Shift: Running From God | 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.

When I was 16, uh, I was driving our family car.

It was a four-door Subaru.

Um, not real cool, but got you from point A to point B.

Not real fast either, which is a great thing for a 16-year-old driving.

My older brother, who was in college at the time, he had what I thought was a much cooler car.

Is it Nissan Datson?

Yeah, is the year that they kind of merged.

Uh it was a 1981, um, like fire orange um hatchback.

And in the 80s, for those who remember, Night Rider was really big.

And so uh this thing, you'd open the door and it'd talk to you.

I thought that was amazing, right?

And then it had this digital dash, and I was like, man, this is the coolest car.

And it's probably cool just because my older brother drove it, to be honest, and I wanted to be like him.

And so, you know, there was this moment where he was in school in Arizona and I was up here, but that car, uh, though it was cool, it didn't have air conditioning, so it wasn't really all that cool inside.

And he said, Hey, why don't we switch cars?

Because the Subaru had AC.

I said, fantastic.

And I thought this was one of the coolest things.

And so I remember the day he was home from break, he had driven the car up, and we're switching cars.

Now, the only problem is the Subaru wasn't automatic, and the um the Nissan Datsun was a you know, manual, a stick shift.

And I had never driven a stick before.

And this is the interaction that we had, and this is the way brothers do it, uh, by the way, uh, is we're out there, I hand him the keys, and I'm like, oh hey man, I I don't know how to drive a stick.

And he literally tosses me the keys, I catch them, and he says, it's easy.

You just put your foot on the clutch down.

For those who don't know, a stick, there's three pedals and not just two.

Uh you put your foot on the clutch in, put it into gear, and then you just kinda go opposite like this.

You're good.

That was the extent of the training that I had in how to drive a stick shift.

Now, today, if you have something that's a you know, today you just have little buttons, right?

But back then you had three pedals, you had, you know, a gearbox and a stick shift and all these sort of things.

And so here I am spending months trying to learn how to drive a stick shift.

And this is how it went for me.

I remember getting it into gear, finally, getting it going, and then all of a sudden, you know, I try to get it out of, you know, into first and moving and go go go.

And it completely shut down.

Now, how embarrassing is that?

As a 16-year-old, these were the days obviously, then you could drive your friends around, and they uh stopped that for good reason as well.

Uh, but I'm in the car with my friends or at the stoplight and trying to go and go and I mean completely stall out, cars honking behind you, frustrated.

And then, like when you do shift, you ever done this before?

Those who've driven, how many, by the way, how many have driven a stick shift?

Fantastic.

How many have an idea of even what I'm talking about?

Okay, all right.

And and if you don't get the clutch all the way in, you do something called grinding the gears and you get it, and it's like and you're just like ruining the gears there.

And so I I mean, I spent months trying to figure this out, broken, you know, stalled out.

I finally realized um the way that I could get out of first, especially with friends in the car, was to gun it.

And so that's what I did.

And I, you know, I'd get at the stoplight and I just like gun the gas and pill out at every stop sign, every stoplight, and at 16, you can kind of act like you did that on purpose, you know?

And I'm like, yeah, look at this car.

Woo! The reality is I couldn't do anything else.

That was had no other option.

Now, here's the reality.

Here's the reality is often here's how we feel in life is like we just got thrown the keys to life.

And there's no instruction manual, there's no way, like, uh, hey, you go figure it out, and we're like trying to shift through life and figure things, and and you kind of have it, and you're like, and some of you feel stalled out in life, don't you?

Like, like you're trying to get out of first gear, and especially after the last couple years, you just feel stalled out, or or maybe you're making some different shifts and there's decisions, and you just feel like that you're grinding the gears of life, where you're where you're just kind of like, oh man, or maybe the RPMs are so high, Silicon Valley, like you're just stuck in one gear, but you have to go faster and faster, and you just can't change it, or or you're just like going, like, okay, the only way I know to do this is to gun it.

And we live in this space of trying to navigate life.

And here's what I know to be true inside of all of us that there's this deep sense in our soul that knows and understands there's more to life than what we're currently experiencing.

And the busyness, it can tend to crowd it out, can it?

And yet there is still that whisper of the soul that says there's more, you have purpose and meaning, that your life matters.

How do you shift?

How do we shift to the more we're made for?

How do we stop grinding gears and maybe stalled out in life?

Here's the wonderful reality is that God didn't just toss us the keys and said figure it out in life.

He he, in fact, went to great detail in his word to say, I I actually want to help you and coach you and come alongside.

I want the very best.

I want to help you live into all that I created you to be.

And so I'm not just gonna talk, hey, good luck.

No, no, no.

I'm gonna teach you and show you and help guide you.

