Rooted in Community | Colossians 4:7-18

Well, good morning, same city. It's good to see you guys today.

I before we get into the message, I just want to say

quickly. I'm so excited for this

Christmas season here. This is our inaugural Christmas

as a church plants. We've been living around for,

you know, a few months now, and to have our first Christmas

together feels like, you know, a chance to set a tradition.

I don't know if you've had that opportunity to like know what's

going to be our tradition, but at same city, I just can't wait

to share with you all that God's been doing and what he did at

Christmas by sending his son for us to be born.

But to have tradition start as a church family, it's such a

great, great and incredible opportunity.

Our service is going to be at 4:30 on Christmas Eve.

We'll have services on the Sundays before and after as

well. But hey, we just want to

celebrate the birth of Jesus with you and your friends and

your loved ones. So be sure to invite people.

We'll have invite cards after the service available for you

next week. I just want to highlight for

that for you, as well as two other quick things after

service, say at 1:30 PMA group of us are going to be heading

out. I hope you saw my e-mail where

you're heading out into the neighborhood here to just pray

and to scatter and to go about this neighborhood and to invite

God to do something special here in this neighborhood in

Gilliland. That there are almost 1500

people here, 600 homes that are right here for us to be a light

for Jesus too. And so we just want to steward

that well. So if you want to come be a part

of, go grab some lunch after the service, then come on back.

We'll be meeting that parking lot up at the front.

And so please come join us for Christmas outreach after church

today and be cheering on the Bears while you do so.

Please, Chicago Bears says, go ahead and turn your Bibles to

Colossians chapter 4. Colossians chapter 4.

Colossians 4 · chapter mention Colossians 4 · chapter mention

I'll meet you there in just a moment.

This is our last week of the series rooted in Rising.

We have been in this since early September.

We've been marching line by line, paragraph by paragraph,

verse by verse through this letter written to a group of

people in a town called Colossi. So this is our final section of

the letter. And so I'll be unpacking for you

in just a moment. But before we do, I just want to

bring you back to a time in my life that was in the 6th grade,

OK, We little boy. I was and I was in Frisco, TX.

I had moved from Illinois to Frisco, TX, where I knew nobody.

I know a single person in Frisco except for my brothers and my

parents. And I had to do the dreaded

thing that every middle school has to do.

I had to go to the first day of 6th grade, Not only have to do

the first day of 6th grade, I had to do it in a new state, not

only a new state, right? I got all these new people and

I'm like, oh man, 6th grade, I'm a little today.

I'm a pretty confident person by nature, but this, this pushed on

that for me. And I remember the experience.

I go to the lunch hall. It's it's early in the day.

We had lunch, like had a horrible hour for lunch.

These middle school schedules 6/10/30 in the morning.

OK. And I remember getting to the

lunch room and having that like panic moment in my brain, like,

why am I going to sit? Who do I want to sit with?

Oh, that, that table does not look like it's for me.

That table looks like I want to be at that table.

They don't look like they like me.

Oh, this seems like a good spot. There's enough people nearby

that don't look like the the loner.

But I kind of want to meet some people.

So I just remember sitting down by myself and having this

profound sense of loneliness. And I remember going man there's

so many people around me right now but I feel all alone.

I feel like there's nobody looking out for me here.

And I remember just like what is this feelings?

I got 3 little brothers. I'm not used to be feeling

lonely but they're at a cafeteria in Frisco, TX.

Was one of my first memories and experiences of being lonely.

When was the last time you felt the sting of loneliness?

It's a very human experience. It's deeply human.

All of us experience at some extent or more, you see.

But the thing about the experience is it has deeply

damaging side effects. Let me read a few of them for

you. That over One in three adults

say they feel slowly, frequently, or almost all the

time. One in three adults.

One in four adults report to having zero close friends.

