Make The Church Weird Again Part 4 | Pastor Joshua Gay

[SPEAKER_00]: High Praise Podcasts.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey everybody, this is Pastor Josh.

[SPEAKER_00]: We'll leave Pastor here at High Praise and I want to thank you for downloading today's podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: We know that this message is going to encourage and bless you.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I want you to open up your heart and proceed with the Lord as for you today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Grab your Bible, go to 1 Corinthians chapter 1, 1 Corinthians chapter 1.

1 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention 1 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_00]: While you're turning there, we're going to read this scripture again at 1 Peter 2.

[SPEAKER_00]: If y'all want to throw that on the screens for me first Peter chapter 2, thank you, verse 9, out of the good old King James, but ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a what, alright y'all alright sure, oh what, a peculiar people, look

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_00]: that you should show forth the praises of him who had called you out of darkness into his marvelous light which in time passed were not a people but are now the people of God which had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't been here we've been in this series entitled Make The Church Weird Again.

[SPEAKER_00]: And God is calling us, I believe this is what He's doing in this day and in this hour.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is calling us out of our comfortable Christianity into a bold, set apart faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is calling us out of what we and a lot of us have been raised in conventionally to think that the church is, which is something we do on Sunday, separate out from the rest of our lives, to go and check it off our list and make sure that we don't go to hell one day.

[SPEAKER_00]: And fulfill our religious obligation.

[SPEAKER_00]: so that we make grandma happy because grandma grew up in church and grandma told us right before she died that she wanted to make sure we serve God so we can see her and have and so we think by coming to church once a week that somehow that fulfills our role as Christians but what you are called to be is as a Christian doesn't just feel your Sunday and by Sunday for some of y'all I mean Sunday from 9 a.m.

[SPEAKER_00]: till 10 30

[SPEAKER_00]: and then one Wednesday a month.

[SPEAKER_00]: for feels your Christianity.

[SPEAKER_00]: This life is something you are called to live at every moment, at every waking hour.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is not something that is part of who you are.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is who you are, that you are a Christian, that you are a follower of Christ, that you are set apart, that you are holy, that you are chosen, and that you are peculiar as well, which makes you just a little bit,

[SPEAKER_00]: Weird, so by saying a little bit weird.

[SPEAKER_00]: So in the first week, we talked about being peculiar on purpose.

[SPEAKER_00]: We learned that we're chosen to stand out of peculiar people.

[SPEAKER_00]: That we're to display God's glory, that we aren't meant to blend in the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: In week two, we talked about the upside-down life, the upside-down kingdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: We discovered that Jesus takes the values of the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he flips them on their head, which is found in the Beatitudes.

[SPEAKER_00]: And to follow Jesus, to live a blessed life, means to live contrary to our culture's expectations.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus calls the poor, the meek, and the persecuted blessed.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, y'all responded, just like y'all did that Sunday.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then in week three, which was actually two weeks ago, we talked about the supernatural church.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we saw that the church is a spirit empowered people that God moves through supernatural power through healing and miracles, making us wonderfully weird in the world that only believes in the natural, we believe in the supernatural.

[SPEAKER_00]: We believe that God does things bigger than what the world can ever think, hope, or even imagine.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, how many believe he's a supernatural God still?

[SPEAKER_00]: Each week, this message is becoming more and more clear that we are not called to live a life of the status quo.

[SPEAKER_00]: that we are aliens, and we are strangers, but we are here on purpose to display the kingdom in a world that is journeying for the kingdom of God to be manifested.

[SPEAKER_00]: Today, first Corinthians chapter one, verse 18, we're gonna talk about mind-bending faith and living the crucified life, which I know makes everybody excited.

[SPEAKER_00]: When you talk about living a crucified life, everybody goes bless God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here we go.

[SPEAKER_00]: First Corinthians one, 18, it's a good thing you'll said all the nice things about me before the message.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm playing it.

[SPEAKER_00]: First Corinthians one, 18, for them it's as Paul talking, for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who were perishing.

[SPEAKER_00]: But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

[SPEAKER_00]: Where is the wise?

[SPEAKER_00]: Where is the scribe?

[SPEAKER_00]: Where is the disputer of this age?

[SPEAKER_00]: Has God not made foolish the wisdom of this world?

[SPEAKER_00]: For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God to the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe, produce, request the sign, and Greek seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified.

[SPEAKER_00]: We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews, a stumbling block, and to the Greek's foolishness

[SPEAKER_00]: But to those who were called, both Jews and Greek, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God, get this because the foolishness of God is wiser than men.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the weakness of God is stronger than men.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's pray, Father, we thank you for this word today.

