Jesus, Paul, & Rodney

My name is Greg Ford.

I'm the lead pastor here at One Church and wasn't here last week.

It was the first time ever since we launched the church that I was not at One Church for a Father's Day, but I took my kids to the Rocky Mountains.

We stayed at Jellystone Park, which is the home of Yogi Bear, if you didn't know.

And then we went uh all into the mountains, and it was uh one of the most precious moments I've ever had with my family.

I'll never forget it.

And uh, hope you had a great time as well.

I looked back, I was watching the men's night was on fire, and then uh speaking of on fire, Eddie Parker uh preached last week, did an amazing job.

If you missed that message, encourage you to go back and check it out.

Uh, but uh eager to share God's word with you today.

So let's go ahead and pray together.

God, I just thank you for the opportunity to be here.

None of us in this room take for granted uh this opportunity, the breath that we have in our lungs, and we want to be receptive to you.

We want to hear from you.

Uh Lord, we know we live in times that are full of tension, especially now.

And uh yet we want to be influenced by your spirit, by your word, in the purest, truest sense.

Uh so Lord, help us to know the difference.

And uh we're receptive to you in Jesus' name.

All God's people said, Amen.

Uh I was thinking back this week of uh growing up, and from elementary school to college, there were four big events that kind of rocked me.

There was a lot going on during that time, but four that just came to mind, like top of mind.

The first is when I was in elementary school was the Operation Desert Shield, Turn Desert Storm, Turn Gulf War.

Uh I was about 10 years old, and I remember watching World News Tonight with Peter Jennings uh with my dad.

Big Peter Jennings fan over here.

Love it.

Peter Jennings.

Only work once.

Um but we sat there and watched that, and I remember seeing, you know, we when we bombed Baghdad and all of that, and just thinking, man, we're at war.

Uh and so I remember that.

The second thing I remember distinctly was in uh junior high um was the Rodney King uh situation, the Rodney King trial that turned into the LA riots, that then also was sort of linked even eventually to the O.J.

Simpson trial, and that was a huge thing on television.

I remember sitting around in junior high, uh, our history teacher had a television with rabbit ears.

Any woos for rabbit ears?

Anybody remember those?

Um and we watched the verdict, you know, huddled as a classroom.

Uh so I remember that.

Well, uh the third was the Columbine shooting that happened my senior year of high school, and I remember that really well.

And then the fourth was uh 9-11, which happened when I was in college, actually.

I remember where I was, and kind of all four of those situations are the do you remember where you were when types of situations.

Um I was thinking about it because I because I think I had about 10 years to process four catastrophic events, and of course, there was more going on than that, but for me it was that's kind of what it was.

Like this rocked my world in about 10 years.

And now it feels like we have about four catastrophic events per month.

At least that's how it feels.

I think the way information comes in, right back in the day, we were huddled around the rabbit ear television, but now it would be everyone would have their own phone on forums, getting news in different ways, and um uh and both have their good and bad, but at the same time, there is so much, and and I have as a as a human being first, and as a pastor and leader and all this, I've been trying to figure out how to do that, how to manage just all of this stuff that's happening so fast, so many different things, and it's been sort of a rocky road because um I think I think you know, from 2000, or I'm sorry, from 90, 1990 to 2001, that whole time, it was like uh it was like crisis management.

So, how do you manage the crisis?

And you gotta grieve and you gotta walk through it.

But now it's we're in a state of permanent and continual crisis because so many things happen, you become so aware of it, so you're in this sort of constant state of grieving.

And each one of these things, I mean, if you go back to just a you know a few weeks ago, Buffalo, New York, and and and and the shooting in the uh in Texas, and and and and now Roe versus Wade, and and and you know, there is a war going on in Ukraine, and just all these things happening all the time, you you're like, how do I do this and give things their just due and their focus?

And these are lives, and these are catastrophic, world-shaking events, but there's so many of them, and I'm so aware of them.

And so I've I've been I've tried to figure this out, and it's been trial and error, and I haven't always nailed it.

In fact, I've I've realized, you know, with being a pastor of a church and a lot of people I love and care about who have trusted me to be uh a shepherd in some way in their life, to be some sort of mentor, leader uh person in their life.

