Discipleship Training Part 2 - Discipleship Training

Well good morning, everybody.

Listen, you found uh a bookmark that was on your seat.

If you didn't if you didn't get one, they are out in the lobby.

And some of you are new here from last night, and there's some notes also.

All of them are gone.

Okay.

So there's no more notes.

Too bad.

Um, no, I think we oh, there's one.

There's one in the back.

So one left.

Um listen, on this bookmark, let me show that to you, and uh Rock will talk about this, I'm sure, in his seminar.

Just something that I'm copying.

By the way, by the way, um I always say to people, copyright laws.

I used to say this at Mountain Springs, and I'll say it here, copyright laws for the road are copy it right.

So um this I copied this from our Lord's Community Church and uh worded it differently, but I liked the idea.

If you'll if you'll read that um maybe later, what we wrote here about the purpose of this and the purpose of spending time in God's Word and devotional life and intimacy with Christ.

The the uh acronym we've talked about here of PB and J is mentioned prayer, Bible, and journal.

Prayer, Bible, and journal, prayer, Bible, and journal.

And then you'll notice there is a lineup, a schedule that we're encouraging everybody in the church to follow in reading the Bible.

It's one chapter a day, and this is just for the fall.

And then we'll have another bookmark that we put out in the spring, uh the winter and the spring.

And as you begin to lead a small group, if you begin to lead a D group, this is what I would encourage you to use for the reading of the Bible time that we did last night when we when we act it out.

We did it in our group.

You would have a chapter, everybody in the church would be on that chapter, and so it would be easy to follow that if you're in the Gospel of Mark.

And that we set it up, so it'd be right after our seminar.

So it starts on October 6th, and so that's on Monday.

And then you'll notice on the weekends we're giving you uh creeds, great doctrinal creeds of the church.

Um it's my conviction that uh knowing creeds, understanding some of the great creeds of the church is vital in uh giving you kind of a systematic understanding of church history and how we got the scriptures and what we believe.

Now, we we will have this available on the website at the point when we're ready to launch to put out the website.

But for right now, I'm told you can go to Jay's website and he has all the creeds there.

And it's arulost.org, which I think is quite an appropriate way to remember it because you are lost on the creeds, or you can just look them up online.

You can just put in the creed and you'll find it.

But are you lost is A-R-E-U, just a U.

A-R-R-U-Lost.org.

And you'll see the Casedonian Creed, you'll see the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, etc.

And this evening before we get set up and we don't.

Okay.

Well, it doesn't start until Monday.

So you don't do anything yet.

Um so anyway, during the weeks, we're going through got we're going through those chapters, weekends, we we uh encourage you to read that day, read a creed.

And uh, and these are just these are snippets, about the same size as a chapter.

Okay, well, without further ado, um come on up, bro, and you got your mic on this time.

It's awesome.

Okay.

Let's welcome Rock.

Hey, good to be with you.

Okay, so how many of you guys were not here last night?

Just wave at me.

I know you're kind of joining us.

Good.

Welcome.

It's good to have you this morning.

And um, we'll we'll review enough of what we did last night to catch it up.

I want to say thanks to George.

George is the maker of uh these aspen walking sticks.

He heard we were Bev and I were hikers.

We went up to the crags yesterday, and uh he mentioned something about the honorarium check bouncing, and so he gave this to us to take home uh as a reminder of our time with you.

So uh anyway, we want to say thanks, George, for that.

That's super sweet here, Bev.

You want to take these.

We are hikers and and we love to use sticks and don't have anything like that.

It's great to be with you.

Um let's see.

Uh who is it?

Greg, are you running the projector?

Let's uh let's try it here.

You know, uh but you guys have your kids here, you know.

Uh I'm gonna have Bev come up and uh so you get to see each other, but but we want to introduce you to our family.

We'll see if the pictures will hold for us, if they'll come on.

Um does it look like it will it come on, Greg, or is it is it dead?

It'll be up in a little bit.

But uh there it is, right there.

Okay, we're making disciples.

And uh so Bev, I want you to come on up.

I want to just introduce our family.

Some of you guys knew our kids because we were here uh for a number of years, both at Pulpit Rock and at Focus.

Uh, but those of you that don't, we want to introduce you to our family so you know that we also change diapers and and uh have done our share of that.

Do I need the mic?

Oh, the mic, yeah.

Let me give you a mic here, and you can kind of there you go.

Okay, so uh these are just my favorite disciples.

Um but uh we had four quickly, and before you know it, they become this.

Uh now Josh, Bo, Bethany, Zach, uh which one did I forget?

Zach.

Uh they're all married, have children, and let's see.

Josh is married to Amy.

Josh is a Josh is a literature teacher.

He turned into this professor, but uh he loves Jesus.

And um really the the striking thing that that I just am so most grateful for is that our kids um love the Lord and are really trying to follow him.

Uh Josh and Amy have Silas from Ethiopia, he's now seven, and uh really uh they they even wrote a book called From Ashes to Africa, just from their grief, uh from their own marriage problems to not having children.

God in his faithfulness always redeems you know the hard things.

And now they they really have a ministry to people who are trying to adopt.

And Brad and Bethany, they are uh they uh uh met in college, and now uh about 15 years later, let's see where they um well this is their four, but Bethany just had number five, Joseph.

And Brad is a businessman, but his real heart is leading worship.

If you've ever sang the song We Are Hungry, he wrote that.

So we are are just grateful for our five there.

Jackie's 12, Anna's eight, Kate is six, and little rock is three, and Joseph's just out of the out of the hatch.

Um Bo and Megan, they they also met during um the college years.

They um Bo is a uh he is a lawyer now in Norman, Oklahoma.

He went through the jag his heart, he loved the military, but they um they didn't love the moving around, so they settled.

He's still a Marine Reserve, and uh they have three children.

There's uh Wyatt, who is um seven, they have Tess.

She is, oh my goodness, she is so cute.

She's uh she's almost four next month, and then they have uh JH and he's really Joseph Hudson.

