Letters to the Thessalonians | 2:13-20

Good morning everyone.

Where are my readers today?

Who likes to read books?

A fair bit of you.

Uh who here enjoys reading nonfiction books?

Yeah, okay.

Some people are just all about the fiction and they don't like going near the nonfiction.

I really struggle with the fiction stuff, but I really enjoy nonfiction.

I do both.

But um I I have a I found that I read when I read like three or four books at a time, that's when I really get it gets exciting for me.

I don't know why it's that's just how I am.

Uh over the last few years, I have been reading a lot more variety.

For a lot, a long part of my adult life, I have read a lot of Christian literature.

And you think that that's befitting for a pastor.

That's what you're supposed to do.

You're just supposed to read Christian books all the time.

I've read countless, probably.

Um, maybe I'm like good reads, I could actually count them.

I'm not sure.

But they are doing great.

Look at these men over here hoisting away.

We'll get to this in just a minute.

But over the last few years, I've diversified my catalog of reading a little bit, and I've really gotten into reading memoirs, biographies, autobiographies.

Anybody like those kinds of books?

Yeah?

So this is one thing I really learned to like about these things.

When I when I read about a biography, about notable individuals, well-known individuals, when I read an autobiography or a memoir, what I find is what they want to highlight as the most significant and consequential achievements of their life.

And when we look at it from the outside, we often say, well, well, this is their best achievement.

This is what they're best known for.

This is what they were the most successful at, whether it's an athlete or a public figure or an actor or a musician, we would say, This is the thing that they did the best.

But they would probably, when you read it, they would say, Yeah, that was a big part of my story.

But really, this other thing is the thing that I would say is my crowning achievement.

See if I can do this.

I brought my own crown today.

Yeah.

I made it myself via Amazon.

Amazon.com.

Anyway, I want to talk today about this idea of a crowning achievement.

I'm gonna leave this up here just for a fact for just a little bit.

When we think about the way that we live, we often would look backward to say, upon our life, this is the greatest thing that I've accomplished.

This is my greatest reward.

This is the thing I take most pride in having accomplished.

Perhaps it's a project that you accomplished at work.

Maybe it's graduating from school.

Maybe it's an idea that you came up with and you saw it come to pass.

But a crowning achievement is an interesting concept.

We don't really visit this idea very often in Christian circles.

But we find, especially when we read through some of these letters, that we see that there is a reward that is highlighted in the kingdom of God.

And so we're looking at this idea today of this crowning achievement.

The worker's great work.

When you think about an artist, and they spend their whole life conceptualizing an idea and refining their technique, and they finally put together the image that they are most proud of to put on display.

And it might not be what the general public says is the most significant, but that artist can look upon it and say, This is my crowning achievement.

This is my great work.

What I want to see, I want us to see today, is that in Christianity we often have the idea of the great reward, the eternal promise of heaven.

But I'm going to challenge that today and say that that really isn't the great reward.

That is a promise that comes with an inheritance.

We aren't rewarded in inheritance.

The reward is simply that we are attached to the one that is passing on the promise to us.

There's nothing to earn, there's nothing to achieve for us to claim that reward.

It is somebody else's reward that is being passed on to us.

If you're here last week, we did the first part of this chapter, and I spoke about how the life of the messenger verifies the message.

And we see that with the Apostle Paul, that he lived a life and he was intentional with certain things so that his message could be believed and trusted.

And how he could be a trustworthy messenger, and not a charlatan to come in and make these bold promises of eternal life, but that his words would be received.

And this week, what we're gonna look at is the second half of this chapter where Paul continues this thought, and we see the result of the effort that he put in.

And we're gonna look at these two sections.

In the first of the sections, you're gonna see where Paul highlights the Thessalonian endurance of faith, how they endured through hardship and persecution.

And then the second, Paul's gonna speak about himself a little bit and how he sees a reward in their persecution and enduring it.

So we're gonna read together first in verses 13 through 16 in 1 Thessalonians.

I'm gonna read along right here.

It will be on the screen, but you can read along however you like.

You can take notes, you can scroll if you'd like to do that.

