A Tale of Three Churches | Jerry Harris

Well, how are you doing crossing church?

My name is Jerry Harris, and I am really, really glad to be

here with you today because there's nothing better than

being in the House of the Lord with the people of the Lord.

And you are the people of the Lord, and you have survived your

family. That's the family you didn't

choose so that you could be here with the family you did choose.

And praise God for that because sometimes that is survival.

Sometimes it's wonderful. Can be that way in church too.

I actually going to talk about that a little bit.

I want to welcome all of you that are joining from all of our

different locations. There's a dozen of them in this

10,000 square mile area that we call like the crossing mission

field. And that's awesome if you're

inside or online. So absolutely thankful for you.

And you know, Thanksgiving isn't just a season of the year for

me. I mean, I've just been

overflowing with Thanksgiving. So many good things happening in

our family and in our lives. And I know that with, in spite

of everything, like even if there's nothing good going on,

if you have the Lord, you still have plenty to be thankful for.

And, and I, I hope that that that's in your mind,

particularly for me. It's been 4 years now.

That's just wild to think. This weekend, it's been 4 years

since I announced 2 things on Thanksgiving weekend at the

crossing. The first thing that I announced

that weekend was that we were debt free.

Can I get a Hallelujah for being debt free?

Amen. The second thing that I

announced that that weekend was that Clayton Hensel was your new

senior pastor. Yeah.

And, and I was a little jealous because he got 3 standing

ovations. That was pretty nice.

You know, talk about a warm welcome.

And so think it was an appropriate day for those

announcements because we should all be so incredibly thankful

for the things that God has done.

So I called the office early in this week because Clayton has

broken all of my records. And I'm kind of sad about that.

But no, I'm not really. And I wanted to see what was

going on with baptisms because there was one record that he

hadn't broken, one record that was standing out there.

And it was in 2017. We have 1011 baptisms.

And I go, good luck Clayton, good luck crossing church.

Come on. And, and I, I called the office

and I said, where are we at calendar year for baptisms and

they go work 12174. I'm like, I've never been so

glad to see a record broken in my life.

And if you keep going like this and what I've been seeing this

weekend, you're going to hit 1400 before the end of the year.

And, and I mean, just the thought of that 1400 people

getting to experience their sins being washed away, being

breaking through that water and finding that new life in Jesus

Christ, how incredible that is. And you see it in in attendance

and you see it in engagement. You know, I mentioned Clayton's

name, but you know, that happens when when the church is at work,

it happens when people are sharing the gospel of Jesus

Christ with other people and there is engagement going on.

And there's incredible gaugement going on at this church right

now. We have so much to be thankful

for and we don't ever want to get complacent in that.

And that is why I'm so glad to be able to share with you from

this last, this last sermon of the series from First

Corinthians, First Corinthians chapter 16, because it is a tale

1 Corinthians 16 · chapter mention

of three churches. That's what we find in that

chapter, what was going on in those churches.

And then if we apply it right, we might learn what we need to

be doing and what we need to refrain from doing as a church.

So a lot of times, especially through this series, we've

looked a lot about about what's going on internally, like what's

going into my heart, what's going on in my personal

circumstances. How is God teaching me through

that? But what I want you to do today

is I want you to zoom out a little bit, and I don't want to

want you to be looking to the Scripture at the beginning

anyway, so much as me as we're looking at it as us, like as a

family of believers. So to look at these other

churches and then see our relationship to the crossing in

the light of those three. Now, those three churches are

Jerusalem, Corinth and Ephesus. OK, Jerusalem, at least in the

16th chapter, is the subject that the apostle Paul's writing

about, and he's writing it to the Corinthian church, and he's

writing it from the Ephesian church.

So let's look at all three of these churches and see what we

can learn. All right, the first one is

Jerusalem. Now, I'm going to give a pretty

negative title for the Jerusalem church, but bear with me because

I think I can support it. And it's this Jerusalem church

is the church that lives in the past.

First Corinthians chapter 16 verses one through 4, Paul

1 Corinthians 16 · chapter mention

writes and he says now about the collection for the Lord's

people. Do what I told the Galatian

churches to do on the first day of the week.