That nearly 50% of Gen. C reports feeling lonely most of

the time. And those are all emotional

problems. But the thing about loneliness,

it doesn't just affect us emotionally, but physically.

That the current data actually says it's the equivalence, that

the experience of loneliness is the equivalence of smoking 15

cigarettes a day. It's a real problem.

But how does God's Word reveal to us a better way?

How does God help us move past loneliness and into

relationship, into community? See, I think He gives us right

here in Colossians chapter 4, an example to follow in the apostle

Colossians 4 · chapter mention

Paul, a person who could have experienced loneliness in the

midst of great ministry, but instead found family in the

midst of ministry and advancement.

He experienced the joy of being in true community.

Would you listen to God's words? It says this.

There's a bunch of names here, and you're saying confident.

When you read the Bible, by the way, you don't know how they're

pronounced. No, neither is anybody else.

He's reading confidently. They believe you.

OK, Certificates, verse 7. He'll tell you all about all my

activities. He is a beloved brother and a

faithful minister and fellow servants in the Lord.

I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know

how we are and that he may encourage your hearts.

And with him, Onissimus, our faithful and beloved brother,

who is one of you, they will tell you of everything that's

taken place here. Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner,

he greets you. And Mark, the cousin of

Barnabas, concerning whom you have received instructions.

If he comes to you, welcome him and Jesus, who is called

justice. These are the only men of the

circumcision among my fellow workers for the Kingdom of God,

and they have been a comfort to me.

And Patrice is one of you, a servant of crises.

He greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers,

that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of

God. For I bear in witness that he

has worked hard for you. And for those in the neighboring

towns, Laodicea and in Hierapolis, give my greetings to

the brothers of Laodicea, Antonympha and the church that

meets in her house. And when this letter has been

read among you haven't also read in the Church of the Laodiceans

and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea.

I said archivist, see that you fulfill the ministry that you've

received in the Lord. I, Paul, write the screen with

my own hand. Remember my chains grace be with

you. Those are God's words for us

today. I want to help you grab them for

your life. I want to help you apply them to

your life because not just knowing God's truths is

important, but also applying them to your life is where the

real life change, the real transformation for your

loneliness is going to happen. And here's a big idea.

This is what Paul's example teaches us is that my life needs

a community as much as it needs a cause.

My life needs a community. It needs people around me.

It needs committed relationships.

It needs this around me just as much as I need a cause, a

mission, a purpose for my life. I need people in my life.

Let me give you a definition of loneliness that comes from

author Susan Mattis. She says this loneliness is the

distress someone feels when their social relationships don't

meet their need for connection. Loneliness is the experience.

It's the distress someone feels when what they're looking for

socially amongst relationships, they're not getting those needs

met through people and that God's antidote for that is

people community committed life changing relationships that will

result in transformation for your life.

That's what God's antidote for us.

So how is that we participate in Gospel community?

How is it that we see that life change through these

relationships? I want to give you three ways to

fight loneliness, three ways to participate in Gospel community.

The 1st is this that I participate in community when I

first rely on God's charity through I participate in gospel

community. I participated in the community

when I rely on God to carry me through.

Go to the end of the letter. We're going to reverse over here

a little bit. We're going to start with this

portion that it says in verse 18.

I, Paul write this greeting with my own hand.

Remember my chains and grace be with you.

That phrase grace be with you is it should be ringing in your

eardrums about how most letters from Paul starts and this one's

no exception. Chapter one verse one says this.

Let me read it back to you. It says that sorry, it's an

extra page in my Bible here. Apollo an apostle Christ used by

the will of God and Timothy, our brother to the Saints and

faithful brothers in Christ, the philosophy grace to you and

peace from our God and father. So the letter starts with grace

to you and now Paul's ending the letter with grace be with you.

Why does he say it that way? Wait, why does why does Paul say

grace to you now grace be with you?

Because God's words are quite literally God's voice.

That the grace that you need is God's voice in your life.

