"DIFFERENT" - Pt.1

Hi, this is John O'Zanting, lead pastor of Evolve Church, and this is the Evolved Church Podcast.

Thanks so much for tuning in.

We hope that you find today's message encouraging and full of hope for wherever you're at.

We're starting a new series today called Different.

Everybody say different.

I believe there's an expectation on people that follow Jesus to be different.

Matter of fact, I think one of the core issues that Christianity, Jesus followers, face in the world today is people that don't follow Jesus think that if we claim to follow Jesus, that we should be different.

Like what's different about our lives versus the rest of humanity?

What sets Jesus followers apart from other world religions?

Why why are we different than other people?

Should we be different?

And we've talked about this in previous series that in in a in a society that that wants to be inclusive and yet to be set apart, to be different, yet to be united.

These are difficult things to talk through, but I think important things.

And a number of years ago I read a study called The Power of Four.

And the Back to Bible Institute, the Center for Bible Engagement in the United States, they did this massive research project on Jesus followers.

They interviewed over 200,000 people that claim to follow Jesus.

And they set out with this study to say, like, if people say they follow Jesus, what sets them apart?

And do they appear to be any different than other people in the world?

And why is it that some Jesus followers seem to walk with a sense of purpose and confidence and peace and kind of this overcoming despite circumstance?

And other people who say they're following Jesus seem defeated all the time and their marriages are falling apart and their homes are a mess.

And uh it's a fascinating study called The Power of Four, and basically what it says is if you're following Jesus and you open up your Bible for yourself four or more days a week, then your life actually is a reflection of the story of Jesus.

A powerful study.

Your life will appear different.

When my kids were young, um there's this artist uh named Butterfly Boucher, um, not a very well-known singer-songwriter, but she had this song called Different that we used to sing.

I'm different, different, different.

Nobody is like me.

I'm different, different, different, and that's okay with me.

Yeah, that's okay with me.

Um, so you're all gonna Apple Music, butterfly, boucher.

The song is called I'm Different.

What we're gonna do over the next few weeks is take a look at um a letter in the Bible called First Peter, and we're gonna explore what it means to be different as a follower of Jesus in a couple different areas.

And we're gonna start in um 1 Peter, in the very first chapter of that letter, chapter uh 1, verses 1 through 9.

Here's what it says in the message translation.

I, Peter, am an apostle on assignment by Jesus, the Messiah, writing to exiles scattered to the four winds.

Not one is missing, not one forgotten.

But God the Father has his eye on each of you and is determined by the work of the Spirit to keep you obedient through the sacrifice of Jesus.

May everything good from God be yours.

What a God we have, and how fortunate we are to have him, this father of our Master Jesus.

Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we've been given a brand new life, and we have everything to live for, including a future in heaven.

And the future starts now.

God is keeping careful watch over us in the future.

The day is coming when you'll have it all, life healed, life whole.

I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime.

Pure gold in the fire comes out of it, proved pure.

Genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine.

When Jesus wraps this all up, it's your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.

Is this good so far?

I could just read this and call it done.

You never saw him, Jesus, yet you love him.

You still don't see him, yet you trust him with laughter and singing.

Because you kept on believing.

You'll get what you're looking forward to.

Total salvation.

Okay.

1 Peter chapter 1, verses 1 through 9.

1 Peter 1:1–9

So, what do I want to do?

I want to start by giving you a little bit of context.

Um, 1 Peter, any guesses on who wrote the book of 1 Peter?

A guy named Peter.

Anybody heard of a Bible character by the name of Peter before?

Uh he goes down in history as being one of the twelve people that that walked closely with Jesus through his three years of ministry on planet earth.

Um, Peter wasn't a formally educated guy, however, he was a businessman, he was a fisherman, he was a tremendous leader, he was incredibly passionate, he was bold.

In fact, when when you read his writings in 1 Peter, he deals with some incredibly weighty and heavy theological stuff if you read through 1 Peter.

And I want to encourage you to do that over the next four weeks as we do this study together.

The two biggest themes that emerge from this book of 1 Peter are this.

Number one, the hope that we have in Jesus Christ.

You and I have hope in Jesus.

