Reflect

Hello, and welcome to the Kalamazoo church of Christ podcast.

Thank you so much for listening.

We're startup church.

We just planted in September, 2020 and at the Kalamazoo church, we believe that Christianity is done best when it is done together.

And so if you live in the Kalamazoo area, we would love to connect, be it coming to a Sunday service, one of our small groups, or even just grabbing coffee with a member to learn more.

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We pray that you are inspired by what you hear today.

Good, uh, good morning, everybody.

I, uh, I hope you guys are doing well, happy 2024 or Mary 2024.

If you're still in the holiday season, who has, who still has their Christmas decorations out?

Okay.

Yeah.

Me too.

Us too.

Us as well.

I'm glad I'm in good company then.

Uh, and I figured you get like, you get about a month that you can keep them, but then, so you kind of stretch it a little bit, one, one way or the other, and ends up about two months because it takes so much work to put Christmas decorations up that you might as well keep them up for about two months.

Amen.

Uh, very good.

We've got, uh, there's, there's a, there's a massive game coming up, uh, pretty soon.

Oh yeah.

Uh, we, we've got, uh, we, we've got fans, um, that, that are going to be fired up, uh, that the Green Bay Packers are playing the Chicago Bears this, uh, this afternoon.

Um, I don't know.

Uh, is there another game?

Is there another game too, tomorrow?

Yeah.

I don't know.

Who knows?

Uh, you, you guys, you guys can open up the Proverbs 20.

He is, he just bandwagoned her, right?

Um, yeah, he is.

I don't know if he's worse.

Yeah, he's not worse.

He's not worse.

You know, there's, there's a theme that we're going to focus on for the next, uh, the next few weeks, the, the month of January, we're going to spend, uh, talking about, uh, well, the, the theme or what this little, uh, this little thread that we're going to pull in is, is re.

Uh, we're going to talk today about re-flecting.

Uh, we're going to talk about re-engaging, uh, in future weeks.

Uh, we're going to talk about reviving whatever we we've got going on to revive.

Uh, and, and we're going to talk about, uh, being refreshed as well.

Um, but, but today, what, what I want to talk about is just the idea of, of reflecting.

As, as we look back on, on 2023, and as we look forward to 2024, I think there's a lot of value in reflection.

I think it's something that, uh, that, that, that actually is, is, is difficult.

Um, and it's difficult to do this from a spiritual perspective because often when you consider reflecting, you look at your actions, right?

And what, what happened in, in 2023 or what happened this last year and what occurred.

Uh, I, I think there's a difficulty that we're going to look at today in really considering why this happened.

You know, wisdom, it's been said that wisdom is, that foolishness is just looking at the result.

Uh, wisdom is looking at the process and, and focusing on the process over the result because you focus on just the result.

You are going to end up in a lot of trouble.

Uh, you're going to end up making bad habits.

You're going to end up coming to poor conclusions.

But if your focus is on the process, then, then there's going to be a path to, uh, to sustained success, uh, sustained spiritual success.

Um, so we're, we're in Proverbs 20.

Uh, what we're going to do is we're going to, I hope to give you a few tools that you can use to reflect on the year.

Uh, ultimately then we're going to focus, uh, on, on our, us reflecting God.

And so we're going to look at, certainly we're going to look at reflection and it's introspective, consider yourself.

And then on Wednesday and house churches, we are going to have a time to discuss a little bit.

What, what happened?

What went well?

Why do we think it went well?

What didn't go well?

That's okay.

What are we going to do better in 2024?

Uh, but, uh, those things are meaningless if it's not in Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

Those things, those things are so pointless.

It's just self-help and that's not, there's, I'm never going to preach.

I hope I never preach a lesson.

That's just self-help.

Uh, that's, that's not my intention.

That's that we're, we're trying to grow closer to Jesus.

We can, and that, that, that is the true way to, uh, for self-help.

Amen.

Yeah.