And um uh it's wonderful because both our kids they're they're really devoted to Jesus and to just um just being they they love being parents, so it's fun to to watch them grow and stretch.

And then our last one, Zach, he um he's our baby, he's about six five, and uh he's married to little Jessica, who's maybe small in body, but she is a strong woman, and they have three precious girls.

Uh Adley six, Banner is uh four, and then uh uh Reynolds is now one and a half, and then they're expecting number four in March.

So Zach is a businessman in Chicago, and they are um they're real pastors at heart.

The they their their home is their is is their just mission field.

They're they're very hospitable.

So we we love our children, and we really love our grandchildren.

They're um we love them all, and this is us together.

We we really don't get to do this very often, but when we do, it's very precious.

So thanks, Bev.

Thank you.

We love our kids.

Let me say uh uh our kids are we're grateful by the grace of God that are walking with the Lord, but a big part of that, frankly, was uh when they got in their um uh teen years, we became part of a church just like you guys have.

And there are two things about that church.

One, they received personal attention, so they weren't just lost in a large youth group, but we we were in a a smaller church, uh kind of like where you guys are, but they got personal attention, and it was a word spirit church.

So they got the truth of the scriptures, but they also got the power and presence uh of the spirit.

So they got to experience God as well as learn his ways.

And I know that's a huge part of what you guys are about.

Your mix of worship that gets to the heart, the ministry of the spirit, which allows you to experience God, to hear his voice and see him work in clear and miraculous ways, and then you've got the strong commitment to the truth of the scriptures.

So that mix is really important, particularly for teenagers.

And uh if they get that, uh, you know, and it and and they they they they engage with that where they'll walk with God the rest of their days.

If they don't, often they walk away from God for the rest of their days.

So this kind of thing that you guys are doing is precious for your teens.

Okay.

Uh well last night we began, and uh we started by talking about being disciples.

We talked about what a disciple is and how they're uh you know, and and and what goes into that.

And uh today we want to talk about making disciples, because that's your that's your uh that's your mission, right?

It's building, building wholehearted disciples of Jesus.

And and uh we want to talk about today just some core concepts um as far as making disciples, how this works, and then uh uh we want to uh let you practice leading a very simple way to do this, both to be and make disciples, what we call a D-group.

And we'll let you, we tasted that last night.

We're gonna let you have a little bit more experience and talk about how to lead one of these and just how simple it is.

Uh and that's the that's the value of a D group.

It is so simple.

Really, anybody who has begun with Christ can turn around and lead this with somebody else.

And the only materials is a Bible and uh a little sheet of questions, life questions, which uh I've we're giving you in your notes.

That's all you need, materials-wise.

You can meet anytime, any place, and uh it can be as few as two people, you and one other person, uh, no bigger than six.

So it is so simple.

I was telling uh um, is it Michaela?

Michaela and Josh over here.

Michaela's in eighth grade, Josh is in tenth.

I said, you guys can lead a D group with kids in your class.

You can do that.

The guy who led me in my first little D group had only been walking with God maybe two or three months.

I mean, that's how far along he was, and he was about 20 years old.

So this is something that all of us can do.

It's a simple way for all of us to make disciples.

We'll talk about that.

But here's what I want to do I want to take you back to the beginning because uh uh of really, I want to take you back to the most important, simple, significant thing, single thing that you can do in your own life to grow in your life with Christ.

It's probably something you heard about from your earliest days, but we never outgrow that, and and often we we think we do.

When I first went to Oklahoma City, this would have been six years ago, the primary objective of the first year at this church that I took on, it was one thing, a simple thing.

It was to get everybody in the church to spend daily time with God.

And we made it very simple.

We called it 15 minutes with God.

And uh we did that because most of them were just like you.

They uh they had significant responsibilities in family.

They were raising family, married, and many of them had young children.

Many of them were responsible professionals, so they they worked hard at their jobs, which means uh time was short and energy was short, and so we said, look, let's keep this simple.

Let's covenant together to make room for God to speak to you and you to speak to Him just for 15 minutes.

Uh now a lot of people roll their eyes and say, see, you can't you can't connect with God.

Yes, you can.

You can connect with God in 15 minutes.

And often if you try to do more than that, you don't do anything because you don't have 30 minutes, you don't have an hour, uh, most of you, uh, in your in your day.

But all of us, if we if we're hungry, all of us can find 15 minutes.

I mean, that's a short time.

You can find it in your car before you go into work, you can find it during lunchtime, uh, you can find it before you come home, maybe, you can find it before you go to bed.

But there's room in all of our lives for 15 minutes.

And what's amazing is what God can do if we'll give him 15 minutes each day, every day.

Because we grow like trees grow.

You don't grow in great bursts.

You grow by feeding a little bit each day.

And so that was for the first year of our church, that was our primary goal.

Let's all agree that we'll spend 15 minutes with God.

And I told the people, listen, if you love this church, that's the most important thing you can do.

Why?

Because if you're in 15 minutes with God, he'll make you a nice person.

And uh, you know, when we get together, we'll be nice people to each other.

We won't bite and devour and so forth.

We'll we'll we'll get along together.

I mean, it's amazing what happens when God gets to speak into the life of his people.

And so that's what we did.

We started out, and uh, and I taught him how to do 15 minutes with God.

Let me and it's very, I said, look, this is the taproot of your soul.

You know, the taproot is the root that goes down deep, so when things get hard on top, they're still feeding.

It's what keeps me going.

Hard times, good times.

It is the taproot of the soul, is that time with the Lord, where he gets to speak to me and I speak with him meaningfully.

And uh, let's go on.

This is what my roommate, this is my roommate.

You remember the story of him from last night.

That's what he taught me.

The first thing that I learned as a new Christian is once you give your life to Christ, you're born again.

But that's just the beginning.

We're born.

Now we need to grow.

And the way we grow is we let God feed our soul.

And so uh uh you see it.

You see this, he was right.

You see it in the scriptures.

Uh the Psalms talk about a godly man, a godly woman, and that's what we all want to be.

And this is how it describes a godly person, you know.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord.