And number two, he tells us that we're called to be different from the world that we live in.

We're meant to be different as Jesus followers.

A little bit more context, it was written between 1665 AD, not sure exactly the year, but it was during the uh the reign of a uh a guy named Nero.

Anybody heard of a dude named Nero?

What's he famous for?

Burning Rome.

He's firm famous for burning down Rome.

Most scholars believe that um Nero burned down Rome because he had an insatiable desire to build new things, and he wanted to build new palaces and new structures, and and um so the city burned for days and days and days, and that they got the fire out, and then it burned for a few more days, and the people were in uproar because they believed that Nero started the fires.

So Nero, to try and dodge a bullet, you know what he did?

He blamed the fires on Christians, on Jesus' followers.

And in 60 to 65 AD, Jesus' followers were this like passionate group of people committed to the teachings of a man who had been crucified by the Romans and who everybody around that part of the world knew and believed and trusted that Jesus had risen from the dead.

It was miraculous, people didn't doubt it.

And this wild, crazy uh group of radicals called um Christ Ones or In the Way or Jesus followers or Christians.

Um Nero didn't like them very much.

So he blamed the Christians and persecuted them.

Um he would do crazy things like put animal skins on Christians and then put them in a cage of wild dogs, and for entertainment, these dogs would tear apart Jesus' followers.

Uh he would um pour wax over Jesus' followers and tie them to a tree and light them on fire, and they would burn like a human candle and light up the night sky of Nero's parties.

Nero persecuted the Christians relentlessly.

And if you were a Jesus follower, you lived in fear of your life.

And so when we read 1 Peter, Peter's writing this letter to Jesus' followers when this is going on in their part of the world.

So, to give you a little bit of context, when Peter says how fortunate we are to have God, because Jesus was raised from the dead, we've been given a new life, that must make you feel great, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation.

We read those like, oh yeah, every kind of aggravation.

Like, I got a bad mosquito bite the other day.

How aggravating.

No, we're talking about their friends, their family members being killed, being tortured.

This is the context that 1 Peter was written in.

Nero was a twisted leader in history.

So that's kind of a little bit of context of who this letter was written to.

And now we have to mine for gold, and how does it apply to us today?

So, this series, uh, who's it for?

I want to teach over the next few weeks about being different for two types of people.

Number one, some of you here in the room today, you're in the middle of a trial.

You're in the middle of hell.

You're going through it, you know it, people around you know it.

Life is hard, life is difficult.

It might be a financial trial, loss of a job, some kind of health issue, business related, tension in a very important relationship in your life.

Could be that your kids are moving in a direction that you don't want them to go.

It could be emotional, it could be addiction, but you're going through it right now.

Secondly, this message is for those in the room who one day will go through a trial.

That's all of us.

I don't know if you were like, okay, oh, who's that?

No, that's that's all of us.

We're gonna go through it.

How many of you would agree that Christians living in 64 AD when this letter was written, they were going through a difficult trial?

Yeah.

Um, incredibly difficult.

Uh, first Peter uh verse one, here it is again.

I, Peter, am an apostle on a Simon by Jesus, writing to exiles scattered.

Exiles scattered.

Uh, everybody say that out loud.

Scattered exiles.

First century Jesus followers, they were living as exiles in all these different Roman provinces.

Um, this original Greek word here is translated a lot of different ways, but exile, sojourner, aliens, strangers, foreigners.

In other words, the first thing that Peter's trying to drive home for us is this.

You need to understand and remember this is not your home.

We need to understand and we need to remember that this is actually not our home.

We're exiles, we're strangers living in a foreign land.

If this world's not our home as followers of Jesus, if planet earth is not our final destination, if we believe in eternal life and a sense of a promised hope that one when when these physical bodies die, that our spirit will continue to live and live in an eternal sense with a very creative and loving God, if we believe that as part of what we adhere to as Jesus followers, if if this world's not our home, it would stand a reason that we should be different than the world that we live in.

Point and case, have you ever visited a country in the world that you were a foreigner in?

When it comes to language and customs and food and everything, your learning curve is steep because you feel like a foreigner.

Do you feel like a foreigner in the world that you live in when it comes to your faith in Jesus Christ?