[SPEAKER_00]: We thank you if something good to say to us this morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: We thank you for all of us that are gathered here today.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're here on purpose.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're here on your timing on your plan.

[SPEAKER_00]: Your words as a righteous man steps are ordered of the Lord and you ordered our steps to be here today.

[SPEAKER_00]: I thank you Lord this morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: You will annoy my tongue is out already in skillful writer to speak for your words of life, exhortation, edification, comfort to your people.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for all of us in this room.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, our ears to hear, our hearts to receive and our spirits to respond to what you're saying to us in Jesus' name.

[SPEAKER_00]: And everybody says,

[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul begins to make this point clear that the wisdom of God's kingdom turns worldly wisdom on his head.

[SPEAKER_00]: The cross itself is the most beautiful and perfect example of this.

[SPEAKER_00]: It appears as absolute foolishness.

[SPEAKER_00]: to the natural mind, to unbelievers, to the people of that day, it seems completely counterintuitive, it seems foolish, it seems insane, that the one who is supposed to be the king,

[SPEAKER_00]: was killed and was crucified by people that the one who was called the deliverer chose to embrace the cross, that the way that he chose to defeat death was by his own death.

[SPEAKER_00]: that He is beaten, and He is bruised, that the chastisement of the world is placed upon Him, that all of this happens, and whenever the church looks at that, we say, that's our guy.

[SPEAKER_00]: That when the church looks at it, we still look at that picture and go, that's my savior.

[SPEAKER_00]: That whenever we see a cross, we don't simply see an instrument of destruction and torture.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what we see is salvation, what we see is power, what we see is life, what we see is freedom, now and forever more.

[SPEAKER_00]: It seems like complete foolishness.

[SPEAKER_00]: That what was used to kill criminals and insurrectionists and violent people.

[SPEAKER_00]: and thieves and robbers that our king chose to embrace that, that no one could take his life, but that he willingly laid it down in this awful form of torture, why in order to proclaim an accomplished victory from the very beginning, the gospel has been counterintuitive.

[SPEAKER_00]: hear me.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you're trying to make your Christianity work in the world, it ain't gonna happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: because what we preach is foolishness to the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: What we believe is foolishness to the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: The life we choose to believe doesn't, we choose to lead, doesn't make sense to the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: The life that we choose to lead seems absolutely upside down and messed up and like it doesn't make any sense because the way of Christ it can fowl the wisdom of the wise.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it says that God's wisdom is better.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then the wisdom of the world, and we've had people that have thought things like, well, yeah, Jesus was crucified, so that I don't have to be.

[SPEAKER_00]: Where does it say that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus says, if any man desires to follow me, how many desire to follow Jesus today?

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, tell me all like I don't know the answer, because I'm going to see how you finish this.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know the Bible that well.

[SPEAKER_00]: If any man desires to follow me, let him do this, deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

[SPEAKER_00]: That makes us weird.

[SPEAKER_00]: In a world that says you do you, baby.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come on.

[SPEAKER_00]: In a world that says you do what makes you feel good.

[SPEAKER_00]: In a world that this has, you need to live your truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever that means, like truth is some relative thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: You need to live your truth, baby.

[SPEAKER_00]: You need to do it, makes you feel good.

[SPEAKER_00]: You need to follow your heart, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Please do not follow your heart.

[SPEAKER_00]: The scripture says the heart is deceitful above all things, but that's one of the things altogether.

[SPEAKER_00]: do it makes you feel good.

[SPEAKER_00]: If I followed my heart, I probably would not be up in this pulpit today.

[SPEAKER_00]: If I followed my heart, I would post some things that I don't need to post.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anybody with me come on?

[SPEAKER_00]: If I just followed my heart, I would probably say some things to some people I didn't need to say.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[SPEAKER_00]: If I would follow my heart, I would return evil for evil.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if I followed my heart, I would just spout off all the time and people could just deal with it because I need to get it out of my system.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Jesus says, if you want to follow me, then what you have to do is all of those things that you wanna do, then what you do is you deny yourself those things and you take up your cross, which once again, he's actually telling this before he even dies.

[SPEAKER_00]: peri goes with the cross and he's telling them, you want to live and you want to follow me, you know that thing that they're crucifying people on the side of the road, you gotta pick that thing up.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you have to follow me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've heard this before in this, so, Jesus did not die, so you wouldn't have to.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus died to show you how to.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus did not take up a cross, so you wouldn't have to.

