True Allegiance | Duane Calvin

Well hope community. It's so good to be with you today. My name is Rob,

one of the pastors around here. If I don't know you, I'd love to meet you.

We got Texas in the house tonight. Good to see you. Uh,

we got to hear a great update from Pastor John Leaks at Agape Church in Haiti.

But since even the recording of that,

the reality of the situation in the nation of Haiti has actually gotten a lot

worse. And the reality is, is like he said, we just see the church.

We are a, a family.

The big C church and hope is a family that loves God follows Jesus and

shares hope. And here's the thing about family.

Family doesn't quit on each other when things get hard.

And there are a lot of ministries that are actually pulling resources out of the

nation of Haiti 'cause they see it as a lost cause.

But that's not what hope is doing. We are pressing in.

We've actually pulled resources more together,

financial resources together even this week to send to them so that they could

have covering so that they could have resources and supplies to continue to meet

those thousands of students and resource those teachers to love those students

and share the hope that you and I have as a family in

Christ. And if you've been a part of hope and you've been giving in any sort of

financial way, this, when you hear us talk about giving,

it's not about more fogs and more lights, it's about more hope.

It's about sharing more hope, not just with the triangle but around the world.

The impact the gospel can have. Because I don't know about your story,

but I know mine, my life was forever changed because of the gospel.

So you can see there's multiple ways for you to get involved.

But the most important thing above it all, above the financial gift,

it's the gift of prayer. So as a family, we're gonna take a moment today,

even if you're online,

we're gonna bow our heads and pray for our brothers and sisters in the nation of

Haiti right now. Father God, you are the great provider.

And Lord, we lift up our brothers and sisters at Agape Church.

We lift up Pastor John Alis to you, Lord, you bless them.

Would you give them a measure of wisdom to navigate these difficult times?

But Lord, may they never forget the hope that they have in Christ,

the hope that unites us all, all over the world as a family.

God we pray that you would have your way and would you stand against the plan

of the enemy so that all things would point to you and your glory forever and

ever. Amen.

Amen.

Hope how we doing today? Okay,

praise God. You know, I've had the privilege of spending time in Haiti,

uh, on a number of vacations and I'm so thankful for the ministry that God has

allowed us to partner with there in Haiti. Uh, really people just living out,

uh, the hope that we see in Jesus Christ.

And it's just very thankful for what God is doing in that ministry.

And I'm thankful for our continued partnership has hoped community church with

agape. Now for those of you who don't know me, my name is Dwayne Calvin.

I'm one of the pastors here and it's my privilege to stand before you today. Uh,

it's always an honor to spend time with you together in worship to our Lord and

Savior Jesus Christ. And I'm excited to jump into this week. Uh,

this has been a long time coming.

We've been talking about this message for a long time. Uh,

we are in week three of a series that we've been calling trust issues.

And this week, uh, we are gonna continue this exploration, uh, in the series.

And it is all about how we respond with first a trust in God when

our trust is shaken, right?

A trust in God and then allowing that trust in God to spill over into every

other area where we need to find trust.

So the whole series is about trusting God, but we're calling it trust issues.

And the reason why it's 'cause all of us honestly have trust issues.

What today we're gonna explore an area that each of every one of us has had some

experience with. And if we're honest,

we will probably say there's been some gaps in trust today we're gonna be

exploring something that affects us all,

is something that is probably at the height of our minds,

especially at the stage we find ourselves in and the current culture today.

And it'll probably be at the height of our minds for a few more months to come.

And then it'll settle down a little bit and it'll come back up a little bit

later in about two to four years.

The question we're gonna be wrestling with today is this question,

how do I trust God in the midst of our current political

landscape? Lemme say it again.

How do I trust God in the midst of our current political landscape? Now,

even as I say that,

I look around the room and there's a hundred different thoughts rolling through

our congregation today. Some of you are people who are saying like, Dwayne,

finally we're finally gonna talk about it. Great, I love it.

