Living Love In A Lost Land - Pastor Jeff - 4/28/19

Hello?

Hello.

Sing a little louder.

We have a song to sing.

It's a love song.

You know, I got to come here on, I think it was Wednesday night while they were rehearsing that song and they were, you know, practicing getting their voices in sync and I was here to do something else with them.

And Brenda would say, well, do you have time to wait?

Do you have time to wait?

I'm like, I could sit here for an hour.

Just hearing that message again and again in the middle of a storm, we have a song to sing.

We have a weapon that is a melody and it's planted in our hearts and it's the love of God.

And so that's what we're going to talk about today is love.

And you know, that's a very generic kind of topic.

Oh, what was the sermon about?

Oh, love.

Oh yeah.

That again.

You know, love, but I think it's a crucial topic in these days.

It's very important that we understand what love is, how to walk in love, to have to be embodied by the love of God, not the love of the world or the love that is about feelings and about our flesh, but about truly embodying this thing that we can't manifest apart from the grace of God.

Now, how many of you like to go shopping?

Yeah.

How many of you don't really like going shopping?

Yeah, by the way, I, oh, what am I favorite things to do when I come to church is to check out what Carlos, uh, is wearing.

Uh, Carlos Garda and Lenay are the fashion Easters of our church.

I always want to see what the hip people are wearing and I just check him out.

If you didn't see his shoes today, they are sparkly.

They are fantastic.

Um, I just, I don't, I don't have that fashion sense.

I have my uniform of Khaki Pants, my black shirt, my black pants, my white shirt.

I mean, I would like to go to the star trek days where you got one jumpsuit.

You just wear it and that's all you gotta do.

Um, but I had to go, I went shopping, I went to Kohl's yesterday.

It's probably the only store I go in cause people leave me alone.

I go to the big and tall section, I grabbed some stuff, I put it on in the dressing room and uh, try to escape as quickly as possible.

And I found myself in a little bit of a dilemma yesterday because I am caught between sizes.

Have you ever been caught between sizes?

Yeah, now it's, it's kind of fun when you're heading in the direction you want to go.

I'm kind of heading in the other direction.

So I go to the big and tall and I'm like, okay, do I want a large, tall or an extra large, tall?

And so I grabbed the shirts I like in both and I go back to the dressing room and I start with the extra large and I put them on and it's too loose.

It's Kinda Blousey.

It's kind of, I don't know if it's strong wind comes up, people are going to see things that they don't want to see.

And so I think, okay, it's too big for me.

I'm still in the large.

I put that on and I find that I'm getting the button gaps.

You could get the button gaps and it's a little too form fitting.

And I'm thinking, well I didn't buy anything because it was either too loose or it was too tight.

And I think that sometimes love can be a little bit that way.

We want to find this sweet spot, this fit where it envelops us in a natural, true way.

And I think with love we, we often maybe slides where things being a little too loose and things being a little too soft and warm and cuddly.

But then when we try to navigate the other way, we swing toward this restrictive kind of tight kind of rigid, uh, uncomfortable kind of love.

And I think that it's very, it's like walking a tight rope.

And even as I was preparing the lesson, I was kind of worried about how it might be received to some of your ears.

I pray, Lord, that you don't hear me being hard nose than unloving and strict and self righteous.

And I, that's not my heart at all.

And I don't want that to be what settles.

At the same token, uh, for those of you that are may hear a message and, and think it's, it's this very, uh, well anyway, and out of balance view.

So I just asked that the Lord will show up here and reveal his love and that whatever my inability to express it or discuss it, that, that the Lord will edit all that out and that somehow his love will sink into your hearts.

So I'd like to go ahead and look at a little video.

Oh, by the way, um, do you like my alliterative title?

Living loving in a lost land?

I want you to repeat living, loving in a lost land.

Now let's do it altogether.

Living, loving in the last land.

Hey, very good.

Let's watch a little video.

Oh, I may send a link to the video to you, uh, later for you to watch.

Technical glitches are of the devil.

So let's just purse that and we'll put them under our feet.

And, um, so what I'd like to do just this to ask you perhaps just it's okay.

Don't worry about the video.

Um, I'm just gonna ask you, well, I'm gonna ask you, I'm going to ask you, um, how you would define love.

So the video had children giving their definition of love.

They gave all their ideas about what love was and a set, a lot of interesting things and I was going to have you comment on that.