[SPEAKER_00]: He took up a cross in order to show you how to take up your cross.

[SPEAKER_00]: God delights in using what the world's calls foolish.

[SPEAKER_00]: What he calls lowly, think about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever he calls his apostles, the first couple he calls are uneducated, lowly fishermen.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna start something that's gonna change the planet.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is gonna split time.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the first place I'm going to get some people that are gonna carry this message forward whenever I'm gone, I'm going to the fish and duck.

[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't go to the Roman court.

[SPEAKER_00]: He went to the fishing docks.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, follow me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll make you fish.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those are the people.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those are some of his closest followers.

[SPEAKER_00]: Two of them are part of the three Peter James John, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: They're part of the inner circle of Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: He goes to the docks and says, these are the guys.

[SPEAKER_00]: they're going to change or it's counterintuitive.

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't make sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: God chooses the nobody's to shame the somebody's.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna say it again.

[SPEAKER_00]: God chooses the nobody's to shame the somebody's.

[SPEAKER_00]: It ensures that no flesh can boast in his presence.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you've had people tell you and your life, you're a nobody.

[SPEAKER_00]: You ain't ever going to amount to nothing.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have anything going for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: You grew up on the wrong side of the tracks.

[SPEAKER_00]: You were born into the wrong family.

[SPEAKER_00]: Your skin color wasn't right.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have enough money in your bank account.

[SPEAKER_00]: Congratulations.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are qualified to be a somebody in the kingdom of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: If somebody's ever called you a nobody, God shows up and calls you a somebody because once again, his wisdom is greater than the wisdom of man or y'all with me this morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are a people who can only brag on the Lord on human cleverness.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the eyes of skeptics, our radical obedience.

[SPEAKER_00]: often looks like insanity.

[SPEAKER_00]: God uses the fishermen.

[SPEAKER_00]: He uses the shepherd boy with a sling dislayer giant.

[SPEAKER_00]: He uses the bear in woman to accomplish his plan in his will.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our faith is meant to be peculiar.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is meant to be a little bit weird.

[SPEAKER_00]: And at some point, if the church really wants to do our job, we have to stop trying to fit our faith into a culture that we are not a part of.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are called to be a kingdom people.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are called to live as foreigners and aliens and strangers.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you neatly fit into the world, and you go, yeah, this basically feels like Christianity, you're wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: What the world propagates is not the way of Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if we can just fit ourselves into it and feel comfortable, and what we really do is we take our values and we try to make our values theology.

[SPEAKER_00]: You got real quiet here.

[SPEAKER_00]: But at the end of the day, the theology stands.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we build everything else upon that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Christ sends and we build everything else upon that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what we have tried to do is take what we believe and make Jesus agree with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not the way this works.

[SPEAKER_00]: We believe what Jesus said even when it doesn't make sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll talk about this the first week.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus told us this to forgive our enemies.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Can we be real?

[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all don't look at me in that tone of voice, y'all been in the same place.

[SPEAKER_00]: When somebody does me wrong, I'm not like a president, bless God.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so excited to forgive, been waiting for this all day, been waiting my whole life to forgive the person who talked bad about me and lied about me and did me dirty and stole money and whatever it might be for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: So excited for this opportunity.

[SPEAKER_00]: Praise God, this is what I was made for.

[SPEAKER_00]: But your Christianity is not called to fit into what you feel.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's called to be built upon what he said.

[SPEAKER_00]: I said it in worship, Jesus said it, that settles it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when Jesus says, forgive your enemy, you know what we've got to do?

[SPEAKER_00]: Forgive him.

[SPEAKER_00]: When he says, the love of those who do evil to you, do you know what you gotta do?

[SPEAKER_00]: You gotta love them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that fun?

[SPEAKER_00]: No.

[SPEAKER_00]: Does it mean you have to, I wanna make sure I'm clear.

[SPEAKER_00]: Does it mean you have to give them access to your life again and again?

[SPEAKER_00]: Of course not.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to give them access, but you do have to forgive them.

[SPEAKER_00]: You just love them from a distance, baby.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the real test of your forgiveness is whenever you run into them at Walmart.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, somebody.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Walmart already gets my blood pressure up just to begin with.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm already the pop-off when I'm in Walmart.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have two cards, and you're standing side by side in the aisle talking to each other, and I need to get through, I need y'all to move out of the way.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not the social hour coming here, get your groceries, go home.

[SPEAKER_00]: And while you're waiting for them to move, you see that person who talked bad about you.

