Worship Walk Work Colossians 1:28 (Nov 27 2016) Mike Armstrong

Well, good morning, Harvest.

I am glad to be with you here today.

And as we get into God's word, why don't you turn in your Bibles right now to Colossians chapter one?

Colossians chapter one is uh we're gonna spend uh just a little bit of time here, but as you're turning there, uh growing up, I had a friend uh named Tom, and I think um every group of boys uh probably had uh a guy like Tom in their crew.

All right, the kind of guy who just really loved to be an annoying pest.

Alright, and I remember there was one night where uh we sat down to watch a movie together, and we were with one of our uh friends, and we uh sat down there and he grabbed, I was sitting beside him, he grabs one of those like couch cushions, one of the like the little pillows, and he just starts kind of hitting me with it.

Just kind of lightly, not hard, but you know what?

I knew right in that moment that the only way that Tom was gonna stop doing that is if I snapped.

That's exactly what he was going for.

He just wanted me to lose it on him.

And so you know what I did?

I was like, in that again, right in that moment, I just decided, you know what?

I am not losing this battle, not tonight.

And so I turned to Tom and I said to him, he had that little smarmy look on his face, and I said to him, you know what, man?

I'm not gonna snap.

I'm not gonna snap.

I'm gonna sit here and wait it out until your arm gets tired.

And right and right there he was just like, oh no, and he had that look in his eyes that he knew that the battle was lost.

And sure enough, like 10 minutes into it, he's like, oh, is it just like slowly kind of swinging this thing, and I'm laughing all the way, and then finally he's like, fine, I lose.

And I'm just like, I remember standing up, just celebrating the victory over my friend Tom.

Now you might say, you might say that maturity is something that Tom and I lacked immensely, right?

You might say that, especially Tom, of course.

Okay, but the reason that I share that uh ridiculous story with you is because when you think about the church, okay, maturity is something that we probably don't want to lack.

Right?

We don't want to lack.

In fact, spiritual maturity is something that we as the church are supposed to be striving for.

It's something that we have had our, we have our eyes set on and uh and we are going for it.

All right?

True disciples are intentionally engaged in the pursuit of becoming more like Jesus Christ, becoming spiritually mature.

Say, okay, so Colossians 1, uh verse 28.

Hopefully you're there right now.

I want to read this.

This kind of ties it all up for us uh together.

It says this Him we proclaim, that's Jesus, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature, okay, mature in Christ.

Okay, so as a church, we proclaim Jesus, we we teach Christ with all wisdom, with maturity as the intended goal.

That's what we are trying to grow up into.

Now understand this.

Maturity is something that we can all attain individually and as a church.

We can attain that, but it's also something that you never fully arrive at.

Does that make sense?

Like it's something that we can we can grow in for sure, and you can get to the place where we get, yeah, I think we're I'm a mature Christian.

I've got, I've I've been seasoned, and the Lord has broken me, and I am humble, and he is working through my life.

I don't think any of us who would be, or anybody who would be mature, would say, you know what, I have totally arrived at maturity.

Right?

There's nothing else that I can learn.

I have exhausted all of this.

I don't think anyone is saying that.

Okay, now the model here at Harvest, this is what we want to teach you here today.

Um, the model that gets us towards that goal of spiritual maturity, becoming mature disciples, is what we call our three W's.

Our three W's.

That's worship, walk, and work.

And I know that some of you, probably, hopefully all of you, have noticed that on the banners out there as you're leaving the church on a Sunday morning after the service, you're seeing there in front of you, this is what we're going for throughout the week.

This is what we're going for here on Sundays as well.

And what we mean by that is that true disciples are those who worship Christ, walk with Christ, and work for Christ.

And so what we want you to do this morning, and hopefully you're doing this every Sunday, but this morning, think about this time together as a personal assessment.

You know, how am I doing in this?

How are we doing as the church in this?

Am I growing into a mature disciple?

Am I growing in that?

You know, or what areas do I need to really kind of take a look at and give more attention to so that I become spiritually mature?

All right, so that's where we're gonna be going here uh today.

We're gonna jump into God's word.

I'll explain more of that in a second, but before we do into that, we just need to pray.

So would you join me as we pray?

God, we come before you today uh recognizing that um the plan is set in place, Lord.

You want us to grow and become mature in Jesus Christ, fully seasoned, uh seasoned, bearing much fruit.