That's perfectly fine.

But we're gonna start in verse 13, and it says, Therefore, we never stop thanking God that when you received the message from us, you didn't think of our words as mere human ideas.

You accepted what we said as the very word of God, which of course it is.

And this word continues to work in you who believe.

And then, dear brothers and sisters, you suffered persecution from our from your own countrymen.

In this way, you imitated the believers in God's churches in Judea, who, because of their belief in Jesus, suffered from their own people, the Jews.

For some of the Jews killed the prophets, and some even killed the Lord Jesus.

Now they have been persecuted, us too.

They failed to please God and work against all humanity as they tried to keep us from preaching the good news of salvation to the Gentiles.

So anybody who's not a Jew.

By doing this, they continue to pile up their sins, but the anger of God has caught up with them at last.

So Paul says, in the last week's sermon, we read the first part, and Paul comes in and he says, I did this and I did this and I did this and I did this to prove to you that my message was verifiable, that I was trustworthy.

And as a result, you actually believed.

And because you believed, you faced consequences.

Your own people resisted your decision to trust my words.

They came against you, they persecuted you, they caused you suffering, and yet you still remained faithful.

You still believed.

And so right now, Paul is just celebrating the fact that they have followed in the pattern of believers that has been demonstrated by Jesus, by the apostles, and by all the other churches, which is a really big affirmation for the Thessalonians.

Now, let's look at this next section because this is where we get into this crown part.

All right.

So, verse 17, this is Paul's response.

And he says, Dear brothers and sisters, for we were separated from you for a little while, though our hearts were never never left you.

We tried very hard to come back because of our intense longing to see you.

That's a powerful statement right there.

Our intense longing to see you again.

We wanted very much to come to you, and I, Paul, tried again and again, but Satan prevented us.

Verse 19, after all, what gives us hope and joy, and what will be our proud reward and crown as we stand before the Lord Jesus when he returns, it is you.

Yes, you are our pride and joy.

Think of all the wonderful things that Paul accomplished.

When we think of the Apostle Paul, we think of this great moment where he was confronted by Jesus himself on the way to persecute Christians and the way to his way to Damascus.

And we see that this is Paul's story.

It's his transformation story.

And it's the highlight of his ministry.

Maybe we think about the fact that he was the one that made it the pathway possible for the gospel to come to the Gentiles.

Maybe the fact that he founded so many first century churches, and that his teaching, specifically, even just looking at the book of Romans, how much theology was established through Paul's ministry.

All of this stuff is not featured in this passage of scripture.

What is featured in this passage of scripture?

What does Paul speak of as his great frowning achievement?

It's none of those things.

None of the things that the public eye would look at and say, that's it.

But the individual himself, the one who experienced all those great moments, says, No, you, my Thessalonian friends, who have in have overcome adversity, who have received this message, who have taken it to heart, and who have continued to advance through the face of persecution, you have endured, and I want to be with you and celebrate with all that you have decided to become.

You are my pride and joy.

You are my crowning achievement.

In verse 19 and 20, Paul uses this exact language, and he says, This is my reward.

This is the thing that I am celebrating.

This is the exact words.

And there's a common sentiment among most people that they would say the things that I do, I don't do it for the reward, I do it just because it's the right thing to do.

That I'm not reward motivated.

I'm gonna say that that might be a problem, my friends.

The Apostle Paul was reward motivated.

Do you know who else was reward motivated?

A man called Jesus had a pretty big reward that he was willing to lay down his life for a certain reward that he would have you back, that he would bring you into his kingdom.

He was motivated.

And then when he sat there looking at the inevitable truth of his suffering and his persecution and his humiliation and his sacrifice, he said, the reward is worth it.

I'm gonna do this because the reward is worth it.

A reward is worth working toward.

Maybe we should be more reward-seeking.

Maybe that's really the essence of discipleship.

It's that if if we're gonna participate in discipleship, that we can compel ourselves to be a reward-seeking people.

Let's look at Paul's life for just a minute, that he endured trials, that he was shipwrecked, that he faced resistance, that he was beaten, he was persecuted, that he suffered everywhere he went.

