Hello, Life: Life Is Here | Part 1

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Hey, we're starting a series today called Hello Life.

Would you just go ahead and say that with me?

And literally, it's kind of like, Hello Life?

Like, hi, how are you?

I I just I just wonder, we spend so much of our lives trying to get our lives together.

You know, what am I gonna do?

I have to make sure and get the right education, find the right career, find my person.

We get our lives together, and then something happens in the process.

It kind of feels like then life tends to like pass us by, doesn't it?

And you look back and like, well, where did life go?

What is life?

Is this really life?

How do I find life?

If life showed up, if life like just showed up, would I even recognize life?

I came across this quote on Instagram.

That's where you find all of your great wisdom.

Uh and so I deep dive in, you know, daily wisdom.

So if you disagree with it, talk to the gram.

Um here we go.

It goes something like this though you cannot add more days to your life, you can add more life to your days.

And everyone went, ooh, or a few of us did.

Though you cannot add more days to your life.

And the reality is, is we really can't, although there's a bunch of tech billionaires trying to say we can and doing a ton of research to say we can, and you know, whether it's transhumanity where we're gonna merge with be a cyborg and have, you know, digital immortality.

That's a thing, by the way.

Research it, weird.

Um, but we can't add more days to our life.

The uh couple years ago, I I received a book from Jenny that was, I and some of you know this already, so I apologize to bore you, but that was offensive.

You ever got a gift from like someone and you're like, thank you?

Do I need this?

Do you think I need this?

And I remember when she ordered it because I I get the emails of the Amazon order, and I'm like, she doesn't need this.

Why would she buy this book?

What in the world?

And then she gave it to me before we went on vacation, and I'm like, so you think I need this?

And the book is this it's called Younger Next Year.

I've talked about it a few times.

Great book, not a Jesus book in any way, really fun book, but How to Live Strong, Fit, Sexy, and Smart Until You're 80 and Beyond.

And like the opening line of the book starts something like this.

He said, Well, you're 50, in great shape.

No, I'm 43, turning 44.

You're 60, you're a weekend warrior.

Yeah, I mean, it just goes on.

Um, and then I'm like, wait a second, are you trying to tell me something?

You know, about I I thought I was, I'm not like in great shape, but I'm in decent shape.

I can still play basketball and some of these sort of things.

Well, she had heard a podcast that was talking about, hey, this book was really helpful because it struggled, he was struggling with getting injuries.

I had a season of uh big injury proneness.

I got injured a lot.

So she's like, oh, this would be good for you.

One of the premises of the book, though, is that you can't reverse aging, but most of what we see today isn't aging, it's decaying.

And so there are practices and habits that we do to not decay, but and that's where you can live to your 80s and beyond.

And we can't reverse age, uh, decaying, or aging rather, but we can do some things around this decaying stuff.

And much of our activity today is how do we live longer?

How do I live healthier?

How do I live well into my 80s and beyond and have a quality of life?

And yet I think the question, the bigger question in all of that, is how do I add life to my days?

Okay, even if I add a little bit more days to my life, how do I add more life to my days?

How do I not just exist?

And that's how we kind of feel, isn't it?

I'm just existing, sleepwalking through life and move to truly living.

We're gonna spend the next eight weeks in what's called the book of 1 John.

Uh and it's really not a book at all.

It's some people call it a letter.

It's not even a letter, it's a sermon.

It's the sermon of a guy named John.

And so before we dive into the uh sermon today, I wanted to just give us an overview of the book of 1 John, because we're going to be spending eight weeks teaching through this book.

And the book of 1 John was written by a guy, uh tradition has it as John the Disciple.

Uh it's a sermon of his.

He he wrote the Gospel of John, and this is where it gets a little confusing at times because you have in the New Testament, you have the Gospel of John, then at the end of the New Testament, you have one, two, and three.

John, the first, second, and third John, and these are little letters.

Uh, and this is John's sermon.

He also wrote Revelation, and this is John's sermon that he wrote to a group of house churches in and around Ephesus, uh, about 50 to 60 years after the resurrection of Jesus, somewhere between 85 and 95 AD.

John the disciple is in his 80s, maybe even in his 90s at this point.

And he's writing back, and it's brilliant as we begin to read it and to understand the profound impact and intimacy and relationship he has and desire he has for the church to really know Jesus.

And the reason he wrote this sermon is he was addressing false teaching that threatened the church.

It was actually dividing the church.

There was deep disagreement and disunity.