Um, you know, Proverbs 20, uh, in verse five, it says the purposes of a person's heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out.

Okay.

Uh, you, you know, for, for us, how I've always, how this, the scripture has been taught to me and how I've taught this scripture has been, uh, well, if a person, the purposes are deep waters, if they're difficult to understand, if people are complicated, then we have to become great at drawing people out.

And we want to become those who have insights so that we can help other people.

And that's true.

And I think we should, uh, we should do that.

We ought to do that.

We ought to be those who have great insight.

Right.

But what this also means is, is if a person's heart are deep waters, and if you are a person, uh, and if you grow in your insight, then you can actually draw yourself out because people, uh, people are complicated.

Your, your motives for why you did what you did in 2023, why you did spiritual things in 2023, why you struggled in 2023, why you had great victories and successes and why you had deep struggles in 2023.

The motives are complicated.

We, we, you know, I've used this quote a couple of times, but there's this, this show, uh, Loki, if you're not into superhero, uh, movies shows, that's okay.

Just listen to this quote for a second though.

I think it communicates, uh, it communicates a lot of, of what I want to, uh, what I want to say here.

There's this dialogue that's occurring and, and Loki, he's, you know, he's painted as being a, if you guys watch the movies, he's frustrating.

He's a, he's full of mischief.

Uh, he's, he comes off, he comes off like a bad person, but there's a depth to his character.

And he just says that, that no one bad is ever truly bad.

No one good is ever truly good.

I would put before you that the same is true with our motives and our actions, the reason behind our actions, that there's, there's, there's very few, uh, actions that we make that are just bad.

We're just evil people and we want it.

But then there's also, uh, there's also very few that are only ever truly good or the motives behind it.

Uh, we're, we're complicated.

And so as, as, uh, as we read, uh, the scripture, I want us to consider then what, what is the reason for why I did what I did in, in 2023.

Um, and we're going to grow in our insight, uh, as well.

You know, there's, there's this interesting, uh, this interesting illustration that I, I, I believe it's, I believe it's powerful.

I've been looking for, uh, just some, some different motivations, but this is, it says, uh, so back in the 18th century, there was a King, the Frederick, the second, he was the King of Prussia, which I'm not great at geography, um, but I know there's no Prussia anymore.

Uh, but it's, it's somewhere like Germany, like Russia, like Western Russia area is my understanding.

And if I'm wrong about that, that's okay.

Uh, he was looking for ways to feed his nation and lower the price of bread.

He proposed the potato as a suitable new addition to the nation's diet.

Up until that time, they hadn't really, uh, they hadn't really eaten potatoes, um, but the peasants resisted growing it.

They said the potatoes looked dirty and had no taste.

They're not entirely incorrect.

That's why we add a bunch of seasoning to this stuff.

We wash the potatoes, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

So King Frederick decided to rebrand it as a Royal vegetable.

He planted a Royal field with potato plants and ordered guards to protect them.

Now here's the real kicker.

The guards were instructed to pretend not to notice in case local peasants tried to steal from the King's garden.

Before long, peasants started stealing these Royal potatoes and growing them in secret and boom, suddenly everyone was eating potatoes.

You know, Frederick understood something, understood this though, if something is worth guarding, it's worth stealing.

It's an, it's, it's used.

It's an example in business textbooks of rebranding.

But what I would, what I would say, and how are we going to relate this spiritually?

How does it give us insight is that there are, uh, there are actions and activities.

If you take a potato, uh, I mean, we're taught that eating potatoes tastes good or that, that it's, it's appropriate, but it makes sense.

As I was reading this, I was like, how can somebody not like potatoes?

And then you realize, well, we put salt on potatoes, we put pepper on potatoes, we put different, you know, Lowry's on potatoes.

We fry potatoes, we put cheese on potato.

We have to do a lot of things to dress up a potato.

We also have to wash the potato.

We have to, we usually, I mean, unless you, I don't know if it's, do we skin the potato?