This is exactly what I was hoping for today.

And then there are some of you who are like, we gotta talk about that.

Really, this is the place I come to get away from all of that.

But now we're gonna talk about that. Yes, we're gonna talk about that.

And then there are some of you who are here who invited a friend for the very

first time. And if you're new to Hope, welcome. We're glad you're here.

But you've been praying for that friend for months and months and months and

they finally said yes. And you're like, this is the week.

Like I see you already sliding down into your seat and,

and I know what you're thinking too.

You're thinking at least there's good food after this and there is,

but we're gonna get into it.

And can I just say I understand every one of those positions. I,

I get that this can be a particularly volatile issue.

That this can be something that can kind of cause challenges amongst families,

amongst groups of people, amongst people working together,

all kinds of situations. This can create a lot of turmoil.

And there's a reason why we wanna work through this conversation.

The first one I share with you is because this typically affects every single

one of us.

Every one of us lives in America or somewhere where there's a government.

And this intersects with our daily lives. The second one,

the second reason is that Christians are supposed to walk in grace and truth.

We are supposed to talk about things that are true and we're supposed to do it

with a spirit of grace.

And we don't shy away from the hard issues when they arise,

even when they intersect with difficult cultural conversations.

Second, I'm sorry,

third is because Christians are called to love our neighbors as we love

ourselves, right? As we love each other.

We're called to be out in our communities loving our neighbors with a love of

Christ. And what intersects with this often is this idea of political influence.

So there's a lot of reasons why we're sharing this bottom line.

We need to talk about it.

Can I just say that if the church doesn't talk about it,

I'm not sure who else will.

And so we need to discuss it and the political landscape can be confusing, uh,

especially the one we live in in America. You know, when I was growing up,

TV had a time when it grow, it went off like,

like you would turn to the channel,

they would sing the national anthem and it would go off.

Like if you're not that age,

like boy you missed it because now it's on 24

hours a day and you hear this message from everywhere. If you turn on CNN,

you hear one message. If you turn on Fox News, you hear a different one.

If you turn on M-S-N-B-C,

you get some conglomerate of both of them that you're really not sure that

either of 'em makes sense or that that one makes sense.

And if you turn on your Instagram or your Facebook posts,

those same messages are invading your lives.

I got a phone call last week from a person I've never met before and did not

give my number to tell me about how to vote. It's everywhere.

You hear it on Bill, you hear it in commercials and on television.

You see it on billboards. And here's the hard part

and seems to weave its way into our family conversations.

It seems to weave its way into our work conversations.

And so we hear it even at times where we don't expect it.

And I'll be honest with you, this is why some people just disengage.

They just say, I don't want any of it.

Like I don't wanna deal with any of it if it's gonna come at me that way.

If it's gonna always be a thing that I have to deal with or I have to walk

through and I, I just don't want any part of it. And truthfully,

many of us have this posture that we take where we just disengage from it or we

go so hard at it

that it becomes our very existence.

And what tends to permeate the conversations that happen as a result of watching

and observing politics is that what comes to the top in our tone is

our fears.

We start talking through a lens of the fears.

And the fears are varied and they're wide. Uh,

it is fears like what is gonna happen next?

What's this country gonna look like if this person wins or if this person wins.

It's the fear of what if they win? What's the day gonna look like after, uh,

on the next day? Like what is that gonna be like?

It is the fear that something is gonna change and I have no control over that

change if they or them win the election.

It's the fear that I'm gonna lose something.

I mean you can insert your something that you feel like you're gonna lose.

'cause there's a ton of them. I'm gonna lose my options,

I'm gonna lose my choices, I'm gonna lose my guns,

I'm gonna lose my ability to control my own destiny.

That.

Fear comes out in almost every conversation.

And these varied reactions highlight just how deeply politics can affect us

and affect our sense of trust and security.

This brings us to our central question again, that we're working from.

How do we trust God in the midst of all of that,

in the midst of the political landscape?

Well.