So I'd like to ask you, does anybody have what they think is a good definition of love?

All right, Mr Wayne, I'm going to give you the Mike.

What do you think love is Jesus.

Alright.

Anybody concur with that?

Jesus is love.

Okay.

Does anyone want to add to the definition?

Maybe share a thought about what that might be?

Can I hold the Mike?

Unconditional?

Okay.

It's unconditional.

Jerry hating sin, but loving the center hating soon, but loving the center, laying down your life for someone you don't know.

Laying down your life for someone that you don't know.

Anybody else want to give a, uh, maybe a short tip?

I want to hear from the youth.

All right, Katie, what would you say love is doing?

Things not for yourself.

Okay.

Selfless.

We're going to do things for others, not for stuff.

One more.

Okay.

I think we should hear from our pastor.

Self-Giving self-giving.

Amen.

Well, why are we talking about love?

You know, because we're in a world in which sadly, we'll go to the next slide and which sadly, Christians are accused of not watching, walking in love over and over.

We're called haters.

Judgers we're viewed as people who do not care about the world unless they agree with us, unless they come onto our side.

And there's just a couple of means up there that I found, you know, two years ago I didn't even know what a meme is and now they're all over the place.

But these are just a couple of them.

One of them says, a hypocrite claiming to be a Christian and reading your Bible in public while steadily stabbing others in the back.

A lot of people will accuse Christians in general of being like that, reading the Bible, quoting the versus going to church and yet gossiping, backbiting, condemning.

We have another one, claims to be a Christian but hates Muslims, Jews, pagans, Buddhists and gays were called haters.

But this is nothing new.

I've been studying church history.

It's been very interesting.

Pastor Chris today talked about the fact that it's not about institutions, it's about the Kingdom of God in the body of Christ, in the church, universal and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

And what we're going through today in the church is really nothing new.

I've learned about, uh, you know, to pope's a one excommunicating a whole country.

And then the other one excommunicating another country.

Wycliffe was dug up and burned after he died because he translated the Bible into English.

So what we're dealing with today isn't really so bad or so new, but even, uh, back in the Roman times we were called, well, it's said because they were condemned.

They were persecuted.

They were killed.

Not necessarily for setting the fires in Rome or for being subversive to the government, but they were said to have hatred of the human race.

How many of you heard that?

We as Christians hate that we judge that we're not loving, that we don't walk in a posture of reconciliation or invitation to Christ, but we're walking with our fingers out.

So I think it's important that we talk about this because these accusations will only increase.

We'll go to the next slide.

You know, one of the things we're finding is a steady change in our demographic.

I had the pleasure of going to the Asbury theological seminary opening, and we had the president speak to us and he gave us some interesting statistics.

And what we found is that when they look at America, the American population today, and they ask people whether they claim a religious affiliation or a faith in God.

If you look at people that are 65 years or older, only 9% would claim that they don't have any faith, any belief in God.

But we find people from 18 to 29 37.8% have no faith in God.

That's a stark cha difference in those two numbers.

It's an and, and we're finding that that's trending younger and the concern is that as our younger population comes up, that they won't have a grounding in the truth.

Now, why is that happening?

I think part of it is that children are taught to believe that Christians really are not embracing of diversity.

That we're not open to people that are different than we are.

And to choose to walk in the Christian faith is to choose to become part of an exclusive prejudice group.

When Israel Sabira joined our staff just this past last few months, uh, I was talking to him, we had a little lunch over at[inaudible] and I asked him, because he's a young guy, how old are you?

2120.

Just 20.

Wow.

And so he's got his finger on the pulse of young people.

He knows how young people are thinking.

And I asked them specifically about how they view the church, particularly with the idea of embracing of people.

And loving.

And he said it was a huge stumbling block for many young people to embrace Christianity because they view us as hating gay people, Hating transgender people being exclusive and saying there's only one way because they've been raised to believe that this is a civil rights issue, that to be on the right side of history, we have to be extremely, uh, embracing that to have a biblical view is to have a condemning view of individuals.

And I think the enemy has used this to keep people away from the gospel message.

Because the minute you mentioned this particular issue, people say, well, you don't like these people.

I can't be part of you.

And so we have to find out how do we as Christians walk in the world that that compromising but also love, truly love.

So I do want to talk a little bit about the St Louis Conference because this is where God really began to speak to me about that.

And Pastor Chris mentioned today some of the results of that.