And Lord, I pray that as we go through that today, our hearts would be to grow.

Lord, I pray that we would uh come to the realization that worship, walk, and work is an important thing because we see it in your word, Lord.

I pray that you would in fact grow our church to this place, that you would grow us as individuals in this as well and in our families, Lord, and make us strong in you.

A church that is mature, that is humble, that is hungry for more of you, more of your presence, hungry to serve you, Lord, and go out into the world and to bless each other, Lord.

God, I pray that our focus would always be on who you are in all of this.

So, God, teach us, stretch us, challenge us, encourage us.

All of it here we pray this morning.

In Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, so let's walk through this uh here today.

All right, the first thing is our church will become mature as we worship Christ.

So the outline is really simple today.

Worship, walk, and work.

Now, uh Romans 12, verse 1.

Romans 12:1

If you want, you can turn there, but it's a really well-known uh verse that really sort of outlines what God's expectation is when it comes to worship.

Now you'll notice that the verses are gonna be on the screen for you here today.

It's a little bit of a different style message than we we're used to doing.

Okay, typically what we do is we just kind of pick one passage and we work through that.

They call it expositional preaching.

We work through that and stay in kind of this one spot.

Uh, the opposite, or the other model that we can do, and we're actually doing it today, is more topical.

We kind of jump around at different scriptures.

We don't do a lot of that, but every once in a while that's really beneficial as we want to see what does the scripture have to say as a whole about a certain uh idea or topic.

And so that's what we're gonna be doing.

The verses are on the screen.

I would encourage you and challenge you to still flip to them in your Bible.

Um, but if but because we want to move pretty quickly here today, it's all there for you as well.

All right, here we go.

Romans 12, verse 1.

Romans 12:1

It says, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Alright, so there's a lot there that we could say, but hey, the bottom line to that verse is that God desires your worship.

He desires your worship.

So all through the scriptures, from the very first man who was ever created, Adam, and into God's people, Israel, and then into the uh early church, and now all the way to us, okay, as as God's people kind of struggle through life and try and figure out what it means to follow Him, the core issue always comes back to worship.

Are our hearts fully devoted to uh worshiping the one true God?

Or are we more concerned with ourselves?

Are we self-centered and focus on our wants and are we chasing after idols and self-interests and all of that?

Okay, that is the constant struggle, the constant battle that each one of us here are all in on a daily basis.

Are we gonna follow the Lord?

Are we gonna worship Him?

Or really are we gonna worship something else and ourselves?

Now, we touched on some of this, didn't we, just a few weeks ago in our worship pillar.

So a little bit of this is hopefully um refresher for you in all of that.

Um, but we looked at how uh our worship is to be experienced uh really in two ways.

Okay, one of those ways is uh on a corporate level, okay, on a corporate level, where we where we gather together as the church, just like we're doing right now on a Sunday morning and even in different ways throughout the week to worship, to express the sufficiency and the supremacy of our God.

Now, Hebrews 10, verse 25 speaks to that.

Hebrews 10:25

It says that we should not neglect meeting together, together as the body of Christ.

It's talking about worshiping in a corporate sense where we're we're altogether bodily.

In Acts, which is the story about how the church began, which is so great, okay, right after Christ ascended, and he gave his marching orders to his disciples.

By the way, we're gonna look at that next week.

After he ascended, we see there through the book of Acts that the apostles, that the disciples, and that Christ's followers began to gather together to worship.

They did that corporately.

You know, what did they do during those times?

What exactly did those corporate worship times look like?

Well, again, in the book of Acts, in chapter one and two, what you see there is that they came together to do a couple of things, but uh three main things I would say.

Uh first, one of them was to pray.

They would get together and and they would pray to the Lord.

Uh, they would sit under the teaching of God's word.

And then they also got together to praise the Lord for how awesome he is and and for their salvation and for all the work that he was doing in the world through them.

So they got together to do those things.

That was their worship.

Now, here at Harvest, that's what we want our services on a corporate level to be all about.

We want to see what God lays out for us in Scripture and then do that from hearts that are wholly devoted to Him.

And so we've already had the opportunity, right?

And we've we've had some time already this morning.

We're gonna have more time uh in a moment after all of this uh to lift high the name of Jesus Christ in worship, to praise his name, to thank him for how great he is, and to ascribe worth to him, and we want our worship to always be vertical, where we are focused on him for who he is and what he has done from a spirit of gratitude and praise and awe and submission.