Each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with

your income, saving it up so that when I come, no collections

will have to be made. Then when I arrive, I will give

letters of introduction to the men you approve to and send them

with your gift to Jerusalem. If it seems advisable for me to

go also, they will accompany me. So let's give a little bit of

background, because there's a gift that is going to be

acquired from the Corinthian church, and then it's going to

be taken from Corinth to Jerusalem.

Why does Jerusalem need that offering?

Well, we've already learned early on in this series that

First Corinthians was written about 55 or 56 AD, that it was

written from Ephesus. And that date is important

because it means that it's about 20 years after the evangelist

Stephen was martyred. Stephen was martyred in

Jerusalem. He was killed for his face,

stoned to death in Jerusalem, and it was some time after the

church had begun. Now again, let's understand it a

little bit better. In Acts chapter one, verse 8,

Jesus gave His most specific instructions about how to live

out the Great Commission. A lot of times we're thinking of

Matthew 2818 to 20, but this is an Acts 1/8.

This is what he says. But you will receive power when

the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in

Jerusalem, Period. No, it's not a period, it's a

comma. You see that?

You'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, comma, and in all

Judea and Samaria comma and to the ends of the earth.

The thing is that the Church of Jerusalem stayed in Jerusalem.

Now Jesus didn't say that you I want you to try and endeavour to

be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samarian to the

he didn't say do your best to be, he said, and you will be.

And this is where we get a difference between the upper

story and the lower story, right?

When God says something in the upper story, take it to the

bank. It's going to happen.

There's nothing in this world that can stop it.

God's going to do it in his sovereign power.

This will happen, but we all live in the lower story, right?

What we're trying to do is get In Sync with God and live our

lives in the upper story where he is.

But sometimes we get stuck down in the lower story, and that's

what you're going to see here. An upper story, lower story,

kind of things smashing in to one another.

Because they stayed in Jerusalem.

They were instructed to go into all Judea and Samaria to the

ends of the earth. And the church was doing so

well. The church was grown by

thousands. The first day, the first day of

the church, 3000 people accepted Christ and were baptized, right?

Just a little later, it says that the number grew to 5000.

I mean, it was growing like crazy.

As a matter of fact, in the book of Acts, they had to change the

Word. They had to change the Word from

the Lord, added to the Word to the Word.

The Lord multiplied. It was growing that fast and I

would imagine there were a lot of people there in Jerusalem

saying things are going so well, we just need to stay here and

try to manage the things that we already have.

That was not what Jesus said. They were effective, yes, but

they were only effective to people in Jerusalem.

That is until Steven. And no one can stand up to the

spirit by which Stephen spoke. He was an incredible preacher,

credible order, credible teacher of God's word.

And he was just so compelling that people were coming in

droves, coming to know the Lord. And so the Jewish religious

leader said, we can't have that anymore, right?

And so they dragged him into court.

And there was this, there's this big scene in the book of Acts of

him being on trial for his faith.

And when he got to Jesus in the resurrection, they had heard all

they wanted to hear. He said you stiff necked people

with uncircumcised hearts and ears, you always resist the Holy

Spirit. They put their hands over their

ears, screamed at the top of their lungs, grabbed that guy,

took him outside the city and began throwing rocks at him

until he died, stoned him to death.

And there was this pretty important young man there who

held everybody's coats so they could get a better wind up on

the rock that they were throwing.

And his name was Saul. And we read about it in Acts

Acts 8 · chapter mention

chapter 8, verses one to four, it says.

And Saul approved of their killing hymn.

And on that day, a great persecution broke out against

the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were

scattered. Look what it says next

throughout Judea and Samaria. Want to stop there for just a

second? Guess what's happening?

The upper story. The upper story's happening

right there because Jesus said you will be my witnesses in

Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria, right?

It's happening right there. Except they weren't doing it in

the upper story. They were doing it in the lower

story. If they would have just gone

out, if they would have just gone out when Jesus told him to,

would have been different. They would have been in the

upper story. But because they were in the

lower story and they were hoarding that blessing and

keeping that blessing to themselves, the gospel still

went out, but it went out on the basis of persecution going on.