That's that's the book, that's the word of God.

And in his law, he meditates.

It means I think about how do I live this?

That's what it means to meditate.

What does it mean?

How do I live it?

And it says, in his law, he meditates day and night.

Doesn't mean you just do it all the time, but it's regular, it's a regular daily thing.

And everything I do, I'm trying to live by what I learned from what God speaks to me, from his word.

And it says, and he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water.

Now, if you've ever been to a dry place, we live in Oklahoma, it's easy to know where the rivers are.

Just look for the trees.

Because the trees are on the river, and every place else, it's kind of dry and scrubby.

Okay?

He says, if a man gives, what's God saying?

If you'll give me time to speak into your soul, comfort, correction, direction, you'll give me time to speak to me.

I will make you like a tree planted by the river.

You think of what that means in Israel, in in Oklahoma, in Texas, you guys know.

You're in Colorado, fly over Colorado, you can always tell where the rivers are.

Because it's the only place the trees are.

The rest of the thing is dried up.

Be like a tree planted by the rivers of water.

And it talks about his is uh talks about uh be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, his leaf also shall not wither.

In other words, when it gets dry and life gets hard and it gets hard for all of us, we all have the disappointments, the miscarriages, the the lost jobs, the the disease in our body, the broken hearts, the we all the the the dry times come.

But it says, look, if you're planted by the rivers of water, your leaf won't wither.

You won't die in those difficult times.

Why?

Because the taproot goes down into the water.

Leaf also shall not wither.

And it talks about you'll bear fruit in your season.

Uh in other words, bearing fruit means fulfilling the will of God.

You'll fulfill the will of God, the dream of God for your life.

And at the right time, God will do the things He wants to do in your life.

Your leaf also doesn't wither, and whatsoever you do it shall prosper.

God says, look, if you'll you'll plant your life by me, uh I'll make your life fruitful, keep you from withering.

And uh and you'll find life works, marriage works, raising kids works, work works.

Uh because the things, you know, as you listen to God, He He teaches us how to do life so that it works.

So anyway, we said, look, this is this is this is the taproot of your soul.

Um and so I taught him how to do 15 minutes with God.

And I want to do that with you this morning, and I'll connect this to D groups in a minute.

Um But but if you've got your Bible, I want you to so 15 minutes with God, we take five minutes, five minutes to read, five minutes to journal what God is saying to me, and five minutes to pray.

And that's what we're gonna do.

I want to practice that with you.

So if you have your Bible, let's open to James chapter 2.

James 2 · chapter mention

James 2.

We started with James 1 last night, but James 2, just open it up, and we're gonna do 15 minutes with God.

I want to show you what this is.

Now, for some of you, this is a review, but for others, uh, this is a simple way to begin something that I'm sure all of our hearts want to do.

So, James chapter 2.

James 2 · chapter mention

I'm just gonna give you five minutes and I want you to read through it.

We're just gonna read quietly right there by yourself.

I just want you to read James 2.

And as you do, you're listening for what is God saying to me?

What is he saying to me about my life and my situation?

So just silently where you are, just read James 2.

Okay, now once you've read through it, that's about five minutes.

Takes about that long to read one chapter now.

I want to take five more minutes, and I want to encourage you to, in your notes there, uh just find a kind of a spare place in those notes.

Uh what we use at our Lord's is we just give everybody one of these little journals like this that you can get at Walmart for 97 cents.

And uh, but I want you to look back and you're listening for where in this do I sense God is speaking to me personally?

Not looking for some theological insight or something that you teach somebody else or how bad the world is out there because they're not doing it.

We're listening for what do I sense the Holy Spirit is speaking to me out of this passage.

And just in two or three sentences, I just want you to write what do you sense the Lord whispering to you.

So this is five minutes one, we read.

The second five minutes we're journaling, we're writing what God is saying to me.

And now we've uh taken five minutes to read the Word of God, we've taken five minutes to listen to the Spirit and what He's saying personally to me.

And uh remember, this is time with God, this is a Bible study, this is connecting with the Lord, letting him speak to you personally.

And uh and by writing, it kind of makes you listen and hear specifically what is God saying to me in all this.

And you write it down.

I mean, I'll I'll write down what what I wrote just as I was reading this, just to give you an idea.

Um it was the the verse that spoke to me a lot of things in this chapter, of course, about walking with God and theologically what faith is and what it's not and all that bit.

But the per piece that spoke to me was verse one, where it says, My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don't show favoritism.

And where I sense the uh spirit whispering to me, It was just in that phrase, the glorious Lord Jesus Christ.

You know, just getting ready for this morning and coming to see you guys, you know, it was kind of a jumble and a tumble, and I and I just sense God was speaking to me.

And I'll read what I wrote here.

Um the piece of this that spoke to me.

I put the date, 3rd of October, 2014, put the passage, James 2, and I put the verse, verse 1, and then I just wrote out that little phrase, glorious Lord Jesus Christ.

And this is what I sense the Lord saying.

Jesus is glorious.

He's wonderful.

He does glorious things for me, and he means glorious things for me.

Things that would give me great joy and peace and desire for him and desire to please him and honor him and know him.

And then I put to me, this is what I sense God saying to me.

Slow down and remember him.

Thank him.

Praise him.

Realize the wonder of who he is and what he's done and enjoy him.

I mean, that's what I sense God saying.

So today is a it's a busy day.

It's a my headspace is full of stuff today.

And what I sense is God is saying, you know, your Savior is glorious.

Now slow down and realize the wonder of who he is.

King of kings, Lord of Lords, the heavenly man, God in a body.

And what he's done saved me from sin.

Giving me eternal life.

Giving me the Holy Spirit.

Promise to be with me to never leave me or forsake me.

I can relax.

I've got a shepherd.

I've got a father.

He'll not let anything get through that would ruin and destroy.

He'll give me what I need to get through the day.

So I can relax and enjoy it.

I mean, this is what God is saying in this little phrase.

That's what I mean by listening for what now.

If we went, you know, around the room, my guess is God would be speaking a different thing because we're all in a different place.

