You Are Known | Part Three

Uh visiting on this Maylong weekend.

Before we start, would you just welcome some of the people to church and let them know that they're loved?

And if they're new here, introduce yourself to them today.

Let them know that they're part of this community for being here today.

God bless you.

And I know for a number of years we had one singular service.

And I just want to thank you all for being uh being flexible with us.

I know that many of you have grown accustomed to knowing where you sit and how you sit, and now you're getting pushed around a little bit by the change in our seating a little bit and squeezing people in and asking people to move a little bit.

I just wanted to update you after four weeks.

Our children's ministry thanks you for making these adjustments.

We have a lot of kids up and down stairs in the church, and we were finding that one of our classes was up to 30 kids, 30 little toddlers.

And the teachers and the volunteers in that room were crying out to God every week for your children.

And so this time, this time at this week, we uh were able to split the kids up hypothetically, and this last week we had 15 and 15 instead of 30 this past week, and we were the the volunteers were like, thank you so much because they love your kids.

I tell you, we should have a shirt that says hug your kids volunteer because they love your kids and they're they're just committed to serving and and making sure that the kids actually are experiencing God.

And uh so if you see them, if you've got kids and they're downstairs, give them a high five and tell them that you thank them.

Um we also have double the opportunity to be able to connect with people as they're coming in and out of church.

And uh for us as a pastor, pastoral team, and uh first impression team, we just love making sure that people who are coming to church uh get connected with and that they don't slip through the cracks and that we get to know where people are at and make them feel uh welcomed and make them feel connected.

So for us, it's really important to be able to make sure that we get an eyeball on people when it comes to the lobby and it comes to just connecting with us, and I just want to welcome all those who are visiting with us today to KCC.

It's it's been a great opportunity to serve you.

Um we are, as I said, we're four weeks into our our two service Sundays, but we're four weeks also into our series on You Are Known.

And I just want to thank Malachi for uh leading while I was away and speaking.

Did he do a good job?

Did he do a good job?

That was two weeks ago.

I love it when Malachi preaches, it's always so exciting.

I love watching what he's gonna wear when he preaches because it's always something bright and floral and different.

Uh I I had a some real experiences that you've probably had in your life as well.

But in my life, having children really shook me.

I got married.

I like, and that was great.

It was a great experience.

It didn't um lots of benefits to being married, lots of exciting times, but there wasn't a big shift.

It just kind of happened.

I I moved out of my parents' place when we built a house.

I was like 35.

No, I'm teasing.

Uh but I moved out and I gone to my own place, and that was exciting.

It was like, yeah, I can do this.

And then uh there was time I graduated, I went to university, I went to Bible school, I did all these things that were great adjustments in my life, and it never really threw me off course.

But as soon as I had kids, my life changed.

Everything changed.

My social life changed.

My wife changed.

She was, I wasn't the the the precious one in the family anymore.

All of a sudden, we had someone else in the family who she was concerned about.

Uh, the shows I was watching on TV changed.

All of a sudden, there's Dora the Explorer.

I would not have watched Dora the Explorer or any other shows like that.

Things changed.

A, B, C, D, songs changed in the house.

Lots of things changed.

My room changed.

All of a sudden, there's a bed, a bed, you like a little uh crib or whatever they're called.

A bassinet in there.

And then there's a change table in my closet, and we're spending money on diapers and wipes instead of like, and someone else that I'm buying clothes.

My finances changed.

Everything changed with kids.

I was home at seven, I'm walking around the house when the baby's asleep.

I'm like tiptoeing through the house so the baby doesn't wake up.

Everything changed.

I know this isn't news to anyone.

I'm just giving you an opportunity to feel me, okay, at this at this point.

And my daughter, uh, man, when she was born, it's like she looked at me and she's like, that's my dad.

And she was so excited, evangeline.

She just turned, she just celebrated her 13th birthday last week.

Wow.

And I don't know what everyone's complaining about having a teenager.

It's cool.

Like, I'm a weekend and everything's good.

Like, it's great.

But I remember as an infant, and maybe you'd remember this as a parent as well, when you had a baby, um, I remember when I used my ears to actually listen to people when they talk.

And I can be like listening while going on the phone, while using my iPad, while going watching TV, while washing dishes.

I can just listen.

I use my ears, like most people do.

They use their ears to listen.

But my daughter, she'd climb up onto my lap and I'd be doing something, and she'd sit right in front of me, and she, you've probably had this happen to yourself.

She grabbed me by the cheeks and she turned my head, so I was looking right at her, and she says, Dad, I'm talking to your eyes.

Like she wants to talk to my eyes.

I want you to listen to me with your eyes.

Talk to me with your eyes.

Eyes on me.