Something must be worth all that to him.

Recognize that.

Is that just a hobby he had?

I like going to straight up the trouble and seeing how hard they can throw the stones at my face.

Is that a fun thing to do?

There must be something worth that.

It must point to a simple truth.

And let me give you what that truth is.

That our greatest crown is found in the ones who choose to follow.

That's your greatest crown.

That our greatest crown is found in the ones who choose to follow.

There's no greater honor and prize in any Christian pursuit.

Now I'm gonna tell you, if I can be honest with you, I would say that most people that I interact with don't truly experience the depth of this honor and reward that Paul speaks about.

Most of us don't really get to experience it because honestly, we wait for the reward to come to us.

And here's the incomplete challenge we face.

We think that when we become a Christian, that all honor and rewards have been satisfied and we don't have to do anything ever again.

That Jesus is gonna do it all for us.

And the truth is that there is a reward in following Jesus, and there's a promise in that.

But we're gonna vacate our opportunity to experience the earthly reward that He has shared with us to participate in if we just sit back and let things come to us.

But we have to engage, we have to participate in the work of Jesus, the actual work.

Is work a word of profanity in Christianity?

I think we can treat it that way sometimes.

If you say work, it's not real Christianity, it's all about grace, grace, grace, grace, grace.

But the thing is that grace makes it, the work means something.

That there that Jesus came to accomplish a work on earth as it is in heaven.

That Paul endures his suffering because that work is a result of the grace that has been extended to him.

We are recipients of grace, and as a respond, we put our hands to work to honor the Father.

And there's no greater honor and prize than the ones that we go to serve and bring them forward towards Jesus.

So let me let me just talk about my story a little bit.

Put this up here so you don't forget what we're talking about.

My journey in ministry started pretty early on.

I responded to the gospel at the University of North Texas up here as a college student.

And um I I encountered the real person of Jesus my freshman year of college, 19, about 19 years old, is when I made a conscious decision to follow Jesus.

And I got really enthusiastic about the work that God was doing in me and through me.

And so I became a student leader in our Kyopha Campus Ministry.

At the time, it was pretty young and it was green.

I eventually graduated college and became a missionary, what they call a missionary associate as a support staff.

Uh and then I extended that and became a campus minister.

Then I became a school of ministry director where I developed campus ministers and future ministers, missionaries.

And then eventually, four years ago, I started pastoring here at Lifeline.

And I'll let you tell you like my concept of what discipleship looked like over that how many years has that been?

20-ish years, 20-ish years of ministry.

My concept of what discipleship looks like has expanded.

It's changed a lot.

Initially, as a college student, my concept of ministry was very program oriented, events-oriented, attraction-oriented.

So we really put all of our effort into things like slip and slide kickball.

Because that's what's going to bring people to Jesus.

This is the slip and slide kickball, right?

We did game nights, we did ping pong tournaments, we put all of our mental energy into how we can do events and programs to get people to show up to things.

Because if they show up to things, then they'll become connected.

And if they become connected, then they'll encounter Jesus and so on and so forth.

But our in-road was through programs and events.

Sometimes we think about church that way.

That's the church's function, is to put on social events and programs and that sort of activities that we can invite people to.

And if they if we can invite somebody to an event, and then maybe they can meet the women's ministry leader or the life group leader, and that person can invite them to church, and then they can come to Sunday morning and hear the gospel, and that's how they're going to encounter a relationship with Jesus.

I think that is a method, and many of you in here might have followed a version of that method.

However, I learned over time that events-based ministry can be superficial, it can be shallow, because people can come and just show up for the free food.

They can show up for the free activities and then go about their lives living the way that they have always lived.

I learned, as I became a missionary, what it looks like to have relational discipleship instead of event discipleship.

Where you would engage with somebody, maybe one-on-one or a small group setting where you're intentionally walking through the truth of God's word.

You're discovering what it means to live out your faith life on life.

And this became a whole shift in my mentality and how I thought about discipleship.

Then I became a director and a minister and training coordinator.

So I developed ministers.