The good news that I wanna start with right up front is that the word of God can

help us to walk through this. Uh,

the word of God has answers on all of this stuff and what I'm not gonna do

today, and you can kinda rest your shoulders just a little bit.

What I'm not gonna do is stand up here and tell you who to vote for.

I'm not gonna tell you which candidate I think is the best.

If you'd like to talk about that, we can talk offline,

but I'm not gonna do that before your day.

I'm also not gonna tell you which political party is best because here's what I

know,

that every political party and every candidate has no sense of perfection in it.

There is no perfect party.

And.

There is no perfect person.

And so I'm not gonna spend time talking to you today about who's the more

perfect person. We're gonna dive much deeper than that today.

Today we're gonna take time to look at our.

Hearts.

To examine our own hearts before the Lord,

hopefully to find a posture to be able to survive and thrive in the midst

of the cultural landscape that we're facing.

We're gonna talk about Christian character today and about no matter how,

whether it's election season or not,

how we as followers of Jesus Christ should exemplify God in our behavior.

In our response,

we're gonna talk about how we can live in a way that glorifies him.

We're gonna navigate the complexities of our political environment by trusting

in the character that Jesus Christ spills into our lives when we trust him and

follow him.

First.

We're gonna look at ourselves. You know,

it's often been said that the hardest look that you take is the look in the

mirror. Today we're gonna look in the mirror

And we're gonna be looking at that through the lens of a well-known passage of

scripture and, and maybe you've heard of it, maybe you haven't.

It's called the Sermon on the Mount.

And so we'll be looking at Matthew's gospel today. So if you have your Bibles,

I want you to go ahead and open up to Matthew chapter five and we're gonna start

at verse one and we're gonna work our way through the text.

So if you have your Bibles, go ahead and meet me there, Matthew chapter five,

verse one.

And let me just set the stage for you a little bit while you're turning there.

Uh, first,

this is known as one of the most famous speeches in history and it's given by

Jesus. Jesus delivered this sermon,

this message to the Sermon on the Mount about 2000 years ago plus and the

implications of the words that he shared in that day,

they still echo to us even today.

Now we're not completely sure whether it was one sermon or a couple of

conversations or a couple of sermons, right? We're not sure of that.

It could be that Matthew collected all of these messages and put 'em together as

one message. We're not really sure about that. But either way,

the sermon contains some of the most rigorous ethical demands that the Bible has

ever explained. That change had transformed the human heart.

This passage cuts right to the heart of who Christians are supposed to be

seeing is set with Jesus on top of a mount speaking to people.

And in chapter five, verse one, here's what he says.

So seeing the crowds he talking about Jesus went up on the mountaintop and when

he sat down, his disciples came to him. And when they came to him in verse two,

he,

Jesus began to lay out a conversation and he starts it with this part known as

the beatitudes.

Now just a little bit about the beatitudes before we jump deep into those,

these are teachings,

they're like kind of a blueprint for how to live out Christian life,

how we can maintain our trust in God and live and act righteously no matter what

our circumstances.

There are eight declarations spoken by Jesus himself at the beginning of

the Sermon on the Mount and the beatitudes described a life of a Christ follower

and not just the life but the rewards that come after following Jesus with our

whole lives. Uh,

they describe the heart of somebody who is living not as a kingdom of this

earth, right, but as a kingdom, a part of the kingdom of heaven.

The beatitudes provide a blueprint for the character of Christ followers.

And by exploring the beatitudes they guide our actions.

The words of Jesus helps us to move forward by faith

people who live out of the beatitudes,

they recognize that their place is first with God

and that that relationship with God informs and instructs every other

relationship. You know, there's a quote that I love about the beatitudes.

It says this,

that the beatitudes are not a spiritual to-do list to be attempted by

eager rule keeping disciples.

It is instead a spiritual done list of the qualities that God brings to bear and

his people and those who follow Jesus. See,

this is not something that we need to try to achieve every day.

It's a way of living as a follower of Christ.

