Awakening Vision

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.

Oh, what a great day.

Begin.

It's our first uh in-person service of the new year.

Thanks so much for joining us.

Uh, if you're new or we don't know each other yet, my name's Ryan.

Absolutely thrilled to have you today.

Uh, and today's a fun day, exciting day.

We're calling this uh Vision Sunday.

Go ahead and say that uh to your neighbor.

Say Vision Sunday.

And if they were a bit blurry, you'd need to go get your vision checked.

Uh that's a whole nother issue.

But we're talking today about awakening vision.

Um, and really, let me begin the new year maybe with this question.

What is the vision for your life?

Like, like what is the vision that you have for your life?

And then we know what vision is.

Vision is this picture of what could be and should be in light of what currently is, right?

We we know people who have vision, like an artist, maybe a sculptor who uh sees this block of marble, and they don't see a block of marble, they see a statue, or you know, a painter who sees a canvas and they see what?

They see this incredible masterpiece, or a designer sees a room, or you know, the flippers on HGTV.

They sit they have vision of what could be and should be in light of what presently and currently is.

Let me ask you what is the vision for your life of what could be and should be, in light of what currently is.

You know the way we used to ask this as kids, or at least the way we ask kids today, the what the question we ask is a little bit different.

It's not as, you know, what is the vision for your life, young man?

We don't we know we don't do that.

Uh but we ask this.

We ask, um, what do you want to be when you grow up?

Right?

Ask that, and some of us are still asking that at 40.

Okay.

Uh, what do you want to be when you grow up?

Here's what's interesting, too, about that question is we don't ask what do you want to do when you grow up, but we always answer what we want to do.

But it's really interesting how we ask that.

What do you want to be?

A better question.

What do you want to be?

And we, you know, when I was uh a kid, I wanted to be a professional athlete, specifically a professional basketball player.

My growth spurt never hit, um, so that didn't work out.

And then as you get older, I wanted to be a rock star.

Anybody else wanted to be a rock star?

Yeah, thank you.

A few of us, um, kindred spirits, um, right?

You have these ideas of what do you want to be when you grow up, and we wrestle with this.

And really, it's a vision.

What is the vision of what could be, and perhaps should be, in light of what currently is.

Well, you know, the vision here at Awakening Church, uh, it actually began 15 years ago.

Uh, we asked this question around, we actually gathered 15 to 20 to 25.

I can't remember how many, it felt like a ton of people, but we have such a small house, uh, is crammed in our living room, a bunch of college students, and we open the scriptures to Matthew 28, 18 through 20.

It's this passage called the Create Commission.

It's where Jesus gives his final words of his really vision statement for his disciples of what he wanted them to be and to do with their life.

And we wrestled and we came up with this vision statement, and it goes like this we exist to awaken this generation to new life.

Like we exist, like our purpose, like the reason I'm on the planet.

And I don't know if you've answered that question, but man, in 2023, wouldn't that be great to answer that question?

Why do you exist?

And you're like, wow, we're going deep already into the new year.

But why do you exist?

What is your purpose on this planet?

We exist.

Awakening was began began as a college ministry and then planted as a church.

It's still our vision today.

We exist.

Our purpose is to awaken, and that's important to us.

And I know not just our name, and like, oh, that's cool, it's an awakening.

That's um, but isn't it true?

And we run across people all the time like that, that that many people, and maybe this is where you're at, just feel like you're kind of sleepwalking through life, but not truly living life wide awake.

And we exist to awaken, because that's what the gospel does.

It's a new life in Jesus Christ, this generation, college, young adults, and everybody else in between, uh, I guess not really in between, it'd be outside, not in between.

There's not a between there, is there?

And that was our vision.

And it began with just a number of us sitting down, opening to this particular passage, and going, what does it look like for us?

Now, here's what's fascinating.

Think about this when I ask the question, what's your vision for your life?

Corporations spend millions of dollars to come up with a clear and compelling vision statement.

And the reality is, is many of us, think about this, many of us do not have a vision statement for our life.

Like, well, maybe, maybe I kind of have one.

It's to be happy.

It's to be successful, it's to be educated, it's to be, and then you begin to wrestle, like, well, how do you be happy?

I don't really know.

I'm still trying to figure it out.

I think this is, and here's so important about a vision.

