Are you trying to do the part only God can do? /// Built: Part 4

Welcome to the Plum Creek Church Podcast.

We're so thankful that you're listening along with us in this way.

Now, if you're a returning listener, welcome back.

But if you're new or newish, we'd love to become part of your listening rotation.

So be sure to subscribe and follow to be notified when new episodes are available.

Now, before we get into the message, we want to remind you of one thing.

At Plum Creek Church, we are all about change lives, changing lives.

We really believe that if Jesus is right about God, about life, about the soul, then it only makes sense to rearrange our lives around what he says is true.

Because when you choose to follow Jesus like that, it really does change everything, including the lives around you.

Okay, let's posture our hearts for what God has in store.

This message.

Elementary school went all the way up through college.

I think I was probably five, six years old when we started to attend Plum Creek back in the movie theater days.

And growing up until high school, like I was just super plugged into the student ministry, missions trips, Sunday nights, you name it.

Like it just was where I wanted to be because that's where my people were.

It was a life that was changed because of ministry and life here.

I remember life group leaders and student pastors and the people that are still on staff today really helped me up our relationship with Christ.

Growing up in Plum Creek was incredible.

I think it was definitely like the firm foundation that I had.

I had so many amazing mentors and leaders around me that really shaped who I was.

I knew I had a community of people who were always for me and fighting for me.

High school's hard, and being a high schooler, but having Plum Creek as my home to come home to was the best gift ever.

Countless people pour into me.

I've been baptized here.

I've been able to grow into my relationship with him.

When you go from high school to college and your faith becomes your own.

Started a residency program.

I got a little under a full year in.

I got kind of brought out of the residency into full time at that point.

Over the course of that like summer, the student ministry just exploded.

God did something that we couldn't even begin to ask, think, or imagine.

And it was just a phenomenal journey of getting to pour into the community that again made me who I am today.

And then God called our family to move to Indianapolis.

And so we started serving at a church there, Northview Church, and we saw over 30 students take the step of baptism last year and say that I'm with Jesus and want to just proclaim that to their friends, to their families.

We saw hundreds of students come to a winter camp that we did and accept Jesus for the first time.

Changed lives, changing lives.

Like my my whole story, my testimony is a complete embodiment of that.

I went on my first missions trip with Plum Creek when I was there Homer Jr.

Um, and that changed my life.

I encountered the Holy Spirit, I saw God's heart for the nations, and I knew that's what I was called to do.

So when I graduated high school, I went to YWAM, and one of their main functions is to train up disciples and send them into the nations.

I went to Thailand.

We sent a team to Berlin.

We were on the ground working with refugees, and then we knew we wanted to live back here near family.

So we felt the call to come back to Castle Rock.

We really hard him say, like, to make this place our home and to invest.

So we jumped in really hard.

We said if we're gonna come, we're gonna serve and we're gonna be Plum Creek.

I started serving with students.

I've been leading a small group for two years now, so is my husband, and it's been the best thing ever.

I started serving on the tech team.

I've led a small group for six years.

I work in construction.

I was like, okay, I can use my gifts for God.

So I went to Homes of Hope and Tijuana.

Loved it so much.

So went the second year, loved it, and went back a third year.

Being a part of growing and raising the next generation felt pretty special.

I was a mess in high school.

I don't think anyone could have looked at my life in high school and been like, yeah, she's gonna go into missions and ministry.

So I think you never know the impact you're gonna have.

And those little moments every week showing up, like getting poured into by those faithful leaders who never gave up on me.

I think that's what I'm seeing now.

You might not see the fruit right away, but knowing that it will come years from now is so powerful.

I grew up here and now I get to raise my kids here.

My kids are in those halls singing loving Jesus because someone loved me here and taught me about Jesus here.

It's just bigger than you could ever imagine.

The stories that God is writing in and through all of these kids, all of these students.

It is unbelievable if we can zoom out for a little bit and just to see me and even one story in my testimony in my life, what God can do and is doing in and through the lives of all these kids and students at Plum Creek.

It's something truly special.

Come on, Plum Creek.