[SPEAKER_00]: You see that person who did you roll.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you're already fresh, ready to do, you're already mad.

[SPEAKER_00]: What happens inside of you?

[SPEAKER_00]: I gotta keep going.

[SPEAKER_00]: I got a lot of notes to go.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's gonna get worse.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry.

[SPEAKER_00]: The early Christians were accused of turning the world upside down because they're message and their lifestyle changed the whole order of things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what the world calls upside down is right side up in God's reality.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus teachings, once again, we talked about it, introduced this upside down values as the last only first.

[SPEAKER_00]: The least is the greatest, lose your life to find it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now that makes sense!

[SPEAKER_00]: The mind of Christ, treasure, humility, sacrifice and the servanthood, virtues that the natural mind will dismiss as weakness.

[SPEAKER_00]: Humility, weak.

[SPEAKER_00]: We even do this with our sports stars, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, you know what gets us fired up?

[SPEAKER_00]: When our guy gets a 15-yard penalty.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's got the touchdown and he flexed a little bit too much.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, that's my guy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not the guy who drops to a knee when the other player gets hurt.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sacrifice, giving of yourself, serving hood.

[SPEAKER_00]: Throughout our history, revival movements were seen as foolish by onlookers, before their fruit was evident.

[SPEAKER_00]: We talked several weeks ago about the Azuzah Street revival in 1906, newspapers mocked the strange, ecstatic worship as a weird battle of tongues, and they claimed that no sane mortal could understand what was happening in these meetings.

[SPEAKER_00]: But those weird pinacosts, the believers, didn't mind the ridicule, because they knew

[SPEAKER_00]: The outsiders called them, quote, mad, mentally deranged and under a spell.

[SPEAKER_00]: The spirit was birthing a global outpouring that would ignite Christianity across racial and national lines.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have to understand, whenever we live in a way that looks the strangest to the world is when God is moving the most in our midst.

[SPEAKER_00]: Upside down with Demingzester, we're willing to be misunderstood.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you misunderstand me, that's fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't feel a need to explain myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't feel a need to adjust my life to be accepted by you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever your coworkers are going out somewhere and you're like, man, I got church, I can't go and they're like, that's weird.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's all right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever they're all wanting to go do something on Tuesday night, you're like, I'm committed to go serve it, celebrate recovery and be among people who are hurting and be among people who are broken and bear burdens with them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why would you waste your time doing that because that's the upside down life that we empty ourselves for others that we live our lives poured out for the sake of the kingdom and for other people?

[SPEAKER_00]: We embrace the foolishness.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I use that in air quotes, the foolishness of a Savior who conqueres by dying, trusting that God's weakness will always overpower human strength.

[SPEAKER_00]: If our faith seems mind-bending to the world, take heart, it has always been that way.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like that way when the early church, they were going, what are y'all doing?

[SPEAKER_00]: This doesn't make any sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: Rome was going, y'all seemed crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Jews were going, we want to kill you.

[SPEAKER_00]: You with me, the very strangeness of the gospel is this sign.

[SPEAKER_00]: It did not originate in the mind of man, but it originated in the heart and the wisdom of a God that beings our natural thinking into alignment with heaven.

[SPEAKER_00]: Romans 12 verse 2 tells us this, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Romans 12:2

[SPEAKER_00]: Hear me, true worship is not just songs on Sunday.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's offering our very lives to God and letting him reshape our minds and our desires.

[SPEAKER_00]: We yield ourselves on the altar so that our thinking, our values and our actions are wholly directed by God.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to hear me hear me hear me hear me hear me really well.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now this is a negative statement.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to qualify pre-qualify that by saying this.

[SPEAKER_00]: But my values don't come from my family.

[SPEAKER_00]: any more other than my family values were built upon Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: My values don't come from my nation.

[SPEAKER_00]: My values don't come from my political persuasion.

[SPEAKER_00]: My values don't come from the media.

[SPEAKER_00]: My values don't come from anything other than Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: His words, him crucified and him resurrected.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is what we are built upon and nothing else.

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you with me?

[SPEAKER_00]: If that's controversial, welcome to the weird.

[SPEAKER_00]: You with me, the world is always pressing us into this mold, but Scripture pleads with us do not conform.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have to resist the pressure to think and live like everyone else, because we belong to another kingdom with different standards, and understand transformation always starts in the mind.

[SPEAKER_00]: a mind renewed by the spirit of God learns to discern his will above all the noise of culture and culture makes a lot of noise.