A vision sets the direction that determines the destination, and if we don't get the vision right, then we're not gonna get the destination right.

What's the vision?

What's the vision for your life?

I I want to look at this passage again, a passage afresh.

It's a familiar passage if you've been around, Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 through 20.

Matthew 28:18–20

And in our time, I pray that it's a catalyst for you to have a clarifying vision for 2023.

A catalyst that would begin to help you uh walk away from our time and go, oh, this is no, no, no.

Maybe a better question, not just what is your vision for your life, what is God's vision for your life?

I mean, think about this: the God of the universe, the author of life, he probably has a better vision for your life than you do.

I don't know.

Just maybe.

And what exactly is that?

I believe as we look at this passage afresh, we'll discover that together, not just for us as a church, but for you personally.

If you got your Bibles, would you open up to Matthew chapter 28?

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 28, verse 18.

Matthew 28:18

Now, a little bit of context here for you is Matthew uh at the end, he's telling the story.

Uh he was a follower of Jesus.

He is one of the first followers of Jesus.

He was called a disciple, and he's uh concluding the story of Jesus' life.

And at this point, Jesus had died and rose again from the grave.

He had appeared to disciples.

In fact, he spent about 40 days with his disciples, talking with them, eating with them, teaching them, and training them.

And now it's come time where he's going to ascend to the Father, and these are his final words to his disciples.

And he says this, we pick it up here in Matthew 28, verse 18.

Matthew 28:18

Then Jesus came to them and said, I was gonna read it in here, but then my eyes are blurry, and I'm like, I cannot read that.

So I turned around, just so you know.

You're like, he's holding the Bible, but he's looking back.

There you go.

My vision.

Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

I have all authority.

Hello, yes, you do, by the way.

You defeated the grave.

You defeated the enemy that's never ever been defeated and always takes captive every single person on the planet.

Yeah, absolutely, you do.

You have all authority on heaven and on earth.

And then he says, therefore, go and what?

Very good, three of you in the front row.

Let's let's pretend like the rest of us can read as well.

Um, and it's right, it's right here, right here.

Therefore, go and make disciples.

Thank you.

Make disciples, like like Jesus called these disciples, and he spent three years with them.

And now, as he's ascending into heaven, he's looking at these disciples, and he says, Here's my vision for your life.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I want you to go and make disciples.

Go and do what I have done.

How do you do that?

He says, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Baptism was this public identification into the community of Jesus.

In fact, if you've never been baptized and you're a follower of Jesus, I encourage you, you need to get baptized.

It's part of following Him.

Baptized into it's this identification into the community of Jesus.

So baptizing and then teaching them to obey everything I've commanded.

You what are you gonna do?

Well, you're gonna help people first identify, I'm a follower of Jesus, and that's saying go in public with your faith through baptism, and then you're gonna spend time teaching them.

You're gonna spend time training them.

And it's not just like, hey, what do you think?

I don't know, what do you think, or what is that?

Teaching them to what?

Obey everything that I have commanded you.

It's not my thoughts or my way, it's Jesus, what did you say about X, Y, and Z?

And they spent three years training under him, and he says, now you train people in like manner and surely into the promise of his presence.

I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.

This is Jesus' vision for the church.

This is Jesus' vision for his followers of Jesus.

Now, I I I want to say something, um, and and it's so painfully obvious that I think sometimes it doesn't need to be said, but it's I think we miss it so much that I think maybe I need to say it.

Okay?

So when I when I when I say this next line, could you just pretend like this is like earth shattering?

You know, like, whoa, Ryan, you spent all week studying this.

Wow, okay.

It would just make me feel better on this, okay?

So so here's something really painfully obvious.

We all understand it inherently, but it needs to be said.

Um, in order to next slide, thank you.

We first have to be a disciple before we can make disciples.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I didn't do that last service, and it really fell flat.

I was like, man, I thought this was good, and you didn't even respond.

Um they were saying, ouch.

Thank you, Mikhail.

It's so painfully obvious, and yet we miss it.

You first have to be a disciple.

If I'm gonna make a disciple, if I'm gonna teach you everything Jesus commanded, I first have to be one before I make one.

What's your vision?

What do you want to be when you grow?

Jesus would answer this I want you to go and make disciples.

And yet, I don't think we know what a disciple is or what that means in our day.