The thing you need to be carried through, the thing you need to

be carried through loneliness and through trial and through

this life is unique people around you.

And one of the people's voices you need in your life is God's

voice being the grace in your life, the gift over your life.

It's his voice is what you need because loneliness actually

pulls you and points you back to God.

Listen, what AW Tozer says. He said it is this very

loneliness that throws man back upon God.

His inability to find human companionship drives him to

seeking God what he can find nowhere else that Paul starts

the letter and ends the letter with the grace of God's voice in

your life. Because guess what, community

will fall short in your life at some point in time, people will

hurt you. People will let you down.

People will abandoned, quite literally in this moment.

We'll look what he says next. Remember my chains.

Paul is in prison. He can't be with these people,

but he wants to be with these people.

He's limited. And so we need to recognize that

loneliness is a grace that pulls us back in a relationship with

God and with people. It's a gift intended to pull

worship and connection and fellowship with God and with

people. It's what God's heart is for us.

It's a lowliness we turned into a grace, the grace of hearing

God's voice instead of others. And when Paul writes, remember

my change, you see that there in your Bible, remember my change.

He is literally suffering. He is writing this letter from a

prison cell, and his circumstance could have forced

him to say God left him, that God is mistreating him by this,

that he disobeyed God. But he's taking this moment to

encourage the Colossian people that God is carrying him

through. In the middle of his suffering.

God's voice is shaping and directing and guiding his life

all the more that he is relying on God to carry him through.

And we need to learn to rely upon God because you can be

lonely and be all around people. Loneliness isn't just where

you're sitting alone at the lunch table.

Loneliness more often is a people are all around you and

you feel all alone. So the loneliest people I know

are married. Some of the loneliest people I

know are in a small group. So the loneliest people I know

have people all around them. I think Justin Bieber has said

this really well, Ash, he writes a song just kind of unpacking

what it was like to be famous at a young age.

He he writes like this, like what if you had everything?

What if you had it all? Money, fame, power, beauty, you

had it all, but you didn't feel like you had a single person you

could call. Then you would know.

It's likely to me because he's he writes.

I've had everything, but there's nobody listening to me.

And that's just really lonely. Could you imagine having

millions of Instagram followers, A posse following you all around

and the misery of a lonely existence like that?

You see, it is possible to feel lonely in the midst of people.

And I think there's some of us here today that would actually

say that you don't experience loneliness.

You're you're one of the people's like, hey, I'm not

lonely or hey, worse, you're like, hey, I don't even need

God. I got me, I got my people.

I don't need God for this. I'm I'm fine actually, I don't

want God for this. I don't need God for community.

I don't need him to help me to get through.

Well, in the Garden of Eden when God created Adam and Eve, he

said when it was just Adam before he created me.

It is not good for man to be alone.

You know what that means? It means that loneliness was

even a problem in paradise. That it's not just the result of

sin, but actually that God actually designed us to be in a

relationship with people. That that God and he's carrying

you through is actually pointing you to other people in addition

to Him. That you need God and you need

people. That's how you were made to

function as a human being. That's how you intended to bear

His image. And the number one obstacle to

not relying upon God is this. It's unbelief.

You know what stops you from relying upon God in the midst of

community struggles? It's unbelief because we trade

belief for cynicism. That He won't bring us the

people that we need in our life. We'll trade belief for doubt

that his plans and the people he has in our life are good ones.

Or we'll trade belief in God for belief in lies, that if nobody

loves us, then certainly God would reject us too.

At the bottom of our reliance on our own selves instead of

relying upon God is unbelief. We don't turn to God in our

loneliness because at the bottom of the bottle of our pain is

unbelief. And that just whispers to us

that we don't believe the good news.

You know, we're missing the gospel that we were made to

experience community, but we struggled to have it and to

experience it and to do it. Why So?