It says godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him.

But Saul began to destroy the church, going from house to

house. He dragged off both men and

women and put them in prison. And listen to the next line.

And those who'd been scattered preach the Word wherever they

went, the Gospels going out, but they missed their window.

Jerusalem was a church that lived in the past, and they

missed their window. And now, 20 years later, when

the apostle Paul, Saul or the apostle Paul is writing the

Corinthian church, instead of Jerusalem being the powerhouse

church that they were, now they're in desperate need.

So an offering has to be taken because they are incapable of

meeting their own needs. And there's a warning there.

And that warning is not to live in the past.

Jerusalem was a church living in the past, resting in its

accomplishments. This is why I'm so thankful for

what God is doing at the crossing, because we have been

blessed, but for the purpose of being a blessing.

God doesn't bless us just to bless us.

He wants that to pay things forward.

He wants more people to come to know Jesus Christ, not just

ministering in one community. Now here we are ministering in

12 communities. You know, here we are in this

big region now, and I want to ask you a question in this

application. Does God bless the church that

takes the Great Commission seriously and proactively or

not? You bet he does.

He does. And that's a lesson we learned

from chapter 16. Let's go to the second church.

OK? That's the church in Corinth.

Also not a very flattering title for this church.

It's the church that compromises.

Hey, we go to the crossing. We love to compromise.

No, nobody wants that sentence attached to their church.

But that is exactly what Corinth was.

Now, the obvious reason that Paul is asking Corinth for money

is because Corinth has plenty of money.

They have an incredible amount of money.

They're just kind of doused in it.

And I'll tell you why, because Corinth is situated on a piece

of land called the Isthmus of Corinth.

It's only four miles wide. And on one side of that isthmus

is the Ionian Sea, and on the other side is the Aegean Sea.

OK, And if you are a sailor and most all the commerce came by

ship, this way didn't come overland, right?

It came by ship. If you wanted to get across

Greece, you had to sail all the way around it, plus all the

islands of Greece. It was a long, arduous, and

oftentimes dangerous journey, but the Corinthians had come up

with a way of picking a ship up out of the water and rolling it

4 miles. They could literally roll these

ships 4 miles and you could bypass all of that.

This is before there was a canal there.

There's a canal there now, but there wasn't then.

And they would roll those ships over that 4 miles and drop them

in the other seat, either east or West.

And they were paid handsomely for that.

They were paid just incredible amounts of money because of all

the money that was saved from shipwrecks and storms and all of

that stuff. So they had plenty of money to

give and that that would do an incredible thing it it would

help the Jerusalem church and it would help the Corinthian

church. The problem was that the

Corinthian church was just too immature to use it.

The money that they had been given in a God honoring way.

Obviously the church would help the struggling church in

Jerusalem, but it would also take away the self-centered

focus that the people in Corinth had.

Now if you're wondering if I'm just throwing that on them,

that's not true. This church had serious internal

problems and the things that Paul says about the church in

Corinth, he doesn't say for no reason.

And it gives us insight into the state of the church.

Here's the first problem. It's in First Corinthians 1610

through 11. It says this.

When Timothy comes, see to it that he has nothing to fear

while he is with you, Stop right there.

Fear. And he's not talking about the

culture. He's not talking about the rest

of the city. He's talking about the church.

What in the world would Timothy have to fear from brothers and

sisters in Christ? Why would the apostle Paul need

to say, See to it that he has nothing to fear for you.

He goes on to say, for he is carrying on the work of the

Lord, just as I am. No one then should treat him

with contempt. Contempt like hating him, being

abusive to him. Again, he's not talking about

the culture of Corinth. He's talking about the church.

That people in the church would treat him with contempt, that he

had reason to fear the people of the church.

What in the world is going on? It goes on to say, send him on

his way in peace so that he may return to me.

Like why wouldn't the church send him in peace?

It just makes sense that they would send him in peace.