Right?

So we have done that.

We've been praising him.

You've already heard uh Drew and I lift up our voices in prayer, and hopefully your hearts are attuned to that, and you are joining us in spirit, praying to the Lord.

So we want to pray as well.

And then, of course, right now, what are we doing?

We're sitting under the teaching of God's word, trying to lean into what is the what does the Lord have for us uh here today that will challenge me and uh and change me.

Okay, so it's not really all that complicated if you think about it.

You know, we see this outlined for us in Scripture, and so we just want to do that.

This is what the early church did, and this is what we want to continue to do.

We don't want to get away from this.

And honestly, that is becoming a more and more popular thing to do in churches these days.

You know, a lot of a lot of professing Christians and churches are saying, you know what, sitting under the teaching of God's word, that's outdated.

You know, why would we do that?

Let's let's kind of push that aside and let's create something else that we think will be a little bit more relevant, so to speak, and and speak more to us.

Well, what are we doing if we're doing things like that, or we're getting away from prayer, or we're getting away from worship?

We're getting away from the model that God gives us.

Right?

And that's a dangerous thing.

Hey, listen, we want God's glory to show up in this place.

We want our worship to please Him.

That's why we're here.

And if we say, Lord, the way you set it up is not what I want to do anymore, and we want to like kind of recreate the wheel and start something different, God's glory will not show up in this place.

And when we do that, what are we?

We're just a social club of people who get together for an hour or two and and and do something.

I hope your heart beats with mine when you want the church to be so much more than that, and you want our church to be more than that.

Our church will become mature as we worship Christ the way that He intended us to.

Alright, so we do that on a corporate level.

That's uh that's one of the ways that our worship is to be experienced.

Okay, the other way is on a personal level.

Personal level, meaning that we're all here uh to worship Jesus Christ as individuals.

So it's not just about the herd mentality uh in the group, but we're supposed to worship the Lord uh individually.

This is what Psalm 9, verse 1 and 2 say.

Psalms 9:1

It says this I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart.

I will recount all of your wonderful deeds, I will be glad and exalt in you, I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.

You see the very personal nature in this, uh, don't you?

You see that this is this is David, and he's saying, I will give thanks with my whole heart, I will recount your deeds, I will sing praise.

Okay, David's expressing his own, his his personal, his individual adoration to the Lord.

Okay, so so worship is something that we as individuals here as harvest, we want to make sure that we're doing that and engage in that personally.

And what that means is that kind of no matter where you're at, or no matter what the circumstances of your life uh might be, your worship mindset is to be, you know, Lord, I I surrender my life to you.

Lord, you are holy and and you are amazing, and thank you for my salvation, for saving me from sin, for sending your son Jesus Christ to take care of that and inviting me into your family.

God, I give my life to you.

Would you would you take it and and and and do with it as you see fit?

Lord, to you be the glory, for you are good.

That is to be our mindset uh throughout the week as we worship the Lord.

That's an expression of it.

That's what the Lord desires uh from each one of us.

It's what he deserves.

Now just think about yourself for a second here.

Okay, think about yourself.

You know, as you think about, you know, growing in your own uh spiritual maturity, uh, which one of these kind of two main buckets, these two main areas, uh do you need to give more attention to?

Okay, think about that.

Remember, I said kind of an assessment time for you.

Okay, is it is it corporate worship?

Is it corporate worship or is it is it personal worship?

Which area kind of needs to grow?

Because you see, some people kind of more naturally engage in worship on a corporate level.

Right?

They love coming together and they can't wait to sing, and when when the prayers of the people are being lifted up, they join in that and they they love to open up God's word and hear teaching from somebody and and they love to gather with God's people and enjoy community and all of that.

That comes very natural to them.

But maybe the personal side of worship that's happening the other days of the week is more of a struggle and more difficult.

Other people, it's the opposite.

They're the kind of people who just love to worship the Lord in an individual sense.

That's just meeting the Lord, and they love getting up in the morning, they got their cup of coffee and their Bible open, they've got a pen, and they're reading and they're journaling, and they love to just, you know, pray and think about the Lord and meditate and worship and all of those things.

That thing comes naturally to you.

But maybe it's not like coming together with people.

The corporate sense of worship is maybe uh lacking a little bit.

Okay, here's the thing: if it's one or the other, but not both, you're you're severely stunting your growth and your maturity.

Okay, so I want to challenge you, commit today, commit right now in this uh moment.