Or is it just sort of easy to just blend?

This is an important question.

For those of us that are followers of Jesus in the room, what does it mean to be different?

Well, you'll have different values than the people around you.

You'll have different morals than other people, you'll have a different set of belief systems, you'll be different as a mom, different as a dad, you'll be different as a husband, different as a wife, different in the ways you raise your kids, different in the ways you relate to people, different in how you deal with someone who mistreats you, different in the way you invest your money, different in the way you spend your money, different in the way you spend your time, different in the way you walk through trials.

Why?

Because this world's not our home.

We're actually called to be different because we're aliens, followers of Jesus, foreigners, exiles, sojourners.

The world we live in is broken.

I don't think there's any denying that.

The world system, it's broken.

It exists under the leadership of sin and brokenness and sickness and poverty and shame and disease.

Interesting thing, Jesus said in John 16, verse 31 to 33, I've told you all this so that by trusting me, you'll be unshakable and assured, deeply at peace.

John 16:31–33

In this godless world, you will continue to experience difficulties.

This message is for two types of people.

You're going through a trial, or you're gonna go through a trial one day.

In this, you're like, man, this is real encouraging, Pastor.

It'll get there.

Trust me.

Hang with me as we set this up.

In this world, you will experience difficulties.

Not might.

You're gonna.

So if we're meant to be different, what sets us apart as Jesus followers?

What makes us different when it comes to going through a trial?

When we're walking through hell, what sets us apart?

How do we appear different?

Because we're gonna be different in how we walk through and experience the difficulties that life throws at us.

Did you know that you can have a different kind of faith when you go through something incredibly difficult?

So you might be coming out of a tough season right now, you might be uh just heading into a difficult season, or you might be smack dab in the middle of a difficult season.

In every case, how can we have a different kind of faith when we're going through a trial?

How?

How can you and I have a different kind of faith when we're going through a trial?

First Peter 1 verses 3 and 7.

1 Peter 1:3

What a God we have and how fortunate we are to have him, this father of our Master Jesus.

Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we've been given a brand new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven, and the future starts now.

God's keeping careful watch over us.

The day is coming when you'll have it all life, healed, and whole.

It goes on to say in verse 6 I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime.

It's interesting the language here, Peter's like, how fortunate we are.

We have everything to live for.

God's keeping careful watch over us.

I know how great this makes us feel.

Sounds like a party.

But the context is Jesus' followers are being radically persecuted.

They are going through trials.

And Peter still writes to the church, how fortunate we've got everything to live for.

God's keeping careful watch.

I know how great this makes us feel.

What's your rhetoric when you're going through a trial?

Is it that?

How fortunate I am.

This sucks.

But this is just how fortunate, man, that I get to work through this.

Remember who Peter's writing to.

Here's a thought to consider.

God may not make our temporary trials go away.

Like we serve a miracle-working God and we serve a faithful God.

And we've all, many of us here, have seen the absolute divine and miraculous.

But there are moments where we're like, God, why am I still going through this?

Where it's clear that this trial hasn't disappeared.

But there's a powerful joy ahead.

This is the truth.

And we can be certain that God's going to show us purpose in our trials.

Because here's the truth.

Genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved, genuine.

That's what Peter writes to the church.

Your genuine faith, when you're working through these trials, when it's put through it, it's going to be proved to be genuine.

So if there's a genuine faith, wouldn't it stand a reason there's also a false faith?

And I want to take a couple minutes and look at false faith three specifically.

Because where you and I live here in Alberta, in the Western Hemisphere, it can be so easy to be a Christ follower.

It can be real easy to just sort of blend.

Of course I'm a Christian.

Everybody's a Christian.

We live in the Bible belt of Canada.

Everybody's Christian.

That's kind of like me saying I'm Dutch.

I am Dutch.

I believe that a lot of people call themselves Christians the same way that I call myself Dutch.

I celebrate being Dutch in small ways around the holidays.

I can utter a few Dutch phrases and words.

Mostly it's just something I grew up with.

That's actually, when I say, do you have faith in Jesus?

A lot of people, of course I do.

I can utter a few Christian words and phrases, and I grew up with it, and I celebrate some Christian kinds of things around the holidays.