And we do a lot of things to make potatoes, uh, you know, palatable.

If you, if you asked those peasants why they didn't eat potatoes before this external stimuli, they'd give you a good reason.

And it's, it's dirty, it's gross, doesn't taste like anything.

If you ask them after they would give you a good reason.

How can you eat potatoes?

Well, this is a Royal food.

It's, it's good to eat potatoes.

That's what rich people do.

I wonder if you look back at your 2023, if you couldn't find areas in your life where you followed or you did what somebody taught you was appropriate, uh, and it, uh, and it, instead of what makes the most sense and what is natural to you.

I bet, I bet there's, there's potential.

This is where we're going to work, where we're going to connect it, that, that perhaps somebody in authority manipulated you to do something that you otherwise wouldn't do.

Uh, perhaps the devil in 2023, uh, played a role in your mind to manipulate you to do something that, that you wouldn't otherwise do.

You know, we, we understand the devil is not, uh, this, you know, this, you know, red guy with a pitchfork on, on the side of our, our shoulder and, and trying to convince us in that way, the devil's much more deceitful than that.

If the devil just said, Hey, I'm the devil.

If you follow my path, you're going to go straight to hell.

We would say, let's run away from that path.

You know, get away from me.

We need help.

We can see it.

Let's just, let's do everything we can to stay away.

The devil's a lot more deceitful than that though.

The devil uses people and he uses people and he actually, as crazy as that sounds, he uses people to infiltrate our minds, to convince us this is what's appropriate.

It makes sense for me to pull back from this group of people.

It makes sense for me to treat my spouse this way.

It makes sense for me to do this at work.

Maybe you, you look back at your 2023 and you look at the school or work and you say, well, I didn't work as hard as I could have, or maybe you found yourself not representing Christ in the way of showing integrity or showing compassion.

And I bet if we sat with it, you could convince yourself and you could say, well, the reason everyone's doing it.

And so I can fudge the numbers a little bit, or it's not that big of a deal.

This is, it's understood that we're not going to follow exactly the protocol.

Or maybe you, you, you could give yourself a reason why you didn't show compassion.

And you could say, well, if I'm always so nice and people always step on me, then it's never going to, it's never going to work out for me.

That's not what it's about.

And I'm not saying to be a pushover.

That's not what I'm communicating.

But I bet you, if you look at your 2023, you might find areas where you give yourself a way out spiritually when you are rather than you make it spiritual.

You try to over spiritualize it.

You know, in terms of, in terms of our, our money in 2023 and our stewardship with, with our finances, I don't, I don't believe anybody in this group that I don't have a, I don't believe anybody to be flashy, you know?

And, oh man, I'm going to flaunt my money.

And I'm, you know, I just let the hundred dollar bill drop.

And, oh, you know, if you, if anyone here lets a hundred dollar bill drop and I see it, I'm picking it up and I'm giving it to contribution.

I'm not, I'm not giving it back.

So just so you know, anyone that's trying to be flashy and, you know, but, but this is where, this is where now here work with me.

No one's doing that, but the devil can be deceitful though.

Right.

And he can say, well, you know, if, if I'm, I'm supposed to focus on my retirement, I want to be, I want to retire one day.

I want to live comfortably one day.

And so because of that, it can prompt us to not be sacrificial to God.

And, and we give, and that's a, there's a, that's a great reason.

The world will tell you that's an awesome reason to not be sacrificial and giving to God.

There's a story.

One of my really good friends, he, he was, he was, he's doing his taxes and they were, you know, he was doing it and he was talking to somebody who's not a Christian about, about his taxes.

And they said, okay, so, and what do you, you know, what about your charitable, yeah, charitable giving?

And he said this, this number that he's giving.

And the guy said, I think you messed it up.

Is there, it's not this number.

Maybe I think you put an extra zero.

He said, no, no, this is what we give.

And the guy who's doing his taxes told him that was irresponsible to give this much in contribution relative to his income.