I'm gonna be I'm gonna be a more engaged worshiper of Jesus Christ when I come to church.

And I and I wanna I wanna be here, I wanna sing, I wanna, I wanna pray and align my heart and my will and my emotions with what's happening here.

I want to soak up God's word together as we come together as the church.

And, not or, but and I'm also gonna make the Lord the center of my life and my my thinking and my adoration from Monday to Saturday as well.

I want to do both, I want to grow in both because that's how we become mature.

That's how we become mature.

Now I think it would be really important uh to say this to become a mature follower of Jesus Christ, to become a true worshiper in the sense that we're talking about here, requires a very important first step.

And that means that we need to become followers of Jesus Christ.

We need to get saved.

And see, here's the thing the gospel tells us in the scriptures, the gospel tells us that our sin is a huge problem.

The wrong that we have done, what that has done is it has it has created a chasm between us and God.

That none of our morality, none of our behavior, none of our good deeds and good works, none of that will close the gap.

And what it took is it took God to step into the equation and say, you know what?

My people who I love so much, they they they they they have they have distanced themselves from me and they have put themselves on a pathway towards eternity apart from me, and I need to fix this.

And so you know how he did that, right?

He sent his son Jesus Christ to come and live the perfect life that we could never live, and then to die on the cross as a perfect sacrifice that paid the price for sin once and for all.

And to know God, to have that chasm that was ruined by our sin close up is leaning into Jesus, trusting that what he did through his perfect life and through his death was enough to bridge that gap and to bring us into a relationship with God.

If we would just admit our sins to him, if we would confess our sins to the Lord, he will forgive us, he will wipe all of that clean, and we will be his.

And listen, I would say this if you're still wondering, what is that all about, or you've got questions about it?

Talk to the person who brought you here today.

Come up to the front after the service, talk to somebody up here and and and get those questions answered.

We would love to walk you through that.

All right, because we want you to be a part of our church, uh, being one who are growing, uh, one is growing in maturity as a worshiper.

Here's the second thing.

Our church will become mature as we walk with Christ, as we walk with Christ.

Here's what Ephesians 4 verse 1 says.

Ephesians 4:1

It says, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk, okay, walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

Okay, now walking with Christ is a picture, a New Testament picture of what the Christian life is like.

Okay, now just think about uh walking for a second here.

Okay, walking is something.

Does it take energy to walk?

Yeah.

Yeah, it takes some it takes some energy uh to walk, but it's something that you can do for long periods of time.

Now let's just see by raise of hands here.

How many of you got roped into the whole Black Friday going to the mall thing?

Anyone do any of that?

Admit it.

Be honest here before.

Not a lot of people.

A couple people over here, all right, or no one wants to admit it.

Um but you notice, right?

You see, if you've ever gone to the mall during that, or it's like it's a boxing day shopping, you see uh lots of people, um, often, you know, just walking with all kinds of energy and they love it, and they're walking around and they're just loving living the dream, right?

Just walking all day, and sometimes people will go for for hours and hours.

It's because walking, okay, walking is something that you can sustain uh for a long period of time.

Okay, it's not like sprinting.

Sprinting you can only do for short bursts before you get before you get tired, you're it you're exhausted and and you kind of you burn out.

Okay, again, walking is sustainable.

And the New Testament describes the Christian life uh as a walk, as a walk, because our our growth in Christ is a journey.

Do you understand that?

It's a journey.

And that journey requires A, that we that we get moving.

Right?

We need to get moving.

We actually need to be moving in the right uh direction.

You know, we're not supposed to be stagnant and just just sitting there like a lot of husbands do on Black Friday in the mall, right?

Sitting on a bench.

Okay, that's not how we are uh to be in our Christian walk.

Okay, maturity is something we're supposed to pursue.

And And and walk towards okay B.

This long journey also requires endurance, it requires perseverance.

And listen, the Christian life is hard.

Right?

Do you know that?

Do you realize that?

Have you begun to absorb that reality that walking with Jesus is just, it presents its difficulties.

It's challenging.

I mean, the entire thing is just so counter-cultural.

The world out there is driving us to go in this direction, and the scriptures and Jesus Christ is driving us to go against all of that.

Okay, so it's very counter-cultural.

It's also hard because the Holy Spirit Himself comes after us, doesn't he?

And he brings conviction into our life.

He doesn't want us to stay broken and wounded.