Of course I'm a Christian.

I want to be really direct and straightforward for a minute.

If there's a genuine faith, then there's also got to be a false faith.

I fear the many people who attend church kind of semi-regularly that they believe they're Christian, but their faith is not actually genuine.

And that's none of us here in the room today.

It's only people listening to the podcast.

Okay?

So we're all good.

We're in good company here today.

We're in a room full of genuine faith kind of people.

But let's look at three types of false faith.

Number one, inherited faith.

I'm a Jesus follower because we always went to church when I was a kid growing up.

My parents are Christian, so I must be too.

I inherited it.

I'm Dutch.

Because my parents were born in Holland.

Not because I'm a Dutchman.

I inherited it.

Inherited faith often looks like creasers.

Do you know any creasers that go to church at Christmas and Easter?

Priesters.

It's an inherited faith.

For example, I talked to a 19-year-old girl.

She said, Yeah, I grew up going to church every Sunday, every Wednesday youth group.

It was kind of this thing we did as a family, and then I went off to university, and I'm not really sure that I believed all this stuff.

What she's saying is, I had an inherited faith.

It was not a genuine faith, it was false.

It was just inherited, something I grew up with.

I didn't make it my own.

If we're going to be different as followers of Jesus, we have to overcome trials with a different kind of faith.

It can't be an inherited faith.

Number two, shallow faith.

That's another false kind of faith.

Jesus talked about shallow faith in the story that we read in Matthew chapter 13.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

He talked about a sower or farmer went out to sow some seeds, plant some seeds, and some of the seeds took root and began to spring up a little bit, and the roots didn't grow deep.

It was shallow roots.

Shallow faith, shallow roots.

Jesus taught on this when he talked about the world that we live in, the deceitfulness of the world that we live in, a love of things that comes along.

I wonder, do you know anybody that has a shallow faith?

Not just inherited, but maybe shallow.

In fact, if I were to be real honest, six months from right now, some of you here today, and this isn't me being like a doomsday guy, because I'm not that kind of guy.

I'm a happy, like, woo-hoo, look, butterflies.

That's me.

Um, I'm not a doomsday kind of guy.

But if I were to be honest, and I can say this with all certainty because I've been around Jesus followers as a leader for a long, long, long, long time.

In six months, some of you here will not be in any church, you will not be reading your Bible, you will not be uh connected to a community, you'll be hurting, you'll be broken, you'll be maybe addicted to something, you're gonna be afraid, there'll be no spiritual power in your life, there'll be no spiritual victory.

Why?

Because your faith is shallow, not yours, other people.

Not yours, not mine.

But shallow faith is a thing, and it exists in Christendom, it exists in this community of Jesus followers around the globe.

People who say they're following Jesus, but when they go through a trial, the moment things start to get a little hot, they're like, what kind of God is this?

I'm out, right?

He said he was good, but this is hard.

See ya.

They have a shallow faith.

Their faith is shallow.

We need more than just shallow faith.

Listen, there's somebody here that needs to hear this.

You're kind of here, you're kind of in, you're kind of checking out this church thing.

If we're gonna have the kind of faith that demonstrates something radically different when we go through trials, it's gonna require an understanding of being Jesus' church, not just attending church from time to time.

An inner fire that I'm connected to something way more meaningful, way way deeper, with a lot more depth than just kind of going somewhere on Sundays.

This is who I am 24-7, committed to following Jesus.

This matters to God.

Jesus died for his church.

Matter of fact, the only thing that Jesus is currently building is his church.

Not a physical building with a steeple and pews and a pipe organ.

Church, his church, people, you and me, ecclesia.

God set apart, chosen ones, passionate, fulfilled, connected, unified, madly in love with Jesus and living out that love everywhere we go.

Not shallow, not inherited, and not conditional, because that's the third kind of false faith, conditional faith.

It's those who would say, I believe in God and I love God as long as things go my way.

I talked to a guy not too long ago.

He's like, Man, my wife left me.

I lost my job.

How can I believe in a God who would let this happen?

Why do you think God let this happen?

Let's analyze why your marriage fell apart.

Maybe you're a lousy husband.

Let's analyze why you lost your job.