And what I learned is that when you're talking to someone, it becomes one-on-one with that individual.

It's important that you look.

You're not interested in other things, you're not interested in what else is going on in the world or things that are happening on social media, you're thinking about that individual.

And when I think about our walk with God and I think about our relationship with God, I think there are times when God is saying to you, you're so interested in everything else around that you're not interested in me.

I want you to put your eyes on me.

Get your eyes on me, Brody.

Get your eyes on me.

Come on, turn like I'm talking to you.

Like, talk to my eyes.

Don't worry about everything else.

Just look at me.

I want your full attention and full focus.

And I believe at times in our culture we've become a critical culture.

We've become interested in everybody else and what everybody else is doing, and we're not quite interested in what God is saying to us and how God is changing us and what God is doing and saying to us as individuals, personally, and taking responsibility for it personally.

A few weeks ago I was uh in Ottawa, and I was moving, I was going through Ottawa, and then we were going to a conference uh in outside of Detroit in Windsor, and I had opportunity in Ottawa to go to the National Prayer Breakfast.

A great opportunity during that time uh to meet with dignitaries and MPs from Canada, ambassadors, government staffers, we uh chaplains, sergeant of arms, like all these people that were working for our government, uh our government at the Capitol.

And we joined together to pray for our nation of Canada.

And I had the opportunity, I was introduced to the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, and I began to sit with the leader of the Green Party, Elizabeth May, we met with the Conservative Caucus in the round table in Parliament, uh, and just to and met with uh Maxime Bernier, who's uh leader of the People's Party of Canada, and we I got to represent our generation, represent our faith, represent our concerns, represent our represent our values, and and let them know that yes, I exist.

A Christian is vocal, I represent other Christians, amen, in this room.

I represent other believers who have certain values.

And I as I began to represent them, I thought this is this is a great opportunity.

Well, while I was connecting, um, I didn't realize that my mom was in the background and she had the camera, and I was talking to the Prime Minister uh Trudeau, and my mom took a few snapshots, and I thought, oh, that's cool.

She showed them to me afterwards, and I was in the hotel, and I thought, you know what?

I'm just gonna post uh and make a post here on social media and make it a non-partisan post.

Virtually the post was the scripture says the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord, and like a river, the Lord directs how the king operates.

It doesn't matter what king it is, the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord, and he just goes here and goes there, and God does the work.

So just keep praying for the for the people, the leaders in charge.

And I I posted, I went to bed.

And when I woke up the next day, I started reading all the people who had, because it's three hours ahead, I started reading what everyone else had checked off on the box, you know.

Hey, I like that picture, it looks great.

Oh, what a great opportunity.

But then it started to get really critical.

And all the social justice warriors started coming out, all the keyboard warriors started coming out.

Did you tell them this, Brody?

What about that, Brody?

What about this?

And started like just cutting the prime minister down.

And I thought, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not gonna be a part of this because I don't care.

So what I did is I just deleted my posts because they started getting really sideways.

I started I just deleted my post, and then my my mom got mad at me.

Why did you do that?

And then I put the post back on.

And I'm like, all right, I'll put it back on because she convicted me because I was pressured to pull it off because there were people who were so critical.

But I'll tell you, it would be a tough job to be the Prime Minister of Canada today.

It'd be a tough job to be an MP or a or uh or any type of counselor or mayor, even though our own mayor this week had uh his life threatened online.

Someone should put a bullet in that man.

Like it was terrible.

So the police went and arrested the individual who commented on it.

And he said he was scared and his family was scared, and they they just people being outrageous.

And we had a problem because people can just go ahead and say whatever they want and be critical of other people, but aren't thinking about the eyes on me.

Everyone else is thinking about somebody else, but we're not thinking about the eyes on me.

And the tabernacle, if you went back into the scripture, into the Old Testament, the tabernacle was a design structure that helped people learn how to approach God.

And one of the primary places in the tabernacle was a labor, like a bowl, and it was made out of bronze.

And the Bible says it was made out of the mirrors that the women used, the bronze mirrors that the women used that they brought from Egypt.

So they brought this bowl and they filled it up with water, and what would happen is before anyone could minister to God, before anyone could come to God, they had to first go and wash in this bowl.

Well, this bowl was made of a mirror.

When you looked down into this bowl to wash, what did you see?

Yourself.

You saw yourself, you didn't see everybody else.

Because God wasn't concerned about everybody else.

You know who he's concerned about?

You.

You need to be concerned about you, not Prime Minister Trudeau.

You need to be concerned about you.

And so they they began to wash before they could minister to God.

And they would wash their hands and they'd wash their feet, and it was a massive reflection of their own life.

And they were saying, it was a virtually saying, before you approach God, you need to audit self.