So I think it leads in very well, but I noticed something there that really was difficult for me.

And that was, I went there hoping to have some dialogue.

I went there hoping to have some discussions.

I wanted to sit down and pray with people.

I wanted to engage people.

I wanted to really wrestle with these, with the Lord at the center of our conversation.

But I couldn't do that.

Somehow.

It was weird.

I would walk through the halls and I would see people with their, uh, the rainbow stoles and part of me wanted to go up and ask them how they were doing or how they were feeling about the conference or maybe to have some kind of positive exchange, but I didn't, I would walk past them.

I would feel like they don't want to hear from me and they don't, there's not a receptivity to it.

It was like two groups, like ships passing one another back and forth.

I didn't see anybody really talking to each other.

It wasn't just me.

I didn't notice anybody really fellowshipping with people from the other side of things.

It was very much two groups of people in almost a defensive posture toward one another.

And there was no reaching across.

There was no apparent a desire to engage.

And that was really hard for me.

Now, after the conference on the very last day, pastor Chris and I went to a restaurant, it was in our hotel was kind of an Irish restaurant.

They had great fish and chips.

We'd been there I think three times in three days.

And um, and we were really talking about what are we going to face when we go home.

Um, we have a church that stands for a doctrine and our church as an institution has made a decision about the book of discipline.

And it's alignment with truth with scripture.

But Chris said to me, but I'm not satisfied with just having a doctrine to being right theologically to being able to point to scripture, to support my, to support my point of view.

I want to be able to offer hope.

I want to be able to do something in a practical way that offers Christ and love to people who may feel marginalized or rejected or apart from.

And so we began to talk about ways that maybe we could do that.

Uh, discipleship programs.

Maybe a conference where we educate one another with issues related to the LGBT community.

Ways that we can have an opening, listening posture to people to, we were just brainstorming.

There were lots of things that came up and next slide.

And all of a sudden during that conversation, this woman at the table behind us turned around to me and said, why are you shouting at me?

Why are you yelling at me?

Why are you talking to me like that?

Why are you doing this?

I don't remember her exact words cause I was in shock and I didn't even know how to respond because I wasn't talking to her.

I was talking to pastor Chris and I couldn't think of anything I was saying that was really hateful or awful.

We were talking about how do we love people, how do we walk with them?

How do we support them through struggles?

How do we provide community for people who may be walking away from a situation in which they had their identity based?

How can we be open armed?

And the response was, why are you yelling at me?

And I remember, I mean, it was very boom in my face and I just kind of moment and I just said, I'm really sorry, I have a loud voice and sometimes it may carry and I certainly didn't mean to offend.

And uh, and she kind of looked at me and turned back around and pastor Chris went to the waitress that was serving us and asked if we could pay for their dinner.

And we walked away.

Now did we have an engagement?

Yeah, we had something, but could it have been more fruitful?

Could it have been more, more loving?

Could it have represented Christ?

Was Christ there in the middle of it?

I don't know.

Um, it was more of a confrontation and it was, it hurt my, my spirit.

And we've had similar issues here at the church.

A lot of questions among our congregation.

When we had our open forum night, before we went to the conference, there was some concern about how do we show love of Christ to people?

How will we not be viewed as haters at our outreach influence team?

A meeting that we had the very first time.

We had several comments about already a backlash of Sally Barns.

Mentioned some of her friends saying to her, what about open hearts and open doors?

You guys don't have either one.

We had another young lady in the group that said, you know, I have a very close family member who I love.

Could I even bring him to our church?

Would he be allowed to come here?

How can I, I know we believe this, but how can I express that and what can I do?

And I think a lot of us are walking this fine line wondering how do I show people that I love them and that God loves them and that he wants to invite them into a new life and to give them redemption and give them hope and that there's a family here for everyone.

And yet the messages, there's a barrier.

There's a block.

I don't think it's a message that we're carrying, but it's a message that the world would look very much like to put in our mouse.

They want to speak for us that that's what we mean.

I find it very interesting that after the conference I heard Methodist pastors say that we decided to say that homosexual people were incompatible with Christian teaching.

That's not what we said.

That's not what the conference said.

Said homosexual practice is incompatible with Christian teaching, but it's, it spun and it's distorted.

And if there are people out there that have never been in here, they've never talked to us, they don't know us, they haven't been loved by us, they're all too ready to believe that that's what we think, that the door is closed.