Maybe you're a terrible employee.

Maybe it was a downturn of recession.

I can be kind as well.

But let's talk about why are we so quick?

Why can we, why can we, why are we so Quick to blame God when things go south.

Right?

That's a conditional faith.

If the conditions of my personal comfort aren't adequately met, then God must not be real.

What?

God's got to be bigger than that.

False faith, conditional faith, inherited faith, shallow faith.

I believe that there are people listening today who are like, huh.

Where's my faith at?

If I'm going to be different in this world, especially when it comes to going through trials, if Jesus said in this life we're going to face difficulty, stuff's going to happen, then how am I set apart?

How am I one of the set apart ones?

How am I modeling what it means to have a genuine faith?

Like Peter wrote to these Christians going through it, your genuine faith in the middle of the fire is going to be proved to be genuine.

In this life you'll have trials, but take heart.

Why?

Because trials can reveal the depth of your faith.

These trials, they too will pass.

And God wants to use them to help deepen our genuine faith.

And I don't believe that God gives us these trials to mess with us.

That's not our theology here.

I talked to a guy uh a few weeks back.

We were talking about sickness and disease and a theology that God gives people disease and sickness to teach them things.

God gives us sickness to mess with us and teach us.

I'm like, you know what?

My 13-year-old daughter, I love her to bits.

And I don't think anybody that knows me really well would challenge my love for Julia.

And let's say one day I get a syringe, a needle full of deadly toxins and poison, and I inject that into my daughter's arm.

And I know it's gonna make her sick, and I know it's gonna be painful, and I know it's gonna be horrific.

And I did that because I love her.

You would lock me up and throw away the key.

What kind of dad would do that to his kid?

A sick, twisted dad.

So why do we believe that God is capable of that as a perfect loving father?

When in a very natural sense, right, the things we believe to be true about God and his character and his nature, God doesn't facilitate the trials.

The trials we live in are most often the results of just the broken world that we live in.

This godless world as Jesus referred to it, under the weight of sin and disease and sickness and poverty.

These trials they'll they'll pass.

So how is it that God uses the trials that we go through to deepen our faith?

How is it that God uses these trials to strengthen a genuine faith?

I want to close with two thoughts.

Number one, well, trials always reveal our faith.

1 Peter 1:7, these trials show genuine faith to be what it is, like gold refined in the fire.

1 Peter 1:7

A faith that's been tested is a faith that can be trusted.

When our faith is under the gun, when we're going through something difficult, do we have an inherited faith and a shallow faith and a conditional faith that we're like, this sucks, I'm out?

Or do we have a genuine faith that even though this is hard, I know who God is.

I know how faithful he is, I know what his word says.

I won't hit the eject button.

Why?

Because I trust him.

Even in the middle of it being hard, I trust him.

How did God use trials to transform Peter?

Like Peter had to have gone through something to be able to say this with confidence and write this to a persecuted group of people.

Think about it.

In his early years, Peter, when we first hear about him, he was kind of obnoxious.

Like he was a bit of a moron.

It's true.

Read his story in the Bible, read in the Gospels.

He was very inconsistent, he was hot-headed, he was rash, he was impulsive, he was a mess.

And Jesus hung with him for three years, right?

In his later years, what was he?

Well, he was incredibly bold.

He was tenacious, he was full of faith.

He was a man of, he was a man of God.

What happened?

Why the transformation?

Why the radical departure from who he was to who he became?

You know, God wants to do the same thing in your life.

God wants to do the same thing in you.

You might feel like you're you're missing something today.

You might feel in the relationship you're in or the workplace or your home or something you've been believing for that, God, man, this just isn't gonna work out for me.

Hang in there.

Be committed to the process.

God's building something in you.

Your faith is gonna be revealed in this trial.

What was one of the biggest trials Peter faced?

One time Peter said to Jesus, hey, Jesus, if all those other loser disciples deny you, I'm never gonna do it.

I'm always gonna have your back.

I'm paraphrasing.

I'm your guy, right?

Jesus, I'm your man.

I'll never leave you, I'll never forsake you.

John, you can't trust that guy.

But me, Jesus, you can trust me.

Then what happens?

Three times he denies Jesus.