But that's what we're trying to capture is what is God saying to me today?

I mean, that's connecting, that's living by the word.

Okay?

So that's what we're writing.

The reason we stop to write is it makes us listen until we've heard what God is saying.

And then we write it down.

So that's number two, okay?

So five minutes to read, five minutes to listen for what God is saying and to write.

Then five minutes to pray.

And uh, you know, I've never found a better uh way to learn to pray than what I was taught as a new believer, the acronym Axe.

Have you ever heard of the acronym Axe?

ACTS?

You know, we roll our eyes and oh, that is so elementary, it's so cheesy.

I'll tell you, I've been a Christian for 45 years.

I've never found a better way to remember how to pray.

This is what I do.

I've got about a 20-minute drive from my home to the church, and this is what I do, ACTS.

And uh it just helps me to slow down, remember the things that God in his word has called me to talk to him about.

So I'm gonna, we're just gonna do this.

I just want you to kind of close your eyes, bow your head here.

A, of course, is adoration.

It's just a fancy word for praise, and uh it's you know, you you you adore by saying, Lord, you know, Lord, I'm amazed by.

And then think of things.

I just want us to do it.

Just just quietly where you are.

Lord, I'm amazed by your what is it?

You can just tell him, what is it about him that amazes you?

Just quietly in your own heart.

Just remember God and tell him what amazes you.

Just silently, right where you are.

I just think.

If there's nothing wrong, there's nothing to confess.

But if there are things that happened this morning, last night, you know they grieve God, they they damaged your own soul.

Just confess it.

Say, Lord, I was wrong when it's like a shower, it's like taking a bath.

The way we clean off.

I just tell people, just think about yesterday.

What was it yesterday that was good, that you enjoyed, that you loved?

The Bible tells us every good and perfect thing cometh down from above, from the Father of lights, with whom is no variation, neither shadow of turning.

So whatever was good, I mean it came from God.

So just think about yesterday.

Say, Lord, I want to say thanks for the S is supplication.

It's just a fancy word for asking.

Now think about what do you need today?

I mean, just think of what's ahead today.

What do you need for today?

What's your daily bread for today?

What do I need?

Father, we thank you for the invitation you said.

Uh let us therefore come boldly under the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, find grace to help in time of need.

And Lord, we do, we thank you that whenever we speak, you listen, you hear, you respond.

We're just grateful for the privilege of uh access to you anytime, all the time.

Amen.

There you did it.

15 minutes with God.

Was that good?

Did the Lord speak to you during that time?

Did you get to speak to him?

Did you feel the muscles in your neck and shoulders relaxing as you remember the goodness of God?

Remember how good he was yesterday.

And if he was good yesterday, it'll be good today, tomorrow and the next day.

Therefore, do not be anxious for tomorrow, Jesus said.

Isn't that a good word?

Tomorrow will take care of itself.

15 minutes with God.

I tell people, you know, daily time with God is like braces on teeth.

Lee, are you a dentist?

You're a dentist, aren't you?

You know about braces on teeth.

Um, you know, it may not change, make everything straight immediately, but you put those braces on there six weeks, six months, a year, it pulls everything straight.

And it is true.

You know, you get somebody and you get them to talk to God and to listen with God a little bit each day, and you check back in six weeks, in six months, in six years, and they are a different person.

And whatever's crooked doctrinally, whatever's crooked relationally, whatever's crooked emotionally, whatever's crooked, you know, in these kinds of areas, it's amazing how God has a way of pulling our souls straight by spending time with Him.

Now I know there are other things that we need, but I also know, you know, if you're a doctor, you can do whatever you can do as a doctor by way of healing people, but if people don't eat, you cannot save them.

Right?

If a person won't eat, there is no medicine, there is no process, there is no protocol that can save a person who won't eat.

The same thing's true spiritually.

You know, if a person won't connect with God firsthand, we can't change them because the power and the direction, the word of God, the spirit of God, the things that people need to transform them from the inside comes from that face-to-face time with God.

In his word, connecting with the heart.

I mean, God is the Savior, not us.

So we've got to get people.

When we're making disciples, we're making disciples of Jesus, not of us.

So we've got to get people to connect with God.

And it's amazing as people connect with God what happens.

The wonderful things that happen.

I tell people, you know, after being around churches for 40 years, two things are amazing.

First things that's amazing is how long a person can be a Christian and stay stuck in a very bad place if they don't connect with God.

And we all know that.

We know people who've been Christians for 30, 40, 50 years, and they're still mean as snakes.

Right?

Haven't you wondered how can you how can you go to church, how can you be involved in Christian things and do this kind of thing to somebody else?

I mean, we've all been amazed.

And these are, I'm not talking about the people out there, I'm talking about inside.

The other thing that's amazing is how quickly and deeply people can change if they connect with God in this kind of deep way.

You can take a very broken person and you begin to get them to do just what we did, where they're listening for what God is saying, and they're talking to God from their heart.

And it's amazing the transformation that can happen in three months, in six months, in a year.

I mean, that is a different person when they connect.

And so, you know, as you guys are making disciples, one of the first things that I'd encourage you to do is to covenant together to give God 15 minutes to work with you personally, day by day.

It's the most transforming thing you can do.

Now, the other things will, it's like going, you know, if you're eating, then lots of other good things can happen as you do the other stuff of life.

But if you're not eating, nothing else can save you.

So, 15 minutes with God.

Great place to start.

All right.

Now, let's talk about let's talk about making disciples.

Uh, we've done a significant part of that.

Making disciples is getting a person to spend time with God like that, from the heart.

This isn't a rosary, it's not some good luck charm, it's not superstition.

We're engaging with God in the heart.

Now, what I want to do is I want to start with a passage of scripture.

Last night we talked about the Great Commission in Matthew 28, and we saw, of course, there the call to be disciples.

I want to take you to the second most important passage in the Bible on making disciples, and it's in Matthew 9.

If you turn to Matthew 9, and again, it's the last paragraph of Matthew 9.

And let's do this.

Let's stand up.