I know I have hurt people's feelings over the years because I either didn't say something about something that hit close to home, and of course, the closer it hits to home, the more you feel it, the more emotional it is, the more intense it becomes.

And it bothers you when people that you care about or claim to care about you don't seem to care enough or care at all.

And so I know I've hurt people's feelings because I I didn't say anything about things, or I didn't say enough, or I didn't care enough, and and yet I've been trying to figure out how to how to do this in the right way and try how do you settle into a permanent and continual state of crisis that we're kind of in in the world?

I think we're I think we're here.

What do we do?

Um today what I want to do is I want to I want to take us to God's word.

I I want to talk about there there's a lot.

Uh I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about Roe versus Wade.

I wasn't planning to, I was gonna talk about something else.

I was really excited about this other message, but I really sense in terms of responsibility, I need to talk about this.

Uh so I am gonna talk about it.

And um uh there's a lot of things in the world, and even with this that I'm I'm not totally sure about, but there are a few things I am.

Uh I do want to say uh this message, I'm gonna talk about Roe versus Wade because it's what I have to work with right now, but this isn't just about Roe versus Wade.

This is about this is bigger than that.

So I want you to not just lock in on this one particular issue.

I want you to look at this biblical perspective.

I want you to take this this type of thinking and think of it broader because it will apply to the last situation and the next situation as well.

Okay?

Three things I'm sure about.

Number one, I'm sure that we do not have uniformity in this room.

I'm positive.

When I say uniformity, I mean we all think the same thing.

We all believe the same thing, we all see things the same way.

We don't have that.

You can find that in a church if you want.

You can find a church where everyone votes the same.

You can find a church where everybody comes from the same place, everybody is the same, same culture, same, but we have a very diverse church.

We have a diverse church uh racially, culturally, we have a diverse church in terms of age.

We're not all the same.

I mean, we have a breadth of age.

Um, people come from different places, they think different ways.

We have a variety of different personalities, predispositions.

There's all, I mean, it is a diverse place.

So within that, which by the way, we believe isn't just a cool idea or a photo op, we believe is actually at the epicenter of the new covenant.

What Jesus intended, which is why we're willing to fight for it.

But we are under no illusion that it's easy.

And in times like this is when it's extremely difficult because of the intensity of the different perspectives.

So I'm 100% confident that everyone in this room is not uniform.

Let me give you a quick stat, okay, and this has been this has been out there a lot.

Roe versus Wade was 1973, it's been about 50 years, 63 million abortions in that 50 years.

In this room, next to brothers and sisters in Christ who love God, believe Jesus, are full of the Spirit that raised Christ from the dead, look at that number differently.

Some people look at 63 million and they see 63 million deaths and lives that never had a chance to live.

And then others see 63 million unique situations and women that were empowered over their own body to be able to make a decision.

So there's not uniformity in this room, and chances are you already knew that.

If you weren't willing to sit next to somebody who's a bit different than you, you probably already left.

So I know there's not uniformity.

The second thing I'm 100% confident is that it is at the heart and the will of God that his church be unified.

What does that mean?

We're gonna talk about it.

The third thing is that the highest ethic and the highest priority is agape love.

What does that mean?

We're gonna talk about it.

I'm gonna give you three names.

Who we're gonna learn from today.

We're gonna learn from uh Jesus, we're gonna learn from Paul, and we're gonna learn from Rodney.

You're like, who's Rodney?

Stay tuned.

Let's start with Jesus.

Okay, so one of the things that I would say we probably all have in common is that we we we want to have something solid in the middle of change.

Change is always happening, the world's changing, new things are happening, but you have to have something that grounds you, you have to have values, you have to have something that doesn't change, right?

How do I one of the ways I navigate change is by knowing what doesn't change.

So I start with that, and so we would say in this church, we are people of the word, we are people of God's word.

And here's what I want to say to you with that amen to that, brother.

But at the second thing is this be careful in your handling of the word.

When I say that, I say it like this there are over 31,000 verses in the Bible.

Over 31,000.

If you want to find a verse to confirm something you already believe, you can find it.

You you can find within the 31,000 plus verses, you can find a verse, you can isolate it, and you can make it say pretty much anything you want.