In Jesus' darkest hour, I believe, and most scholars would believe, within earshot of Jesus, Peter watching, says, Jesus?

No, I don't I don't know him.

To a little girl.

Excuse me, mister.

Aren't you one of Jesus' friends?

No, a little girl, right?

To a little girl, he even says no.

He denies Jesus three times.

And then the eye contact, the encounter with Jesus where the rooster crows, and he knows what he's he knows what he said, but he knows he did the opposite of what he said.

He's a mess.

What a trial for Peter to walk through.

Three days later, the stones rolled away, the tomb is empty.

Jesus Christ rises from the dead.

In John 21, this meaningful encounter with Jesus and Peter on the beach, and Jesus looks Peter in the eye and he says, Do you love me?

And Peter's like, You know I love you.

Then feed my sheep.

Okay.

Do you love me?

Yes, Jesus, I love you.

I'm pretty sure I just said that.

Feed my sheep.

Peter, do you love me?

Really?

Are we doing this a third time?

A third time.

We're doing this a third time.

Yes, Jesus, I love you.

Feed my sheep.

Right?

This radical 180.

Full circle back.

What happens shortly after?

Well, Peter, the guy who messed up, he's the great, the great preacher on the day of Pentecost.

Once Jesus goes up to heaven and God's spirit begins to fill people on planet earth for the first time, this encounter with 3,000 people in one shot make a decision to become Jesus' followers.

It's Peter at the helm.

He goes from denial to radical leader in Jesus' church.

The trial tested his faith and he walked with Jesus through that trial, even though it was hard.

Man, I've often thought if I was one of Jesus' followers and he got arrested and sent to the Roman prison to be crucified, I don't know if I would have hung around.

I would have been like, I'm out so much for this guy.

See ya.

That's what we do when we go through trials.

This is terrible.

So much for this.

What kind of God lets me go through something like that?

No, no, no.

Don't have a conditional or an inherited or a shallow faith.

Have a deep, genuine faith.

Because our trials always reveal our faith.

Number two, and lastly, our trials draw us closer to God.

1 Peter chapter 1, verse 8 and 9, Peter's writing to these persecuted Christians, you never saw Jesus with your own eyes, and yet you love him.

1 Peter 1:8

You still don't see him, and yet you trust him with laughter and singing.

Another translation says, with inexpressible joy in the middle of hardship, you trust him even though you don't see him.

Whoa! That's amazing.

Remember who Peter's writing to.

Remember how dark it is.

With inexpressible joy, with laughter and singing, you trust him even though you don't see him.

A joy which we don't even have words in our human vocabulary to try and define.

A heavenly emotion that settles our soul, that calms our mind, gives us peace beyond our human ability to understand, joy, inexpressible joy, even though we're grieving, even though we're hurting, even though we're afraid, even though it's dark, even though they're coming to get you, even though that joy is ours.

I can't see him, I can't even see what he's doing right now, except I know that he's good and that he's for me and that he's working on my behalf, and I can't see it, but I trust him, and so I rest in this inexpressible joy.

Thank you, Jesus.

Do you know that God never said that he was gonna deliver us from all of our troubles?

If you hold that as a belief in your heart, I'm not sure where you got it, but I want to unwire that and undo it today.

God never said you wouldn't have any migraine headaches, even though he's our great healer and our physician.

He never said you wouldn't have financial difficulties, even though he's our provider.

He never said that that person that drives you crazy at work that you want to help make disappear, right?

He never said it wouldn't be hard.

He never said any of that, he never said any of that.

He actually said the opposite.

In this lifetime, you're gonna go through crap, you're gonna experience difficulties, you're gonna walk through trials.

But, John 16, take heart, because I've conquered the world.

I've conquered it, I've overcome.

And because my spirit's in you, you're an overcomer.

Matter of fact, you're more than an overcomer.

That's what he says about us.

The good news is not that he rescues us from trials, the good news is that Jesus has covered our sin, set things right between us and the Father, and that he's with us, building something in us and through us as we work through these trials.

And yes, that doesn't mean we don't pray for miracles.

Yes, when we fall prey to sickness and disease and the things that's going on, because God wants to do what only God can do.

But if something doesn't happen in your time frame, don't give up.

