's the same news Paul shared. It's the same news Jesus shared. It's the same news that for many, many, many years this is all we got, that we get to share this news that God loved us so much that Jesus would come down to us. A very extraordinary God came and became very ordinary, at least 100% ordinary, 100% God, so that we would not die, so that we would not perish, but that we would have life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. We have a God who became extraordinary, extraordinarily ordinary, in fact died a death, suffered more than we'll ever suffer, so that we could have life. This is why any of this is possible. And he sits today on his throne. And his spirit, the power of his spirit can come right now and change us. And it's true. The power of God's saving work in ordinary people to all places is our story just one more way. This has really impacted me a little bit. I was thinking of this week. So when we got this, I got the email from Pastor John, who's our executive pastor. We don't see him often here. He has this throne at our downtown. No, he does. I actually usually think of John in sweatpants, like late at night, in his office, he keeps stuff running. I love this guy to death. He gives me an email and says, hey, here's kind of where we're at, I hope. Here's what we're sure pretty praying for. Looks like Hope Heights. We're gonna need to get about 75,000 more dollars by the end of the year to kind of reach where we think our budget's gonna go. And I go, cool. And I'm like, thanks, man. God's got it. And then I send that email, and then I feel this wave over me, and I'm like, oh, that's a lot of money. Kind of like Aaron said. I'm like, if this was at my house, we'd be calling the realtor. We're like, we're selling the house. I'm feeling it. So I'm feeling nervous, I'm feeling anxious, I'm feeling overwhelmed. My first response on that was to Google, like, fundraising techniques for churches, right? Which there's a lot of options for that. There's organizations you can pay a bunch of money to, and I think you'll get the money back. I don't know. I'm trying to think all the right questions. We gotta be able to figure this out. Who could we call? What things could we say? How could I craft. Can I get chatgpt to craft the right thing to say to just change everyone? So, like, who am I emailing? Can I just start emailing other churches? I don't know. Really, I am. And then I go, okay, just pray about this. I sit down to read acts to get ready for this morning, and. And I read the power of God is going to come on these people and change them and that God can know the ends of the earth. And I go, true. You skipped it. You skipped the most important part. You think you and these people in this room are all that you have to raise these funds. And you forget that I'm the one who raised it in the beginning, that it's my funds, that I got this, that I changed the life of Paul and so many others, that I got this. And that's how. I mean, I think there's a million of those that happen every week in your life. And believing this is true changes everything. That Christ did die. He did rise. That we do have this good news, that God changes and saves us in a million little ways. And that one day we'll get to be with him at home. And right now, as ordinary people, we get to rely on him and we get to tell others this incredible News as we end our time here, just a couple questions to consider and then I'm actually going to share a video. I'm really encouraged by this. To see the work that God's doing, really just doing in the life of our friend Paul, not Paul from way back. This just happened to work out. Paul, who is now a pastor here at Hope, who's about to start one of our new locations, who I love this guy to death, known him for many years, and he's going to share how this is how the Spirit has just in his life, that story of Paul. First, I want you just to consider a few things here, some questions to reflect on, some ways we're gonna respond to the gospel before we watch this video of him. Do you know Jesus and his power to save me? That's the starting place. The starting place is know him and allow him to change with the power of God through the Holy Spirit. Change you. When is your review of God and yourself wrong? Maybe consider, where am I getting that from? When I think about who I am and who God is, and it's like, ugh, I don't like it. Why is that? And where is that coming from? And maybe God needs to speak into who you are in him and who he is. Who reminds you of God's goodness and power? Who are the people who remind you those things? Maybe consider who isn't reminding you those. And who could you share this good news with as well? Ways we respond here. We love taking care of communion and build our service to that moment. Communion's just the thing Jesus commanded us to do. He said, I want you to break bread and drink wine as a way to remember my bloodshed. My body broke. And it's this great opportunity, this amazing moment to remember his presence with us. We do that out in the hallways. Both sides have crackers and grape juice. We'd love for you to partake in that as an opportunity to remember that thing, that moment where Christ did die and rescue eyes that has changed all things. We love to sing together. Our band will come up here after the video and we get to sing good gospel truth together. People would love to pray for you. We've got people on both sides of the of the aisle here who love to pray. I hear they're like the best prayers we have. So get in on this. They're not always good. That's not true. Please take them up on that. They have a yellow lanyard. They love to pray for you. It's a real gift. One of my favorite, favorite parts of the week and then you can always give. Giving is a response to the gospel. Hey, this isn't mine and I want to help continue the work of what God's doing. I'm going to show you this video. This is a longer one. I think it's like eight minutes. It's a story of Paul, our friend Paul here at Hope and you get to see a little bit of what Hope, like why we exist is to see people know Jesus, develop people and eventually even start churches. We want to see more people know him so you get to see that whole story and just be encouraged. We love this brother. He's actually come here and preached a few times and we're excited, really excited for another location of HOPE to start this fall and so just even celebrate that God's doing a lot of cool work to see this. So here's our friend Paul and his story and his family's story.

Acts 28:30–31 Acts 1:8 John 3:16 John 3:16