So whatever you believe, okay?

So you've got to be careful, you've got to understand and approach the Bible the right way.

The Bible, let's just say it out loud, it is 66 books written by many, many authors over thousands of years.

Um, some of the some of the writings are principles, some of them are probabilities, some of them are narratives where you have to really look at it and you got to sit with it to find the salient point.

And you could misunderstand the narrative.

There's a lot to it.

Humble geniuses who love Jesus don't agree on interpretations of certain things.

So to understand, you can't just meme and put a verse under it and go, enough said, argument over.

You can't do that.

And this is why I'm gonna tell you if you're expecting me to just be the first to meme every time something crazy happens or something big happens in the world, I'm going to disappoint you.

Because when things happen, oftentimes there are things I know about, and and and again, I'm encouraging you to maybe think similarly, there are things I know about, but now they're coming to the front of my mind.

And yet I think some things, it's it's disrespectful to just put it in one sentence.

There's a lot, there's a lot of complexity.

And so to sit there and to think about it in its totality, it takes time to do that.

Takes space to do that, to say, Lord, search me and help me know, okay?

Help me see this the way that you see it.

So here's what I would say to you, and this is sort of a simple statement.

But I would say the greater, a greater understanding of God's word, if you're a person of the word, a greater understanding of God's word, should lead you to a greater understanding of God's heart.

They had the same issue with Jesus, by the way, in in John 8, when Jesus was talking about God the Father, and they said, Well, you know, in a different text, they say, Show us the Father, we'll be satisfied.

He said, If you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

So when we want to understand the heart of God, we look at Jesus and what he did.

So in John 8, Jesus, uh I preached this last year, so I'm not gonna go way into it, but Jesus and the woman with caught in the act of adultery.

He's with this woman, she's been brought out in the public square.

They brought him out, it says explicitly in the text, they brought her out to trap Jesus in a catch-22.

You can't win.

The law says she's done a bad thing.

The law says that she should die.

So they use the the moral law and the judicial law, and they say, What do you say, Jesus?

And so they they think they've got him, you know, caught up, and and yet Jesus, you know, he he takes a knee, he slows everything down.

They're trying to hammer him for an answer.

They says they demanded an answer.

They kept demanding, what do you say?

What do you say?

We got him, finally we got him, you know.

And Jesus is writing in the ground, who knows what he was writing.

He gets on this woman's level and he's connected with her in her in her low place of humiliation, uh, maybe regret, and he's there with her, and and then he hits them with the just the one-two of all time.

He's like, Okay, yeah, yeah, exactly.

She did a terrible thing, she should die.

He without sin cast the first stone.

Count of three.

One, two, three.

Oh, no rocks?

Okay.

And they all kind of walk away, and then he's there with this woman, and then the conversation gets really interesting because he said, Where are your accusers?

Did no one stay to accuse you?

She says, No, Lord.

And then he says, Neither do I.

Which, if I'm listening to that, that might be a bit confusing.

Because if you're hiding behind a tree listening to this conversation, and you're like, you're like, wait a second, why wouldn't he condemn adultery?

Is he condoning it?

Because that's a bad thing.

You cheated on somebody.

I mean, you you hurt people.

So what do you mean you don't condemn?

So he says, I don't condemn you, and then he says, Go and sin no more, which is I think, you know, the Bible says in John 1, Jesus came full of grace and full of truth.

So go and sin no more is like he calls it a sin, but he also doesn't condemn her.

But it kind of almost raises a bit of a problem.

Like, how can God show love and grace to a sinner without being unjust, without breaking his own law.

And yet what what we're seeing is the heart of God, you understand that Jesus got there with this woman, and when he got on her level, he start he understood the complexity.

Everybody else saw it as an issue.

They saw it as an issue.

Adultery, bad.

And yes, adultery is bad.

Jesus doesn't say adultery's good, but at the same time, he doesn't condemn the woman in an almost uncomfortable way.

And so we see the heart of God that he understands of the 63 million, he understands every single name and every single story and every nuance and what's going on here and what happened there, and how did this even happen?

And it's not as simple as like, well, if you don't want to raise it, keep it in your pants.

And so that's John 8.