And what I want to do for the next few minutes is I want us to dive deeply into the world of Jesus, dive deeply into uh the first century Jewish educational system, because this moment that Jesus uh said to his disciples, it would have been equivalent to um you graduating and getting your doctorate and the pronouncement over you of being like, you have made it and completed it now, you're to be sent and to go be a doctor.

I mean, it had that gravitas to it, and yet we miss it all the time.

And so let's kind of back the train up.

We don't really use the word disciple a whole lot in our DNA.

What in the world is a disciple and why did this matter so much?

And how did these first few followers of Jesus flip the world upside down?

Well, take a look.

What is a disciple?

I gave you the definition here in the Greek, it's the Greek word methaetase.

It means one who engages in learning through instruction from one another, a pupil.

In fact, apprentice is probably the best word for us today.

We understand apprenticeship.

You know, whether you want to become a plumber or electrician, you apprentice under a plumber or electrician.

You want to become a doctor, you apprentice, you go into apprenticeship to become a doctor because you're studying, you're training to learn a practice, a particular way of doing things, and to become a master at it under a master.

That is what a disciple is.

It goes on, uh, the definition, one who is rather constant uh constantly associated with someone who has a pedagogical, that's fun to say, reputation or a particular set of views.

That's what a disciple is.

And in the first century, Jewish education, if you were to ask a young Jewish boy in particular, in that day it was very patriarchal, a Jewish girl would get parts of this educational system, but wouldn't be able to go all the way through it.

But you asked, what do you want to be when you grow up?

They had really two answers.

I don't know if they asked this question honestly, uh, but if you asked them, they really had two answers.

One was uh education, and specifically the Torah was held in such high honor and regard, it was to be a rabbi one day.

It's like you know, it's it's kind of like to be a pro-athlete in our day.

Like, I want to be one of them.

And then the other answer is simply I'm gonna do the family trade.

Whatever, whatever dad had done, you know, if it's carpentry, if it's agriculture, I'm just gonna uh do the family trade.

And the Jewish people were intense and so um focused on their educational system.

And there's actually three different stages uh along the way.

You can think about it in our DNA, like um your grade school, your college, and then your graduate degree.

It kind of follows that kind of way of thinking here.

And the first stage of education for a young Jewish child would have been called Bet Sephiff.

Would you say that with me?

Bet Betzephyr.

Betzephyr literally means the house of the book.

And this was for those, both boys and girls, who are aged six to ten.

I like how Josephus says it.

Uh, he's an ancient historian, uh, Jewish historian.

He says, above all, we pride ourselves on the education of our children.

In fact, they were so intensely focused on educating their kids, because here's what they understood.

The Jewish people uh were often, and for most of their history, they were persecuted, they were ostracized people, and they knew that if they didn't educate their children well, they were one generation from their Jewish heritage becoming obsolete.

That is a word for us, by the way, parents, in how we raise our kids up and making sure we raise them up into the ways of Jesus and not simply outsource their faith to church or to maybe a school, but like how do we educate and train our kids?

I like how the Talmud, uh, this is the writings on the Torah, said it.

Under the age of six, we do not receive a child as a pupil.

From six upwards, accept them and stuff them with Torah like an ox.

Isn't that great?

Like, hey, we're see this young child, and and here's what we know young people are sponges, and we're just gonna stuff them like an ox.

And here's what they would do from six to ten, they would memorize the Torah or the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures, or what's known as the books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

And some of you are like, I can't even read those.

Those are like, oh my gosh, they put me to sleep, right?

And they memorize those.

They memorize all five books of and and you know what?

We memorize today, too, by the way.

We memorize all the time.

It's just the things we put into our memory.

Some of you can tell me every song of Dr.

Trey, uh, right?

Some of you can tell me every song of the red hot chili peppers.

Uh, some of you can tell me every movie line of your favorite movie.

We memorize all the time.

It's just what we memorize, and they memorize the Torah.

In fact, this is amazing, this is fascinating.

On the very first day of Torah training as a six-year-old, and in their teaching, they're very uh visual and always like wanted to make sure it was engaging.

Uh, the the rabbi, the instructor, would take honey.

Now, honey was precious, uh, honey was a delicacy.

Uh honey wasn't something that you had all the time.

And so you got this little stick of honey, and they would actually take honey and they would pour it over the tablet that the student had for kind of writing, and they would just drench the tablet.