We're going to read the Word of God together.

This is the way they did it in the early church.

They stand to read and sit to teach.

So we'll stand to read.

The last chapter, the last paragraph of Matthew chapter 9.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

Says Jesus went through all the towns and villages teaching in their synagogues and preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.

And when he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

And then he said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.

Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.

Now these are the very words of God.

Go ahead and be seated.

Matthew 28 gives us the Great Commission.

Matthew 9 gives us what I call the Great Need.

And Jesus is the one who teaches on both.

The Great Commission, go make disciples.

That's what we talked about last night.

Here we have the Great Need.

And you see, you know the story.

Jesus is doing what Jesus did.

He's teaching, he's preaching, he's healing.

That's a great summary of the ministry of Jesus among the people.

And then it says, he stops and he sees the crowd.

As people heard the words of God, they heard the wonderful news of the opportunity to return to God if they repent and put their faith in him.

Many, many people responded.

And uh there's a crowd.

That's what it says, a large number of people.

And Jesus looked at the crowd, and it's interesting.

When a pastor looks at a crowd, he's delighted.

Oh, look at all the people.

It's wonderful.

They're all coming to hear me.

You know, that's behind the closed doors.

But there is, there's this, there's uh, there is this delight in crowds.

But when Jesus looked at the crowd, it says he's moved with compassion.

Literally, the word means his insides moved, his bowels moved.

And uh it means he was deeply concerned.

Um deeply concerned.

And uh and you can see why.

Well, why?

It says he because as he saw these people, he saw beyond their faces, beyond their clothing, he saw into their souls.

And he saw two things were true about them.

It says they were harassed.

Literally, the word means skinned.

A skinned deer, a skinned rabbit, they'd been cut and the skin pulled off.

In other words, they're bruised and bleeding.

That's what it means literally, skinned.

Figuratively, what it actually means is they were in deep need, desperate need.

Now, all of us, as we look around, if we could get, if I could get behind, if we could get behind the closed doors of all of us, all of us are in deep need.

We've got things emotionally that are hurting, relationally that are hurting.

We've got questions in our minds about life and about God and about ourselves.

We got, you know, some of us have physical things that are that are uh wearing us and draining us.

We have emotional things, we've got relational things, we've got family things, we've got marriage stuff going on.

I mean, behind closed doors, all of us are kind of bleeding and bruised in some area, and he knows that.

And we need healing and we need growing and we need help to do life.

And then he says they were helpless, and the word actually literally means thrown down.

That's what it means.

Having been thrown down.

And uh and and and it's uh a word that means they're they're down, they can't get up by themselves.

They need help to get up.

It's the word is used of a drunk man who's drunk and passed out.

He can't get himself up.

Or a person who's been mortally wounded, he's been cut, knifed, shot, and he's laying there on the battlefield and he can't get up.

All he can do is kind of groan.

But he cannot get himself to a place where he can get better.

Get the picture?

So Jesus sees the people, he sees us, and he sees us where we really are in desperate need and needing something and somebody beyond myself to get better.

And that's the reality.

He says that is the reality of the people, the crowds who are coming to him.

That's the reality of us.

All of us are in the same boat, right?

And so he says there's a great need.

There's something we need that I cannot do as an itinerant evangelist.

There's something for the dream of God to be fulfilled for these people.

There is a need.

And what is it?

What's the need?

Tell me, what does he say?

So he saw this battlefield, this crowd of people, bruised and bleeding, unable to help themselves, needing something beyond themselves, and what does he say the need is?

Workers, right?

How many workers, you suppose?

Two or three?

Lots of workers, right?

We don't need three or four or five or six Billy Graham's.

We need a whole bunch of ordinary people who are willing to go one to one to one to one to put the salve on the wound and bind up, right, the brokenhearted, and help the people individually.

Many workers.

That's why a church like this is so good.

That's the vision of the church is that we'd all become the answer to this prayer.

That we grow to the point, we gain some ability, we get some tools.

It's kind of like uh it's kind of like the army training a whole bunch of medics, you know, because all those guys out there laying on the battlefield, they don't just need somebody to say, some grand heart specialist to clap his hands and say, okay, everybody up.

Nobody can move.

We need a whole bunch of people, picture it now, to go out into that crowd and one at a time to bind up the broken hearts, the bruise, and the bleeding, and to help them get from where they are to where God wants them to be.

So the uh the pressing need is many workers.

And the thing that those workers provide, that Jesus could not provide, is personal attention.

He had to move on to the next town.

He had to proclaim the gospel, do some teaching.

He had his own guys that he was binding up their wounds.

But if we're going to take care of the people who are coming, we needed many workers who provide, and this is what they provide, personal attention, personal help.

Right?

That's what they needed.

Every one of those people needed somebody to come to them, go to where they're broken and wounded, put the ointment on the wound, give, put the water in the mouth, put the food in the mouth, grab them by the shoulders, lift them up, get them to a safer place.

Now that's what the people in this city need.

That's what the, you know, tens of thousands of people who are who are the crowds who've responded to Jesus, that's what we need.

We need some personal help.

And so uh, personal attention.

Now I want to talk to you about this business of personal attention a minute.

Because this is what you, I'm talking to every one of you.

Uh tell me your name again.

Michaela.

That's it.

Michaela, Josh, this is what you can do with some other eighth graders out of Peyton.

Josh, this is what you could do with some 10th graders out of Peyton.

This is what you guys can do with somebody who you work with, with somebody in this body.

You can be one of those medics who goes to these people, they have a desire for God, a hunger for God, they responded to Jesus, they want to be saved men and women, they want to grow up, but they need somebody to help.

And uh, what you can provide is personal attention.

Now let me tell you what people get from personal attention that they do not get any other way.

They don't get it by coming to church, they don't get it by going to a Sunday school class, they don't even get it by sitting in a home group.

They get it in the kind of thing we're going to talk about in a D group, where you are sharing your life with each other.

This is what happens through personal attention.

Now think about it.

First thing that they get is they get value, a sense of value that you matter.

You matter to God, you matter to me.