All kinds of reasons. We struggle to have it because

we trade the convenience of digital like connection and the

shallowness of that for the sacrifice of creating real

relationship. We selfishly protect ourselves

from others because we don't want to get hurt again.

We fear others will reject or misunderstand us.

So we pull away from community. We pull away from a lying upon

God because deep down that unbelief is still gripping our

hearts. But Jesus freed us from the fear

and shame of being fully known and fully loved.

So the insecurity you experience socially is because you are

afraid of being fully known and fully loved.

And Jesus knows what it's like to be lonely.

Think about it. He was abandoned by his friends,

left to die alone. Only John and his mom were

there. He was hated by the world so

much that they killed him. He was misunderstood by the

masses, saying things like, hey, isn't he just like a Carpenter

son? Like isn't his dad the one who

made my door? Jesus experienced loneliness.

He experienced it so he can sympathize with you.

He knows what it's like to be lonely.

We have a Savior who knows what it's like to be lonely.

And you know He did. He went and died.

So you and I could have the relationship that we need with

Him and the relationship that we need with others.

That He could invite us into community, that He could invite

us into friendship with God. Because He's the friend who will

never leave you, who will never abandoned you, who will never

forsake you when others do, when others will.

You have a friend in Jesus, the friend of sinners who will not

leave you alone, but who will be in your life and a part of your

life wherever you go. He's a friend who sticks closer

than a brother who in others would cancel you or leave you.

He won't, and now we don't have to experience Halloween.

It's not because of our earning or deserving of it, but because

of Jesus, because of the cross. We have good news.

The good news that Jesus is the one we can rely upon.

Even our community fails us. That's why we started in verse

18, because we need God's grace to give us a paradigm, give us a

perspective about the other things we need to do.

That's the vertical layer of community, but now we need to

get into the horizontal because we need community in our lives.

So the second thing that we need to do to participate, we don't

just need to rely upon God, we need to raise up people around

us. How do you participate in

community? Do you rely upon God to carry

you through when community fails you?

Yes. But that is not an excuse to not

get after it and seek community in your life.

So how do you seek it? How do you fight loneliness?

You raise up people around you. Look back at the letter verses 7

through 17 and you will see 10 names there. 10 names.

Now across Paul's letters and all the New Testament he has

over 90 people he lists as his ministry like network people he

does work with for the ministry. And here we find 10 of those

names. I broke them up into categories

where you just understand who these people are.

First you have the messengers. You have Typicus and Anissimus.

These were the people who literally left wherever Paul was

in prison and brought it to the people of Colossae.

Then you have the Jews. Do you see that in your Bible,

how it says there in verse 11 that these are the only men of

the circumcision? That's code for Bible speak for,

hey, these men are Jewish and you have three of them.

You have Aristarchus, Justice and Mark.

We'll get back to Mark in just a moment.

Then you have the Gentiles. You have Luke and Demas and

Epaphras. This is where we learn Luke is a

doctor. We hear about Epaphras again,

the pastor of the Church of Philosophy, and we have Demas.

More on him in just a moment as well.

And then you have two local leaders.

You have Nimfa, a rich lady who the church met at her house, and

you have archivist who is likely a pastor to one of those

neighboring towns. These are the people that Paul

is highlighting for them and saying hey.

These people, I know them, I love them, I've invested in

them. I'm an apostle Christ Jesus.

I have personally been at work in ministry with these people

and they're all greeting you. They all care about you.

They all want to see you flourish.

Church. And these are all people that

Paul by example for us has shown us what it's like to still have

people you're investing in even from prison cell.

Paul's investing in people. That's crazy, by the way, how

many excuses we like to get in the way of investing in other

people. And Paul's like prison.

I'll just keep going, you know, I'll just keep investing in

others, keep having a person that I'm disciple.

Keep going about it. He had 10 names here who he

built up, 10 names of people he had relationships with that

resulted in life change. And those there's three names I

want to highlight for you that you might not know some of the

surrounding story around them. First you have John Mark.