There's no room for you here.

Go live your life and go roast later because the media is carrying our message rather than us being able to effectively carry it in love.

You know, last week we had a gentleman, uh, wait, was it last week or two weeks ago?

We had a gentleman from, he's a messianic Jew.

He comes from a Jewish background and he was sharing with us how he came to the Lord and he shared the fact that he had a lot of prejudice about Christians.

Because being, when you're raised in the Jewish tradition, there's a history, there's baggage.

People have their hands up, people have their hearts closed probably for pretty good reason.

I've been studying church history.

The Crusades didn't just go after Muslim strongholds.

The streets of Jerusalem were filled with blood of Jews and Muslims.

We have the pogroms in Russia.

We had the Spanish inquisition where people were tortured so that they would then come to faith and of course we have the Holocaust, which as a Christian we would never associate with ourselves.

But sadly the Jewish community looks at Christian country.

Government wants to exterminate us.

Christians are viewed with suspicion and what this rabbi said was it wasn't them giving me the scriptures and it wasn't them trying to prove in the Bible Jesus was Messiah and it wasn't them telling.

It was love.

When I saw love manifest in their countenance, in their lives toward me.

That's what drew me and I think some of the same things can be said about the gay community.

I think that a lot of them have been hurt, had been judged, and sadly, we've got horrible representatives out there.

We've got the Westboro Baptist Church, which has about 20 members all from the same family, and yet I guarantee you, every time they pull out a sign, it's on every news outlet.

It's on every radio station.

And that's the message.

That's what Christianity is.

Don't touch it, don't go near it.

It's dangerous for you people in other countries.

When I went to Romania, when had been to England, they knew about the Westboro Baptist church.

They knew about this attitude and they ascribe that to you and me.

So there are people who have legitimately been wounded and legitimately been hurt and are legitimately afraid about even darkening our doors, even being open to Christ.

I'm not saying that we don't deal with issues as they are and the reality of the Bible and speak the truth and stand for what is right, but we have to be sensitive to their experience, which has been probably well earned through interactions that may be they misunderstood as being Christian.

So let's talk about what is Love's aim?

What is love?

We have to define it in order to walk in it.

John Three 16 our favorite verse.

It says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life later in John.

But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

The aim of love is to give life, to bring people from death to life.

That's the purpose of love.

It's an invitation to life.

So love's essential character is to bring life to another, but the conditions under which I thrive, I cannot set myself.

Somebody may love Twinkies so much that they want you to love them by giving you a box of 25 Twinkies a day.

But that's not love.

When we accept love, love has our best and we have to recognize that we ourselves don't know what is best for us.

When I was three years old, I thought it was perfectly appropriate when I was at my Montessori preschool to take a bath in the bathroom sink.

Took all my clothes off, filled it up, sat in their splish, splashing around.

The teachers weren't particularly happy about that when I was 10 years old.

I didn't feel like a Prac.

I was a swimmer.

I didn't want to work out that morning, so I decided to hitchhike home barefoot.

A towel wrapped around my neck and a speedo hitchhiking at 10 in a speedo.

Not a good thing.

Pretty stupid.

We don't know what we want.

We don't know what's good for us.

We don't know what's healthy for us.

We have to submit ourselves to the one who does in love.

Now, the most famous chapter on love of course, is first Corinthians and we see the most beautiful description of love and we know it.

Love is patient.

Love is kind.

Love does not envy or boast.

It's not arrogant.

It doesn't insist on its own way.

It's not irritable.

It's not resentful.

Well in my seminary courses, I've learned that the love chapter is situated between two other chapters about spiritual gifts.

In Chapter 12 Paul is talking about God giving gifts to all people according to how he wishes to use them in the body.

And then in chapter 14 he talks about the higher gifts seek, the higher gifts those with will bless and encourage.

And right in the middle is the love chapter.

Right in the middle is the underpinning.

The it is the foundation of which all the other gifts are going to manifest love.

It in fact is a gift, and I thought it was really beautiful this morning.

I don't think I talked about my message at all, but the praise team who did a wonderful job sang this song and part of it was, I will build my life upon your love.

It is a firm foundation.

The foundation of our life should be God's love.

Everything that we put upon that, every gift, every relationship, how we behave, what we do, how we think should be built on love.

And it said, and fill me with your heart and lead me in your love to those around me.

Love is the foundation in our life and love is the gift that we carry to the world.