And this really challenged me and stretched me so that I was going to function in ministry beyond just a relational capacity.

This became an intentional, mentor-minded effort to develop people, to see what they didn't yet know.

Now we I say this sometimes that there's there's things that you know that you know, there's things that you know that you don't know, there's things that you don't know that you know, and there's things that you don't know that you don't know.

Make sense?

You get the idea.

Maybe you can write that down and revisit that.

But it it and I found that in ministry and discipleship that it became my duty to recognize that I have to impart to others the things that they don't know that they don't know.

That you don't know what you don't know.

And if I can be honest with you, you might think you do know it all.

But if you don't have somebody in your life who knows more than you that can tell you, hey, you think you know it all, but you actually don't know what you don't know, and let me tell you what you don't know that you don't know, then you're missing out on a blessing.

Okay?

So this is what I learned is that this was this is a responsibility that I had to put on.

This is a role that I had to willingly accept.

And I feel like this is what Paul was really accomplishing in his letters.

Thessalonian church, you don't know what you don't know.

Let me instruct you so that you can know what you don't know.

I can see it, but you can't yet.

I've been there and you haven't.

And this is what I learned in this season of my life.

And then as a pastor, it's extended even further, and I can see that there is a multi-generational impact of discipleship.

We're talking about decades upon decades of generational discipleship, and where I'm not just teaching people what they don't know they don't know, I'm teaching people how to teach people what they don't know or they don't know.

You get that?

It's pretty cool.

It's a pretty special thing to be a part of.

But my greatest reward on all these things is not a title, not the fact that I became a student leader when I was 19, or when I became a campus staff person at 22, or director at 26, or a minister in training, at what he called it the CMIT director.

Hold was I, Haley, um 30, 30 something, 32, something like that.

And then as a pastor when I was 36, so I don't know, I don't know if the what those were those titles, how they meant to me at that moment.

Maybe I felt like they were a special thing, but the reality is those were not my greatest reward.

It wasn't the authority that came with those things.

But instead, let me show you what my greatest reward is literally so I don't damage myself trying to do this.

Yeah, I think this one's good.

There you go, thank you.

There you go.

I'm not expecting you to see this.

Yeah, good job, Larry.

Deserves a hand.

I'm not expecting you to see all the pictures, but it's meant to just be a representation of my crown.

My greatest crown in all these things are the people who chose to follow.

Now, this is not a comprehensive list.

Most of these people are individuals that I have had a deliberate ministry in training encounter with.

I've run a school of ministry, and most of the people on this list are people who have gone through school ministry.

Many of them did not go through school ministry, though.

Like Graham, our life group here from Forest and Rocky and uh JD and that whole group.

They're goofy guys.

They're up here somewhere, right here.

Um yeah, they're they're like represented here.

This is the staff team I worked with.

This is Josue.

I talked with him a couple weeks ago about him a couple weeks ago.

He's the one that's the attorney now and changing his whole family dynamic and the future generations of his name.

Um here's Miss Melissa.

She's like that all the time, smiling at me.

Yeah, there's people up here you probably don't know, but when I connect with them, we have a special connection.

I have a special joy.

And here's the honest truth: they probably don't share it the way that I do.

It's not our relationship may not be as special to them as it is to me.

And I don't require that of them.

I don't require them to cherish our relationship the way that I have cherished it.

I'm okay with that.

But the reality is that when I encounter these people, I am reminded of why I do what I do, what I am called to, and what my great reward is in discipleship.

Let me tell you what I've learned about Paul's reward.

I've learned that teaching others to possess enduring faith requires enduring faith.

Teaching others to possess the enduring faith means that I have to have enduring faith first.

It means I have to be proactive.

It means that I have to be willing to be disappointed at times.

And I'll tell you, this is a good list.

There's a lot of people who are not here, even though I gave those other individuals the same amount of care and attention that I've given these individuals, because those other people have chosen not to pursue what I've asked them to join me in.

They have not endured, they have not persevered, like Paul describes the Thessalonian people.

These individuals have, and no matter where they are, some of these are local here in Denton, some of these people are you.