In verse two, we get a front row seat to these beatitudes.

This is what it says in verse two.

It says He Jesus opened his mouth and he taught them the

disciples saying Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom

of heaven. Now, when he starts this message,

he starts right outta the gate by saying, blessed, blessed, happy. Uh,

blessed are the those people who would open who, I'm sorry,

who blessed are those people who are poor in spirit. This is important note,

it's important to note poor in spirit has nothing to do with our finances.

When he says blessed are the people who are poor in spirit, he,

he's not talking about our physical poverty.

He's instead talking about our spiritual bankruptcy before God.

It's a posture that we take when we come to God,

where we come with hands open with nothing in them that would change our

fate for eternity.

We come to God like this with nothing in our hands that will save us knowing

that instead we need a savior.

That's the spiritual poverty posture.

We recognize our spiritual poverty before the Lord in this real sense of saying,

God, I ain't got nothing to bring. I got nothing.

And that recognition of that posture, right, that saying,

I got nothing to bring to the table.

Everything that I get needs to come from you. I need you to fill my life.

I need you to show me where to go. I need you to show me what to do.

All of that kind of poverty spiritually leads to us having a dependence

on God when he is saying

he wants us to come with that kind of spiritual poverty,

he's saying that I want you to depend on it.

Every thing that you give as though it were coming from me,

every behavior, every attitude,

every moment in your life should be a dependence on the living God.

The Christian life is dependent on God for everything and and spiritual poverty

creates that kind of dependence on Jesus for every waking moment of our lives.

So when it comes to the political landscape,

what it prepares us for when we depend on God for everything is it prepares us

for a life where we don't have to depend on our government for everything. Amen.

You know,

I got problems in my neighborhood sometimes and one of the problems is potholes.

. There are some of 'em. I've waited for two years for them to fill

and every time I look at the pothole I have to remind myself like I don't,

I shouldn't be in this place where I depend on my government for everything.

Because.

They've proven they can't fix a Powell . You know,

when it comes to things like this in life,

I have to be reminded from time to time that my first dependence is on

Jesus and I depend on him to fill me with his spirit and to help me to navigate

difficult situations and difficult seasons like this political season,

poor in sp in spirit, poor in spirit, but reliant completely on God

and it stops us from running away

and worshiping created things rather than the creator.

It's a posture that we take

and and what should be at the forefront of every Christian facing a political

season like right now is dependence on God and not on man.

And I think if we're honest,

sometimes we depend on man way more than we depend on God.

But this first beatitude reminds us that God is the person who we should trust

first. He goes on in verse four,

I talk a little bit about mourning

says Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are those who mourn. For they have been, they shall be comforted.

Now the term mourn is not something that we generally associate with mourning.

What he's talking about here is a little different from our experience of

mourning.

Mostly our experience of mourning comes from a loss of a relationship or a loss

of a loved one or maybe even a pet or something like that.

What Jesus is talking about here is just a little bit different in the context

of the content that he's talking about.

He's talking about instead of mourning over something, an article,

a created thing, what we're supposed to be mourning over is our sin.

The sinful state that we found ourselves in when we found Jesus.

You know, Romans tells us that everybody has sinned,

that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and sin is a missing

of the mark.

And we should constantly remind ourselves that like we are sinners saved by

God's grace.

A recognition of our own sinfulness allows us to walk in grace when observing

people who don't share our views and observing candidates that don't necessarily

represent what we represent or parties or neighbors or whoever it is that we're

talking to.

When we walk in the mindset that I have sinned and God has given me grace,

it changes how we approach the conversation.

That grace that we experience as a result of God forgiving us

and his blood covering the sin that we've experienced in our lives,

that grace stops us from condemning people with other viewpoints,

that grace points us back to Jesus at every single turn.

You know it's easy to see others with grace when you realize that you yourself

are a product of God's grace.

It's a lens that we put on as followers of Christ that helps

us to tone down the rhetoric and get about the business of loving and connecting

with people. That's God's grace.