John 13, John 13, Jesus says something fairly provocative.

He says in John 13, he says, I give you a new commandment.

Okay, now he's talking to people who love the law, who were all about the 613 commands.

He said, I got a command for you.

Here's a this new command I give you, love one another.

How can you do that?

Some of you tried to do it with your kids, they weren't acting right.

Love him, you know.

It was like, eh, no.

Love her.

No, you how do you command love?

He says, I command, love one another.

As I have loved you, you must also love one another.

By by this, everyone will know you're my disciples that you love one another.

He's not saying, hey, fall, I'm not commanding you to fall in love.

He's he's talking about a whole different definition of love and that it was it is within your grasp to love each other.

And he said, by the way, it's so it's so abnormal that if you do it, if you love in that way, people will take notice and they'll go, that makes sense.

By this, all people will know that you're my disciples, that you love each other like that.

So if you love each other like that, it won't be that you're more right than everybody else, or you got the best bumper sticker, or that you got the best meme.

It will be that you love, that you're able to love when it's really, really, really, really, really hard.

And he makes it, he we'll call it the law of love.

He elevated, he puts it way up here.

Then John 17, John 17 is what's known as the high priestly prayer.

This is Jesus prays this prayer for his disciples and for us, actually, right before he goes to the cross.

So at the beginning of the prayer, he's praying to God the Father, and he's praying for you know Peter, James, and John and Andrew and all these guys.

And then he says in verse 20, I'm praying this not only for these disciples, but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message.

That's us.

So did you know that Jesus prayed for you and me right before he went to the cross?

Well, what did he pray?

Verse 21, I pray that they will be one.

I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one.

As you were in me, Father, and I am in you, may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.

That is a mouthful, but he is essentially saying, when we catch the heart of the Father, and when we when we love, it will lead to unity.

Unity.

Well, what what does that mean?

How do you how are you unified in the real world?

We're not just in platitudes like, oh yeah, love, man, just love.

What how do you do this?

Well, let's keep reading.

So we get into the book of Acts, which is the historical narrative of the early church, and there's a few main characters.

One of them is the Apostle Paul, who in Acts 15 shows us how to screw this up.

And so in Acts 15, they have just come through the first missionary journey where they've gone into hostile territory and started Jesus communities, and now they're like, let's go back and let's encourage them.

Now, on the first missionary journey, a guy named John Mark left them in the middle of the journey, and Paul most likely said, John Mark, if you leave, if we come back, you ain't coming for round two.

You don't rejoin the caravan.

If you leave now, it's done.

And John Mark's like, I'm out.

Well, they get to the second trip, and now Barnabas, who's related to John Mark, says, Let's take, let's take John Mark with us, Paul.

Paul's like, no, absolutely not.

And they get in an argument.

And by the way, I can make both arguments.

I could get on both sides of the argument.

Come on, Paul.

Come on, man.

It's just, you're the grace guy, okay?

You're always talking about grace.

Everybody makes mistakes.

He was a young guy.

He did a dumb thing.

He's grown.

Okay, at this point, he's grown up a bit.

Let's give him a second chance.

Come on, man.

Everybody deserves a second chance.

Somebody gave you a second chance.

Okay, I can go there.

I can go with Paul, like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I don't care what you say, I watch what you do.

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me.

I don't hear promises, I look at patterns.

And I saw, okay, so I can go there too.

Bottom line, they both had a good argument.

They argued with each other.

Verse 39 says, their disagreement was so sharp that they separated.

Paul and Barnabas are like this.

They are tight, they are close friends.

Barnabas is Paul's mentor, and yet they got so angry about it and they got so locked into their perspective, they said, essentially, we're not preaching the gospel together anymore.

You go your way, I'll go mine, I'm done, and they split.

That's AD 50.

In AD 62, Paul writes to the Philippians.

And when he writes to the Philippians with 12 more years of maturity in Philippians chapter 2, Philippians chapter 2, okay, Paul says this.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention Philippians 2 · chapter mention

He says, Therefore, if any of you have any any encouragement in being united in Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded.

Understand what like-minded means.

Like-minded doesn't mean we all think all the same thoughts.

He's speaking of unity.

Like-minded means unified.