[SPEAKER_00]: Culture has these voices saying, this is the way, this is the way, this is the way, this is the way, this is the way, this is right, this is right, this is wrong, that's wrong, this is bigoted, this is good, this is love, this is accepted, this is this, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that, this is that

[SPEAKER_00]: It amazes me how many of us haven't read the Bible.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you listen, I'm just gonna say this very quickly.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't read the Bible, that's okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not here to shame you, but you can pick it up and you can read it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, please do me a favor.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't go and start in Genesis.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just don't, amen.

[SPEAKER_00]: And certainly don't do this.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm gonna read this in reverse order.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna start in Revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't, you're gonna quit.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna stop three seconds in or there's a dragon and there's a great hole and I don't know what's happening.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is all confusing.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, you need to go get your Bible and go read Matthew Mark Luke and John.

[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.

[SPEAKER_00]: And after you've read Matthew Mark Luke and John, you know what I want you to do after that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to read it again.

[SPEAKER_00]: And after you've read that, you know what I want you to do?

[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to read it again.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then if you need to read it again, just go read the red letters and get to a point where Jesus' words are so deeply in you that you read the rest of Scripture through the lens of what he said, because if you don't read Scripture through the lens of Jesus, you will read it wrongly.

[SPEAKER_00]: I gotta keep going.

[SPEAKER_00]: You got to resist all those voices and go back to the one voice that matters, the voice of the Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: When we live in that way, we start to approve what pleases God, even if it clashes with popular opinion.

[SPEAKER_00]: God calls us higher to upgrade our thinking.

[SPEAKER_00]: We think differently so we can live differently.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't conform to the world's evil, but rather we live in non-conformity.

[SPEAKER_00]: to the world, which brings the presence and the protection of God, the early church in Rome defied the empire by saying, Jesus is Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've said this before to y'all, but so you may not have heard this.

[SPEAKER_00]: We say Jesus is Lord now and we think about that was on a banner in our church in our church in 1996 that somebody waived in the back.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Jesus is Lord was this expressly political statement in ancient Rome.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was political in this way.

[SPEAKER_00]: Caesar's called themselves Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not only that, they called themselves the Son of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: So whenever they show up in the early church and they say, Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, and Jesus is Lord, they're not just saying, Jesus is Lord, they're saying, Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're saying, Jesus is the Son of God, and Caesar is not.

[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't wanna kill them just because they preached real good and loved people.

[SPEAKER_00]: They wanted to kill them because everything that they said was an affront to the Roman Empire.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everything they said was an affront to its demonic systems of death.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everything they said confronted the principalities and powers that operated behind that thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as a result, they wanted to kill them for it because they were constantly being confrontational.

[SPEAKER_00]: And saying, Jesus is Lord, there were new minds couldn't call a man divine.

[SPEAKER_00]: And for that holy stubbornness they had many of them were martyred.

[SPEAKER_00]: They chose loyalty to Christ over everything else.

[SPEAKER_00]: When we think about through history and people who were a little bit weird and did some wild things in our history, I think about people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a pastor and theologian,

[SPEAKER_00]: A German pastor in theologian, if you can't tell by that name, during the rise of the Nazi regime.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as Hitler is rising to power, Bonhoeffer and the confessing church are pushing back constantly the entire time.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's rising to power.

[SPEAKER_00]: Constantly pushing back, he publicly challenged Nazi ideology and taught at the church must reject any government that demands what belongs to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Worship didn't belong to Adolf Hitler, Worship belonged to Jesus, and we worship no one other than him.

[SPEAKER_00]: We only worship Jesus, and obviously that did not blend well in Nazi Germany.

[SPEAKER_00]: In 1939, Bonhoffers actually in America.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was on his second excursion to America.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that correct, Casey?

[SPEAKER_00]: Pastor Casey knows a lot about Bonhoffers.

[SPEAKER_00]: And 1939 right on the brink of World War II breaking out, his friends were telling him, stay in America.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is getting bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't good.

[SPEAKER_00]: You'll be safe in America.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Bonhoeffer got on one of the last ships headed back to Germany before World War II breaks out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because he knew that the church needed him in Germany and he would be more good there than he could be in America.

[SPEAKER_00]: Can I just be, can we be really honest?

[SPEAKER_00]: For us, that doesn't make sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Bonhoeffer had to be true to what God told him to do, and he had to go follow the call back to Germany, despite the danger.

[SPEAKER_00]: The world's wisdom said save yourself.

[SPEAKER_00]: But God's wisdom in his heart said, give of yourself.