Some of these people live all across the country.

But when we can pick up where we left off, we can take joy and celebrate the fact that we have marched through the calling of Jesus together.

And it is a special crown that I get to carry, and I hope the list continues to grow and I get to share in the rewards that Paul is speaking about.

Teaching others to possess enduring faith requires enduring faith.

If I can put it another way, that the burden belongs to the message bringer.

It does not belong to the message receiver, my friends.

The burden does not belong to the Thessalonian people.

The burden belongs to the message deliverer that Paul endured.

He's the one that laid out all of the challenges that he had to overcome just so that the Thessalonians would trust him enough to receive.

He was the one that endured the suffering and the persecution so that they would have the courage to follow.

It's his burden first.

And so he initiates and they follow.

And when he sees that his suffering meant something for their eternity, that is his crown.

Do you understand what I'm saying today, folks?

The crown is seeing where somebody else gets to receive the promise of Jesus because of a sacrifice that was made.

The burden belongs to the message bringer.

Let me give you some practical steps.

Some of you are getting this theoretically, but you want to know what to do practically.

How do I apply this to my own life?

Let me give you some practical steps that you can take toward the greatest Christian crown, the one that Paul speaks about in this passage.

The first thing you can do is confirm the friendship.

Sometimes we encounter somebody and we let it become an acquaintance that remains.

But what I've found is that when I take the first steps of saying, I don't just want to be acquainted with you.

I want to connect with you.

I want to be your friend.

I'm going to choose to be your friend, even if you're not ready to be my friend.

And I'm okay if that's a little humiliating, that you ghost me or you reject me or that you're not as interested in what I have to offer.

I'm okay with that.

I made a decision in advance that I'm going to be okay with that.

And so, practically, do you know what that looks like?

Hey man, it's good meeting you.

Let me get your phone number.

Do you know how many people don't ask that question?

And do you know what you can't do if you don't have any way of interacting with somebody?

You can't ever enter into a discipleship relationship if you don't know how to talk to somebody.

And so you have to engage and say, I want us to be friends, and I will take the burden, and I'm going to reach out to you.

And sometimes I have found that I'm the one doing the reaching out like 95% of the time.

Are you okay with doing something like that?

Is that okay?

Is that something that you can make yourself comfortable with?

I have to think that the apostle Paul had to do this all the time.

That he wasn't ever going into a church and saying, I hope this is a 50-50 deal that we're going into this with the Philippians.

I hope that the Corinthians accept me and they put in as much work as I'm putting in.

The reality is that Paul goes in and he's saying, I'm going to put the work in, and you're just going to receive it, because that's what grace looks like.

And I'm going to get the reward of seeing you encounter Jesus and live for Jesus.

The first thing we can do is just confirm the friendship.

We decide that the friendship is going to exist.

The second thing we do is we call the meeting and we say, I want to be a part of your life.

I want to join in your journey, whether it's a relationship, a family thing, whether it's a professional thing, whether it's a spiritual thing.

I want to be a part of that.

And so I want to invest in your story.

Tell me your backstory.

Tell me your history.

Tell me your family dynamic.

Tell me your professional pursuits and endeavors.

Tell me what's going on in your life.

What is God doing in your life?

What has he done?

You know, we have to ask those questions, folks.

Those things have to be prompted.

And if we're willing to do that, then we take this discipleship relationship to a new level.

So the first thing we do is we confirm the friendship.

Then we call the meeting.

And thirdly, what we do is we support their calling.

We support it.

We come alongside.

We invest in it.

We participate.

We pray and intercede for their calling.

What God is doing in their life, we come alongside.

And if they're outside of their calling, if they're making stupid decisions, then we say, hey, I don't think this is what God has for you.

If we're so bold to do that.

Do you ever hear Paul talk about that in his letters?

Hey, this is what you've called to, and this is the way you're living.

It's not lining up.

We have to be willing to support their calling.

We have to encourage.

We say, I believe in you.

You can do this.

I'm in your corner.

I see what God is doing, and I want to endorse that.

And when we do that, they channel their focus and energy and give it to the Lord and say, Holy Spirit, guide me, direct me.