So he's not saying we should all agree on everything.

He's not saying we should all, we should be monolithic.

He's not saying that.

He's saying we be like-minded, be unified, having the same love, being of one spirit of one mind.

Well, how the world would I do that, Paul?

Verse 3.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.

Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking out for your own interest, but for the interest of others.

Then in Philippians 4, okay, he literally is helping them settle a dispute between two women who he knew well, who had been a part of presenting the gospel, who are now having, they've had a falling out.

They've had a falling out.

And so he writes in Philippians 4, 2 and 3, he said, I plead with you, yo, you.

Uodia and I plead with you, Sintichi, to be of the same mind in the Lord.

Be of the same mind.

Again, he's not saying don't disagree.

He's saying find unity.

In fact, he says in the NLT, he says, please, because you belong to the Lord, settle your disagreement.

Settle your disagreement.

He's not saying don't disagree.

He's not saying that you have to all think the same thing.

He's saying settle your disagreement.

And then the next thing he says, verse 3, he said, I ask you as a true companion, please help these women, since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel.

Or he says, they have worked hard with me in telling others the good news.

Now I want you to connect this dot.

This is a hidden gem in the New Testament.

You have Paul, who 12 years earlier said, You know what, Barnabas, I like my point so much, I'm willing to lose you over it.

If you read the rest of his writings, Paul is actually vouching for John Mark in the epistles.

In his last writing, 2 Timothy 4, in his 2 Timothy, in the last chapter 4, in less than a year before Paul dies, he says, Bring John Mark to me.

He had become wiser over the years of going, you know, we can disagree and yet still maintain unity to the point that in his dying days, he's wanting to make sure John Mark knows.

You matter more to me than my point.

And in a sense, it feels a lot like John 8 and Jesus getting down, going, you know, you you matter more to me.

I'm gonna get here with you.

Now, I'm not going to I'm not going to be uh lack courage or I'm not going to withhold truth, but at the same time, I'm going to value, I'm going to understand the heart of the Father.

So in Philippians 4, Paul tries to help these two women see a perspective that he wishes he would have had 12 years before.

Who the heck is Rodney?

Rodney is Rodney Stark.

He wrote a book called The Rise of Christianity.

If you want to read a really dry book, a very good but dry book.

The rise of Christianity.

He's a sociologist and a historian.

So obviously, you can't always explain spiritual things with human terms, but it's not sacrilegious to look at social science.

It's not sacrilegious to look at in human human things and human actions and human terms, and that's what he does.

And throughout the book, he makes a whole lot of points, and I do not have time to tell you all of it, but what I'll summarize is he talks about in the first few centuries why did the church explode?

Why did Christianity explode?

And it came down to three things.

The first one was courage.

You have a group of people who, when Jesus was crucified, were terrified.

They went into hiding.

And yet when Jesus was resurrected, they had unbelievable courage.

They were willing to go anywhere.

There was no stopping them.

And so then they launch out to the ends of the earth.

And so there was nothing that would intimidate them.

They had an eternal mind.

They weren't afraid of death.

They weren't afraid of being martyred.

They really knew their life was transcendent.

They really knew that their life was about more than just what happened here on earth.

So they had an uncommon courage.

The second was compassion.

And this was big because up to that point, every globalized movement was built on the love of power.

So you had the Egyptians, you had the Romans, you had these empires, you had these rulers, okay?

You had obviously when Paul was writing the epistles, you have Nero, you had the Babylonians, the Assyrians, you had all these people that were trying to dominate the world, and yet Jesus says, I got a global movement.

I'm sending you out to love people.

I'm sending you out with the good news.

And so it wasn't built on the love of power, it was built on the power of love.

And so what they start doing is doing things no one had ever done.

They're going into different cultures and loving people.

They're going into leper colonies, and they were loving lepers when lepers had been put on the outside.

And so some of these lepers survived.

And when they survived, they said, I'm on that team now.

And so everything started growing because of their compassion.

And then the last one was humility.

Humility.

Humility, which is a beautiful trait.

It's a beautiful trait.

You can be fake, humble, but eventually people are going to sniff you out.

The gospel of Jesus Christ should produce humility every time.

A humble person.

Why?