Okay,

but we can't do this in our flesh.

Love is not something I manifest by myself.

Love is not something I work for.

I don't say Jeff, be patient, be kind, don't worry, don't be resentful, don't keep a record of wrongs.

I don't go over that in my mind all the time.

I have to pray that God will implant his supernatural love, which is other than my love.

It has no bearing or relationship to anything that's in my flesh.

That love is a gift which drops down and changes me and that is what we carry into the world.

That's what changes me and that's what can change someone else.

We can't do it apart from me.

You can do nothing.

The most important thing we do is love and we cannot love apart from Christ.

In Ephesians it says, and I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have the power together with all the Lord's holy people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and that you know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

There are no limits to love.

It is boundless as God is boundless because God is love.

The prayer here is that we understand that when the holy spirit comes out in us, love resides in us.

He is love in us and then it says now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us.

To him be the glory in the church and Jesus through all generations forever and ever.

I want to focus on the idea that God is able to do all through his power.

It's through his power that love can manifest.

It's through his power that we can demonstrate Christ through love.

When he's talking about this, he's not really necessarily talking about all the benefits and blessings that we want.

He's talking about his fullness, thriving and living inside of us.

So what's the math of love?

Well, first of all, we know that the fullness of God, which we need to be full, the the measure to the full is love and love brings life and life is Christ.

So when we love, we manifest Christ, we want to be Christ to the world.

We want to be his hands, his feet, his eyes, and his heart.

When people meet you, when people see you, do they see Jesus is oozing out of your pores?

Are the words that you speak those that Jesus would speak, that's a tough order apart from him, apart from his power, because if we're coming out, then he's not coming out.

No, I think it's really interesting when we look at the Bible to see how Jesus interacted with people.

It's such a beautiful picture because for the most part, simply being in his presence brought about repentance.

It brought about a changed life.

We all know the story where the penitent woman comes in.

Jesus is at a Pharisees home and she falls at his feet and she weeps bathing his feet with her tears and she wipes his feet with her hair.

I don't think she says a word.

There's a heart pouring out to him and it's a beautiful mixture of repentance and devotion of turning away from something dark in herself and turning toward the light and the love and the safe invitation.

She went right to his feet.

She wasn't afraid of him.

She fell at his feet, poured herself out to him, knowing who she was.

I would love to know her story.

We don't know her name.

Was she in the streets?

One day when Jesus touched an unclean leper and he became hole was she's standing at the foot of the sermon on the mount and she heard his voice talking about those who hunger and thirst for the Lord will be satisfied.

And there was something in the timber of his voice that pierced her heart.

Well, she simply heard news of this man that did all these things and thought, this is my last chance.

I don't know who he is.

I don't know what he stands for, but something in my heart says go to him.

And when she opened the door and she saw him, her heart was pierced and everything came out and everything became new.

I don't know that Jesus ever convicted her of sin, ever judged her for anything, ever even talked about her life.

Because in his presence, we know it.

The Holy Spirit shows us who we are.

The same time we see who he is.

We look at the woman at the well.

It's such a beautiful story.

We know a little bit, a bit about her life.

She was not walking in accordance with Jewish tradition or Samaritan tradition.

She wasn't living according to what we consider the righteous way.

She was probably sinful, having had five husbands and living with the man that wasn't hers.

But how did Jesus talk to her?

This is the first place in the gospel of John where Jesus reveals himself I who you have been waiting for.

I who you have heard about.

I'm[inaudible].

He gave her the best news on the planet.

She may have been the first one.

He told a simple woman an outcast if our society, does he beat her up for her soon?

No, but he mentions it.

He asks, where's your husband?

And she says, well, I don't have one.

And he's like, you're right, you don't.

And I knew that.

I knew you didn't have a husband and I knew that you were living with a man that wasn't.

But I sat down next to you and I told you that you could have rivers of light flowing out of you.

I've given you the best news of your life because I love you.

And I know that if you come to me, you will be clean.

You will be changed.

You will be restored.

And what did she do?

She ran back to her community, to those people that probably didn't have a lot of respect for her.

And she opened her mouth and said, come and see the one who told me everything I ever did.

What about does a key I love as a kias, climbing up that tree, a tax collector, totally rejected by society just wanting to peak the sea.

Jesus, I don't know if he wanted to be noticed up there.

He's probably hiding behind some leaves, probably didn't want attention from Jesus and Jesus said, come down, I'm going to have dinner with you.