You know, it's the difference between a family and an orphanage.

In an orphanage, the basic needs are met, right?

You got 15 kids, 20 kids, 50 kids.

They get fed something enough to live on.

On, they get some clothes, they have a bed to sleep in.

But what they don't get there is a mom and dad.

Somebody who loves them and values them.

Why do we need to get kids out of orphanages into families?

Because in a family, somebody values me.

And that's something we pick up from people around us.

You know, we're either without value, we're kind of just one of the crowd, or we have value.

There's a picture of Bev with our two granddaughters.

What is it?

What good does a grandmother or grandfather, or father, or mother do for a kid?

You communicate to that kid, you are special, you are valuable, you are loved.

And we all need that.

I mean, we either thrive because that's true, or we wither because we don't get that.

Value.

You get value.

Second thing that comes, you know, from uh personal attention is uh let's go to the next the next slide, is it rescues us.

The Bible says, two are better than one, for they have a good reward for their labor, for if they fall, the one will help up his fellow.

But woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him up.

Says, look, we need somebody who's there so that when we need help, we don't just kind of disappear and go under and there's nobody to grab us.

But look, if you're getting personal attention, you're in the life, you're meeting in this kind of a group, and the person goes down, you know, they I don't know, something happens and they they they lose all their confidence in God.

Uh they, you know, they there's there's a broken marriage, there's a there's a disease that comes, and there's a loss of hope, and so forth.

If you're just you know, if you just come to church and those kinds of things happen, there's nobody to help you.

And you go down and nobody knows, you just disappear and go to the bottom.

But if you're look, if you're getting personal attention, you're in a little D group and and we're asking the life questions, you know, what are you afraid of and how are you dealing with it?

This comes out, now there's somebody there who can rescue.

I'll tell you a funny story.

When I was uh I didn't I got engaged to Bev, Bev and I got engaged on our first date.

Typical kind of navigator deal, you know.

You love God, I love God, let's get married.

Um so uh so anyway, Bev and it's true, we got engaged, and we'd known each other for a long time.

But but anyway, uh so so we're six weeks before the the wedding, and I get cold feet.

I think, oh man, I don't know if I know her well enough, I don't know if this is gonna work, I don't know if I can be a good husband, I don't know if we ought to get married, do we have enough money, whatever, you know.

So I get cold feet.

So I call Bev up, and she's about to send out the invitations.

This is terrible.

I tell her, hold the invitations.

I'm having doubts.

Now, women, can you can you feel what this is like?

This is really bad.

Okay?

So uh so I call Bev up and she's sweet and says, I'm okay, and we'll pray and see if God'll you know bring us through.

So I but I had a guy who's watching for my soul, and I called him up.

He's an older man.

I called him up and I said, Isn't it Chuck Bowler?

Some of you may know Chuck.

He lives, he's an architect.

I called Chuck.

Chuck, I'm having an awful time with getting through this thing.

And can I come up and talk to you?

He said, Okay, come on up.

Well, he was meeting, I was in South Georgia, he was in Atlanta.

I came, drove up, and and he's in meetings in the morning.

He says, Here's what I want you to do.

I'm in meetings, I can't get with you.

Go out and talk with God and ask what God wants you to do.

Listen to God.

Find out what he wants you to do.

So I went out and I, you know, prayed and agonized and quote, listen to God.

And I came back.

And uh, so I met him after lunch.

And he said, Okay, you went out and spent, yeah, I got some good time with God.

Yeah.

So what did he what did he say?

Well, I think he said, I need to break it off.

And he just looked at me and he said, Wrong answer.

And wrong answer.

He says, You have trouble making decisions.

You go back and forth, you overanalyze everything.

Now, listen, you call that girl up, you tell her you're getting married in six weeks, send those invitations, and then never give her cause to pause again.

I said, okay, I'll do it.

So I called it up, send out the invitations.

Now, here's the deal.

Okay, so I'm doing the best I can.

I'm I'm me, but I am me, and I've got a limp, and I have trouble making decisions, and I have this kind of tendency to worry and to analyze, and I'm I'm sorry, that's the way I am.

This guy saved me from throwing away what has been the best part of life on this earth.

Now, if I had not had him, I would have broken it off and walked away and lost the best thing.

It's true.

Personal attention, there are times when we all need somebody to come alongside because we're over our heads to keep us from doing something really stupid.

Can you feel that?

If you've got it, you won't go down.

Somebody will grab you and say, Hey.

Okay.

So it rescues.

There's another thing.

Oh, there it is.

We got to that point because I had personal attention.

All right.

Bev's happy, I'm really happy, her dad was happy.

Okay.

It corrects us.

You know, all of us have all of us have things that we do that are destructive, and we're blind to it.

We don't even see it.

We talk too much, we talk too little, we're too shy, we're greedy, we we we're overcontrolling, we're critical, we're pessimistic.

And uh and and we don't we don't realize, we don't even know what's going on.

We're blind to it.

Uh the Bible talks about, you know, uh faithful to the wounds of a friend.

Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens the face of another.

God is saying part of the divine process of sharpening, of maturing, of growing is having somebody in your life who can speak to you about things you're blind to, but they are hurting you and they're hurting the people around you.

Now you know as well as I do, uh, if you don't have a person, you're not gonna get a whole lot of correction by just sitting in a church service.

Nobody's gonna talk to you about the stuff that everybody sees except you, right?

And as a result, people avoid you or they're irritated at you, or they they drive home and they say, Did you hear what so-and-so said?

I can't believe they said that, you know.

But nobody's gonna tell you unless they have a relationship with you.

Unless there's a personal relationship.

Let me give you a picture here.

This is Howard Hendricks.

He was a teacher at Dallas Seminary, he's kind of my mentor there.

And our last year he had a discipleship group, 12 guys, he gets together.

And uh anyway, I remember sitting in this group, and I have a tendency when I get excited, I just go on and on, I talk too long.

So we're in this group, and uh, you know, it's a group discussion, and it's like, okay, here's the passage.

What did you say?

Oh, oh, that's me.