Well, the essence of the gospel is that I owed a debt I was unable to pay, that I'm a sinner and I fall short of God's glory.

And yet, uh, because of what Jesus has done for me, not what I've done for myself, I've not earned it.

It's not by work, so no one can boast.

But because of what Jesus has done, now he's given me forgiveness and he's given me freedom and he's given me grace.

And then he's given me grace in place of grace, already given, and now he's given me a purpose and he's given me his spirit.

All of this creates humility, a humble person.

So it went nuts for centuries.

They went out.

That's what Rodney said.

Uh often we're looking for something new.

I think every once in a while it's worth peeking back to the first, second, and third century to look at what they did.

Courage, compassion, humility.

Courage.

If I'm only courageous and I lack compassion and humility, I might go run people over instead of actually having the ability or the willingness to stand back and be humble, humble and compassionate as I speak the truth, or what I believe to be the truth, or what I believe to be the heart of God.

And I think if you take any one of these out, the movement is different.

I find myself looking at those three and going, which one do I need more of?

So, okay, Greg, you're talking about love and you're talking about unity and all this, and you're talking about courage and compassion and humility, and let's use this Roe versus Wade as the current thing we're gonna talk about.

How would this affect?

Okay, what what is what is this what does this mean?

Well, I actually think I think there's some people right now who, based on their point of view, feel tremendous energy around injustices or or or their principles.

And yet I think maybe not willing to look fully at all and to find the compassion that's available to you.

If you want to be compassionate, in other words, if you want to see through someone's lens, God and life will hand you lots of opportunities to do that if you'll take it.

I'll give you one.

This will probably upset a few people, but why else would you come to church?

I think there was one we just had that regardless of listen, okay, regardless of where you fall politically, you had a golden opportunity, you still have a golden opportunity to really see through someone's lens, even like not just head, brain, but heart, like ah, I get how you feel that.

And here it is.

Okay, pro-choice, pro-life, pro-life would say we value the unborn child, we value the mother, but we value the unborn child more.

So we're gonna tell this woman who's pregnant that you you gotta carry this baby.

Okay, that that that's what you think is the is the right thing to do.

And over here was say, you should we shouldn't be able to tell a woman what she does with her own body.

Well, how could I how could I see that other person's perspective?

Well, you know, we just had a pandemic.

Within the pandemic, people were like, we had masks and vaccines.

And we actually had, you know, and I know these are generalities, but we just had people that would say right now, no one could make we're saying no one can make me have a vaccine, or no one can make me wear a mask.

We had people that left our church because we said, you gotta wear a mask during these months.

I'm out.

No one's making me wear a mask.

I have individual rights.

So that person then says to women, some of whom are carrying their father's baby, uncle's baby, or uh a rapist baby.

They're saying to you, I'm telling you what to do with your body now.

You go, yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but I'm not saying we're not in the head brain right now.

We're talking about what is the heart.

To go, I under I I can actually understand.

I I don't want to be told what to do with my body.

I don't want to make it so that you make me do this.

And by the way, it's always easy to go, yeah, yeah, they're hypocrites, they're hypocrites, they're hypocrites.

But you know, David prayed, search me, O Lord, so you can jump to the other side as well and go, the same people that said, Yeah, for the greater good, you should wear a mask or you should get a vaccine.

Why?

Well, I'm not worried about dying.

Well, yeah, no, it's for the those among you, the weak among you, the sick among you, the elderly among you, you should get it for them because you're a good citizen, because you care about somebody other than yourself.

And that same group of people says, What about my individual rights?

What I'm saying is it's not necessarily exactly apples to apples, but that's not the goal.

The goal is compassion.

The goal is actually, instead of just demonizing everybody on the other side and everybody that thinks differently than me, and all the evils over there, and all the wrong thinkings over there, and it's totally black and white, to actually go, you know, I actually know what it's like to feel that in some way.

I've tasted that perspective.

I I feel it.

So so that that's sitting right there.

I I would say with, and again, we all go, we can see the hypocrisy in others.

We've got to see it in our in myself.

Do I do I even want to feel that?

Do I even want to get that?

Or do do I just want to be right?

How do we as a church, by the way, how do we do, how do we live in unity, how do we live in compassion, how do we do this for people that come through these doors?