And the the most of the false teaching was this idea or concept called Gnosticism.

It comes from the Greek word gnosis, knowledge.

And it meant to have a very special knowledge, a secret knowledge.

You actually had to kind of build your way up these rungs of secret knowledge.

At its core, Gnosticism would say that matter is evil, physical is evil, and the spirit or spiritual is good.

And this teaching was undermining the actual who Jesus is.

It was saying that Jesus wasn't really a human or a man, he was only spiritual or God.

And in that it undermines the work of Jesus in our lives, that he became one of us, what we are, that he could make us what he is.

And so the major themes of this book are really summed up in three words: life, truth, and love, all around this idea of fellowship with God and one another.

Life?

What is really life?

And then the book is broken into two big halves.

Uh, it's it's broken into God is light, and what does that mean for us?

What does that mean for our relationships?

What does that mean for our relationship with God and others?

And then the second half, God is love.

And in light of God is love, what does that mean for us?

How do we live?

How do we connect with God and one another?

And so we're gonna be spending the next eight weeks.

Here's what I want to ask you to do bring your Bible, bring a journal, bring a pen, and let's learn and grow together.

I believe this is an incredibly important book, especially this fall, as I don't know about you, but I kind of find myself holding my breath to see what's gonna happen in our country.

Anybody else?

And I'm actually holding my breath to see how Christians are gonna respond.

Anybody else?

And I believe this is a deeply formative and formational book for us and how to respond and love and live the way Jesus did.

Alright, so as we dive in, would you pray with me?

Heavenly Father, we welcome you here.

We ask that you would speak to us, that you would have your way, that you would show us what you want to say, that you would uh meet us and change us, make us more like your son.

And Jesus, get me out of the way.

And would you speak real clearly in Jesus' name?

Amen.

Uh the title today is Life is Here.

Life is Here.

And we're gonna cover the introduction in 1 John, four verses, and what he wants to do is help us understand three big things that you're created for.

Like, what are you really created for?

Like life is here.

What are you made for?

And the first thing that he's gonna say is that you are created for wonder.

You are created for wonder.

Wonder is the natural state of the human heart.

It is something that we do as kids and we can't help it.

You remember when you're little, and some of you may hopefully still have this, when the life was magical, there was mystery, and then we grow older and we grow out of it.

I want you to notice John, who's 80 years old, writing about the wonder of Jesus.

50 to 60 years after the resurrection of Jesus, he writes this introduction that just is like this explosion of his heart around wonder.

Notice what he says.

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we've seen with our eyes, which we have looked at, and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the word of life.

That which was from the beginning, that is speaking about Jesus.

Jesus, that he is the one who existed from limitless eternity, has entered time, space, and taken up residence on earth.

He's like the eternity one, the eternity stepped into history.

And then you see this progression.

This is how wonder works, by the way.

And you see this progression into intimacy and knowledge and understanding, which we had heard, like I just heard something about it, like somebody telling you about an incredible uh sunset.

I heard about it, that's amazing.

Seeing, all of a sudden you get to see it, and it's this idea of I just got a glance of it.

And then he goes even deeper, because this is the space, this is the moment of wonder that we heard, that we seen, and that we looked at.

A better word is that we gazed, beheld.

This word means to look at something or someone long enough as to understand the significance of that purpose or thing.

Like I'm gonna behold, I'm gonna sit upon the ocean and take it in.

I'm not gonna take a glance, I'm gonna take it in long enough as to understand the significance or the importance of that thing or person.

That which was from the beginning, when I we we saw him, we heard him, and then we beheld him.

We looked at him long enough, we lingered, we beheld, and then he says, What?

We have touched him.

Now notice he's addressing this heresy, this false teaching that Jesus wasn't fully human.

He's like, No, no, no, he wasn't some, you know, myth, some ghost.

We touched him.

He was real.

We're talking about a real person in real time.

That word touch is the same word that's used for someone who's blind that would touch someone to understand what is in front of them, to truly grasp with their senses.

And this we we proclaimed concerning the word of life.

And he goes on.

The life appeared, we have seen it, we testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and has appeared to us.

We proclaim to you, not a speculation, we proclaim to you not a fable, not a myth, not some abstract appearance, but a historical person we call life.

Four things about Jesus that draw our hearts to wonder.

The first thing I want you to notice is Jesus is eternal.

Jesus is eternal.

Jesus is the eternal creator God who stepped into time and history, becoming fully man.

That he's eternal, that the infinite life of God Himself took shape before us.