Do we know what they talked about at dinner?

I have no idea.

All I know was that one meal, couple of hours and Jesus' presence and[inaudible] was a new man.

He was new and Jesus said, salvation has come to this house and Zakiya says, I'm going to return anything I stole and I'm going to pay extra up to what, four times?

I don't know what Jesus said to this man, but I think that is knew very well.

Just like the woman at the well knew very well, just like the penitent woman knew very well that they were not right with God because deep in the heart of every person there is that knowledge that we're not right with God and when Jesus stands face to face as he did in these moments or when he does, when you're standing in front of them and bodying the presence of Christ in you, when you manifest Christ to them, I believe that if their hearts are not, they will come to that same conclusion, the Holy Spirit, his job is to convict.

The Holy Spirit speaks to the heart.

Does he use us to plant seeds?

Absolutely.

We've got to know the truth.

We've got to know the word.

We've got to share it with people, but the Holy Spirit is the one who pierces the heart and his peers is so sharp that it goes right to the center, but it doesn't leave a wound.

It brings life.

It says here, and when he has come, he will convict the world of Sin and righteousness and of judgment.

The Holy Spirit is working on every human being.

We believe that there is grace for all.

Now, every person may be asleep at one point, but every person I believe gets a wake up call to where they can hear the Holy Spirit.

Just like when my alarm goes off, I have a choice.

I can get up or I can hit snooze.

And sadly there are many people that God is waking them up.

He's ringing the alarm.

He's saying, this is the time for you.

Listen to me, I care about you.

I want to change your life.

I want to turn you around.

I want to bring you into my kingdom, into my body, and they hit snooze.

I've spoken to many atheist and many agnostics and many people who are totally opposed to the Gospel message, and I've never heard one that said they had never thought about or prayed to God wondering if he might be there.

There I haven't met one.

Now, there may be out there, but I think every person, for whatever reason, whether they're going through a difficult time, whether they're fearful, lonely, depressed, whether they see a beautiful sunset, whatever it is, that for a moment makes them say, God, are you there?

That is the moment that the Holy Spirit awakens them to hear the good news.

And they have a choice.

They can hit snooze or they can open their eyes and that's up to them.

That's the job of the Holy Spirit and their choice to respond.

But imagine yourself there in the moment when the alarm goes off and you are Jesus in front of them and you have a word, you have a heart.

Your presence is an invitation to Christ.

In 1988, uh, it's really the day I think that I became born again.

I'd been gone to church, had been baptized, but I just want to describe what that moment was like for me, what I experienced, because I think that's the experience that we have when we come to Christ.

I was in church, didn't want to be there.

I was up late the night before.

I went cause mom and dad dragged me.

Thank you mom and dad.

And something happened to things almost simultaneously, but one on top of the other.

The first thing was I suddenly saw the truth about myself.

I suddenly saw my helpless condition.

I suddenly saw that I was full of sin.

If I had been a forest, it had been blinded and dying dead.

But it almost at the same moment I saw this loving invitation come to me and I will clean that up.

I will fix that for you.

I can forgive that and I can give you life.

Come to me.

Don't be afraid of me.

I love you.

Come to me, come to me.

It's safe to come to me in your filth, in your wickedness, in your lack.

Come to me poor.

And I will pour my richness into you.

And it was in a moment of, Oh, oh, that's what conviction fuels like.

And when we stand in front of someone who doesn't know Jesus and we are Christ for them and we have that honest, sincere love for them, not a love that says you're bad.

I'm right.

I'm sick of you.

You're going the wrong way.

When will you learn?

But come, please come.

There's life for you.

When Isaiah went into the temple and he saw the Lord, he immediately fell down saying, I'm dead.

I'm a dead man.

I can't stand in this.

When Peter First met Jesus, he said, depart from me, I'm a simple man, but what did Peter do?

He followed him.

All of us have to go through a moment of recognition that we are broken, sinful, unredeemable apart from Christ, that we are wretched and poor and broken, and that's really bad news.

But the minute we take that medicine, Jesus, love comes in and says, but guess what?

I've got a future for you.

I've got to hope for you.

So do we ignore the sin issue?

Absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

But we want to get people in a position where they can have healing and growth and fellowship.

We don't have to get them cleaned up and fixed up and be able to see their life completely.

Everything that's wrong with it.