The world will tell you that it's appropriate.

And it makes a lot of sense to withhold and give and give for your, for your retirement because you need to retire one day and you need to live comfortably.

Again, there's, we, we, we're very fortunate that we give to our retirement.

We, we, we're trying to be responsible and great stewards.

Part of great stewardship is, is looking in the future and setting yourself up.

That is absolutely true.

But, but, but it's a slippery slope, isn't it?

Because although we don't have to be flashy, but we can still hold back from God.

Yeah, our contribution ought to be a sacrifice.

And I'm not, this isn't prompted me, me saying this is not prompted.

By any, uh, any one person or one thing, that's not what I'm doing.

I want us to, to ask ourselves why we did what we did in 2023.

You know, the, the, the Bible says in Hebrews four, uh, we know this scripture and we know it well, it says for the word of God is alive and active sharper than any double edged sword.

It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit joints and marrow.

It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

Nothing at all creation is hidden from God's sight.

Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

But the Bible says the word of God, it says it's alive and it's active.

It's sharper than a double edged sword.

And then it says this really interesting, it makes, it makes this amazing claim.

It says it divides soul and spirit.

And this is this, this concept I think is, I didn't understand until I looked it up and someone explained it.

So we, I was always taught soul and spirit.

You're like, it's just difficult things.

Nobody's going to understand them.

And so there you go.

But actually with soul, it says that there's, there's clear definitions, especially in the Greek.

And I was reading a commentary that, that explained that the soul is, uh, this is like the, the nature of, of, of a man, like the animal desires, uh, that, that that's, which hasn't, which he has in common with just, uh, normal people or normal animals.

Like that's the, the earthly essence of somebody, if you will, says it divides that part.

And it divides the spirit, this higher part of a man.

Uh, this is what, what, what allows him to go to heaven or the hope of, of eternal life.

And it, it divides these two things and the motives of these two things that if you'll sit with yourself are extremely difficult.

And I use the example a lot of times when I'm, when I'm meeting with, uh, young men, I say, so let's say, uh, my friend that you see a very pretty girl and you're, you, you said, man, I really, you're single.

And I really liked this girl.

And so you, but you're like, you know, I asked, you ask her, Hey, will you come to church with me?

Uh, now why are you asking her to go to church?

Well, on one hand, um, you're asking her to go to church because you really care about her salvation and you want her to become a Christian, but you'd be lying to yourself.

You said some of your motivation wasn't, uh, I want, I want this girl to become a Christian so that I can date this woman.

Right.

You'd be, you'd be out of your mind if you, if you just, so there's, it's difficult, right?

There's multiple reasons and there's motives and, and all of that stuff.

It says the Bible is able to cut through that like a knife.

It is not difficult for the Bible to discern things that, that we inside of ourselves are unable to.

It says, it says that the thoughts and the attitudes of our heart are, are able to be discerned.

You know, it's, it's amazing.

Uh, there's, there's no other book that can say I'm able to do this.

Uh, there, there's no other book that's able to say that every other book talks about rules and laws and regulations and what happens on the outside.

The Bible says I can figure out, and I, not only can I figure out, I already know what's going on inside of me right now.

Wow.

What a, what a powerful book.

What a powerful example.

The entirety of it from, we can see from the lens of God, what's going on inside of our hearts.

This, this ought to give us motivation then to dig deep into it in 2024.

Amen.

And so through, through all of this, we, we understand that, that there's, there's a, there's a point to reflection and that we're looking more at the motives than we are at, at our actions.

Even, uh, all of it, again, it's useless if we're not focused on reflecting God.

Uh, you, you can go to second Corinthians three, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna read a little bit and we're going to, uh, you know, we're going to bring it in for a landing here pretty soon.

Second Corinthians three, uh, it brings up this, this story of Moses, actually it says, therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold.

We are not like Moses who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away.

But their minds were made dull for to this day, the same veil remains when the old covenant is read.