Think about this.

The infinite life of God took shape, that he's eternal, the eternal one who created all that there is stepped into time.

That we begin to behold Jesus not as a good man, we make the opposite problem that they did in their day.

We don't diminish Jesus' humanity, we diminish his deity.

And that also Jesus is a real man.

He is human.

He took on flesh, he became, like we said earlier, he became one of us.

The incredible truth that God with us, not against us, God for us, God came down among us to become one of us.

Third thing I want you to notice, he says in here, Jesus is the word.

If you're familiar with the gospel of John, he begins it this way: In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

He was with God in the beginning.

All things uh came through him and by him.

This idea of word in in the Greek, it's the it's the word Lagos.

And Lagos for Judaism, it meant the creative self-expression of God by which the cosmos were made.

He is the word.

It's the title for Jesus.

He is the Lagos, he is the creative self-expression of God by which everything was made.

In Greek thought, the Lagos is the divine reason that gives the universe coherence and purpose.

He is the origin of it all, the reason of it all, the purpose of it all.

This is Jesus.

And I felt this last service, and I feel it now.

Like this, I it's like trying to describe an incredible waterfall to somebody.

Like it just falls flat.

Trying to describe a breathtaking sunset.

Like words don't even capture it.

Oh church, that we would return to the wonder of Jesus.

Be in all of him.

Like he, like we would gaze, we would linger, that he would capture our hearts and our attention.

The more you know Jesus, the more wonderful he becomes.

The more we know him, the more you know of him, the more you sit with him, the more wonderful he becomes.

And wonder is ultimately at its core the fuel of our worship.

A worshiping church, a church filled with passionate worshipers, are in awe of Jesus and they walk in here.

And I don't know why I'm here.

All I know is by grace I'm here.

I'm saved, I'm loved by the God of the universe who became one of us, walked this planet in humility, died on the cross in my place, and rose again to the third on the third day that I might have life.

I don't get that.

I don't understand that, and I'm in awe of that.

Would you return to the wonder of Jesus?

Jesus is the word, and then it goes on.

Jesus is life.

Notice he said that life appeared.

I love that.

The way it's constructed in the Greek here is that this is the title of Jesus.

It's not like it's life.

This is where the title of this sermon series came from.

Hello, life.

Like Jesus appeared, and Jesus is life.

He's not a way, just a way to life.

He's not pointing, he's not talking about life.

He is life itself, the ultimate origin of the universe, the sustainer of all that we see and understand.

He is life.

In fact, so following Jesus means entering into a way of life that is permeated with God's own life and love, beginning now and carrying on into eternity.

To know Jesus is to know the creative God of life-giving and self-giving love.

This is Jesus.

Why do we lose our wonder?

You ever think about that?

I do.

Why do we lose our wonder?

I mean, we grow out of some of it, don't we, as kids?

I think we lose it for maybe two reasons.

One is our familiarity.

You've heard it, familiarity breeds contempt, right?

We diminish the extraordinary for the ordinary.

We become so familiar with something we no longer see the wonder in it.

Have we become too familiar with Jesus?

That we've diminished him.

That we just show up and we sing songs and we do our thing and just get a little bit of Jesus instead of go like, whoa! And we say, Oh my God.

And we mean it because we're in awe that the creator of the universe has beckoned us in and welcomed us home.

I think the other reason we maybe lose our wonder is unfamiliarity.

Is we're just not familiar enough with Jesus.

We dismiss the extraordinary for the ordinary.

We look at it and go, well, it's not really that big of a deal.

He's just an okay guy.

He's done some good things.

Where we just begin to dismiss it.

And the invitation is you are created for wonder.

It's hardwired into your DNA and design.

It's the natural state of the human soul because you are created to worship and be in awe of Jesus.

A.W.

Tozer in his book, Knowledge of the Holy, says this secularism, materialism, and the intrusive presence of things have put out the light in our souls and turned us into a generation of zombies.

We cover our deep ignorance with words, but we're afraid to wonder.

We're afraid to whisper a mystery.

We live busy, hurried, noisy lives, don't we?

I think another reason we don't wander is we just don't have the space.

We don't pause.

We don't gaze, we don't hold.

I was up at a leadership thing in Tahoe earlier this week, and with uh several uh pastors, and one night we're sitting in this back deck, and the guy who is leading it just turned off all the lights.

Like, dude, it's dark, man.

What are you doing?

He's uh he he he was a pilot uh for the Air Force and he began to explain some things, but he turned off all the lights.