Why would they send him in some other way?

And he goes on to say, I'm expecting him along with the

brothers. Here's what it tells you that in

First Corinthians chapter 3 when it talks about the factions in

1 Corinthians 3 · chapter mention

the church where people are saying I'm of Paul, I'm of

Apollo, so I'm of Cephas or Peter or I'm of Christ.

Those factions weren't shallow. Those factions were like a no

big deal thing. Those factions were so deep.

These people were so in their teams.

They were so anti each other that you had reason to fear, you

had reason to be in contempt, and you had reason to feel

anything but a sense of peace. That's why Timothy had to worry

about his safety. That's just one problem.

Here's another one. Apollos wasn't willing to go.

Why would that be? Look at verses 12 to 14.

It says now about our brother Apollos.

I strongly urged him to go to you.

I mean, it's a big deal when Paul strongly urges you and then

he says, no, he was quite unwilling to go now, but he will

go when he has the opportunity. Be on your guard, stand firm in

the faith, be courageous, be strong, do everything in love.

Apollos wouldn't go. He's like, you know, things are

going gangbusters here in Ephesus.

Why do I want to leave here where God's doing all this work

and go to that? Church in Corinth that has so

much sideways energy, they'd rather kill each other than see

the world one to Christ. Wow, he didn't want to go.

Why in the world would the apostle Paul have to say, do

everything in love? That's like, duh, you're in the

church. That's what we're supposed to do

all the time. Why would you have to write that

down and say, oh, by the way, do everything in love?

Why would he have to say what he said before that?

To be on your guard, to stand firm in the faith, to be

courageous and to be strong because that was the culture of

the Corinthian church. Here's the third problem.

They had a complete lack of strong biblical leadership or

any recognition of it. We read that in 15 to 18.

You know that the household of Stephanus, we're the first

converts in Achaea, and they devoted themselves to the

service of the Lord's people. Do you know how hard it is to be

the first converts? And that's an entire region of

the world. They were the first converts.

You may have heard the statement before.

The first one through the wall always gets bloody.

And you know what the Apostle Paul's doing?

He's recommending Stephanus to be one of their leaders.

He's obviously not one of their leaders, but he ought to be

because he's one of the most courageous there.

He was the first one to come to know Jesus Christ right Then it

says, I urge you brothers and sisters to submit.

Now you know it's leadership to submit to such people and to

everyone who joins in the work and laborers at it.

Then he goes on to say, I was glad when Stephanus Fortunatus

and a Cacus arrived because they have supplied what is lacking

from you. They refresh my spirit and yours

also. Such men deserve recognition.

Do you know what Paul's doing? He's making recommendations for

leaders. The question is, will they take

his advice? I already know the answer to

that question. The answer is no, they won't

take his advice. Do you know why I know that?

Because he had the right Second Corinthians.

And the fact is, Second Corinthians is all about why

they didn't do anything that he told them to do in First

Corinthians. And what you don't know, or

maybe you do from the study that you've done, is that First

Corinthians and 2nd Corinthians are also two of four letters

that the apostle Paul wrote. There's actually a first, a

second, a third, and a fourth. We just only have two of them.

Kind of wild. The Corinthian church was filled

with people who were distracted with selfish, worldly thinking.

They wanted everything that faith offered, but they wanted

also the compromise of worldly thinking and acting.

I already told you 12174 baptisms.

That means that there are 12174 people up to this weekend that

got in the water and repeated these words, right?

What are they? I believe the Jesus of Christ,

the Son of the living God, and I want him as my yeah.

And I've told you before, Jesus can't be your Lord unless he's

your savior, and he can't be your savior unless he's your

Lord. They go together.

But you see, what the Corinthian church wanted was they wanted

Jesus to be their savior, period.

They wanted everything they could get from Jesus, but didn't

want to submit to Jesus because they wanted to compromise with

the world. And a lot of First Corinthians

is about all that compromise with the world.

In our church today, what are we thinking about?