It has not been removed because only in Christ is it taken away.

Even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts.

But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

Now the Lord is the spirit and where, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

Here we go.

And we all who with unveiled faces, contemplate the Lord's glory are being transformed into his image with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the spirit.

In verse 18, it communicates what we are, who we are trying to reflect.

It says we all are bold.

And so we can come to God with unveiled faces and we can reflect, we can really gather stuff.

And then we can go ahead and reflect God to the world.

There's a comparison here.

There's so much in this scripture that I really study it this week for yourself.

There's, there's too much in it for me to do it justice.

They're preaching it right, right now this morning.

But what's being talked about is, is Moses coming down after receiving the 10 commandments and then coming down and he has this interaction with God.

And so he doesn't realize it, but his face is shining brightly so much so that the people are scared.

They realize that they're not, however close Moses is to God, they're not that close to God.

And so they're, they're, I can't be close to you.

And so it says Moses then veils his face and then, and then the children of Israel come near to him and he's able to talk to them.

It says in Exodus 34, you just referenced it, 34, 35, it says, and whenever the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses's face shown, then Moses would put a veil on again until he went in to speak with him, him uppercase being God.

For, for you and I, there's truths about reflection, right?

One, if we are going to reflect God, we understand that, that the reflection is always, it's a reflection of something is always worse than the original, right?

You can look in a mirror and you can see your, your face and, and, but it's, it's worse than the original.

It's a little bit different than, than the original.

Whenever you see a reflection or like a figurine of something that, that was created, the, the figurine or the creative thing is, is worse than the original.

It points to the original, but it's worse than it.

The same, the same has to be true for you and I, if we're reflecting Christ, we understand that, that it's not about us.

We didn't do anything amazing.

We're just trying to reflect and we're reflecting, we're pointing to something and someone.

Amen.

Another thing that, that is true about reflection is that whatever you stare at is, is what you're going to reflect.

Whatever you focus on is, is what you are going to reflect.

Yeah.

And we, we see that in, in the Bible.

It says that Moses and God were, were speaking and he was in God's presence.

And so when he came down, he reflected, he literally, his, his, his skin reflected God.

For, for you and I, whatever we're focused on is what we are going to reflect.

And so as you look at your 2023, perhaps you can identify, this is the area in my life that I was focused on God and that I just wanted to reflect God's image.

And, and there's, there's, there's things that you did, but, but more than a challenge that somebody gave you, I bet you when, when you became convicted of whatever you had to change or whatever you had to do, there was something intrinsic, right?

That, that you felt like, I need to repent in this area.

I need to turn to God in this area.

I need to, I need to do better in my marriage.

I need to do better in my integrity.

There was something that happened when you connected with God, that you were able to say, you can give me rules, I'll follow them.

But the reason why I'm doing what I'm doing is because I just want to reflect God.

Uh, whatever you stare at is what you are reflecting because you, you'd probably be able to look at areas in your life where you didn't reflect God so well.

And you, you might be able to see that in those areas, you were looking at something else, or you were looking at the example of someone else instead of the example of Christ.

The, the, the power in, in this scripture in particular is that it's saying that we're, we're trying to, we sit before it, it's, it's powerful.

It says we're very bold.

Um, and it says, we're not like, like Moses, who even veiled his face.

We are called to, to live lives that reflect Jesus and then go out to the people and, and live with unveiled, uh, unveiled glory, uh, to be able to point to him.

It says that Moses, when he interacted with the people, he put this veil on so that the people would interact with him.

He says, no, no, we're, we're even more bold than that.

And so when we connect with God, reflect God, we're, we're connecting, we're so deep in our relationship with God.

What our call is then to do is not to put a veil on as we go into the world.

It is to be a flagrantly and offensively Christian as we go into the world.

Amen.

The, the, the, the Bible, uh, then this, the same passage follows and it says the God, uh, under case God.