Now Mark is just his Roman name. That's why Justice has two names

as well. It's just they're Roman names.

They have Roman name. Names make it easier in a

foreign language context. But Mark, you might have know

this about him. He's Barnabas's cousin, but also

him and Paul got in such a beef one time about ministry.

They literally went separate ways.

We don't know what the argument was about.

We don't know why they're upset with each other.

We just know Mark's like Paul. Yeah, I'm done doing a ministry

with you. Yeah, We're not going to do this

anymore. Mark's going to go with his

cousin Barnabas. And Paul.

Paul was actually the one who was more like, yeah, Mark, I

really don't want to do a ministry with you anymore.

We're good with that. We don't know what the nature of

the beef was. We just know that there was real

conflict and let them go separate ways.

And here we find after the fact that they're reconciled.

This is after that happened in the book of Acts.

I wonder if you have some in your life you've already written

off that you guys have gone your separate ways in ministry or in

relationship, but God's not actually done writing this

story. That Mark is actually an example

of what it's like to keep chasing community and

relationship in the midst of having that common cause.

So you have John Mark, but you also have Luke.

He's the only Gentile author of the entire Bible, the only one.

He wrote the book of Luke, wrote the book of Acts, possibly, we

don't know for sure, Wrote the book of heroes.

My personal opinion is that Paul wrote the book of Hebrews, but

Luke was going to transcribe it. That's my personal opinion.

But Luke is the only Gentile author in the Bible.

And when he heard Paul was going away from Mark and Barnett, he's

like, I'll go with Paul because Paul's definitely going to need

a doctor, OK? Like, this guy gets into trouble

everywhere he goes. He gets stoned, beaten to death.

I need to go with I need to go with Paul.

That's not actually the text. That's just me thinking Luke's

or an actual person who thought about Paul, like or a person,

right. OK, so you have Luke, the

Gentile author who stayed by Paul's side all the way.

A broken relationship, a consistent relationship.

And then you have the heartbreaking relationship,

Demas. Demas at this point in the New

Testament in the life of the church, he's in on making the

silence. But Second Timothy 4 tells us

this, that later on, Demas, in love with this present world,

leaves Paul, completely jumps out of whatever they're doing

together. You can expect all three types

of relationships in your community.

People who break your heart with going at the face of the world,

people who are confidants and absolute allies like Luke, and

people like Mark who are going to maybe see things differently

than you but are still about like you are.

Relational suffering is what loneliness is.

That's the biblical category for loneliness.

It's relational suffering. And we can let these types of

people drive us toward community, or it can pull us

away from community. And just because loneliness is

growing, because relational suffering is immense, it need

not steal our joy, but it is growing.

And there's an epidemic of loneliness.

One off the rights. Here's 4 categories for why

loneliness is growing in our world today.

First, that there's a lack of stability.

People are moving more in our country than they ever have

before. They're moving jobs.

They're moving zip codes. They are moving.

And that mobility has created loneliness everywhere.

Not only lack of stability, but a lack of embodied presence.

The rise of social media, this digital substitution.

It's a quantity of contact but not a quality of connection.

So people are getting increasingly lonely because

they're dealing with the gap of they're not omnipresent.

They can't be everywhere with people all the time.

And they feel like, Oh my gosh, I'm being left out.

It's also because our lack of structures.

Neighborhoods aren't what they used to be.

Schools aren't what they used to be.

Family connections. They're not like you're not as

connected to those structures as people used to be.

But also you have those three things.

Then you have this, the presence of pain.

One of the deceptive things about loneliness is the when

you're feeling lonely, the lonelier you feel, the harder it

is to begin to initiate relationships, making the issue

worse. It compounds your loneliness.

Those are all driving us towards more and more and more

loneliness. And what happens is we settle

for shallow, shallow community rather than deep community.