I knew my forest was dead and dying, but I didn't necessarily even know what all my sins were yet.

Have you ever just been walking down the road after 20 years of being a Christian and suddenly God shows you that you've been sending in a particular way all along and you didn't even realize it?

You thought you were doing pretty good and then boom, oh my gosh, I've been living this way all this time.

I've been thinking this way all the time and you're now revealing to me that this needs to go.

I believe that God works with us, that none of us come in here and are suddenly all cleaned up.

Now I know you all, some of you pretty well and you and you have, and you know me, my best, best, closest friends in here know that there's a lot of work God still has to do, but where's it going to do it here?

This is the hospital for the sick.

Come on in if you're sick.

We got plenty of beds.

We got plenty of doctors, put him medicine.

We've got all the technology and it's the Holy Spirit and it's the body of Christ coming alongside.

There's an invitation to a community of faith to a community of brothers and sisters who are just as broken, just as needy, just as poor, apart from Christ.

What do we do?

We disciple.

We encourage, we exhort, we spend time.

Love is being selfless and I will tell you, people need our time.

They need us to take their call.

They need us to sit face to face with them across from a table at Panera and say, what's going on?

How can I pray for you?

And most importantly, we need to talk about ourselves.

When I work in 12 step recovery, I don't go into the prisons or into the meetings or the drunk tanks and begin telling people what they did.

I tell them what I did and how Jesus came and delivered me and rescued me and changed me.

And I see the heads Bob, because they know they're in the same boat.

And I will tell you, there are people in the world that know, no matter how proud they are of their sin, no matter how much they justify that what they're doing is right in those quiet moments, they see the failure of it.

They see the bankruptcy of it.

Unless their hearts are so hard and it's at that moment that they want to reach out to something.

But if nobody's hand is there, if nobody's heart is open, if the doors are closed, where are they going to go?

They're going to go back into what they know till we offer them something better.

Our job, number one is to love fearlessly that our first and primary goal is to be the love of Christ to the world.

I love this quote by Charles Spurgeon, you know, love so much that rejection from the world, does it matter to you?

The reputation doesn't matter to you that you're so compelled because of what Jesus did for you to share that abroad.

And Charles Spurgeon said, if centers be damned, at least let them pair.

At least let them leap to hell over our dead bodies.

And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay.

If hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions and let not one go unworn and unpaid four and I will add unloved.

This is how we love.

We invite we, we stay and we walk alongside and if they reject us, they reject us, okay?

It's not a big deal.

Second thing is we've got to remember that there is no way to walk through this life that's going to make the world happy with us.

There is no way to navigate through and mind your p's and q's and still speak the truth and not have people want to punch you in the face.

There will be people, Jesus promised us their wood and sadly the majority will probably hate us but that doesn't mean we don't keep running into the building to pull people out of the fire.

Even if 90% want to roast in there, we keep going in, we keep showing them the exit, we keep reaching out our head, we keep getting the, the, the, the hose full of water and sending the ladders up to the top floor.

Whether they want to push our ladder back down or not.

We keep climbing back up because we love them.

We cannot be ashamed of the truth.

It's so hard.

You know, I was watching some videos the other day and there were people, so many people are invited into the world's media to speak on behalf of the church.

And there was a gentleman from a very big ministry on the panel of the view.

And if you walk into something like that, you've got to expect two kinds of questions.

One of them is always the gay question.

They don't want to talk about Jesus.

They don't want to talk about your ministry to the poor.

They don't want to talk about how lives have been changed, how families have been restored, how lives have been, you know, they don't want to talk about that.

They want to ask you, so do you hate gays?

Can Gaze come to your church?

I gay is going to hell.

And you see the minister there like he didn't know that was coming.

I'm sorry.

If anybody invites you into a secular news program, prepare an answer.

Don't act like, oh, I didn't see that one coming.

Give me a break.

It's going to come.

How do we answer it?

And sadly, many of these people will just say, well, of course God loves everybody.

And of course we want to open our doors to everybody in heaven is a home for everybody, but they don't really talk about the fact that there are things God wants to change in us.

There are things that can prevent us from entering heaven.

There are things that can destroy our lives and make them unfruitful.

We don't want to do that.

You're not going to get invited back on the view again.

I saw Oprah talking to another minister, big ministry.

So is Jesus really the only way?

That's the other question they're going to ask you.

These are the two questions that offend the world.