So the, the spiritual forces of evil that we read about it, that the, the, um, it could be the devil.

It could be just these, these, you know, God's of these strongholds in, in our lives.

And that we've seen in our communities says the God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers.

So they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God for what we preach is not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves as servant, as your servants for Jesus's sake, for God, who said, let light shine out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ.

And so our responsibility, you see, I even tripped it up because it's a, it's an interesting phrasing in verse five.

It says, we preach.

It's not ourselves, but it's ourselves as your servants for Jesus's sake.

Paul can, he, he, he called the church to change and repent in first Corinthians.

And then he's, he's sharing.

There's hope.

And he says, you guys are changing, but you're still holding back a little bit from me.

He says, no, no, no.

My job is to be your, your servant.

Then we are servants of Christ first, but I'm your servant for Christ's sake so that you can know the reason for, for, for all of this.

That's our, that's our call.

That's our call more than it is that the purpose of our reflection is not again, to feel better about ourselves.

It's not even necessarily to grow.

The purpose is to reflect Jesus.

And if we focus on reflecting Jesus, we are absolutely going to grow.

There's going to be areas of our lives where we, we totally run from.

There's going to be areas where we totally run to, but, but none of it matters if we're not aspiring to reflect Jesus in everything that we do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The, the think about the amazing call.

What, what a privilege that we have, that we truly have to reflect Jesus.

We, we could have been born 2,500 years ago.

We could have been born 4,000 years ago.

We, we could have not even been able to hear and see and understand the true gospel of Jesus.

We could be like, hear me now.

We could be like so many of the members in the community who've heard a little bit about Jesus, but who've never had a real deep experience with Jesus.

So they're, they're, they're, they're living a disillusioned life.

There's no church that is actually going to follow it and call people to do that.

And so we'll just tune in online and we could, we could be those people, but consider how privileged you are to know, to know Jesus, to have the opportunity to walk with him, to have the opportunity to reflect him.

This is not, it's not a chore.

It's not a burden.

It's, it's not too heavy for us.

We have the opportunity to truly reflect Jesus.

This is something that I can promise you when we get to heaven and we talk to those who, who were living faithful lives in the old Testament pointing to what is to come.

They would say, wow, it'd be amazing to live.

It would have been amazing to live in Kalamazoo in 2024.

Yeah.

And you'd say, I think it would have been more amazing to live where you, it's no, no, no, no.

You got a chance to know Jesus.

You could read about the whole Bible.

There's so many tools and applications that you can always look at the Bible.

You know how to read.

That's amazing.

I don't even know how to read and I'm in heaven.

You know how to read.

They would say all of these things to us.

We have such an awesome opportunity.

I pray that we don't miss it in 2024 and beyond.

Amen.

Right now we're going to bring in, we're going to bring this whole lesson in for a chance to take communion.

We're going to listen to a song and about halfway through the song, we're going to, we're going to take communion together.

And the purpose of the communion is to remember Jesus' body on the cross and the blood that he shed for each and every one of us to have the opportunity.

But even more than for you personally or you individually, he gives the opportunity for everybody.

Amen.

Let's pray right now.

We're going to listen to a song.

And then again, about a minute and a half in, the trace will be passed to take communion.

Dear God, Jesus, we come before you and we're honored.

We're so grateful to be able to praise your name.

We're grateful to be able to walk with you.

We're grateful that we have the privilege to reflect you, we see you, Lord, that we don't have to come with veiled faces as we approach your throne, that we can talk to you, Lord, that you listen to us, that you want to listen to us, that you care about us and that you care about us so much that you would send your son to die for us.

We don't understand why we're worthy, but we know that it is true.

And because of that truth, Lord, I pray that it will order our steps and it will compel our lives to live those that are devoted entirely to you and entirely to reflecting Jesus Christ.

Jesus, this is in your name that we pray.

Amen.

Thank you so much for listening to the Kalamazoo Church of Christ podcast.

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