And and I mean, uh I'm just thinking that sounds sticky.

Um and then they were called, they were told to lick the tablet clean.

Now, I gotta tell you, as a six-year-old, that sounds fantastic.

Hello.

That's a great first day.

And if you want to, you can.

I mean, you can go ahead and taste it.

I got a little bit.

Not gonna lie.

There we go.

Yeah, go ahead and do it.

Because here was the blessing.

Listen, listen, listen, listen.

Come on.

This was the blessing for a young child who started into their training every six-year-old, boy and girl.

The blessing was simply this may the word of God or Torah be like honey to the tongue.

Like as you start this training and as you begin to put into your mind the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, the books of Moses, may it be like that honey that is sweet to your lips.

May it be a delight and not a duty, that it just begins to become just like you you crave it and you long for it, and you're like, oh, that is so sweet and so life-giving.

It would remind us of what the psalmist would say or what Ezekiel would say is I took his word, it broke and ate it, and it tasted like honey.

And so the first stage was Bet Sephyr, the house of uh of the book, ages six to ten.

The second stage of training was this was for the best of the best.

So not everybody moved forward.

This was only for the best of the best of the class who really excelled, and it was called Bet Talmud.

Go ahead and say that with me.

Bet Talmud.

This was called the house, this literally means the house of the learning.

These are for ages around 10 to 14 years of age.

Now think about this.

From ages six to ten, you memorize the Torah.

For those who stepped into Bet Talmud, uh, they would then memorize the entire rest of the Hebrew scriptures.

Let me give you a little visual of that real quick, because this is wow, amazing.

Um, okay.

They would memorize this.

By the way, our human mind is way more capable than we think.

And we undersell ourselves all the time.

They would memorize the entire rest of this.

They would then begin to go into the deeper ways of learning and thinking in the Jewish tradition.

It take on much of the way uh a rabbi would teach is this kind of art of questions and questions.

Uh, it's really more of an eastern way of learning, um, question and replies.

And here's the way it would work.

And I this is not necessarily a question they would use, but uh, like if the rabbi asked, What is two plus two?

And we all know the answer is four.

The the pupil wouldn't just say four to show mastery that you truly understand what two plus two is.

The pupil would say, uh, well, what is eight minus four?

Because I actually so understand that answer, I can ask it with a different question that has the same answer.

Doesn't that bring insight into when you begin to read the gospels and you see Jesus asking a question after he's been asked a question?

And he is now practicing and he's putting into practice.

This is the way of teaching and training.

In tutelage, and this was Bet Talmud 10 to 14.

This is the next stage.

The best and the brightest would move on from Bet Talmud to Bet Bet Midrash.

Go ahead and say Bet Midrash.

The age is somewhere around 15 and 16 years of age.

And this was only for the very best and the very brightest.

And the way you stepped into Bet Midrash or the house of study, and it's the training ground to become a rabbi, was you thought you had what it takes.

You had your teacher say you have what it takes.

And so then you would go to a rabbi that you respected, a rabbi that you uh really wanted to be like, and you would ask to be their disciple.

So you'd go up to the rabbi and say, Rabbi, I'd like to be your disciple.

Then the rabbi would sit there and he would begin to question you.

Uh, and he'd begin to question you on specifics of Torah, but more specifically, every rabbi had uh what was called a yoke.

Now, a yoke isn't just for oxen, a yoke was their particular teaching or understanding or interpretation of the Torah.

And so their yoke was a particular understanding and teaching of the Torah.

Doesn't it make sense?

And we'll talk about this in two weeks when Jesus said, Take my yoke upon me, it means something even deeper and more wonderful than we thought.

Then it does mean the oxen thing, too.

But their yoke, and so he began to question them do you really understand my yoke, my way of teaching, my interpretation of the Torah?

And here's what the rabbi's trying to get at with this student.

He's gonna ask him questions and he's gonna wants to know this.

Can this student know what I know and do what I do?

Can this student know what I know and then do what I do?

And if he believes this student can know what I know and do what I do, then after all of the um interview and all the examination, the rabbi will say, Come, follow me.

And then at that moment, the student will be accepted in as a disciple.

And the moment a rabbi says, Come follow me, the rabbi says, I believe you can know what I know, and I believe you can do what I do, and so you can come into my training with the expectation that you will know what I know and do what I do, and you will go on and train others in like matter.