[SPEAKER_00]: Bonhoeffer showed that this transformed mind leads to a transformed life.

[SPEAKER_00]: He would not let fear or the Nazi culture shape his decisions.

[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, he followed the conviction of God, even when it meant facing imprisonment and ultimately death for resisting tyranny.

[SPEAKER_00]: To be not conform today, might mean not following the crowd and moral choices that they make.

[SPEAKER_00]: It might mean not following the crowd in entertainment choices that they make.

[SPEAKER_00]: It may mean not following the crowd in their definitions of what success looks like.

[SPEAKER_00]: It may mean not following the crowd in what they call priorities.

[SPEAKER_00]: And to be honest with you, compared to what people like the price that people like bun Humphrey paid, that's a small choice.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's a small choice.

[SPEAKER_00]: We think that our big things are massive, listen, there were people who died for being a little bit weird.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm asking if we can just live a little bit weird for Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever that looks like, whatever the Spirit leads you to do, however you live.

[SPEAKER_00]: And once again, it comes down to this, and I got a really hurry.

[SPEAKER_00]: It comes under this living that crucified life.

[SPEAKER_00]: We adapt the wisdom of God to live in this crucified life.

[SPEAKER_00]: Galatians 2 says this, I've been crucified with Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: To live that life is to adapt Paul's confession as our own.

[SPEAKER_00]: I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our old self with its ego and its agenda is nailed to the cross with Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now his resurrected life animates our every breath.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus makes everything, we need a 15, we need a 15 step discipleship plan.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus makes discipleship plan.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's your discipleship plan, reject what you want to do, do what he says, follow him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you with me?

[SPEAKER_00]: Following Jesus means dying to the right to run our lives on our own terms.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the daily cross is not forced upon us as chosen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Bonhoeffer, who I mentioned earlier, famously taught that when Christ calls a man, he bids him to come and die, which you'll see in every Christian bestselling book today.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's about your best life, 10 steps to getting everything you ever wanted.

[SPEAKER_00]: When Christ bids a man, he calls him to come and die.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think about people in our history like Watchmenney, a Chinese church leader who exemplified

[SPEAKER_00]: as the Communist rose to power in China, they obviously began to implement an atheistic ideology that always goes with communism, not just, this is the preferred, but this is the state mandate.

[SPEAKER_00]: And watch Mani, knowing it's better to obey God than man, amen, just like the church in the book of Acts said, what did he do?

[SPEAKER_00]: He chose to continue preaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he's imprisoned for 20 years by this communist regime because he refuses to renounce Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in spite of harsh labor, isolation, re-education they attempted to do, he kept the faith until his death.

[SPEAKER_00]: Telling a friend just before he died, I never gave up my belief.

[SPEAKER_00]: I never gave up my trust.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have faith in Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: When Watchmenese life ended at prison camp at 1972, he left behind a note.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that note in his cell said this, I maintain my joy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Think about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: 20 years in a prison camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: I maintain my joy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why?

[SPEAKER_00]: because he lived the crucified life.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because he lived that upside down kingdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because he knew at the end of the day that what he had done counted for the kingdom not just in this age, but then an age that is to come.

[SPEAKER_00]: The world tells you, get everything you can now.

[SPEAKER_00]: The kingdom says, we're not living for now.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're living for an age that is to come.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are pointing to a kingdom that is now, but not yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are living in it now and we believe in it one day.

[SPEAKER_00]: People like Watchmeni, the more people try to kill his faith, the more it's spread.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because you can't defeat and you can't kill a people who are already dead to themselves and alive to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to understand this because I know we talk about living crucified, they can feel heavy and all that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it is not doom and despair and gloom, it is resurrection and it is life to live the crucified life.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is resurrection and it is life to live in the wisdom of God, rather than the wisdom of man.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have no fear of losing reputation or fortune, can't scare people who have already surrendered everything to Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: The bottom line of this, in doing this is how we make the church weird again.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's how we are peculiar on purpose.

[SPEAKER_00]: The gospel is the power and the wisdom of God for salvation.

[SPEAKER_00]: That means this, we lay it all down.

[SPEAKER_00]: It means, say, Jesus, not my will, not my way.

[SPEAKER_00]: but your will and your way be done in my life and through my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: You want to be a history maker, you want to be somebody who changes the world, live like Christ, and watch what you understand your feet.

[SPEAKER_00]: Make sure you subscribe so you never miss a message here from High Braise.

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[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be back soon with another incredible message.

[SPEAKER_00]: God bless you and have a great week.