And it took a while for our eyes to adjust.

But when they did, you know what we saw?

The heavens.

Not a star.

We see a star a time or two here in San Jose.

We saw the heavens.

The starry host just on display, saw satellites streaking across, and because we know that because he told us that's what it was.

I'm like, shooting star.

He's like, no, it's not.

Like, okay.

And then as we saw the heavens, he began to explain that our eyes, in the intricacy of our eyes, that there is actually a chemical when you enter the dark that's released into your eyes that allows you to have night vision, to see in dim light, that the brain works in such a way as to transmit what's happening from the retina, to produce those images, to see and understand it all.

And it's like, are you kidding me that right now we just had to turn off some of the exterior noise and some of the exterior lights to behold and to gaze the wonder that's always been there all around us all the time, but we walk past it.

Beauty is not hard to find, but it is easy to overlook.

And we just walk past the wonder.

Would you create space to wonder afresh of Jesus?

You're created for wonder.

The second thing that the Apostle John wants to say, life is here, is that you're created for fellowship.

We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us.

And our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son, Jesus Christ.

At the core of John's themes of life and love and truth is the undergirding so that we might have fellowship.

In fact, you see that word, that words right there, so that it's the Greek word henna, it's a henna cause, it's a purpose statement.

Generally, when we see the so that there, it's saying this is the reason, the purpose, this is why I'm writing.

This is my point, is that you may have fellowship with us, that there's going to be fellowship here, and that we'll have fellowship with God, the Father, and his Son, Jesus Christ, that there's a vertical element to our fellowship and a horizontal element to our fellowship.

You are created.

I am created for fellowship, relationship.

We worship the triune God, a God who exists in three distinct persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and yet is one a mystery we can't understand.

Who has existed for all of eternity in perfect fellowship and then made you in his likeness in the Imago day, you are hardwired and designed for fellowship.

That word fellowship means to share something in common, to share a common life, this idea of communion, which is a oneness in community and partnership.

In fact, we're going to take communion because here is the point of it all.

The reason we take communion and talk about it as communion, the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist, is there's this oneness in community, not because of what we agree on, not because of what we disagree about, everybody else on, not because of what tribe or what language or what nationality.

We have an uncommon unity in Christ's finished work.

Jesus is the foundation for our fellowship.

Not your political party, not your stage of life.

Isn't it interesting that we have an older season of life and a younger season of life, and there seems to be a gap we cannot bridge?

There's not your cultural identity, not your economic standing.

Jesus is what he's saying.

Jesus is the foundation.

If we want to have fellowship, it has to be centered on Jesus and nothing else.

We live in a world that uh elevates the religion of me.

It's all about me, it's all because of me, it's all for me.

It's a rugged individualism, it's autonomy.

The highest good is individual freedom, happiness, self-definition, and self-expression.

The only authority is found with the individual.

Thus, there is no possibility of a sacred order, something that pulls us and binds us all together.

And so we live these really independent, self-sufficient lives that push us farther and farther away from what we actually are designed for.

One another's each other.

And where we go, you know what?

The only thing we can agree on right here is Jesus.

And the only thing that matters is Jesus.

I guess I'm done.

What if that was true of us?

What if instead of the people that we kind of unite with just agree with some of our political rantings, ideologies, our cultural assumptions?

Or they're just that crew that you love to just sit back and criticize everybody else with.

Became a pastime since COVID, hasn't it?

Let's just talk about how everybody else is wrong and we're right.

I've done it too.

But what if our core reality was Jesus and nothing else?

And it doesn't matter where we've come from, it doesn't matter what we've done, it doesn't matter.

It's like, no, no, no.

Are you a Jesus follower?

Then let's just talk about him because that's what we have in common.

And what we have in common at the table in front of us is that there is level ground at the foot of the cross, and we come to a Savior who loved you and who loved me, and we're all desperately broken, and he says, Come to the table, you're welcome.

And we all sit at the table by grace.

Jesus is the foundation of our fellowship with one another and with God.

You're created for wonder, you're created for fellowship, and then finally, you're created for joy.

Do this for me.

I didn't do this last service.

This may be terrible.

Would you just do give me the biggest fake laugh you could possibly give?

All right, three, two, one, go.

That was kind of fun.

That you are actually think about this created for joy.

We miss this in the church.

John writes, we write this to make our joy complete.

Another emphasis is your joy complete.

We write this down that we would have complete joy.

Like joy is the essence of life with Jesus.