Oh, it's getting real now.

Isn't this good?

Come follow me.

Now, if the rabbi didn't think this person could uh, you know, make it and know what they know and do what they do, uh he wouldn't say, come follow me.

He would say this line: go ply your trade.

Go ply your trade, go home and do the family business.

Now let's look at when Jesus calls his first disciples.

In Matthew chapter 4, uh it says this as Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

They were casting nets into the lake, for they were fishermen.

Okay, so what were they doing?

So what does that mean?

It means they didn't make it to Bet Midrash, right?

It means they were disciple rejects, it means they were overlooked.

It means Jesus is gonna call disciples who were overlooked, and other rabbis said, not good enough.

I don't believe you can do what I can do.

I don't believe you can know what I know.

Go ply your trade.

And so they're plying their trade, and Jesus sees the B team out there, and he says, What?

Come, follow me.

Whoa.

Now, in all of history that I know and could find and research, there's only two rabbis that went and called disciples rather than having disciples come and interview.

One was Rabbi Hillel, who was a few hundred years before Jesus, and the other was Jesus himself.

And Jesus came instead of having disciples come and asked to follow him, and he said, Come, and he went to them and said, Follow me.

Pregnant in those words to Simon and to Andrew, even though they were casting nuts, even though they were overlooked, even though they thought, the only two things, what do you want to be when you grow up?

Hello, the only two things they thought they could be, well now they only had one option.

And Jesus says, I believe you can do what I can do.

I believe you can know what I know.

You can be like me.

Come and follow me.

In fact, I I skipped it under Bet Midrash, and so we'll go we'll go right back to it just real quick.

But Jesus would say it this way: the student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be just like their teacher.

That is the point of discipleship.

That was the point of come follow me.

And then there was this blessing that that people would say to new disciples, may you be covered in the dust of your rabbi.

And what the picture was is like, may you follow so closely after your rabbi that as he walks, he would just kick up dust and you would just be covered in it because you're following him that closely.

And disciples wanted to do so precisely in their day what their rabbi did, they would mimic everything, you know.

And even you see it when Jesus was picking some grains ahead as he was walking, the disciples did the same thing.

They're just copying their rabbi.

In fact, this is kind of funny, um, but uh there's other sources that say that disciples wanted to even know how their rabbis used the bathroom.

Because they wanted to be wanted to get down to that uh you know idiosyncrasy.

We want to go to the bathroom the way our rabbi goes to the bathroom.

May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi.

And Jesus looked at this B team.

By the way, these early disciples weren't 30-year-old men, they were 15, 16, 17-year-old high schoolers.

This is a JV team that couldn't make varsity.

In fact, they got rejected even from the JV team, and Jesus used this group of people to change the world.

It also helps us understand when just a few verses later, when Jesus goes to call James and John uh the brothers, the sons of Zebedee, uh, like why they left their nets.

And kind of in our Western way of thinking, we're like, man, the father had to be like so bummed, you know.

He's like, What in the world?

Why did you stick?

In fact, think about this.

He probably went home to his wife.

He's like, There's a rabbi that thought our sons were worthy.

There's a rabbi that thought our sons were good enough.

He probably showed up the next day, you know, in this little fishing village, and he's walking around with a little bit of strut.

He doesn't have his boys by him, and his boy like going, where are the boys?

Oh, I'll tell you where the boys are at.

They got called up to the big leagues.

Come, follow me.

And what Jesus said, and what he meant, and what the disciples heard was, I believe you can do what I do and know what I know.

And if you follow me, you will become like me.

And that is what a disciple is.

Someone who says, You are the rabbi, the master, the teacher, and I am going to follow you because I want to become like you, to know the things you know and do the things you do.

Now that sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it?

And I think for some of us, we might be asking, well, what happened to just believing, right?

Didn't you just talk about it?

I mean, we talk about this, just believe in Jesus.

Uh and Ryan, on Christmas Eve you talked about believing, right?

And you said, you know, the famous verse, John 3.16, for God so loved the whole world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in Jesus shall not perish but have eternal life.

I don't think belief means what we think it means in our American theology.

You know, the way we use belief, we think like I just intellectually agree, but it doesn't impact my life.