Think of it like this, that we're like snorkeling along the

surface of community. We're an inch deep, a mile wide,

experiencing some of the joy, some of the benefits of it, but

not experiencing the joy of the depth of a scuba diving with

brain where if you go deep, you can behold different wonders,

different treasures, different glories of the ocean that we're

settling for, shallow and deepest available to every

single one of us. So how are we going to do?

How are we going to raise people up?

How are we going to actually invest in people like Paul did?

I mean, he was in a prison cell. How are we going to do it?

How are we going to put others before our own selves?

Well, here's three ships that I want to talk to you about, OK.

It's friendship, discipleship and mentorship. 3 ships that I

think will help you go deeper in your life and the people you are

investing in. The first is friendship.

CS Lewis says it this way. The friendship begins when one

person says to another, Wait, what?

You 2? I thought I was going.

It was that way that one of the ways to find all this is just to

find common ground and connection.

Voice. Oh, you start with that too.

Oh, you've liked that too. Oh, you're about that too.

Awesome. Let's have a friendship, but

don't let fear of being life stop you from initiating.

Don't let that. Don't let that hold you back.

Safe city. Let's be a church that's not

afraid of other people. Let's be a church that initiates

relationships and friendships and look for common ground and

connection with people. And to have friends, you got to

be a friend. If you're lonely, chances are

the place to start is you go be a good friend to somebody and

watch as that returns, returns back in your life, making

commitment to being a friend. Friendship, second discipleship.

Discipleship is the other ship. You're probably lonely because

you're like the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is over the

Mediterranean, and guess what? It has a lot of salt water

coming in, none going out, a lot of the intake, no outflow.

So guess what? It's got salt water and it's

just a Dead Sea. You might be like that where you

have a bunch of people pouring into you, a bunch of consuming

from the church and not contributing.

Madison invites you to what God is in a better design for you,

that you are a disciple who makes disciples.

That's the that is the Great Commission to go and make

disciples of all nations. So find somebody that you're

like, Hey, I don't know everything it is to follow

Jesus, but I can help you learn how to read your Bible.

Hey, I don't know everything it is to follow Jesus, but you know

what I can I can memorize about verse with you this week.

Hey, I want to talk to you about that, about your life, some

wisdom. I want to get a smaller with

you. I want to serve on a team with

you that you jump in on discipleship with people.

It's the mission that we're about and we have to find

people. Every single one of us.

Making disciples is for the church.

It's not for the paid staff. It's for everybody that calls

themselves a Christian, that you are intended to find people to

pour your life into. Not just giving them content,

but give them your life, your very self and say, hey, I don't

have it figured out how to be a husband or a wife, but you can

come over and have dinner with us and you can watch how we

interact. Hey, we can meet up for coffee

and we can talk about your life. This is discipleship.

It's teaching people how to take their next step with Jesus, and

every single one of you is more than capable of that, that you

can go make disciples of all nations.

You can help us as we gather ordinary regular people to take

their next step with an extraordinary God.

Come join the mission of Saint City.

Come be about the mission of Saint City, the mission of the

Bible, that we are called to make disciples of all nations.

Paul was about it, even from a prison cell.

And 3rd in final shift that I just want to highlight for you

is mentorship and a church context like ours where we got a

bunch of college students in the room.

We got a bunch of 20 somethings in the room.

We have a bunch of people who are in their 30s and 40s and 50s

too. But guess what?

If you're looking for mentorship, if you're in that

boat, listen to me. Don't look for a mentor.

Look for mentors, plural. Anybody want a mentor by toys at

the time to decide for you in every category of their life.

But if you grab them for lunch and say, hey, how do you budget?

Hey, how did you land that job? Hey, how did what you do with

your summers? Hey, how did you meet your wife?

Hey, what'd you do when you met your wife?

How did you know? You can ask them questions like

that. Find a mentor of young people.

Find mentors, plural, and find categories that you want to

emulate their life and take them up to lunch, take them out to

coffee, call them up on the phone.