He instead wants to heal us.

He wants to make us new.

He wants to give us new hearts that desire Him and desire what He wants.

Now listen, all of that sounds great, and it is great.

It's awesome.

But quite often it's very challenging to us, isn't it?

It's challenging to us because we've got a flesh.

And our flesh just wants comfort.

Our flesh just wants ease.

We don't want difficulty.

We don't want hardship.

And so we can often kind of rub against that and and chafe against that.

And in our flesh, we we often want to stop our maturity.

And we're just like, no more, Lord.

Right?

You've already taken me a certain distance.

And you know what?

I think that's enough.

And I would rather stop, and I think I have kind of arrived.

And the Lord's like, no, you haven't.

That's the process of sanctification, of being made more holy.

That is a lifelong process between the time that you get saved and the time that you die.

We are never, never done with that journey.

You know, and so a lot of us want to stop.

And then there's some of us as well who kind of go the opposite way, and we want to charge ahead and we want everything to happen yesterday.

And Lord, I want to grow mature and I want this to happen.

And why is this happening slowly?

And you find that you get discouraged with it sometimes.

You're like, why do I still continue to struggle with this?

Why is it the same sin issues come up and come up time and time again, over and over?

And you even maybe find yourself getting frustrated, and you find yourself uh getting angry even with it.

And so what happens is if you're in that mindset and you're trying to sprint, is you end up just kind of flaming out, and you can't handle it because that's that's not sustainable.

So, hey, the Christian life is a walk.

It's a walk, and we're to keep moving.

Okay, slowly but surely, steadily, with with purpose, with determination, in step with the Spirit, not out of sync with him.

Okay, the road to maturity is one that we must walk down.

Hey, you might be wondering, well, how do I actually do that?

How do I walk down this road?

You know, what are some what are some things that I can do to make sure that I'm heading uh in the right direction here and gaining uh maturity?

What does it look like to walk with Christ?

Okay, well, a couple of ways.

Okay, first of all, it involves personal spiritual disciplines.

Personal spiritual disciplines.

Are you growing in these?

Okay, personal spiritual disciplines, meaning uh one of them would be uh growing in your Bible intake.

You know, throughout the week, are you learning to read and study and know God's word with the purpose of drawing close to Him and knowing God and becoming more intimate in your relationship with Him?

Are you are you taking that in?

Are you do you have a plan?

Do you have a process in place?

Are you saturating your life with God's word?

That's a really important thing.

How about prayer?

Prayer is another spiritual discipline.

It's a pretty obvious one, maybe, to some of us.

But you need to be growing in this.

Are you are you bringing all of your needs?

Are you bringing your concerns, your anxieties, all of that to the Lord, saying, Lord, I need you.

I can't handle this this week.

I'm gonna get tired, I'm gonna be weak, I will break down.

God, would you help me?

Are you bringing your praise items to him?

Are you are you thankful for the things that he is doing in your life?

How he is challenging you, how he is changing you.

Okay, prayer is another one.

There's lots of different spiritual disciplines.

Another one would be witness.

In your witness, that's a spiritual discipline.

In fact, we talked about it all last week.

This is evangelism.

This is a spiritual discipline, a muscle that we must learn to exercise.

You begin to do things like these, and you will grow in your walk with Jesus Christ.

These are all spiritual disciplines.

Okay, second thing, walking with Christ is it's accelerated through small group participation.

Okay, small groups.

This is the thing that we have uh as a very um integral part of our church as Harvest Bible Chapel.

Okay, small groups for us are huge.

They're huge.

You might be like, what's up with small groups?

Uh, what are those all about?

Well, we basically have uh a small group of people, pretty simple, uh, that gather throughout the week on different nights of maybe you know, 10, 12, 15 people, whatever it might be, and we gather in homes, all right, and we we uh dive deeper typically into the sermon that was just preached the previous Sunday.

And all of it, all of it is geared towards how do I apply God's word?

How do I dive into that?

It's not just a pure Bible study, we're accumulating knowledge and all of that, but it's like, how can I change?

How can I be done with these sinful patterns?

How can I, how can I actually grow and move towards maturity?

Okay, so small groups are huge for us.

And I and I know Angie and I love our small group.

We love gathering on Tuesday nights in our home to dive into these things.

You might be, what's what's up with small groups?

I've I've never really heard of that before.

We need to understand that small groups are, first of all, biblical.

They're biblical.