And what we're gonna do over the next several weeks, we're gonna spend the next five weeks in an ancient book uh called the book of Jonah, and really discover how do we live the life uh that we're created to, the more you were made for.

And we're gonna be looking at this prophet that's really kind of an anti-hero, if you will.

Um, he's the Bernstein bears of some of the, you know, prophets in the Old Testament, meaning, if like you remember the Bernstein bear, some of you, like uh it was the father bear that would always mess things up, and then you say, This young bear is what you ought not to do.

Right?

When we look at the life of Jonah, he's that kind of character that we see what he's doing and the directions or the different things he's doing.

And it's such a helpful picture, one, because I so often identify that, man, I'm leaning in that direction, and then realize, okay, there's actually a different direction to take.

And so we're gonna be looking at that for the next several weeks.

And to do that, I want to actually first kind of help give you a background to the entire book of Jonah since we're spending so much time in it.

And so if you got your notes, open them up.

Let me give you just a backdrop to this book.

First, Jonah is the fifth of the book of twelve or the minor prophets.

And and here's in the if you got your Bible in the Old Testament or the Hebrew scriptures, you flip to the end of the Old Testament, what you find is these books of prophecy.

And you have Isaiah and Jeremiah, they're major prophets, and they're called major prophets just because they wrote long uh, you know, uh books, if you will.

And then there's minor prophets, and they're called minor because they're just shorter.

And in fact, it was can all condensed in one book.

It's called the Book of Twelve.

And so you would have one scroll that had all 12 of these books, and that was Jonah is the fifth of that book.

And it's unique among the prophetic books as it's primarily narrative.

It's telling the story of Jonah and his call to prophesy to the city of Nineveh.

And what's fascinating is Jonah is probably one of the most well-known stories in the Bible, but it's not really well known.

It's Jonah and the help me out.

Well, yeah, the two of you.

Um, Jonah, it's not that known that well, Ryan.

Jonah and uh help me out.

Well, you're like, I heard it earlier, thank you very much.

Right?

And some of you with veggie tails, you're like, that's the only context that you have for Jonah, and uh along that line.

Now let's talk about who is this Jonah character?

He's Jonah the prophet.

When you think of a prophet, a lot of times we think about foretelling the future, and certainly that was some of the work that prophets did, but primarily what a prophet did was they proclaim forth the word of God.

They would proclaim forth the very words of God to the people of God in general, uh, to call them back to the heart of God and the ways of God.

That is what a prophet did.

And Jonah, his name was uh Dove, literally son of Amitai.

He was from Gath Hepher and Galilee.

Just note that it's real close to Nazareth.

So he he lived in the region later on where Jesus grew up as well.

He prophesied to the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of Jeroboam II, who was a wicked and evil king.

And we see some of his story in 2 Kings 14, where, you know, this is where we get a picture of Jonah, and like, hey, maybe there's some interesting parts about Jonah we want to keep our eye on, is he prophesied to this evil, wicked king in Israel that the borders were going to be extended, and they were, but he had no problem uh with that and even calling Israel to repentance through that.

He's like very happy, hey, our borders are being extended, and it gave him a great life because he's giving this good news.

Well, later on, uh a contemporary of his, Amos, said, Yes, the borders are gonna be extended, but because of your wickedness, because of the way you've treated people, because of the way you've been unjust to others, they're not gonna last and it's gonna actually come back upon you.

And so Amos and Hosea were contemporaries of the prophet, and God specifically what we'll be looking at is Jonah's call to preach uh to Israel's archenemy, the Assyrians.

We'll talk about them in just a second.

Now, something unique about Jonah is how Jesus identified with Jonah.

Now, Jesus quoted and spoke of four different prophets uh from these books uh in his earthly ministry, but there's only one prophet that he identified with, and that was Jonah.

And what he did is he identified himself with Jonah's three-day sojourn in the belly of this great fish as a foreshadowing of his own death, burial, and resurrection.

And let's be honest, as we start this conversation, isn't it part of the hookup or hang-up rather, of Jonah and the well, or Jonah and the fish is Jonah and the fish.

You're like, come on, could that really happen?

In fact, some people are like, yeah, it's probably just, you know, uh allegory or you know, a made-up story with a point to just try to make this really good, meaningful point.

Now, there's been several occasions where people actually have been swallowed by a fish and survived.

That's a whole nother story for another day.

But here's what's fascinating: Jesus, we're a group of people who gather around a resurrected savior who died, predicted his death, wrote and was buried, and then rose again from the grave.

Okay, so so if Jesus rose from the grave, it's not too big or too big of a jump to think that Jonah could survive a couple days in a well by God's grace in that area.

And then the other side of it, just for me and when I read this book, is if Jesus took this as historical, I'm gonna take Jesus' word on it.