We would love to do that. Initiate 20 somethings.

Older people listen up, go find the young person and say, hey,

you looking for somebody to disciple you?

I'd love to jump in on that. Go for it.

Consider yourself Commission, OK, friendship, discipleship,

mentorship, Ken 3rd and finally raising people up.

We're relying on God and finally we're letting people build us

up. That's why we ended with

mentorship. It's because you need to be

built up. Paul needed strengthening and

encouragement. Look at just some of the ways he

describes these people that take a kiss is a beloved brother,

faithful minister and fellow servants in the Lord that he may

encourage the Colossian hearts Onissimus, our faithful beloved

brother. He's one of you.

Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner more than likely by the way,

Aristarchus volunteered to go to prison with Paul.

That's how about the mission. He was he's like, you know what

Paul, I'm not going to leave you by yourself.

That's the kind of community members darkest was he's like

you're going to prison me too. I guess I have so many jokes

that I want to say but I can't say.

Then you have Mark who's encouraging Jesus, which is a

common name back then, but he was called justice.

These are the only men of the circumcision by fellow workers.

They're a great comfort me. Do you see that phrase right

there and they have been a comfort to me.

These are people that were meaningful to Paul and hear me

out. If the apostle Paul needed

encouragement. If the apostle Paul needed

strengthening. If the apostle Paul needed

community, you need one too. You need it.

You need people in your life. We're going to uphold you.

We're going to strengthen you. We're going to challenge you.

We're going to be there for you and with you.

You need it. Latest data says this.

And in the church, the most lonely people are not visitors,

but regular attenders who haven't found relational

footholds. That, according to Varna, people

who attend church less than once a month are also nearly twice as

likely to report serious loneliness as weekly attenders.

That is true for both of us. What is that saying that

everybody slowly becomes church just about?

God has something better in mind that just because you're

attending doesn't mean your belonging.

You got to get into the mix. You got to go deeper with people

and home, family. It's less about where you come

from and more about where you feel truly known and truly seen.

And sitting in a row like this doesn't cut that.

It doesn't get you there. You need more than this.

You need more than this to fight the loneliness in your life

because families fight together. Families survive together.

Families stay together in the midst of hard things.

And if it gets hard in your life, and it will, you will want

a community around you. You will need a community around

you. You will need a family, a

spiritual family to be there for you.

A found family. The theme of found family is not

just a biblical theme. It's a theme our world is

obsessed with. Here's how I can tell you

Hollywood is obsessed with found families.

Let me give you some examples. Guardians of the Galaxy, a bunch

of weirdos, misfits, ragtag crew, that's their family.

They they literally fight and survive, die.

Again, if you're not like a superhero person, that's a

superhero movie. But maybe you'll like this one.

OK. Band of brothers found family or

military found family. Keep going with Hollywood.

Harry Potter found family. Star Wars found family.

My personal favorite Sandlot found family.

Damn the TV show Friends Popular.

Why? Because people have a craving

and desire for family, where they're known and seen and loved

despite all their flaws, all their idiosyncrasies, all their

gaps. People were wired to matter and

people were wired to belong. How God made us.

It's to be on the team and to play for the team.

So here's my invitation to you. It's to join the team at St.

Sydney. That's like an application point

for you. Obviously, that's not what the

text says. What the text is getting at is

the idea of unique people around you to build you up.

How do we do that at St. Sydney?

Worshiping and services is certainly a part of that, but it

is just like the shallow end of the pool.

Come deeper and experience the joy and the gift of real

community, the community that you need.

Don't let her hold you back anymore.

Don't let your story stop you anymore.

Jump in and join a team. We're going to have groups

launching in January. My invitation to you is to join

that. In fact, how could you actually

throw up the Christmas graphic real quick?

Christmas is coming and I want to use that QR code.

That's the way to sign up for the Christmas services.