How good was that video right there?

I've seen that thing's thing about nine times, and every time I watch it, my eyes start to sweat a little bit, if you know what I mean.

My I choke up a little bit.

Um, thanks for being here this weekend, sharing part of your weekend.

If you're with us online, we're glad that you're with us too.

If we haven't had the opportunity to meet in person, my name is Bob Seal, and I am the executive pastor of Next Gen Ministries here at Plum Creek.

And the people leading worship today, the stories that told on LCTV, the hosts of LCTV, the people behind the cameras right now, they're all part of the 1,100 people involved weekly in Next Gen Ministry, either as attendees or contributors or staff.

And those are my people right there.

And I'm so proud.

I'm so proud of what God is building here in the next generation through Plum Creek.

Can we just celebrate that one more time?

Well, we're gonna wrap up the Nehemiah series today, and uh we're gonna go and start, we're gonna start where Pastor Doug left off last weekend.

So if you have your Bibles or your devices and you want to open them up, you can open up the Neobiah 12.

And while you're doing that, I wanted us to just kind of remind us of a theme that's been happening in Nehemiah.

And the theme is this people participate, God builds.

The people participate, but it's God who does the building.

And in chapter 12, we see a people who've been faithful and have participated, and the walls finished, Jerusalem's rebuilt, the temple is rebuilt, it's restored, and now the people in chapter 12 are gathered to celebrate.

And in Neobiah 1243, it says this.

On that day they offered great sacrifices, rejoicing because God had given them great joy.

The women and the children, the next gen children, also rejoiced.

And the sound of rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard far away.

That's kind of a picture of what lit of what literally happened last weekend, right?

When we gathered for our 20th anniversary, all of us, 2,500 plus of us, gathered at the Mac, and our worship and our joy, it echoed into the hills surrounding the Mac.

It echoed to the incline as people's thighs burned and they sweated and they they gasped for oxygen.

It echoed to those tray, all the mountain bikers out there thinking they were going out for a quiet Sunday ride, and then they ran into us.

And at one point, as I looked out on 2,500 people worshiping, some of you with your hands in the air behind you, you couldn't see it.

There were two zip liners just coming down like that.

And I'm like, what are those guys thinking is going on?

It was actually amazing.

Well, chapter 12 here, what we see is the essentially their anniversary celebration.

Nehemiah's anniversary celebration.

And chapter 12 is the crescendo of the book of Nehemiah.

And if we were making a movie of Nehemiah, this is where Nehemiah would have ended.

The people singing and the inspirational music rising, and the screen would fade the black, the credits would roll, and everybody would live happily ever after.

But unfortunately, there's one more chapter with a plot twist.

Cue the ominous music.

In Nehemiah 13, Nehemiah leaves Jerusalem and he goes back to his old gig working for King Art Erxes.

And after some time, he returns to Jerusalem.

I like to think that Nehemiah was returning for homecoming because high school just kicked in and there's going to be homecoming soon.

So Neah returns to Jerusalem for a homecoming, and I would guess that Nehemiah had high hopes for his homecoming based on what we see in chapter 12.

But what he finds is something very different.

Because things have already started to unravel with the people of God.

In fact, their hearts have drifted far from him.

One of my seminary professors, Sinclair Ferguson, he's a Scottish pastor, and I'm going to paraphrase him here, not in a Scottish accent.

I used all the accents last weekend, if you were there.

But he essentially said Israel's deepest problem had not simply been solved because Jerusalem had been built, rebuilt.

They still needed transformed hearts.

And he would go on to say that the heart of the matter is a matter of the heart.

The deepest problem that had not been solved was their heart.

The wall had been rebuilt, the temple restored, the word read.

They'd made commitments to God, but none of those things by themselves could transform the human heart, and that was their deepest need.

And the reason I think this is true is because heart work is hard work.

Nehemiah teaches us this: that you can build a wall in 52 days, but it takes generations to form a people.

And Nehemiah is not just about rebuilding a wall, more importantly, it's about building a people.

You might be thinking, well, how bad, how bad can chapter 13 be?