I don't I I don't have time to give you all of it, but I'm gonna start, and maybe you finish it in your car or at home or in your own mind, your prayer closet, however you do it.

But I will give you a few.

Uh we we have a lady, a lady, you know, a few weeks ago, I preached on the tale of two daughters, and I said then, I was before this thing even happened, I said, I think we should care about unborn babies, and I also think we should care about the women who carry them, and I think we should care about the whole thing.

Jesus says to Jairus, I know you care about your daughter, but what about mine?

The one lady he calls daughter, okay.

We had that I had that conversation.

And a lady, I met her recently after that, and she said, Hey, I appreciate you, I appreciate what you're doing.

She goes, but here's my thing.

I I have a sister who was raped, who had an abortion, and I just need I'm curious if she comes here, how's she gonna be treated?

Is she gonna be loved?

Is she gonna be cared about?

And by the way, by the way, by the way, here's a stat.

14.4 out of 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44.

So imagine this room is a thousand people, women 15 to 44.

Last year, 14.4 of them had an abortion in our country.

When I read that stat, I thought, hey, we got we got over a thousand women in our church between those ages.

It's probably 14.4 if the stat holds true, maybe, maybe more, maybe less, I don't know, that are here.

This lady's asking me, what how is she gonna be treated?

You know, and I'm like, she's safe here.

By the way, we have a just so you know, if that if that is you, if you're here, you had the courage to show up today, having no idea what I was gonna say, if I was even gonna talk about this or not.

We have a group for you.

We have a community for you.

We have uh a community of women who have lost their babies either naturally or who have had abortions.

The group is actually led by a woman who had an abortion.

And so we're here for you.

And if you're in that group, I want you to know we care about you.

Go to our website right now, one dot church slash groups, and find a community.

But I say to this woman, I'm like, listen, we have people all over the map that think all these different things, but your sister's welcome here.

Your sister's gonna be loved here, your sister, nobody's looking to judge her and and and and to push her down.

And then I walked away from that conversation and I thought, I hope I'm right.

I hope I'm right.

Did I just overpromise under something we're gonna under deliver as a community?

Are we that strong?

Do we have the heart of God that much?

Not not not to be wishy-washy with our principles and our values and all that, not that, but to go.

When you put somebody in front of us, they're gonna feel love, they're gonna feel capacity, they're gonna have somebody that cares enough to understand the whole story.

And that really the answer is up to us, because you're the church.

I'm the we we are the church, it's not just it's not just me, it's us.

Is that the is that what you believe the church is supposed to be?

I do.

I do.

Um, what do we do?

I I think I think our church has done a lot with foster care and has done a lot with adoption and all this within our state.

You know, we got an award a couple years ago because of the stuff we've done at Christmas, but I think it's time to call them back too and go, what what is there any, what else can we do?

I mean, I know these aren't simple solutions, but go, what is what is courage, compassion, humility?

It's courage to believe what I really believe is aligned with the heart of the Father, but it's also it's Jesus in John 8, it's the person in front, and going, what is our part?

What is my sliver?

What can I do to not just call this a win?

Because a win is the scoreboard's at zero and the game's over, the battle's over.

No, in many ways, what's happening is the beginning of the new season, which is if over 50 years 63 million abortions happen, if in the next 50 years 63 million abortions don't happen, of course, that's not gonna happen like that exactly.

But let's say there's less.

What are we going to do?

What are you going to do?

What am I going to do if I believe that that's the best thing?

And that's at the heart of God.

What am I going to do with those lives that come in the world?

That's a good story to go, God, what's my what's my part and what's yours?

And to care that much about all of that instead of going, oh, cool, game over.

Fight over, battle over.

No, no, not not if you understand the heart of the Father.

Not if you understand the heart of the Father.

So here's what I want us to do.

I want us to take a moment, allow the Lord to speak to us individually.

Maybe there's something that needs rearranged in our minds or our hearts.

Or maybe even this moment is about sort of taking yourself through these things and going, Lord, is there anything here whether I maybe I need more courage, maybe I need more compassion, or maybe I need more humility that you give me?

And allow God to speak to each one of us.

Let's let's just take a moment.