Okay?

So we we have to take on the burden and we support their calling.

Alright, and fourth, then we share the responsibility.

We say, This is what God's called me to, this is what God's called you to, and let's do it together.

And I'm going to tell you that everybody up in here, there's a shared responsibility.

And I think that's what makes this crown so special, is that we can have a conversation with any of these people, and we are all talking the same language.

We want the same thing.

We are pursuing Jesus in the same way.

We're connected with the same purpose.

And when Paul's talking here, when he's looking in this letter in chapter 2, and he says, Dear brothers and sisters, after we were separated from you for a little while, though our hearts never left you, we tried very hard to come back because of our intense longing to see you again.

There's a desire to be with people of like-mindedness.

And then he goes on and talks about the hope and the joy and how proud he is, the fact that they have joined together in the same purpose, that they have shared in the same persecution and verified the faith in the same way, and therefore have become one of one accord.

So when you look at these practical steps, recognize that these are, these this is an application of the discipleship method that we preach here all the time.

That there is a process that comes, and we're modeling this process after those who established the faith encountered Jesus back in the first century when we read it in the Bible.

Discipleship, my friends, it is not accidental, it is not incidental, nor is it exclusive.

The thing we have to realize is that grace is something that is free, but discipleship is work.

You hear me today?

That grace is free.

Discipleship is work.

And if we stop short with receiving the grace of God and recognizing what Jesus has done for us and then mailing it in for the rest of our lives, then we're losing out on the great reward of discipleship.

We're losing out on the promise that comes with enduring faith.

God has called each one of you to have an enduring faith, to be burden bearers, not just for your own sake, but for those who will come after you.

And I'm going to tell you, folks, that I want this for you.

I want you to have your own board.

I'll tell you this this was a really rewarding message for me to prepare because I got to make this list.

This is not a comprehensive list, but to be able to look at the list and to look at the faces and say, I love all of these people.

And I'm so proud of who they have become.

I want you to be able to say that.

I want you, it doesn't really matter if you've been a Christian for 28 minutes or if you've been going to church your entire life for decades upon decades, you can still begin this journey and begin the process of developing your own crown.

And maybe that crown is your kids.

Maybe the crown is a sibling.

Maybe the crown is a coworker.

Maybe that crown is somebody in your life group.

Maybe God's going to call you up and forward to lead people in ways.

You don't have to be a campus minister or a ministry and training director like me.

You don't have to be a pastor in order to do this.

There's plenty of people in lay ministry and non-professional capacities who have a far bigger reach of crowns than I do.

Because they're willing to embrace this example that Paul has demonstrated to us today.

This is what Jesus wants for us, is that we would embrace this call for discipleship and recognize that our crown, yes, there's a crown that comes in heaven, but the heavenly crown is something that Jesus gets to celebrate, that we get to celebrate in that promise.

But our greatest crowns are the people.

Our greatest crowns are those who accept the message and join with us.

What happens when we do this?

Yes, we get our own crown, but even more we share in the reward of Christ.

We share in the reward of Christ.

Do you realize what's happening?

When we are willing to embrace this idea, that we are willing to bear the burden, to face disappointment, to face rejection, to face hardship and face frustration for the sake of somebody else who maybe doesn't want to receive what we have to give.

Do you know what we experience in that?

We experience the experience of Jesus.

Do you realize that you yourself are the crown of Christ?

You are the pride of his effort, that you are the ones that he laid his life down for, that you are the one that he willingly chose suffering.

And as he looks upon you, he celebrates and says, That is my crown.

It is not the authority I've been given, it is not my inheritance that I have been promised by the Father.

It is you, that you are my Lord.

You make it worth it.

That your response is the one that give the cross meaning.

You realize that.

Yes, it's Jesus' cross.

But the reason he did it was for you.

And so when you are willing to embrace this attitude of Christ and endure the hardship and bear the burden, you are emulating and imitating the person of Jesus.

And when you receive your reward, you are sharing in the same reward that Christ shares in your response.

So my appeal to you today is to identify the ones that you will bring the message to.