Turn with me to Nehemiah 13, verse 4.

Nehemiah 13:4

Before this, Eliashib the priest had been put in charge of the storerooms of the house of our God.

He was closely associated with Tobiah, and he had provided him with a large room.

Where was that large room?

It was inside the temple.

Now we met Tobiah, some of you might remember back in chapter four.

Tobiah was one of several men who were actively threatening, manipulating, mocking, and trying to sabotage the rebuilding of the wall and God's plan.

And Tobiah ends up somehow in a room, living in a room in the temple.

And in order to make room for Tobiah, Eliashib, the priest, he had to move all the items that were stored there.

And the items that were stored in that room were all the things necessary for the worshiping of God, the worship service in the temple.

So essentially, Tobiah moves in and worship is out in the temple when he moves in.

Now, Tobiah, he couldn't stop the building of the wall.

They rebuilt the wall.

And Tobiah couldn't get in through the wall, but you know he didn't have to.

Because eventually someone invited Tobiah in and gave him a room.

And Plum Creek, as we think what's ahead of us in the next 20 years, I think there's something here for us.

Because the greatest threat to God's work through the church through Plum Creek Church in the next 20 years, it may not come from the outside.

The greatest threat might actually be the threat of an inside job, which is what we see here in chapter 13.

Heart drift happens when we make room in our hearts for things or people that pull us away from the heart of Jesus.

See, small drifts, small, small compromises can lead to big drifts of the heart.

And here we see that the wall can be standing, but the hearts can be wandering.

And that's what we see here.

So Plum Creek, the one question we probably need to ask for the next 20 years is this what is the condition of our heart?

See, Nehemiah, he confronted the compromise.

And he goes in and he throws Tobiah and his furniture out of the temple.

And he called out the compromise and he called it for what it was.

It was evil.

And then he prayed over the room, they purify it, purified it, and then they moved all the items back in and they began to worship again in the house of God.

But the one thing Nehemiah couldn't do, as good a leader as he was, he couldn't form a new heart in the people, and that was their biggest need.

Now, the Old Testament prophets they point to the fact that God had a plan for the reforming of the hearts of his people.

And I think Ezekiel probably puts it best in Ezekiel 36.

This is God telling Ezekiel of his plan of how he will renew the hearts of his people.

And he says in chapter 36, starting in verse 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.

I will remove from you your heart of stone, a hard heart to the things of God and the ways of Jesus, and give you a heart of flesh, a soft heart receptive to the ways of God.

And I will put my spirit in you, and I will move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep all of my laws.

Look at the promises that God's giving here.

I will give you a new heart.

I will put my spirit in you.

I will move you to follow and not drift.

And notice who is doing the work.

God will give, God will put, God will move in our hearts.

And it echoes the theme of Nehemiah, which is people participate, God builds.

Now, those of us that are familiar with the Bible, the big story of God, we know this that the Old Testament prophets are his solution, God's solution for this heart problem, it points to a person, and that person is Jesus.

And Jesus didn't just come to save us for the future, an eternal future in heaven.

Jesus actually came and he came to build a people.

A people whose hearts are transformed, a people who go about this world bringing heaven down to earth.

That's the type of people he is building.

And Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6 19, the first part of it, do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God?

For those of us that are in Christ, the Holy Spirit takes up residence in our heart, and he begins to do the inside transformational work that only God can do.

Metaphorically, the Holy Spirit searches and he begins to go after the deeper roots or deeper rooms of our heart.

Where we have invited things or people to take up residence that actually keep us from experiencing God's fullness in our life.

And the Spirit comes along as he enters those rooms and he asks us to surrender those things and to make room for God.

Things like our pride, our fear, our self-protection, maybe our lust, maybe our need for control.

You see, Plum Creek, the heart of the matter really is a matter of the heart.

And one of the other reasons that I think heart work is hard work is this is that the hard work that God is doing, it requires presence.

And presence requires of us the most valuable commodity that we have, which is our time.

Jesus, if you look at his life, you you'll see Jesus' presence.

He doesn't just teach his disciples, he is with them.