Tia told you the beatitudes are power packed. They're an amazing,

amazing, encouraging, uh, conversation that Jesus has with his disciples.

And when he goes on to verse four, here's what he says.

He says another thing about how we're supposed to posture ourselves before the

Lord and before other people. He says,

blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

Now the Greek word that translates to meek is a word that means prayers called

prayer. It means this, this mindfulness, this, this mildness,

this gentle approach of spirit, this humility that we bring to the table.

It means that we have strength that is under control.

It is not weakness, it's meekness.

It is like strength with a seatbelt on.

It is strength that understands that the person that is all powerful is God,

not us. When Jesus says that the meek shall inherit the earth,

what he's saying is, is because meekness models humble Christianity,

it models Jesus Christ. And as such,

those who live a life of growing in meekness will be both blessed but

will also get to be with Jesus when it's all over,

Christ compels us to be meek.

It lives out his faithfulness.

When we approach situations with humility, You know verse six,

it goes on to say blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

for they shall be satisfied. You know, I love the definition of righteousness.

Righteousness is the act of doing what is right.

And Apostle Paul talks about this in his writing in Ephesians chapter five,

verse eight, where where he says, for uh, all,

all at one time you were in darkness. That's all of us who have followed Jesus.

At one time we were in darkness, but now you are in light, in light of the Lord.

Live his children for the light,

for the fruit of the light consist in all goodness and righteousness.

There it is again and truth and find out what pleases the Lord.

Find out what pleases God. Let's do that. Do the right thing.

Live.

Righteously.

Find out what God's wants from you by reading his word and applying it to your

life. It seems kind of simple to live that way, right?

And I think it is until we get angry,

until we get angry about another political party's viewpoints or or angry about

a different candidate's speech,

until we get angry about something that really doesn't have a whole lot of

long-term kingdom impact

that we feel goes against our political views.

And that's usually troubled kind of coupled we get angry and then we start

posting and sending things out.

That's usually coupled with a tweet or a Facebook post or a good old fashioned

yelling fit in the midst of a conversation.

You see, it's easy, it's easy to try to do the right thing

when nobody's challenging our viewpoints.

But the real test of whether we want to be just right on whether we wanna be

righteous comes in the midst of our conflicts.

Quick inventory here. Have we been living righteously?

Have we been living this way

like in the midst of a political backdrop that's clearly confusing and

challenging? Do we care more about being right?

Do we care more about being righteous?

Because can I just say like what I've seen on social media over the last couple

years has blown me away?

And what I've learned is that your posts paint a picture for you and your tweets

tell the tale of what you actually believe.

And if you haven't been living in a way that recognize God's character first.

And.

Who he would have us to be, this may be a great opportunity for his repentance.

Maybe take inventory on what sins are secretly hiding behind the way we respond

and act.

Maybe we need to just go to the Lord more than we go to our posts.

Verse seven, The Bible says,

blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.

You know the word mercy is a word that we kind of forget about in culture. Uh,

a lot of our churches are named after the word mercy.

We got like Mercy Hill and a bunch of churches like that.

And when we go to a hospital, sometimes they're made mercy hospital.

And so I think we forget about how powerful of a word the word mercy is.

And so let me explain it.

Mercy can be defined as compassion or forgiveness shown towards someone who

is within your power to punish or harm.

And instead of choosing to harm or hurt them, you choose mercy.

It's relinquishing our power,

relinquishing our power to harm and instead choosing love.

And it's a powerful action when you see it happen. Mercy,

can I just say like, in the polarized world that we live in today,

we need a little more Jesus and a little more mercy.

I mean,

could you imagine the message it would send to the world around us if just

people who followed Jesus decided to live out this idea of mercy?

If we were to take serious our Christian witness

And live a life that says like I was in position to harm you right now and I

could hurt your feelings or hurt you or your character,

I could assassinate your character with what I'm about to say.