How are we acting? Where are we in the Savior and

Lord continuum? Because I'm going to venture a

guess. You certainly don't want to be a

church that lives in the past and you don't want to be a

church that compromises. So you don't want to be Corinth,

you don't want to be Jerusalem, but what do you want to be?

My third church is Ephesus, and I call it the New Testament

powerhouse church. If I could choose a New

Testament church to join, it'd be Ephesus.

Why? Well, if you go back to Acts 19,

it gives you a portrait of this church and what it was like.

It began with 12 guys. OK, And I'm just going to start

reading. There were about 12 men in all.

Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three

months, arguing persuasively about the Kingdom of God.

But some of them became obstinate.

They refused to believe and publicly maligned the way.

Before we were called Christians in the New Testament, we were

called the way. So Paul left them.

He took the disciples with him and had discussions daily in the

lecture hall of Tyrannis, which is interesting because it's the

first mention of a church building in the New Testament.

Now this went on for two years. Actually, this was the Apostle

Paul's longest located ministry, so that all the Jews and Greeks

who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.

That's a big statement. All of the people in the

province of Asia heard about Jesus because of what was going

on in this place called Ephesus. And God did extraordinary

miracles through Paul so that even handkerchiefs and aprons

that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses

were cured, and the evil spirits left them.

Holy Spirit was working people. Some Jews who went around

driving out evil spirits tried to appropriate this.

It's funny, try to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over

those who are demon possessed. They would say in the name of

the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out and

seven sons of Skiva, a Jewish chief priest, where they were

doing this. One day the evil spirit answered

them. I bet they never expected an

evil spirit to answer them. Jesus I know, Paul I know about.

But who are you? And the man who had the evil

spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all.

He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked

and bleeding. What a story.

When this became known to the Jews and the Greeks living in

Ephesus, they were all seized with fear and the name of the

Lord was held in high honor. Except Jesus.

And don't run out naked and bleeding, right?

Wow. Many of those who believed

listen to this now came and openly confessed what they had

done. A number who had practiced

sorcery brought their scrolls together.

So they had scrolls written with like incantations, like the

occult, like witchcraft, right? And burned them publicly.

And you're going, wow, the number who had practiced

sorcery, this is they calculated the value of the scrolls and

total came to 50,000 drachmas. And you don't know what a

drachma is. A drachma is a day's wages.

So the value of the scrolls that they burned was 50,000 days

wages. And if you calculate that into

the modern American economy, those scrolls were worth about

$5,000,000. Hold on, how many people in

today's church would say hey you guys ever heard of eBay?

Have you heard of Facebook marketplace?

I bet we could get 2-3 million for those.

Just think of what we could do for Jesus if we had that

3,000,000 bucks and you want to burn them?

Are you crazy? How do you, how do you think God

felt about that? How do you think that Jesus felt

about that burnt offering? Well, it tells you how he felt

about it. Look what the last last sentence

says. In this way, the word of the

Lord spread widely and grew in power.

The Lord provides for what he calls us to.

He doesn't call us to anything that He doesn't provide for,

right? It starts with 12 guys.

There's plenty of cultural and religious opposition from the

outside, but it doesn't stop this church, doesn't even slow

down this church. Ephesus was a church on fire.

They were forged in the fire of opposition.

They experienced the power of the Holy Spirit in real time and

godly fear molded them and shaped them and they willingly

sacrificed without compromise. And the gospel went out from

Ephesus. And when we read the Book of

Revelation, it's the seven churches of Asia Minor.

You know, the first church that was in Asia Minor was Ephesus,

and they're the ones that started all those other churches

in Asia Minor that John writes to in the Book of Revelation.

Wow. See, Ephesus wasn't like

Jerusalem, wasn't living in the past, and they weren't like

Corinth. They weren't self-centered and

highly divided. They were empowered.

They were focused. And I think the obvious answer

is if we're wanting to look at a church to be like we go Ephesus,

sign me up. I want to be in that church.

And when you think about it, how many churches around us are

churches that are living in the past?

How many churches are trying to preserve traditions that have no

connection with living out the Great Commission?