That's another point. Disregard.

I've seen the QR code because here's where you can sign up for

a team or group. If you're interested in going

deeper with Sane City, this is the place to sign up now.

QR code will take you to a space on our website where you're

like, hey, I want to join a team, I want to get in a group

and this is where we're going to rally together.

We're hanging on what we're not settling for the shallow end of

connectedness anymore. We're not settling for just

coming to church and not knowing people.

We're not setting for church. We're just singing a few songs

and going. We're actually going into God's

invitation for us, the deep community that we long for, that

we need that God is calling us into.

He's saying, hey, I have something better in mind than

just singing songs on Sundays and hearing God's word.

That is a good thing. That is a needed thing, but it's

not the entire thing. That life change happens best in

circles rather than rows, and you need real community to fight

your loneliness. You need people that send you a

text when you got a hard day at work.

You need people you can confess sin to, that you feel safe to do

so because you know them and they know you.

You need a people that you can invite to lunch even after

service today and go, You know what?

That's my church family. Like a family.

Guess what? We got chores to do, bills to

pay, and meals to eat together. Join a team.

It'll be worth the yes, I promise you it is.

The greatest thing is being a part of a church like this.

There was 10 names listed there on the page in Colossians 4 for

us. And the whole book is about how

Jesus is better than anything you can imagine.

It's better than all the knowledge you can find.

He's better than literally anything you can think of that

it's not Jesus plus, it's Jesus plus nothing equals everything.

So you have Jesus, you've got all that you need for life of

God, right? Or exceeding all that you need

for salvation. But you need God's people to get

you more sanctified. It's his agent of them.

So this is closely said city. There were 10 names there, but

your name wasn't there. And that's OK, because God is

still writing the story here. You will be listening to Paul's

letters. Neither will I, But you need a

community just as much as you need to cost that.

Your name might not be written in Colossians 4, but your name

is written in the book of life and God is at work.

He's using him for his glory and for your good.

And I wonder what difference a community that sold out for his

namesake could make. I wonder what difference a

community who lives like this, who relies upon God, who is like

fired up about raising people up and letting others build them

up. I wonder what difference that

might make in your life. I wonder how much less lonely

this room would feel is if we were obsessed with getting to

know each other, captivated by the opportunity to get to know

somebody. I think it was Mr. Rogers who

kept a car in his wall that said there's not anybody who can get

to know and love if you just got to know their story.

I think that might be a great way to look at people here at

Saint City as made in the image of God, worthy of connection,

worthy of community. A place where the sting of

loneliness is like the sting of Jesus, of death on like the

death of Jesus. Excuse me, that the sting of

death is no more than the sting of loneliness.

Could not have the last word, but the gospel would.

You need a community just as much as you need a 'cause we're

here for the cause of Christ. Yes, but we are here.

So come join the week with us. Would you pray with the Lord?

Thank you for your work. Thank you that it's living an

active sharper than A2 edged sword.

Lord, I think it's the kind of community you call people to be

a part of. And I pray, Lord, that that we

would be that community that we have people who rely upon you.

The gospel is fresh on our lips and fresh on our minds.

That Lord, not only that, that we have people who are obsessed

with building others up and letting them build us up, that

we would receive it. We wouldn't be too prideful.

We wouldn't let hurt stop us, but God we would be of people

who are about the mission together on the cause for the

cause of Christ. Don't let any of those drivers

drive us away from community, Lord, but let them be drivers

back into the community you designed and given for us.

Laura, I pray that you would call people to deeper

relationship with one another, that in their hearts and in

their minds right now, they would resolve to be a person who

creates community wherever they go.

Then if they're not even experiencing lowliness right

now, they would go helping in somebody else or this is a good

thing. Your word is good and your name

is worthy. And so wherever we experience

relational suffering, God would you give us the hope of Jesus,

the one who suffered in our place on cross, in Jesus name,

Amen.