That's just my my thing.

I'm like, if you predicted your own death, burial, and resurrection, uh, and then actually did it, I'm gonna be pretty confident on whatever you said and go with what you said on that.

So this is who Jonah is.

Well, who are the Assyrians or the city of Nineveh who he's called to preach against?

Well, Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria, uh, the Assyrian Empire.

This is an ancient superpower located uh on the east bank of the Tigris River, modern-day Iraq, about 550 miles east uh of Jerusalem.

Now think about this.

Imagine this.

It had a hundred foot high walls, 50 feet thick.

And when we think about that thickness, there were also homes and different things built in the city walls, so it wasn't just like straight uh, you know, uh stone 50 feet thick, but this huge and seven and a half miles long.

I mean, just immense, about over 600 people, estimated scholars, of how many people were in the city and around the surrounding areas.

This is an immense, huge, massive city in the ancient day.

And unfortunately, the Assyrians were renowned, well known for their cruelty and brutality.

In fact, one historian says it this way it is as gory and a blood-curdling a history as we know.

Like the things that you watch, and I feel like today, and whatever kind of TV show, I feel like things have gotten especially gory and especially, you know, brutal, and this makes it look PG.

In fact, let me just read just a little bit because this is gonna set the context for the entire book.

One historian writes this records brag of live.

Oh, sorry, this is gonna be gruesome.

I just want to give you a warning.

Records brag of live dismemberment, often leaving one hand attached so they could shake it before the person died.

They made parades of heads, requiring friends of the deceased to carry them elevated on poles.

They boasted of their practice of stretching live prisoners with ropes so they could be skinned alive.

The human skins were then displayed on city walls and on poles.

They commissioned pictures of their post-battle tortures where piles of heads, hands and feet and heads impaled on poles, eight heads to a stake, were displayed.

They would burn young ones alive.

This was their common practice, and they boasted, their kings wrote uh boasting about this.

Those who survived the sack of their city were tied in long lines of enslavement and deported to the Assyrian cities to labor on building projects.

Tens of thousands in hundreds of cities suffered this fate over the 250 years of the Assyrian reign of terror.

This is the city Jonah was called to preach to.

And what we do know is about 50 years later, after Jonah of Syria, then does conquer the northern kingdom and deport the city of Israel, and they accept this fate.

Now, what is the purpose of Jonah for us?

Well, one is it reveals an incredible thing that's woven from the very beginning of scriptures all the way to the end, and it reveals God's expanse of love and mercy for every single person on the planet, especially those we feel do not deserve mercy.

And then when we see Jonah and his life and his response as the reluctant, as the rebellious, as the anti-hero prophet, it so often acts as a mirror for our lives.

As we see it in the word, and we get to see ourselves and how we respond, and it's a clarion call for us to shift our lives onto God's purpose for this planet.

So that's the history, that's the foundation, that's the background of the book of Jonah.

Are you ready to dive in?

How do we, how do we shift to the more you're made for?

If you got your Bibles, would you open up to Jonah chapter one and we'll dive in and begin?

Jonah chapter one begins this way.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amitai.

Like God came up and said, I'm speaking to you, I have a call for you, I have something to say.

And I think we get excited about that.

In fact, we were talking with my small group and uh the other night, and they're saying, you know, we so want God to like reveal uh his will, like in just such clarity, wouldn't it be great?

But then this is what God says to Jonah.

Go to the great city of Nineveh.

I'm sorry, come again.

We just talked about what that city is.

Go to that city, um, the arch enemies of Israel, Assyria, which borders the northern border of Israel, the ones who are constantly encroaching on our territory.

You want me to go there?

Are you kidding me?

And then preach against it, or literally the text in Hebrew is just proclaim, it's just speak forth, it's just utter this.

Because it's wickedness, wickedness has come up before me.

And Jonah's going, like, no kidding.

Are you yeah, thank you.

About time, God, you caught up with where we're at on this.

This is the call of God on Jonah, the prophet, and I think he responds exactly the way that we respond.

When we when we experience God's clarity or God's word in an area that we particularly disagree with or dislike, and don't want to do.

It says but.

Generally never good, by the way, is the butts in scripture.

Some of them are very good, but this one is not.

But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshus.

Tarshus is like exactly opposite.

If uh Assyria, Nineveh is northeast, Tarshus is southwest.

We don't really know exact identity, but somewhere in Spain, across the sea, and he's gone as far away as he possibly can.

He heads for Tarshus.

He went down to Joppa where he found a ship uh bound for that port.

And after paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshus to flee from the Lord.

He's like, God's got a call in his life.

He shows up, but he doesn't like the calling, he doesn't like the direction, he disagrees with God's direction in his life to go to a people that he hates and that hate him.