How many churches are trying so hard to be relevant to culture

that they're being swallowed up by that culture to the point

that you can't tell them apart from the world?

How many are full of internal division, all trying to run

their own play instead of cooperating to make the biggest

impact they can for Jesus Christ?

It would be easy for the crossing to take a victory lap

right now. Just slow the music down, you

know, get out the flags because we want to identify with this

Church of Ephesus. But I want you to hold on a

minute before you take the victory lap.

You see, Ephesus is actually unique in the New Testament in a

very interesting way. It's the only church that we get

to look at 2 times. Every other church we only see

in one period of time. But Ephesus, we see it two

times. In Acts 19, we're seeing it 5556

AD. In Revelation it's 95 AD.

So you're seeing it 40 years later.

So how's Ephesus doing 40 years later?

It's in Revelation chapter 2, verses one to seven.

Revelation 2 · chapter mention

I'll read it to you. To the Angel of the Church of

Ephesus, write. These are the words of him who

holds seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven

golden lampstands. I know your deeds, your hard

work, and your perseverance. Oh, it sounds good, right?

Getting good grades so far. I know you cannot tolerate

wicked people that you've tested those who claim to be apostles

that are not and found them false.

Wow, they're doing great. You've persevered, you've

endured hardships for my name, and you've not grown weary.

Oh, what a great church they still are.

And then you read the next line. Yet I hold this against you.

You have forsaken the love you had at first.

Some translations will say you have forsaken your first love.

Consider how far you have fallen.

Repent and do the things you did at first.

If you do not repent, I'll come to you and remove your lampstand

from its place. He goes on to say, Yeah, this in

your favor. You hate the practice of those

nasty Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

Whoever has ears, let him hear what the Spirit says to the

churches. To the one who is victorious.

I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is

in the paradise of God. The Ephesus still doing all the

right things to a fault, be in the church that's doing the

things that God wants them to do.

And yet when John writes under the inspiration of the Holy

Spirit, the words of Jesus, he says you have forsaken your

first love. What motivates you to do all the

things that you're doing? It's coming from the wrong

place. And there is one word that

describes that. That word is passion.

You see, in Acts 19, Ephesus was full of passion.

It was driven by passion. It was uncompromising in its

passion, but by revelation 240 years later, still doing the

things it did but losing its passion, I was preaching A

sermon many years ago. For the use of those of you at

different locations, you might find it hard to visualize this,

but before the 48th St. Auditorium was built here, we've

met down in a gym which is a little bit away from here.

And I was trying to help people to understand this concept of

passion. And so midweek I found a disco

ball and I haven't had them install a disco ball in the

center of the of the ceiling in the in the gym.

And I had lights to shine on the disco ball.

And then when I was preaching on Sunday morning, I, I didn't want

the congregation to know that this was all planned.

But while I was preaching, the tech team started playing a song

right in the middle of my sermon.

And the song was the very Thought of You by Natalie Cole.

And I mean, it's, it's a beautiful song.

And as, as they started playing it, I started to yell at the

tech booth. What are you guys doing?

Hey, I'm preaching up here. Who turned on the music?

Turn the stupid music off. And I'm yelling at him.

And they, they don't pay any mind to me.

And the music comes up and then the lights all go down.

And then a spotlight forms on the front row.

And while the very thought of you is playing chairman of the

elders and his wife, they're sitting right there right now,

probably holding hands because they are So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Barb and Dale Mitchell.

And he was in, I don't know if you were in a suit or tux, but I

think you were. But you, they, you.

And she was in a formal, and they stepped up and he escorted

her to the center of the floor of the auditorium, right in

front of me. And they were dancing.

By the way, they are incredible ballroom dancers.

And so I started to yell at them, What are you doing?

I am trying to preach a sermon. Do you realize it's Sunday.

I'm in the word of God. And what are you doing?

And, you know, and, and I just kept yelling at them and they

didn't look at me. They didn't listen to me.

They didn't care that I was doing it.

They're just staring at each other.

And I'm like, you know, go get a room staring at each other.

And, and, and they're, and they're dancing and it's so

beautiful. And I keep yelling at them.