As long as I kind of intellectually have this, you know, assertion and I believe this about Jesus, then I can do whatever I want with my life, and then I'll pray to God and somehow have a little bit of God in my life, and maybe He can make me a little bit better.

And that's really the vision of my life.

The vision of my life is the American dream, and I just want to live just a little bit better, successful, happier life.

And I want to add Jesus to my life to make that a reality.

The Greek word for the word belief is the Greek word pisteo, uh, and it means something deeper and richer than just kind of an intellectual ascent.

It means to consider something to be true and therefore worthy of one's trust.

Jesus, you're true and therefore worthy of my trust.

It means to entrust oneself to an entity in complete confidence, like you have all of me.

And that's what it means when you follow Jesus.

It's like, no, I you are setting the direction.

If vision, right, begins to give you direction to a destination, you're going, Jesus, you get to set the direction to the destination.

And so wherever you go, I'll follow you.

Whatever you say, I'll do.

And the things you call me to do, I believe you can do through me.

This is what it means to believe.

I like how John Ortberg said it about faith.

He says, Faith is coming to believe with my whole body, what I say I believe with my mind.

Faith is coming to believe with my whole body, mind, soul, and strength, what I say I believe, and what I think I believe with my mind.

Now, there's this incredible passage about where Jesus walks on the water that I think flips the script on belief for us.

And here's what's amazing is, you know, principle and central to our faith is that we believe in Jesus.

Yes, and that is central and that is true.

And yet something that is so profound that's often missed is that Jesus actually believes in you.

Jesus was walking on the water, he sent the disciples ahead.

It was a stormy night, and he's walking on the water towards them.

And the disciples cry out in fear, they think it's a ghost, and he says, Don't be afraid, it's I, it's Jesus.

And then Peter does something that a disciple would do, and it makes sense when you understand the context of a disciple.

Peter says, If it is you, call me out onto the water.

Why?

Because when Jesus said, Come follow me, it meant you can do the very things I do.

Otherwise, I wouldn't call you.

And so when he sees Jesus walking in water, if I'm his disciple, then I can walk on water too.

Oh.

And so then you see him, he kind of puts his foot over and he's like, ooh, that's wet.

I don't know about this.

Okay, well, third time's the charm.

Here we go.

And he steps out and he begins to walk on water.

And then it says that he begins to notice, the text says he begins to notice the wind and the waves.

And as he looked around at the wind and the waves, he began to sink and cries out, Lord, save me.

Jesus grabs his hand and pulls him up.

And then this line, it always has sat so wrong until you understand the context of a disciple.

Jesus says, Oh, you have little faith, why did you doubt?

And in our Western way of looking at it, we're like going, Come on, he got out of the boat.

There was 11 other guys in the boat.

See, because we often think interpret it as Peter doubting Jesus.

But I don't think Peter was doubting Jesus.

Why?

Because Jesus was standing on the water.

He was not sinking.

Who was sinking?

Peter.

See, as he got out on the water, he began to realize, I don't think I can do what he does.

And he began to doubt his ability, not Jesus' ability.

He says, You have little faith.

I called you.

I said, come follow me.

And in those words, the God of the universe beckons us.

Doesn't say you have to work your way up, somehow make yourself a better person, and you know what, you have to be the elite spiritually.

I'm looking at you right now, fishermen.

And I believe you can know what I know.

And do what I do.

So follow me.

And you will.

What's the vision for your life?

Jesus actually has a vision for your life, and it's him.

And the invitation still is offered to you and me this day to come, follow me.

I believe you can do what I do and know what I know.

Would you come and follow me?

To make disciples, remember, we first have to be one.

And so simply for 2023, as I've been wrestling with this actually for a really long time.

And I look at where we're at as a church, where we're at as a country, what's going on.

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of playing church games.

I'm tired of just going through the motions.

I'm tired of going, like, how do we build a bigger, better X, Y, and Z?

I don't want to do that.

And I don't think you want to do that either.

Here's what I would love for us to have as a vision as a church and pray for you personally.

In 2023, next slide.

Our vision as awakening church is simply to apprentice under Jesus.

Apprentice.

I mean, think about this.

Wouldn't it be so good?

I know you wouldn't regret it, right?

Nobody's gonna go like, oh man, I can't became more like Jesus this year.

Yeah, the greatest person who ever walked this planet, and that's every person agrees on that.

He literally divided time.