And then I go off, you know, and I go off on this three and four minutes of all these different things, and I'm fascinated, and I assume everybody else is too.

And what I don't realize is everybody sitting there in the circle saying, I wish he would shut up.

So the rest of us can talk.

So, Howie, after after this, you know, I was so excited to be in his thing and to demonstrate how much I know and how clever I am and how good I see this stuff, and it was feeding my soul, and I assumed it'd feed everybody else, took me in a side after one of these times, and he said, Bottomly, he said, 30 seconds.

30 seconds when you're in a group and we're talking and it's a discussion group, 30 seconds, and then shut up.

Now, I you know, I this was what 35 years ago.

More than that, not that that how he said that to me.

And boy, I'll tell you, when I'm in a group now, I think 30 seconds.

But who else would tell me that?

You know?

Now, that's just an example, but we all need that.

We all need we have tendencies we're blind to, they're harming us, they're harming the people around us.

Personal attention.

Now, if we don't have that, we don't have that in our lives, we can go for decades doing destructive, harmful stuff that everybody sees except me.

And wondering, why do people leave me?

Why do people abandon me?

Why, why this?

So, personal attention, it corrects us in ways that we don't get corrected in a Sunday school class, we don't get corrected in a warm, uh, happy home group.

We don't get corrected in a in a church service.

It pushes us.

I was thinking every major step forward that I've made in my Christian life, from conversion on, I have had to be pushed to make it.

So, you remember the story of my testimony?

You know, I'd been thinking about God.

It was interesting.

I'd been going, well, I came to the academy my first semester out there, I'd go to chapel just about every day.

So I was hearing about things of God, I was hearing the fragments, but I didn't realize I needed to make a personal decision to give my life to Christ.

That took a roommate.

So let's put that picture up here.

It pushes us.

It wasn't Mike Sheshewski, but you get the idea.

Personal attention pushes us.

Now, there it is.

There's Ed, my roommate.

So finally, this night, you know, Ed Palley draws the bridge and he says, Look, life with God begins by you giving your life to the risen Christ.

He's alive.

You can talk to him.

But this isn't something that happens kind of automatically by deciding you're going to try to be a good person.

It's by telling the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, the Savior of the world, that you want to turn from your sin and you want to trust and follow him for the rest of your life.

Have you done that?

Have you done that?

No, I haven't.

We need to do that to begin with God.

That's what pushed me to say, okay.

And I'll go off in the corner of a room and I say, God, thank you for sending your son to die for my sin.

I give you my life.

Now help me to follow through, to have tenacity, and to not quit.

And that's when I was born again.

But I need to be pushed to turn and talk to God about my soul.

When it came to growing, you know, I just said, okay, I'm born again.

He's the one who got me out of bed and said, now we walk with God.

You're born again, now we walk with God.

So let's get up, I'll meet with you, we'll read the book of John together, I'll show you how to pray.

He pushed me, you know, out of the out of the little neonatal basket there, began to help me walk.

It was interesting.

For three years, I did, you know, I'm probably like many of you, you're sitting out there thinking he's trying to get me to help somebody else grow, and I'm not gonna do it.

I don't know if I want the responsibility, I don't know if I have the time, I don't know if I can do it.

That's the way I was.

Three years I was like that.

I'd come to the meetings, I'd take what they gave, but whenever they talked about helping somebody else, uh, not me.

At the end of three years, I was a senior out at the academy in in the fall, we had this uh retreat, uh, the chaplain had a retreat, and we had at that retreat, 90 different guys filled out cards and said, I need help spiritually, and gave them to the chaplain.

Well, he's one chaplain, 90 guys, no way he could take care of those.

Well, we had this little group of 30 guys who'd meet on Sunday night.

So he took those cards, he gave them to us and said, Would you go help these guys?

Well, the leader of the group, we were engineers.

We don't know much about relationship, but we can do the math.

So 90 divided by 33.

So we all get three cards.

Three cards each, sure enough, it all works.

So they gave me my three cards, and you know what I did?

I went, I put them in my desk drawer in my in my room, and I said, I'm not gonna go see these guys.

They won't listen to me, I can't do this.

Well, the next Sunday we come around, and the agenda for the meeting is let's all share what happened when we visited our guys.

So, you know, we've got an honor code out there.

They kicked me out of the place if I didn't tell the truth.

So they got to me, I said, Well, I put my cards in my drawer.

I didn't go see them.

I don't think I can do this, I don't know how to do this.

I don't think anybody, I don't think I can really do this.

So, as I recall, it was Ed came over to me and said, Listen, you can do this.

You just do with them what I did with you.

You know, go see them, invite them to meet you in one of the little squadron rooms.

Remember that how to have a quiet time?

15 minutes I just did with you?

You do that with them.

Remember those little cards we memorized?

Pull those out, give them to this guy, and you have them memorized.

Remember how I taught you to pray?

A C T S.

Do that with them.

You can do this.

So I go around reluctantly, three guys.

By that time, one of the guys had lost interest, but two of the guys wanted to meet.

And so we began to meet.

I began to meet with two of those guys.

One of the uh, and and to my amazement, they wanted to meet.

And God, it's kind of like sunshine.

God used that time, and He God was working in their heart.

They had a desire to grow.

They just needed somebody to show them how.

And two of those guys continued to meet, and they blossomed.

One of them I got a letter from, you know, 20, 25 years later.

He was a he's a writer for TV sitcoms out in in Hollywood.

And they wrote, he said, Hey, you remember me?

We began to meet back in those days.

I just want you to know I'm still walking with God.

Part of a church out here.

But I need to be pushed.

Pushed.

I graduated from uh uh the academy, went to Purdue.

One of these guys, Ed Powell, and some other guys, we'd all arranged that we're gonna meet at one pilot training base, Moody Air Base down in South Georgia.

By the time I'd gotten through grad school, as a shortened program, and I got down to the pilot base, all of the guys for different reasons had, oh, they'd washed out of pilot school, some medically, some because they got to air sick or whatever.