We see in Acts chapter 2, verses 42 down to 47, we see that um the as the as the as the early church gathered, um, they also gathered in homes and they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching.

Acts 2:42

They would have a meal together, they would, they would pray, they would take care of each other's needs.

And so we see that line uh outlined for us in the Word of God.

And so we have small groups at our church.

Other churches have small groups too, and they call them different things.

They call them cell groups and life groups, and I don't know, they call them all kinds of different things.

We just call them uh small groups, and they're a really important thing for us.

They're also very practical.

Very practical.

Now, I I wouldn't consider our church massive uh by any stretch of the imagination, but we're also not tiny.

And I think you've probably noticed if you've been coming even for a while or even just recently, it's pretty much impossible to get to know everyone.

And so small groups is where you can get to know uh some.

And that's where relationships can begin to grow and some of your personal needs that you have can be met.

And sometimes what will happen is somebody, you know, a couple, they get pregnant, you know, and a baby comes, and the small group will just rally around them and bring them meals.

Right?

It's a very practical way to have your needs met.

Small groups are very, they're very practical.

It's also really just the real life work of the church.

It's where it's where discipleship takes place.

It's where we can be encouraging each other and we can be equipped, and we can be growing in knowledge and understanding.

We can be growing in maturity, we can have, we can have accountability where we are leaning into each other for prayer support and help.

I'm struggling in this.

Would you hold me to account on this?

Would you encourage me through prayer?

Okay, small groups are where leaders are raised up as well.

And we need leaders in the church, people who would lead godly, humble, mature people, and it happens within the context of small groups.

Okay, so small groups are huge.

Say, where are you at when it comes to walking with Christ?

Where are you at with that?

Is there something that maybe we just covered here that you need to kind of tighten up in your own life?

Is there something that the Lord is leading you to?

Like, I mean, even right now, to commit to or or recommit to in your life.

Maybe it's a spiritual discipline.

Something that's just kind of got a little bit loose.

You know what?

I've gotten away from uh spending time in God's word.

I haven't been sharing my faith with people that need to hear it.

My prayer life has gotten a little bit flat.

Maybe there's something you need to tighten up.

Maybe it's a recommitment.

Maybe it's commitment to it.

I've never done these things before, and I want to grow in this.

Okay, no more, no more holding back.

Okay, no more, no more excuses on this.

Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna get my walk with Christ going.

I wanna do this.

Okay, last thing.

Last thing.

Our church will become mature as we work for Christ.

As we work for Christ.

Hey, 1 Corinthians uh chapter 12.

Okay, the entire chapter is amazing.

I would really encourage you uh to go read that later this afternoon or this week, spend some time looking at that, but we're gonna we're gonna focus in on uh verses four to seven here, and this is what it says.

It says, now there are ver uh there are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit, and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord, and there are varieties of activities, but it's the same God who empowers them all in everyone.

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

Okay, so there it is.

Yeah, there it is.

God, God gives every believer, every believer, gifts that they then used to serve the local church.

All right, we see that in a few different places in the scripture uh as well.

Now, those gifts are very wide-ranging.

Okay, some people might have the gift of teaching, you know, and you would aspire to be in, you know, in a teaching role.

In in a godly way, you aspire to that.

You know, and maybe it's for you being up in harvest kids and teaching the word of God to those young ones, or it's or it's a youth leader and getting together with a bunch of teenagers throughout the week and discipling them and teaching them the ways of the Lord.

Maybe it's being a small group leader uh over adults or something like that.

Your gift might be teaching.

I would uh be pretty certain that there's a group of people in here who are like, I don't want any part of that.

I don't have that gift.

You know, don't put a microphone in front of my face.

I don't want to stand up in front of a group of people at all, and that's totally fine.

You have different gifts.

Maybe your gift is serving in the church in some type of way.

And you have, you take great joy in doing the roles that other people just don't want to do.

They don't have that desire or gifting or ability to be able to do it.

And you love that behind-the-scenes stuff.

You're like, this is how I'm gonna pour myself out for the church.

Maybe your gift is serving.

Maybe it's something like wisdom.

And you and you just, you know, the Lord has just gifted you with wisdom and discernment.

Your gift might be mercy, and you just have such a heart for the lost and those who are hurting and those who are broken.

Maybe you have the gift of hospitality.

It's something like that.

You love you love making church, you love making small groups, some ministry people, you just love making them feel welcome and and and comfortable.