You need to judge yourself before you judge others, you need to forgive before you seek someone to forgive you.

Make sure that you're clean.

And so this is what the first step was.

And I started looking through the scripture, and I looked in the book of Isaiah, and Isaiah is approaching God, and he walks into the temple, and I think about it like this room.

And the Bible says that in Isaiah that he walked in and God was in the room.

And the Bible says the train of the Lord, like his the train, his train filled the temple, and angels are surrounding him with six wings, and they were covering their eyes, and they were singing, Holy is the Lord God Almighty, the whole earth is filled with your glory.

And they were singing, and and the smoke filled the room, and the Bible says that the pillars and the foundation points started to shake.

And Isaiah is in the middle of it, and the first thing he does isn't, hey, uh, God, about this guy, or about her, or about him, or about someone else.

The first thing he does is he says, Woe is me.

I am a man of unclean lips.

I live in a perverse generation.

I am responsible for the way I live and I need help.

And he cries out to God, he lands on his face, God, fix me first.

And when he says that, the Bible says an angel came with a coal from the altar, came and touched his lips and purified him.

And then at that point, he said, Who should I send?

Who can I send to do my work?

And the Bible says that that point, Isaiah says, I'm here, Lord, you can send me.

I'm here, Lord.

Now I'm clean now.

Use me.

But until we first find salvation that way, at first we can't think about others until we first look at ourselves.

Again, David says it in chapter 51 of Psalms.

This is a really good uh scripture verse.

When it comes to like you've done something wrong, or you're this audits my when I read this verse, I'm auditing myself.

Listen to how many times it reflects internally to me, myself, I.

He says this, have mercy on me, O God, according to your love, according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions, wash away all my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.

Against you, you only have I sinned and done what's evil in your sight.

So you're right in your verdict and justified when you judge.

Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

You desire faithfulness even in the womb.

You taught me wisdom in that secret place.

Cleanse me from his lip, and I'll be clean.

Wash me and I'll be whiter than snow.

Let me hear your gladness, let the bones you've crushed rejoice, hide your face from my sins, blot out all my iniquity.

He's saying, This is mine.

I own this.

I'm looking at myself, and it's mine.

Before anyone else, this belongs to me first.

Create in me a pure heart, O God.

Renew a steadfast spirit in me.

Don't cast me away from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of my salvation.

Grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.

It's personal.

And then after all that is done, God's fully audited my life.

Everything has been washed.

Then I will teach transgressors your ways.

Then I will go and reach out to sinners.

Because if my testimony isn't right, if my life isn't clean, and my witness isn't pure, then how am I going to reach out to other people?

How am I going to lead other people to Christ?

First, Lord, heal me.

First, Lord, take audit of my life.

I would think that there, when I think about it, I think of it like a blockage that's in a pipeline.

And uh maybe you've you can think of it like a sink or a or a hose or something like that.

But while we were in prayer on Wednesday, I had this vision.

It was just so surreal.

I was thinking of a culvert that is uh up like that was up in the mountains.

Uh when I'm fishing some lakes, and I watch how there's a lake that's literally full to the brim, overflowing in the lake.

Like the resource is there, the water is there, and at the end of the lake, they have a little culvert, and it goes through a grate.

The water flows through this grate.

And at the other end of the grate, though, the water is just trickling out.

And I think sometimes as Christians, we sit at the other end of the grate and we're like, oh Lord, bless us.

And it's like trickle, trickle, trickle.

Lord, take care of us.

Come on, Lord, more, Lord.

And we we want to see God's capability, but all we're looking at is the trickle.

And we're saying, Well, God, why aren't you opening up the where's all your resource?

And if you had a bird's eye view, you'd look up and you say, Hey, every spiritual blessing in Christ is found.

We have access to every resource.

There's nothing that God can't do.

All these, nothing is too big for my God.

And you've got all this opportunity, all this resource, but it's plugged at the point of access.

Because there's stuff in our lives that's keeping us from that blessing.

And what we need to do is remove that garbage, remove that sludge, remove that debris that would keep the blessing from flowing into our life.

And some of it is secret, some of it is generational, stuff that we've dealt with, some of us is just a refusal to allow God.

To shine in our life.

Some of us, it's a refusal to allow accountability or someone else to just sit with you and just tell you what you need to hear.

And we have to say, Lord, test me first, because I can pray every day and not access the resources because I've got my own issues in my life.

James says it this way He says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to those who are humble.

Literally, pride will create an opposition for you.

And I see it all the time where people, virtually when they're criticizing the prime minister, they're saying, I can do better than him.

When they're criticizing other people or criticizing people at work, and sometimes in our heart we realize that there is pride in us.

Pride in us.