So as I was leaving, the last guy, it was it was either Ed or a friend of ours, he he said, uh, now we've gathered this group, and they had they'd gathered this group of young airmen and college students in this doctor's home down in South Georgia.

And they said, We're on the way out, we're all leaving.

You're it.

You're the leader.

And I said, Oh my goodness, I can't, I've never let anything like this.

But you know, that's how I began to learn to teach.

Again, they pushed me.

Push me to come to Christ, push me to grow, push me to help somebody else, push me to lead the group.

And all I'm saying is, I again, uh for most of us, the push that we need to step up and move to the next level isn't gonna come in a worship service like this.

It's gonna come from a person who believes in you and sees what God can do through you and pushes you to take the next step.

Can you feel that?

I mean, the value of having somebody, you know, uh saying Wendy, Pat, you can do this.

And look, I'll do it with you.

Now you can turn around and do it with somebody else.

That's what pushes us to become what God wants us to be.

If we don't get that push, we kind of settle in to kind of a mild religion, and we stay sterile for decades.

Personal attention, so it pushes.

Um, the other thing it does is heal.

You know, all of us have things that need to be healed.

We have fears, we have worries, we have tendencies in our life.

And uh and often they go back to things that have happened early on.

We deal with shame, we deal with fear, we deal with senses of guilt, we deal with with uh fear of certain kinds of people, and uh we all limp.

And the truth is healing emotionally, spiritually, personally, happens the same way uh uh it does physically.

It requires kind of the personal attention.

Uh let me just show you.

These are some of my healing lists.

These are some things that are true of me, and uh that they're they're not healthy things.

A sense of futility.

Somewhere early on, I got a sense nobody listens to me.

It's no use even trying to try.

And uh fear.

Uh I wake up almost every morning uh and with a knot in my stomach, thinking, I'm not sure I can deal with what's ahead today.

You think that's crazy.

I mean, look, you're 66 years old, you're Air Force Academy grad, you can handle the world, but that's not the way it is inside.

Inside, I'm wondering, am I gonna be able to do what I need to do?

The shame.

I don't know where I got this, but there is a sense, and I've wrestled with this all my life, of being ashamed of myself.

So ashamed of the way I look, the way I talk, uh, the way I think.

For me, it's hard to look people in the eye.

I have to make myself look people in the eye and shake hands.

My natural tendency is to look down, look away, and uh, and to feel ashamed.

You say, that's stupid, that's crazy.

There's nothing wrong with you.

It is stupid, it is crazy, but it is the way it is with me.

Um, I think of perfectionism, there's some things in the anger area and locked up.

You know, I love to see people worship like you guys do.

I love to be in an auditorium full of people who are affectionate with God, but it is so hard for me to do that.

I love him, I know the wonder of him, but my natural posture is this right here.

And I watch people who can who can, in a way, embrace God, who can praise God, who can from the depths of their heart with all of their body enjoy God.

And I long to be able to play that game, but it's hard for me to get in there.

There's some things that have happened that just kind of keep my keep me emotionally kind of pressed down.

Something's broken in there.

Now, many of these things, you know, I've experienced some significant healing in, but in every case, it doesn't come from a meeting like this.

It comes from somebody up close and personal, praying with me, inviting me to listen to what God is saying.

I mean, I've I've experienced some significant healing in all of these areas, none of them in a conference, none of them by reading a book, none of them in a worship service, all of them face to face with somebody who's working with me personally.

Now, here's the deal personal attention.

When people get it, these things get uh dealt with, particularly in a body like this, where you've got the power of the Spirit, you've got the Word of God, but you've got up close and personal.

On the other hand, if you don't get this kind of help, you can sit in meetings like this for decades and stay stuck and broken.

Limping with this kind of thing.

And uh so personal attention.

When when Jesus looked out and he says he saw the multitudes, they were harassed.

That is, they were bruised and bleeding, and they were they were uh helpless, they were pinned down, they could not get themselves up without the help of another.

He was moved with compassion because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

They were like sheep who had no personal attention, which they desperately needed.

And so he said to his disciples, pray the Lord of the harvest that he will send forth laborers.

Laborers, that's blue-collar workers.

That's not specialists or experts or professional engineers.

The word there is field hands.

Just the guys who go out with a simple tool and whack the wheat at ordinary people just like us, but who are willing to give personal attention to needy people.

He says that's what they need.

Because these kinds of things, the valuing, the rescuing, the pushing, the healing, only happen when somebody knows and loves me personally.

Can you feel that?

That's why this vision of making disciples, being a church who provides that for people who are willing to receive it, is so valuable.

Because without it, we generally stay stuck at a pretty low level of life with God.

Okay, so that's the value of uh disciple making.

In a personal way.

Let's go ahead and go to the next one.

Oh, I gotta show you this.

Um you know, one of the things that happens when you get personal attention is you discover that people have more in them than anybody ever imagined.

I mean, there is this unlocking the the enormous potential.

We all have it, but often nobody knows us well enough to see it.

I want you to see this clip.

Can you roll that?

Randy, I want you to see this is a great picture of a guy who's present.

The world of Shawby's seems a million miles away.

It's Paul, a mobile phone salesman from South Wales.

By day, I tell mobile phones, my dream is to spend my life doing what I feel that I was born to do.

Paul, what are you here for today, Paul?

To sing opera.

I've always wanted to sing as a career.

Confidence is has always been sort of like a difficult thing for me.

I've always find it a little bit difficult to be completely confident in myself.

Okay.

Ready when you are.

Things that God wants to do and can do that nobody sees until somebody gets up close enough to recognize what's in you.

And uh, you know, that really is the value of personal attention.

I mean, every one of us God has says for God has, you know, we're saying for the good words which God has before ordained that we should walk in.

Most of us need somebody to say, you know, you can do this to recognize it and to call it forth.

I know it's true of me.

Through my roommate, through men, through the through the times.

You know, they reach in there and they see something in me that I never saw in myself.

And uh call it out.

That doesn't happen in worship service, it doesn't happen in service.

It happens when you've got words and numbers and numbers and see what I got.