And this is a great place for people to come.

You're like, I want, I want part of that.

Those are the different kinds of gifts.

But what do you notice in 1 Corinthians 12 there?

It says that God empowers us, he empowers us by his spirit to exercise those gifts, doesn't he?

He will actually do it, he will work alongside us in like a sort of like a teammate sort of way to carry out the work of ministry.

That's what God does.

Another great passage is Ephesians 4, verse 11 and 12.

Ephesians 4:11

Okay, and this speaks to all of this.

It says this, it says, and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, that's God.

He gave, he gave these people, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers.

He gave, God gave leaders to the church.

Why?

To equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, for building us up.

And so what God has done is He's put like pastors and leaders and people like that in place in the local church to train up others.

I mean, we just had a had a time yesterday morning, we were training up new future potential small group leaders as we want to multiply our small groups.

You know, and and and that's what we need to do.

So it's, yeah, I mean, you're getting the sense here that there's work to be done and that everyone needs to be involved in that?

I mean, the scriptures speak to that, don't they?

I mean, it takes a village, as they say, uh, to get a church moving down the road towards maturity.

And you know what I think would be so great right now is I I just kind of realized very recently that we have um over 80 people in our church who are in some way serving in our church.

I mean, how incredible is that that so many people would be, would be, it would have a heart to help us carry this vision and this movement forward.

And here's what I'm gonna ask.

I'm gonna ask if you have served in any way in our church or you are currently serving, would you please just stand?

Because we want to recognize you, we want to thank you.

So please stand right now.

Come on, let's jump up.

Let's jump up quickly now.

I mean, take take a look around.

Right?

This is amazing.

This is amazing.

I think it would be really appropriate if we all just gave these people a huge round of applause.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I mean, God is so blessed by that, and I am so blessed by that.

And what the Lord is doing to raise up people uh to move this forward.

Listen, the Lord wants to see his church built up.

And his desire is that that each person here would pick up a shovel, would, would grab a hammer and start working, start building this thing.

And what what every person serving is doing, regardless of the role, is that they are playing a significant role in seeing that God's kingdom takes ground, that God's kingdom moves forward.

What that means is that if you are in one of our hospitality teams and you are serving coffee, uh, for example, after the service, you're doing so much more than just pouring a hot beverage into a styrofoam plastic cup, whatever it is.

You're doing more than that.

You're providing uh an environment where people can feel welcome and comfortable.

You're giving people an opportunity to grab a coffee and stand there and drink it and get to know other people, and community is building around here, and and again, the kingdom is moving forward as people get to know each other and relationships grow, and we uh that plays us a pretty huge part in moving us towards maturity.

Okay, if you are a harvest kids worker and and you are holding babies, I bet there are many times where you're up there and you're like, what am I even doing doing this?

You know, you're trying to burp kids and calm them down, and you're probably wondering what's the purpose in all of this?

Well, your purpose is you're making, you're you're allowing parents to have a moment of reprieve where they can come into the service and they can meet face to face with the living God, and they can they can absorb God's word and they can be they can be blessed.

It's because what uh because of what you are doing to work and serve in the church.

Every single role, regardless of what it is, is vital.

It's vital.

And again, I am so appreciative of you and our teams and how you have in many ways just just stepped up and blessed us.

I mean, it's been incredible.

Now, here's where we're really at right now as a church.

The Lord has us uh in a season of growth, which is super exciting.

Okay, it's really fun.

I mean, we have we have prayed for this.

We have prayed that the Lord would bring more people to us and healthy things grow, and and we want to remember that it's not just about numbers, but but each number uh represents a person made in the image of God who gets to come here and and hear the gospel and their their children uh do as well.

And I don't know if you you you have maybe realized this, but actually last Sunday, uh up in Harvest Kids was the largest group of children that we have ever had up there.

And Angela Meyer, who does such a great job running that, had to actually come down here and pull some servants out of the service to make sure that our ratios were all good and up to snuff.

I mean, amazing, right, what the Lord is doing in that.

Youth is growing, our adults are growing, the Lord is doing a great work here.

And all of that means that there are countless opportunities for us to serve, for us to work for Christ right here in our church.

And one of the things I like to remind myself of and remind our leaders of is that we are constantly in recruitment mode.

Okay, we're in recruitment mode.

And we're and we're in that for a few reasons.

Okay, one reason is that we want to build up our teams.