It's the indelible mark of a follower of Christ.

Jesus in John 15, he's talking to his disciples.

The night he's going to be betrayed, and he's talking to them about what's most important.

And he says, abiding or remaining in me, being connected to me, that fellowship with Jesus.

And out of fellowship with Jesus comes joy.

And he says, This I've told you these things.

And here John is picking up on this.

I've told you these things.

That my, think about this, this is amazing.

That my joy will be in you.

The eternal creator, God, the Lagos, life itself, joy will be in you, and that your joy will be complete.

When I am connected to Jesus, when I'm in fellowship with Jesus, you don't try to be more joyful, you don't work harder to get joy.

It says, no, no, no.

It's just a consequence.

It's the byproduct.

It's the overflow.

Because when I'm connected to Jesus, that's life.

Joy just overflows because joy is what Jesus is about.

What is joy?

Joy is not the absence of pain or trials, it is actually the presence of Jesus.

Joy is not the passing sensation of pleasure, but a pervasive sense of well-being that is infused with hope because of the goodness of God.

Lewis Meads, I like how he says this.

You and I were created for joy.

And if we miss this, we miss the reason for our existence.

Moreover, the reason Jesus Christ lived and died on earth was to restore us to joy we've lost.

His Spirit comes to us with power to believe that joy is our birthright.

Because the Lord has made this day for us.

C.S.

Lewis sums up well what we've all been talking about this whole time.

If you want to get warm, you must stand near the fire.

If you want to get wet, you must get in the water.

If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to or even into the thing that has them.

They're not a sort of prize which God could, if he chose, just hand out to anyone.

You're created for life.

Jesus is life.

You're created for fellowship.

He is the foundation.

He is the author and the perfecter of our faith, at the foundation of our fellowship.

You are created for joy.

Jesus is his presence.

The essence of the Christian life is joy with him.

This week, I gotta be with someone that I think epitomized what we're talking about.

Moves on from that, you know, just trying to get through life to like living.

That there's more life in her days.

It was one of my great honors as our prayer team, some of our leadership council, and me and Dave got to go pray with Arlette.

You can see her there.

Arlette, a few years ago, was diagnosed with ALS or Lou Gehrick's disease.

It's a neurological disorder that affects the motor neurons.

As neurons die, there's less ability to control your movements.

This disease has ravaged her body.

It has stolen her voice.

She can communicate.

She only has her right hand that is mobile.

She can text an amazing technology.

She can use her eyes on the screen to write.

I first got to know Arlette because she was a teacher of some of my kids at San Jose Christian.

She's been a member of Awakening Church.

She serves on the prayer team.

She watches most Sundays.

After our prayer time over her, she talked about missing the fellowship of believers.

Our let's end this service today.

Thank you for being here.

She shares her journey with an incredible witty sense, great sense of humor, deep honesty of the pain and the struggle.

And through it all, just a faith and a hope speaks louder than what she could say.

She's lost her voice, but her life is spoken so loudly.

Life.

Life is here.

Arlette is someone, as I've gotten to see, she lives more fully than most of us because she's not distracted by all the trappings.

As we're leaving, she typed this out.

With AOS, it's a hopeless end.

There's no cure.

And then she wrote this with Christ, I have an endless hope.

That's life.

I don't know what you're walking through.

I don't know the pain that's in this room, but I was told once never underestimate the amount of pain in the room.

And as I'm talking about joy, talking about fellowship, talking about wonder, you're just struggling through today.

Would you come to the table?

Would you come to Jesus?

He wants to meet you right where you are.

He wants to breathe life into that which is dead.

He is the word of life, and so he brings resurrection, life.

He wants to bring hope, even those circumstances are hopeless.

Would you come to the table?

Let Jesus meet you.

Would you behold him?

Would you take time and just in the tangible grabbing of the bread and the wine and just realizing I want to take hold of life.

I want to take hold of you, Jesus.

And where you would walk out of this room with that same declaration.

With Christ, I have an endless hope.

Jesus, I pray for my friends.

We confess, we get so distracted, so busy, so hurried with things that feel like life.

But you've been in front of us this whole time.

We just needed to quiet the noise, turn the lights down just so that we can see you.

In this moment, as we step into the moments of communion, that oneness with you that is exemplified at the table.

Holy Spirit, I ask that you would move in this room powerfully.

That you would awaken our hearts to you.

That you would draw us to yourself, that we would see and behold and encounter your presence.

We'd be shaped by you.

We would experience your life.

In Jesus' name.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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