That you will begin to prayerfully consider the people in your life that God has brought to you and recognize that it might require a little bit of a challenge.

It might stretch you, that there might be hardship, that they may not be receptive to your message, that you might have to do a little bit of extra effort in order to build trust, to build a connection.

You might have to be extroverted.

Is that too big of an ask?

You might have to talk to strangers.

You might have to interact with people in ways that you haven't before.

You might have to initiate instead of letting them initiate to you.

You might have to ask God to change your heart to think differently about people that you don't think are going to be receptive.

God, you see this person, you see what they're going through, you know their heart in ways that the world around cannot see.

I recognize, maybe you can say, I recognize that there's people all around me that hate this person or don't trust this person or want this person to go away.

But God, you see this person as a beloved, lost son or daughter.

And you want to see them redeemed too.

And maybe the Lord would change your heart and open a door.

Perhaps there's rejection there, perhaps there's disappointment in that.

But I'm thankful that I have a Savior who is willing to risk disappointment in me, risk my rejection of him in order to lay himself down.

That he said, this isn't gonna work for everyone.

There's some people are gonna deny me and turn away, but some of them are gonna come.

There's some of them are gonna follow, and my greatest reward are the ones who choose to follow.

So my appeal to you today is to seek the crown of Christ.

And that crown of Christ are the ones that choose to follow.

The crown of Christ are the people that one day you can have an eternal spiritual unity with.

And say that I joined with these individuals.

I called them and they responded.

And today we pursue the same things in Jesus.

Maybe some of you are here today, and you're maybe a little disoriented about the partnership between grace and works.

And I just want to speak to you today and recognize that God has not asked you to work out anything about your salvation.

He has not asked you to endure suffering so that you can be worthy of it, that you can freely receive everything that he has for you and what he has done for you without a prerequisite.

He just wants you to have it.

Because that work has already been done.

And maybe you're here today and you felt like I just gotta, I gotta work hard and I gotta be a better Christian and I gotta clean up my life, and I gotta, I've got messes, and in order, in order for me to really encounter Jesus, I gotta get these messes out of my life.

But hear me today.

But Jesus saw the mess.

He saw the problems, he saw the hindrances, and he said, That's what I'm coming for.

I'm gonna lay my life down in hopes that they would be willing to lay those things down too.

So today, all you really need to do is to yield those things over to Jesus, put them in his hands, and say, I'm gonna come to you.

And I'm not gonna have to try to work it out anymore.

I'm just gonna trust you, Jesus.

And if you're in that place today, I want to pray for you.

I want to pray that you would be able to willingly and eagerly receive the grace of Jesus.

My hope is that no matter where you're at today, is that we would learn to orient ourselves towards seeking the convictions of Jesus and share in the promises that He has, and that we would be able to pursue the crown of Christ and establish His kingdom here by taking on the burden to reach out to others and be able to wear our crown.

This is our crown.

It's not about me.

It's not even about you, it's about Jesus and his reward.

And our our greatest gift to him is calling people to come along with us.

Let me pray for you today.

Lord, we thank you that you are so faithful to us, that you've already done the work of overcoming how we can disappoint and fail and create problems and messes.

And you said, I'm gonna do it anyway.

Suffering is worth it to me.

The rejection or the hardship or pain or the whatever it is that might get in the way, it's worth it.

And God, I pray that there are people here today and that you would speak to them in a way that they can understand in their own heart.

That you would put your finger on things in their life that they have yet to yield over to you.

And that you would say to them, I saw that, and I still chose you.

I still chose what I chose.

And you're worth it.

God, I pray for us today that we could pursue the crown, the great crown, the pride and joy, and that we could call those to follow.

God, help us to have the courage to endure, have enduring faith.

God, help us to see the people in our life whom you are waiting to respond.

Put us to work in discipleship.

God, we love you.

We thank you.

And may our crowns always belong to you.

Amen.

May the discipleship of Jesus inhabit your life richly.

May the light of his gospel shine through you brightly, and may the world around him encounter him sincerely.

May his faithfulness bless you abundantly.

Amen.