And eventually, and this was not planned, eventually someone in

the church stood up and say, why don't you sit down, Jerry?

Let them finish their dance. Couldn't have been a better

thing. And I shut up and step back and

sat down until they were done with their dance.

And the people clapped and they didn't care.

And when the dance was over, he took her hand and escorted her

back to her seat. And I step back up to the

pulpit. And I said that my friend, is

passion. When you can't see anything

else, you don't care about anything else.

You are 100% living in that moment and would be happy if

that moment never ended. That's what Ephesus had, and

that is what Ephesus had lost. You see, the love of Jesus is

captivating, preoccupying, passionate, and passion

rekindles the flame in our hearts for Jesus and for His

mission. And like the Ephesian church,

listen to me of all the good things that the crossing does,

They are pointless without passion.

We're moving to a time of decision.

Glad you liked it. But are you convicted by it?

Because I am. I definitely AM, and I'll tell

you why. When I first came to know Jesus

Christ and I realized that He loved me, I realized that He

went to the cross for me and that He died for me.

And then He knows my name and that He can wash all my sins

away and He can make me like new.

And someday He's going to take me to heaven.

And all the people that went on before me, I'm going to meet Him

there. And we're going to be like some

big family and it's going to wipe away all the tears from our

eyes. And there'll be no crying and

there'll be no death. There'll be no sickness,

there'll be no pain. Oh, so great.

Just to think about how wonderful he was that he would

do that for me. And to recognize it, realize it,

embrace it. But I've lived a lot of life

since then, and sometimes I don't feel much passion.

Sometimes I'm just going through the motions.

And sometimes so are you. And this

I met my wife when she moved across the street from me and we

couldn't. We would talk on the phone for

such a long time and we were like lived across the street

from each other. And I would be trying to figure

out ways how to get every last second out of that date until

11:00 when she had to be home and the window of her bedroom

faced the window of my bedroom. So even after I said goodnight

to her at the door, I would wait for that light to come on.

I would turn on my light and we just have to have one more good

night. From a distance, some of you are

remembering that passion in you when it was preoccupying,

captivating, it owned you. You didn't own it.

But Allison and I have been married for 42 years.

And sometimes, well, but don't clap sometimes the woods wet,

you know what I mean? Kind of hard to kindle the

flame. The coals get separated.

Any of you connecting with this? And I need to go back and

remember the things I did at first, that it wasn't enough to

just be married to her and have children with her and

grandchildren with her. I still need to date her.

Remember the things that you did at first.

Many of you here are already believers in Jesus Christ.

You would already say I have an intimate, personal relationship

with Jesus Christ. But I'm describing your faith

right now and I want you to consider these steps and just

the purity of a single moment where you could just say,

because I had a person in between services, young man came

up to me and how do I rekindle that?

And I go, well, I really appreciate that question two

ways. Number one is you talk to the

Holy Spirit about it. Admit it to him.

So you're sorry, say I still love you, help me to do better.

Second way is you're going to take communion in a little bit

because that reminds you of the value of the love of Christ.

This is what it cost. And his passion for you has not

changed one bit. Don't you love that about Jesus?

He doesn't see you as you are. He sees you as all your, all of

your potential fulfilled. That's what he sees when he

looks at you. Isn't that nice?

Some of you here today have never accepted Jesus Christ as

your Lord and Savior, and you're learning about this for the

first time. There's going to be somebody

right over there by the baptistry would love nothing

more than talk to you about what it means to come into that

relationship and live in that relationship.

But we're still just people. Just look around you.

This is what this is what the redeemed look like.

Not perfect, God will take care of that later, but still

redeemed. We've talked about the church,

but now I'm talking about you. And what I want you to be is

full, full of passion for Jesus. Would you stand with me?

Let's pray Heavenly Father, in Jesus name.

We want to be people of passion, we want to live our whole lives

that way, but we do not want to minimize that.

We are in totality 100% passionate in our relationship.

For you Father, rekindle the flame, stir up the embers, and

let us feel and experience what we felt at first, in Jesus name,

Amen.