We want to build up our teams.

We want our teams to get bigger so that we can ease the burden on some of those who are already serving.

And instead of like a setup team, for example, coming each and every Sunday morning at 6 a.m., we we would build that into two, three, four, five teams as more people join that.

And I mean, it's that whole, you know, many hands make light work thing.

That's what we want to do.

We want to build our teams up and ease the burden and spread out the load and the responsibility among many.

Yeah, that's one reason we're in recruitment mode.

Hey, second reason, second reason we recruit workers for Christ is because we want you to experience spiritual growth.

Do you realize that that's what serving, that's what working in the church does?

It's really easy for us to think about worship and walk as, you know, I do those two things that I'm gonna grow, but don't miss the fact that what that working for Christ, that serving in the church, is also gonna contribute to your spiritual maturity and your growth.

It plays a huge role in that.

We want people to serve because people who work grow.

You grow.

People who who don't serve, who don't work, or people who stop working, ultimately what we see happens is they begin to plateau in their growth with the Lord.

And in cases as well, they begin to decline in that even.

I mean, I have honestly have seen it so many times.

As people just they they they sometimes they just stop.

Okay, not serving results in a lack of growth, uh stunted spiritual maturity.

It really just kind of hits the the put hits the pause button on all of that for you.

And so I really want to, you know, challenge you, motivate you, encourage you to find a place if you haven't already to plug in and get serving in the church, to get serving, you know, where where you will grow and where you can be such a blessing and used by God.

I mean, what a privilege, what an what an awesome opportunity to be able to do that, right?

To be a part of what God has called us to in building the church.

Awesome.

I encourage you to think about that.

And also remember this.

Okay, we're not desperate.

Okay, we're not desperate.

And sometimes maybe you might be thinking, wow, they're desperate, right?

They really need people.

You know, I have to remind myself of that a little bit a little bit, you know, as as ministries grow and you know, harvest kids are trying to figure out how can we get another classroom up there and get more people to teach and all that kind of stuff.

Sometimes I can feel it a little bit as the pastor.

But here's the thing that I have to remind myself of God is sovereign.

God is in control, he is building his church as he sees fit.

And he will bring us people as as we pray, people who have the right heart to it.

And here's the other thing, very much related to this.

God doesn't need any of us.

He doesn't need us, myself included.

He could find somebody else to come up here and to preach to you and to lead this church.

He could absolutely do that.

And I have to remind myself of that.

He doesn't, he doesn't need me, he doesn't need any of us.

But hey, if we refuse to serve, if we refuse to work, here's the thing, he'll just find somebody else to do it.

And then we'll miss out on the blessing.

And that's the thing that we so don't want for you.

We don't want you to miss out on the blessing of that.

We don't want you to miss out on growing more mature and exercising your spiritual gifts and growing in this way.

There is great, great joy in this.

We care so much about your maturity here at our church.

And we want you to be involved.

So think about that, the kind of impact that you can have for the kingdom uh right here on Sundays or maybe some uh in some ministry throughout the week.

And if you're wondering, man, how do I get involved and and how do I do this?

Well, I would say go to our website.

It's it's harvestnewmarket.ca, and in there there's a there's a page where you can sign up to serve, and you click on that, and there's the different leaders that are in different positions, you can email them.

If you need to, you come talk to me.

If you're like, I don't even know what my spiritual gifts are, and and I don't really know where to serve, and I'm still trying to figure this out, and you know, my schedule is complicated and all that.

Listen, I get it.

I really do.

Life is busy and it is it is tough.

But come talk to me.

We would love to figure out how we could get you uh involved in all of this.

Okay, really think about these things this week.

Allow the Lord to stir this up in you, allow the Lord to help you and commit these things to.

To prayer.

Commit these things.

Be willing to take a step of faith in this.

You know, I get it.

Like, maybe you're not used to small groups, and that that whole idea just seems weird to you.

And, you know, I've never, I've never served in the church and all of that.

And this is this is all new and it's different, and I'm not sure, and there's some fear that I have in it.

And maybe you've been been burned in the past and all of that.

And I know that's what people bring into the church.

But think about it and take a step of faith.

Trust the Lord that He's going to use you, that He's going to work in your heart to grow you so that you can grow up into maturity as a disciple.

And so that our church, together, Harvest Bible Chapel, can be a mature church who worships Christ, who walks with Christ, and who works for Christ.

Let's pray.