You can't be loving if you believe that there is a standard for sexuality and marriage, and if you believe there's only one way to heaven, and that's Jesus.

These are the two unforgivable sins by the world,

okay?

If you want to fill your church and you want the world to love you, then tell him every road leads to heaven and you live any way you want and you'll have applause, but there'll be tears in heaven over it.

We tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in love.

We tell the truth in love, not because I am angry with you.

You're the enemy.

I don't like how you're living.

That's not what we say.

We say, please calm.

God has something beautiful for you.

Whatever you're holding onto in this life, God will restore to you more in this life and in the future.

You have nothing to lose.

Will it cost you everything to come to Christ?

Yes.

Will you ever regret it?

No.

That's the truth, but we don't want to say that.

We want to make a happy, fluffy, warm and Fuzzy Gospel and you can fill the pews and you can afford a big stage and big lights and a smoke machine and your music.

Cds can go out across the world and you can be millionaires, but your gospel is weak and poor and there's an accounting for that.

Hmm.

There's some times we wonder why our church hasn't grown more than it has.

That's maybe the answer because we don't water it down, but it may also be because we're not loving fearlessly that we're not sacrificing our time, our pride, our finances, to walk with somebody through what it takes to truly manifest Christ to them and backing them in and love them and wrap our arms around them.

Even if they fall 20 times, we stand there, we pick them up and said, I fell 20 times too and I still fall 20 times.

Let's help one another.

Let's be honest with one another.

Let's contend for the faith together.

Well, whatever it takes, that's all we're here for.

Do you understand?

We're not here for any other reason.

We are here to represent Christ.

To walk in his love and be part of his body.

Clean up our side of the street when I was at, it's not really 1215 is it?

I'm going to wrap up really fast.

Wow.

Uh, where was I?

All right.

I'm going to be really fast.

So when we were at the conference and in the, in St Louis, there was a lot of discussion about hypocrisy in the church.

Why are you guys condemning these gay people when we don't hold the line in divorce, we don't hold the line of premarital sex.

We don't hold the line on giving generously.

We basically are completely not following here.

So let's just not follow it there too.

Let's just make it a full out surrender and we're going to live in the flesh.

That's not what we should do.

Rather than just letting everything go, we need to clean up our act.

We need to get the plank out of eye.

We need to walk into wholeness and holiness.

If we're hypocrites, we have no message.

And if we're walking in sin, the Holy Spirit is not going to be very active in our life.

He can still bless, he can still use your gifts, but we need to make sure that we are cleaned up.

And finally we need to walk in humility.

We need to understand that apart from Christ, we have no righteousness, that I'm a sick sinner, that nothing in me is good except for filthy rags.

And when I look eye to eye, face to face with someone lost and broken and sin and deceived and held and chains with by Satan, I can only see a place I once was.

I've still got the shackle marks.

If you look close enough, and I just want to go there with the key and set them free.

I'm not better than you.

I don't know more than you.

I'm not cleaner than you.

I'm just a beggar that found some bread.

And I want you to find it too.

Let's go get the bread.

It's for everybody if you're willing to come.

Oh.

So that's, uh, that's the evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.

So I'd like to invite the praise team to come up please.

Okay.

So this is our invitation and as we, as we sing this song together,

okay,

if you feel like someone who

okay

has been afraid to come to the cross because maybe you were dirty or maybe you felt like you wouldn't be embraced for love, I invite you to come down here and know that this is the love is real.

I found it here.

I know many of you have as well.

Or if you need an extra annointing of love, if you need that gift to come into your heart and bill you to where you're effective to spread a message to spread light.

But I asked you to come forward to, and I'd like to praise the prayer team to come up as well to pray for anyone that come.

[inaudible]

this is a song I wrote just a couple of weeks after the conference.

It's what I wished I could have expressed but didn't

[inaudible][inaudible] I don't[inaudible] I go[inaudible] you don't stop[inaudible] I'm just the bag.

Please stood up.

Jesus called me from angry.

What's true?

[inaudible] I'm not in a fight.

Just say I just wore on three.

You know, and that[inaudible][inaudible] you may feel the[inaudible][inaudible] judges saying, I just trust him.

[inaudible][inaudible][inaudible][inaudible][inaudible][inaudible][inaudible][inaudible][inaudible] I'm just as bad.

[inaudible] Jesus[inaudible][inaudible][inaudible][inaudible] you too.

Love that bread.

[inaudible].