But instead what I'm gonna choose to do is I'm gonna show you mercy and love,

the love of Jesus Christ

and I'm gonna do my best to create an opportunity where we can work through our

differences,

the light of Jesus Christ shining into our relationship.

Could you imagine what the world would look like? Uh, it's a game changer.

It would change everything and it comes from the purest of heart,

a heart that's been changed and transformed by Jesus Christ.

And so we can live out mercy if we choose to,

but oftentimes we don't. In verse eight,

Jesus talks about the heart that we need to have in order to explain, live out,

uh, be this kind of mercy for people.

In verse eight it says that blessed are the pure in heart.

We need to have pure hearts. He says, with they shall see God.

Now,

pure heart is a heart that leads to a clarity of relationship with God.

It's a heart that examines ourselves and looks at our motives and seeks to

align our motives with God's heart.

And that's what makes it pure because he is pure.

And when we kind of align our hearts to his, we have a pure heart.

We're operating out of a pure heart.

And it begs the question, are we operating outta a pure heart?

Are we operating outta the things that God would have us to look at

when it comes to how we vote,

when it comes to how we align with decisions and with parties?

The question would be how do I, how do I align myself with God?

How do I make sure that my heart is pure.

With.

The way I approach not just this political season.

But.

Every aspect of my life?

You see what God desires from most is a pure heart that's focused on his

attentions above our own. And the question we often ask is,

are my intentions pure?

Are they rooted in Jesus or do I just want to get my way out of that,

out of what I'm about to experience? Uh,

we have to examine our hearts and make sure that they are pure before the Lord.

If we are not, we are not going to be the people who God calls us to be.

And the people he calls us to be is not people who stir up chaos all the time.

We're called instead to be peacemakers.

We bring the pure heart of Jesus with us when we go into situations.

And that brings with this a heart of peace.

You know, when you get to verse nine, Jesus just says,

blessed of the peacemakers,

for they shall be called sons of God. You know,

as a pastor, uh,

I get to be at all kinds of events and I'm so thankful to God that I get to be

at the best times and the worst times of people's lives, right? And,

and I tell people when they're getting married,

they call me into their marriage or to be the pastor on scene and I tell 'em,

Hey, one other thing that I do, right? And, and this is free,

it's not a charge for this.

Like one other thing that I do I want you to know is that I want you to sit me

with the person who will cause the most ruckus at the wedding.

Go ahead and put that person in your mind. You already knew,

you know who you know who it is. Sit me with them and they go,

why would you wanna sit with that person? And I say the same thing every time.

Uh, it's because we are people who bring peace.

I know that the spirit of God lives and moves in me.

I know that I'm doing everything I can to follow his plan and his will.

And that brings me to a state of peace more often than not.

And it brings others to a state of peace.

And so when I sit at a table with them, I'm like, you know what?

It ain't gonna be no foolishness at this table.

We're people who bring peace

as followers of Jesus Christ.

We walk into a situation and we think to ourselves, God,

how can you use us to bring about your kingdom in this space?

What can you do in our own hearts that would bring peace to the room that we're

in for people who bring peace?

And I know it's not popular to say that, but can I just say it's necessary?

I know that the status quo is different,

but what we're talking about is being a peacemaker and that brings joy to the

Lord. And you may not win over everybody with that approach, right?

Quite honestly, there are some people who don't want no parts of peace,

they just wanna fight. And I understand that

as a matter of fact, I've been that person before,

caring more about being right than about being righteous.

And when you enter into that kind of approach in your life,

you can destroy a room pretty quickly.

And I don't believe that that's what God would have for us.

I think we are people who bring peace.

He goes on to say that even if it's the peace,

there'll be persecution. He says,

blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake,

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. He goes on to say,

blessed are you when others revile you and sate you and utter all kinds of evil

against you falsely on my account. Remember, we're living for Jesus first.

We are not people who live for a party first. We live for Jesus first.

So more than I care about the donkey, more than I care about the elephant,

I care about the lamb. Amen. And I'm living for him.