Don't walk away, don't have shallow or conditional or inherited faith.

Have a genuine depth that puts down roots despite what we see, because we believe what we can't see.

Genuine faith says that in my weakness, his strength is made perfect.

When you're in a trial in a place that's so low that all you can do is look up to God, you draw closer to him.

It's there that you'll see he's good, and that regardless of your circumstance, you can experience a glorious, inexpressible laughter and singing kind of joy.

That's different.

That's different.

That's different.

Think about when you've gone through trials in the past, or when people you know that aren't following Jesus go through something difficult, how do you see them respond?

If God's asking us to be different, set apart, what's that gonna look like?

I believe that whatever happens, despite whatever happens, the very creative spirit of God living on the inside of us, the opportunity to live in the sense of daughtership and sonship, that Jesus is our big brother and what he paid for, and what he mediated between us and God, and that that same spirit that raised Jesus up from the dead that's meant to fill up our lives, drawing us closer, working out our faith as we as we walk through something that's difficult.

And I believe that if we put down roots with genuine faith, not a shallow, not a conditional faith, not an inherited faith, but a genuine personal me and God, I'm in.

That kind of faith.

Those of you here today that are hurting, I just think you're here because God loves you.

I think you're in the room because you're taking one step closer to what genuine faith looks like for you.

When you draw near to him, he draws near to you.

He stands at the door and knocks and waits for us to open.

We lean in.

I just think some of you are hurting and going through trials right now.

And just the fact that you're here in the room is you taking one step closer to the Father, deeper, genuine faith.

And God loves you so much.

He brought you here today to help you understand that you can have a faith that's real in the middle of trials, a faith that's tested and developed and revealed, a faith that allows you to draw closer to God, that kind of faith.

Draw close to God through whatever you're going through.

There's some of you here that maybe just talking today, you're thinking about your faith and wondering, is some of my faith a little bit false?

Have I been leaning in too much to this inherited or conditional or shallow faith?

And to you, I think God just says, hey, you're not here by accident.

Just visit this issue of how you believe in me in the middle of something difficult.

Because in this lifetime, we're gonna go through something hard.

It's gonna happen.

If you're not in it now, give it some time.

And that's not to discourage you, it just is.

That's this is the life we live in.

Some of us here today, we we recognize that this is an area we can grow, an area we can mature in.

And that's my simple hope as we start this series on what it means to be different.

We're gonna look at some real specific things over the next few weeks.

But today I just wanted to say what makes you different as a Jesus follower when it comes to the difficult things that you're walking through, the difficult things in your home.

What sets you apart as different, as unique, as God's kid as you let this trial reveal your faith for being what it is, genuine faith, and allow that to draw you closer to God, not run away from him, not turn your back on him, not abandon him, but move him closer.

Because that's the kind of God we serve.

Let's pray.

Father, in Jesus' name.

We just want to say thank you for this moment, this opportunity to be together, to gather as a part of your church.

God, thank you so much for what you're doing in our lives.

For what you're building into us.

And I think there's something inside of us today that wants to echo what Peter wrote to the early church.

Man, even if we're going through something that's hard, what we want to say is, God, because of you, because of Jesus, how fortunate we are.

Because of Jesus, we have everything to live for.

Because of Jesus, God, we know that you're keeping careful watch over us.

And because of Jesus, we know that this can make us feel this inexpressible joy, this this response of laughter and singing, despite what our circumstances say, because we know that our God is good, and we know what He's said, and we know what He's paid for in full, and we know what He wants to do and accomplish in our life as we lean in with this genuine hope, genuine faith.

God, if our faith has been shallow, we're sorry.

If our faith has been inherited, help us grow up a little bit.

If our faith has been conditional, let us see you for who you really are.

Faithful, true, worth serving in every season, in every trial.

God, we love you.

And those of us here in the room that have made a decision to follow you with our whole life, we want to be different when it comes to working through the difficulties we face in this life.

We want to be set apart.

Help us, we ask.

In Jesus' name.

Thank you so much for listening to today's message.

If you're ever in the Edmonton area, pop by for a visit.

And if you need any more information, visit Evolvechurch.com.

We hope to see you soon!