Or we go, you know what?

I I want to apprentice under him.

I want to train under him.

He invited me, come follow me.

And that invitation, he believes in me.

He believes in you.

I don't know where you've been, what you've done, what last year was like, even what last night was like, but he says, Come follow me.

The invitation is true.

You can know what I know and do what I do.

You can be a disciple, come follow me.

He actually believes in you.

So here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna get to know Jesus through the study of the Gospels.

In fact, in our teaching for an entire year, we're just gonna teach out of the Gospels.

We're gonna be in the Gospels and reading plans together, in our small groups together.

I want to invite you to love him fully with your whole self.

What does that look like with your mind, with your heart, with your strength?

And begin to ask him this question like, what does it look like this year?

How do I love you with all of me?

And we love him with parts of us, but what does it look like to love him with all of you?

And then as you begin to know him, just start looking for ways to do the very things that Jesus would do if he were in your place.

We just simply want to apprentice under Jesus.

We want to commit.

So what does this look like?

Would you you have a Bible reading plan?

Would you commit to getting to know Jesus afresh through the study of the gospels?

Would you memorize?

Yes, memorize.

I said memorization.

You're like, I'm not the Torah.

Okay, so there you go.

Would you memorize Luke 640?

For those of you who like to memorize and it comes easy, it comes easy for me.

Right now, the first hundred days, I've I've said I'm gonna memorize the Sermon on the Mount.

So some of you are like, hey, I want to do that, do it with me.

Join me if you want.

If you're like going, right Ingram, you're crazy.

Do Luke 6.40.

All right?

It's one sentence.

You can do a sentence in a week, but we're gonna have memorization.

And would you engage in a small group that's growing together to become more like Jesus?

Where you go, you know what, this is what it means to be a follower of Jesus, and I'm gonna do it in community with other people to say, yes, we're apprenticing and becoming more like Jesus.

He thought you had it in you.

He wouldn't have called you otherwise.

And he says, Through the power of my Holy Spirit, in you, I wanna help you live a new life available to you and to me.

And as we close, I thought it'd be helpful to have a picture of what this looks like.

And for some of us who've been following or walking with Jesus for many years, it's even more helpful to be around people who are brand new believers, reminding ourselves of our first love.

And I want to invite uh my friend Ben Fu up uh here.

Would you please welcome Ben?

And I just want him to share just a little bit of his story.

Come on up, Ben.

Let's get in the light over here.

Now, uh Ben's story, actually, today here's really funny.

Today is uh your one-year anniversary here at Awakening Church.

Man, welcome.

We're so thrilled to have you.

Is that on?

Let me let me check this guy.

It's on.

We got no there we go, there we go.

Uh and Ben is one of our proteges, he's a part of the nine-month leadership development program that we have here at Awakening.

And we were hanging out uh at our protege Christmas party, and we're talking.

I got to hear a bit of Ben's story, and it's like, oh man, this is so good.

Everybody needs to hear Ben's story.

And so thank you for being willing to come up and share.

And so I want to just ask you really two questions.

One, what was your life like before Christ?

And then how did you come to know and follow Jesus?

So tell us a little bit.

What was your life like before Jesus?

Uh yeah, so I'd like to preface this by saying uh I did not grow up a Christian, and uh my family, nobody was Christian.

Um so around middle school, I was just a really awkward and shy kid.

Um, I didn't really have a lot of friends, and I wanted to change that.

So going into high school, um, I decided like I really just want to be cool.

I want to be seen as cool.

Um, and I grew up in suburban Connecticut.

So as you might imagine, all the cool kids there, they played lacrosse.

Um now I had never really played sports growing up.

Um, I'd actually much prefer to stay inside and play Mario Kart Wii for my whole childhood.

Um so I mean, as you'd imagine, it didn't really go so well for me when I started playing.

In fact, I played on this freshman team as a junior and on JV as a senior, which I didn't even know was possible.

Um but anyways, going into college, uh I saw that my school had a club lacrosse team, which still played other schools, and they didn't make any cuts.

So uh I saw this as a great opportunity for me to kind of make this sport like my whole identity.

Um and people had no idea how bad I was.

Um and all throughout college, I never really got any better at the sport.

And uh sometime my senior year, uh I realized this.

And I I'd made this sport my whole identity this whole time, and I'd accomplished nothing.