I know better.

My way's the right way.

No one else can tell me what to do.

The pastor, oh, he's pretty, you know, but blah blah blah blah blah.

I roll my eyes.

Sometimes it's the way it is.

No one's above it.

I think about it.

I sit under humility in humility.

I'm like, Lord, teach me.

There's a way to do things better.

I don't care if it's from a child or an adult or someone who's long in the faith or short in the faith, teach me, God.

Teach me, humble me.

Keep me humble because I want that pipeline open.

I want that valve open without debris.

I want the blessing flowing through my life.

Listen to the other one.

Therefore, Matthew, if you are offering your gift on the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, go ahead and make it right.

Leave your gift, go reconcile with your friend or with the person, and then come back to the altar.

That means if I've got an issue with someone and I try and come to church to worship, I can't.

You'll never get out of worship.

And out of this experience, what God has intended for this experience, you'll get the trickle effect.

But you won't get the full-out blessing if you know that there's someone out there who there's an offense with and you can make it right.

So we do our best to say, God, where is it in my life?

Test me, purify me, cleanse me, wash me, take audit of my life, judge me, God.

Judge me.

In fact, the Bible actually says we as believers are not to judge other people, but we should judge ourselves and each other towards godliness.

Like, come on, Natalie, you can do better.

I know what's in you.

Let's talk about this and this offense or this bitterness or whatever it is with your husband right now.

And it's like, come on.

What is it, God?

And so I look back at Jesus' example and his parable in the book of Matthew.

And Jesus referred to this judgment that actually happened with him in his day, that's still happening today.

And he said this.

He said that there were two men, and they were debating with each other, and one man was judging another man based upon the speck in that man's eye.

But in his own eye, there was a whole log.

A fleck of sawdust in one man's eye.

And the other man has a full log in his own eye.

And he's judging the other man about the speck in his eye.

The Bible says, before you do anything, deal with the own log in your own eye.

I was gonna use an example today, but it was hard for me to bring a log in to come in there like this.

Dealing with other people, judging other people, without first saying, God judge me first.

The blessing is on the other side.

I want the flow to come through your life and through my life.

And it's not, and it's not gonna happen unless we first look, eyes on me, God, you and me.

What are you gonna see?

What do you see in me and what needs to change in me first and foremost?

I want to see us just make a difference in the world, make a difference in our families and in our community.

And it's not gonna happen until the river is flowing free in our church and then through us.

And the only way that'll happen is if each of us are walking with purity.

There was a time in our life where I know like when a believer first comes to accept Christ, someone first comes to accept Christ and start to believe in Christ, and God makes all things new, they're walking around, they're like, Don't don't let any argument, don't let any, I'm guarding my eyes, I'm guarding my lips, I'm watching what I'm saying, I'm watching my heart because the Bible says, out of your heart, just guard your heart above all things, because out of it comes life, the issues of life.

So I'm gonna guard myself, and I'm not gonna feel bad about saying, God help me, God preserve me, God protect me, God expose that area in my life that needs exposing.

And this is a great weekend to do it.

Go home and ask the Lord, Lord, is there something in me?

Shine your light on me, Holy Spirit, come in and just open up your heart to me so that open up my heart so that I might walk pure.

Would you bow your heads with me this morning?

Father, we thank you this morning as the word has been spoken, Father, that you are wanting to make a difference in our lives.

And the way you want to do this is you want to deal with us first.

So today, Father, we say eyes on you, eyes on you.

And I just want to ask the congregation, you all here with eyes closed and head bowed, that if you're here today and you're saying that, you're saying, Lord, I I want to be made right, I want to be made pure, I want to be, I want you to shine in my life.

I want that that valve to be wide open in my life, so I can be a blessing to my community.

Every resource you've made available for me is there.

I don't want the trickle, I want the full out roaring, rushing, flooding river flowing through my life, spilling over my life, affecting other people.

Would you just raise your hands with me if you're saying, Lord, do that for me today?

Do that in my life today.

Father, I ask in Jesus' name, by your Holy Spirit to come, minister to each one here today.

Shine on our lives, Lord.

Holy Spirit, shine on our lives and expose any area of darkness, expose any area of hiddenness, expose any area that would be generational, expose any area that would be keeping us back from you.

Father, we want to walk pure with you, we want to walk right with you, we want to walk in the peace that you've prepared for us.

So, Lord, I we open our hearts to you and we say, We're an offering.

We're an offering.

Do with us as you must, as you will.

And we say, Less of us and more of you, less of me and more of you, God.

Less of me and more of you, so that you can become great in my life.

We open up our hearts to you today.

Change us, purify us, cleanse us, make us clean.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Let's give the Lord a round of applause today.

Amen.