See, the disciples watched Jesus pray.

They watched him love difficult people, he watched him confront injustice and welcome children, and they experienced his patience when the disciples were slow to understand what Jesus was teaching them.

Jesus didn't just teach him, he embodied the very thing that he taught.

And when it comes to formation, presence is required.

The formation of our hearts requires the presence of someone else because I believe this.

God is building a people.

We see this in Nehemiah, he's still doing that today, but he's building a people who can be embodied witnesses to the Jesus that we proclaim.

And that happens when a person with a transformed heart is present with another.

Essentially, what Jesus is forming in us, he wants to reveal through us.

And we say this a different way here at Plum Creek.

We say it all the time.

Here at Plum Creek, we're all about changed lives.

See, a changed life doesn't simply teach someone that Jesus sees them.

A changed life says hi first and gets to know them by name.

A changed life doesn't simply teach people about Jesus-centered community.

A changed life lives in Jesus-centered community and invites others in.

A changed life journeys alongside of them in their loss, grief, and pain.

My friend Ken, he has a kind of a nifty way of saying this that's really sticky.

Ken would say it this way our witness is our witness.

Our witness is our witness.

We embody Jesus to the person across from us.

And we all know this to be true, don't we?

Because all of us can think of that person or several people that were with us in our life at a point in time.

And their presence, God used to be catalytic, to begin to shape the trajectory of our life and of our faith.

But one of those people in my life was John.

John was an architect.

And John the architect was a contributor in a local student ministry called Young Life.

And Young Life is like a youth group for kids without a youth group or kids who don't go to church.

And I didn't have a youth group, and at that time I wasn't going to a church.

There were lots of students there.

I started going in the spring semester of my sophomore year.

I just went three times that semester, and I didn't even think John even knew my name.

John, he was cool.

John was so cool, and he he still is.

We stay in touch.

And John rocked this bushy Tom Selleck like mustache, and he still does.

And John wore polo shirts with the collar popped all the time, and he still does, but he probably shouldn't.

And that summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school, I was 16 years old and I was working at a summer camp.

And that's when my life was interrupted by loss and grief.

My mom lost a two-year cancer battle that summer.

And I went back home from camp to be home for a week with my family and all the things surrounding her passing.

And when all of this was going down, John was away on a trip.

But when he came home, the very first thing he did was hop in his car and drive 90 minutes to the camp where I was working.

Unannounced.

He didn't call and ask permission.

He didn't make any plans.

He just showed up.

And I don't remember a single thing that we talked about that day.

Not one word that he said or one word that I said.

In fact, we only talked for 15 minutes because I had to go back to work.

A three-hour round trip for a 15-minute conversation.

But what God did with that 15 minutes, with John's witness, John embodied the love of Jesus to me and gave me a glimmer of hope.

And you better believe the first place I was when fall rolled around in the new school year is I showed up at Young Life because John had at least earned that, right?

And when John stood up that semester, and he taught that God sees us and that he knows us.

Not just here, but here.

That brings us full circle.

Twenty years from now, as we gather to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Plek Church at Ball Arena.

I pray that this would be true.

Nehemiah 12.

And on that day, twenty years from now, they offered great sacrifices, rejoicing because God had given them great joy.

The women and children also rejoiced.

The sound of rejoicing in Jerusalem, Castle Rock, in the valley, it could be heard far away.

So Plum Creek.

Two decades from now, may the sound of our joy travel far and beyond, echoing around the world, through the generations into eternity.

And may we draw near to God and near to others so that our changed lives continue the ongoing legacy of Plum Creek Church, which is changing lives.

And may it be said of us that we were faithful, that we did not drift.

We participated.

God built, He built a people for His kingdom and his glory.

Amen.

Thanks again for listening.

Our prayer is that this message encouraged and challenged you in your journey to follow Jesus.

If you'd like to learn more about our church, please check us out online at plumcreek.church or if you find yourself within driving distance of Castle Rock, Colorado, we would be honored to see you in person on a weekend.

So until next time, grace and peace in the name of Jesus.