So I set this goal for myself to uh to make Team China and to play in the world championship and maybe become an Olympian.

And uh around that time they sent us all home.

It was 2020, they sent us all home for the pandemic.

And so I had all day, all night to train and watch hours of film every day.

And uh during this time, like my peace and my joy were completely dependent on how uh how my training was going.

So uh anytime I'd have like a setback, I would just lash.

Out at those around me, particularly my mom.

I remember getting in many fights with her over that summer, and just something I'm not proud of to this very day.

But anyways, after several months of making this my whole life and giving everything to this sport, I submitted my virtual tryout for Team China.

And they got back to me and they said that I had made the training team roster.

And I mean, at this point, I was like, this must be what life is about.

Like I'm so close to achieving greatness in this sport.

I'm so close to achieving my dream.

And then it kind of all started going downhill.

In when I when I attended a Halloween party.

And I mean, it being 2020, everybody there got COVID, including me.

And I remember a few weeks after I was hearing how everyone else was healing just fine.

And I was the only one that was still sick.

My nausea was just not going away, no signs of it getting any better.

And uh I would try to train through it, but um it would just make me 10 times sicker every time I tried.

So I had to put it on hold for a while.

So you're in this moment, life is kind of crashing down around you with your dreams of what you hope to be almost achieved, and now you can't do that.

So where does Jesus fit into the picture?

How did how did you come to follow Jesus through this?

Yeah, yeah.

So I mean at this point, um, I was really at the end of myself, and I was kind of figuring like maybe life isn't really all about just achieving greatness.

Um, maybe there's something more to it if if greatness could just be taken away from me, like in the blink of an eye, like that.

Um so around that time, uh my girlfriend at the time, she grew up Catholic, and her mom had given her a Bible, and she wanted me to read it with her, and I guess I was more open because I was honestly questioning life at this point.

And this is actually I ended up getting the same Bible that her mom got her, and uh I have it with me here today.

Um and I just remember we started at the uh the book of Matthew, so with the Gospels, and um I mean I'd always heard that Jesus died for us growing up, even though I wasn't a Christian, um, but I had no idea how much love was behind that.

And just reading the gospels and getting to understand the person of Jesus and getting to start to grasp how much God loved me, um it was really eye-opening.

And uh I I remember one verse stood out in particular.

It was uh Matthew 20, 28.

Uh, just as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

And this is like this is when it all clicked.

Um, just realizing how Jesus, like God, uh who created the whole universe, rules over all of it, came down, um, lived the most humble life to serve us, came down, was born in a manger where they fed animals and lived a life of poverty, got tortured and died a criminal's death just to serve us and love us.

And um, I'd never been loved like that in my life before.

And I just remember crying tears of joy uh every single day for like a month straight, just thinking about it.

And uh that's when I decided to give my life to Jesus.

And I remember going back home for Thanksgiving that year, um, and my mom just asked me, uh, Ben, you've you've changed.

What happened?

And I could only tell her one thing, and it was Jesus.

So yeah.

That's amazing.

That's amazing.

Thank you, Ben, for sharing.

I love it.

And I love I just want to show your Bible.

There are so many post-its and notes.

Uh, I love this because he got into it.

He didn't know that the word of God is powerful.

He he just began to read it, and then he's like, I wanted more of it, and he just read more of it and read more of it, and it came all hive.

And he just it was a delight.

So thank you.

Thank you, uh Ben, one more time.

Will you stand as we close?

An invitation of Jesus to you and to me is the same.

It's come.

Follow me.

I believe you can know what I know and do what I do.

May the word of God in 2023 be like honey to the tongue.

May you devour it the way Ben devoured it as he first was coming to know Jesus.

That it be a delight and not a duty where you realize, oh my goodness, you love me.

And friends, may we follow in the way of our rabbi.

May the dust of your rabbi be upon you this year.

What would it look like if we were just apprentices?

If we actually accepted the grand invitation of Jesus and just started to follow him.

Imagine what God would want to do in your life and your family and your friends.

Imagine what God would want to do with a whole community that does that.

And what God wants to do through an entire world.

That's actually how the world changed through the B team of 16 and 17-year-olds who actually took Jesus seriously to be a disciple and then make a disciple.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

Please subscribe to our podcast for access to every episode as they're uploaded.

And hey, we'd love to connect with you.

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