He says,

blessed are you when others revalue you and persecute you and utter all kinds of

evil against you and falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven.

They persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Why would you think they won't persecute you?

You see what Jesus impacts in the beatitudes is a framework for Christian

living.

I just wanna kind of recap what he talks about in this. He,

he says that we as followers of Christ need to understand that we are poor in

spirit. And because we're poor in spirit,

we need to be dependent on God and his will and his word.

We are people who mourn our sin and we seek repentance and empathy for others.

We are people who are meek, not mild and gentle,

but humble in the way that we approach our situations,

in how we approach our interactions with other people.

We are a people who hunger and thirst for righteousness at the hands and the

feet of Jesus. Not wanting to just be right, but wanting to be righteous.

We are people who are merciful, who choose mercy over power.

God's power gives us enough so we don't have to seek it from every situation and

every moment. We are people who are pure and heart.

And because our motives are pure, we walk in the sense of peace before the Lord

and we pass that peace out by being peacemakers,

by being peacemakers.

And this beatitudes message, again,

is a framework for how we live our lives.

And I know what gets in the way of this.

It's the same thing every time we start looking at

our God through the lens of our politics.

But what if instead we chose to view our Jesus first

and through the lens of Jesus, we viewed our politics.

What if we allowed God to shape our worldview

and we allowed him to point us in the right direction when it comes to

this political landscape? You know, here's what I know.

I know that God has plans for us

and I know that this is an issue that often derails those plans because we get

bogged down in all of this stuff and it consumes our every waking moment. It

we start thinking about just this country alone and forgetting that we are

part of a much larger kingdom, the kingdom of God.

You know, if you just go a couple of verses down in verse 13,

you'll see why this is so important to God. In verse 13 of that same chapter,

chapter five,

he says that you talking about Christians are the salt of the earth,

but if the salt loses its taste, how should the saltiness be restored?

It's no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under

people's feet.

It goes on to say that you talking about Christians are the light of the world.

A city set on a hill cannot be hidden,

nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket,

but on a stand and it gives light to all in the house in the same way.

Here's what we're supposed to do in the midst of a crazy political backdrop.

In the same way, let your light shine.

Let it shine before others so that they might see your good works

and give glory to our Father who's in heaven.

You wanna know how to trust God in the midst of a crazy political environment.

It's the same way we trust them in every other area of our lives.

We allow Jesus to be at the forefront of our trust and we let

that trust fall over every other relationship in our lives.

You know, we're supposed to be the people who go into our neighborhoods and our

communities and our homes

sprinkle little bit of sight, salt and a little bit of light.

And as we do that lives are changed.

That's supposed to be our posture.

And I know this is challenging stuff,

and maybe you're here and you say like, I want to be that kind of person.

It changes our community.

I want to be the kind of person that can walk into a situation and bring peace.

I want to be that kind of person, but I'm not sure how to do it. Well,

can I just offer to you today

that a trusted relationship with Jesus Christ of you putting your trust and your

hope in him,

it will do all those things and even more.

If you wanna put your trust in Jesus today, at the end of our service time,

we would love it if you would stop at our next steps area.

There will be somebody there at each of our physical campuses.

And if you're watching online at Gate Hope tv,

there'll be somebody there to guide you through a conversation about what it

looks like to follow Jesus.

I wanna take a moment and pray for our nation and for every single person

under the sound of my voice today, uh, let's pray together. Father God,

thank you so much for this time together. Whew.

Thank you for your grace and mercy.

I pray that we be kind church Father God,

that would lock in to trusting you First,

I pray that you would empower us by your spirit to live out this hope that we

see in the beatitudes the way that we're supposed to approach life.

And I pray that we would be the change That makes change.

That our change lives would change our communities,

that our change lives would glorify you and how we approach each conversation.

Father,

help us to be salt and light and to give you glory

with how we live. In Jesus name we pray.

Amen. Well listen,