And so what does he do?

He runs the opposite direction and says, Well, I don't want to do that.

And so I'm not gonna do that.

In fact, I'm gonna get as far away from there so that you can't make me do that.

That didn't work out.

No, I want to say something that's so obvious, but we have to say it.

Something that we I think intuitively we know this, but we don't really live this.

When we run from God, we shift away from the more we're made for.

When you run from God, it's shifting that gear and it's shifting to a direction from the more you're made for.

When you say, you know, I don't like that assignment, I don't like that call, I don't like that direction, I don't like the way you're telling me to do relationships, I don't like the way you're telling me about to go about my finances, I don't like the way you're calling me to engage and be uh at my workplace.

When we shift away from God, here's what happens: we are shifting from the more you're made for.

And you know this, you get this.

Because if God made you, designed you, created you, in my men's morning group, we're talking about this in Ephesians 2, where it says that you are God's workmanship.

The Greek there's poema, you're his masterpiece, his poem, designed with intention, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, like like he has just some incredible things for your life.

And the calling isn't always what you want, the calling isn't always the way you think it should have been.

The calling isn't like, oh man, oh, I'm just gonna live my best self.

He's like, No, I'm calling you to Nineveh.

No good.

I don't want that one.

See, anytime we run from God, we're shifting away from the more we're made for.

You know, in the text it said that he went down to Joppa.

You remember that?

And then something that didn't get translated, maybe some of your translation has this.

When it says it went aboard the ship, you know what Hebrew word that is?

Down.

And then in verse 5 again, do you know it says that he went down into the ship?

And the reason in the English they don't translate it is because it's kind of awkward.

You don't go down and down, and but here's what the author and the writer is trying to Help us to say is that when you run away from God or when you shift from God, when you say that it's not neutral.

And I think that's what some of us think is like, no, I'm just in neutral, it's not a big deal.

I'm just gonna coast and it's not a big deal.

He's saying, no, no, no.

And you shift away, you're actually on a downward ascent.

And it might seem like you know best in that season, best in that relationship, best, and we say, no, no, no, it's a downward ascent that's gonna create great harm on your life when you run from God.

It's always a shift away from the more we've made for.

Just thinking about like how do how do we run?

How do we run from God?

I think it's in the areas where his will doesn't make sense.

I think it's honestly most of the time, don't don't don't we have a better plan than God's?

I know you like created the universe and all that stuff, and um it seemed like you had some pretty good old testament plans, but I got a pretty good plan for my life.

I got it from here.

We run from him when we resist what God has clearly shown us or revealed to us in his word.

We go, okay, there's much that when he said this is how life is to operate, how life's to work, who you're made, that he's been so clear on.

And when we just go, no, I I just I pick and choose the parts that I like.

And I don't like this part, but I like that part, and it's when we run from God.

When we run from God, we shift away from the more we're made for.

Well, then how do we shift into the more we're made for?

Let me give you two things that God has shown us clearly.

These are two fundamental shifts we need to make in our lives to live out the who God has made you to be and into uh the person he's created you to be.

The first is simply this shift, the shift to God's heart for the world.

God's heart for the world, to embrace his heart for the world and the way he sees the entire world around you.

I I John 3.16 is probably one of the most famous verses in the entire world.

And even if you don't go to church, uh you'd know this verse.

And it says this for God so, help me out, loved the world.

For God so loved, like the attitude, the intention, the disposition of the God of the universe is not that he's against you, out to get you, down on you, but loves you.

And who does he love?

The world.

Every single person on the planet, regardless of whether you agree with their politics or not, regardless of where they live, regardless of what they're doing, regardless of how they're living, he says, I love them with an everlasting, passionate, all-consuming love.

Whether they're Nineveh or Israelites, I love them.

I love them.

That he gave his one and only son.

Isn't it a fascinating thing that God calls this prophet to Nineveh and he runs the opposite way?

And God sees the great heartache and pain of the world, and he sends his son right into the heart of it.

Right into the heart for you and for me.

That whoever believes puts the weight of their life on him, shall not, and will you say this word with me, perish?

Like God's heart is that you would not perish, but have eternal life, or it's the eternal life now.

Notice that it's present tense, have.

It's the eternal kind of life of peace and joy and hope that begins now in the presence of Jesus, the spirit deposited inside you, and forevermore.

And his heart's desire is I so love you, I so love you, I'm so for you.

And there is a sickness of the soul that has separated you called sin from my presence, and there's a direction and intention that that pathway is destruction.

And this is my heart for you.

My heart is to keep you from harm and to bring you into my family.

I love you.

You know, I was wrestling this week of like, why didn't Jonah want to go to Nineveh?

And um, you know, I think my human kind of first reaction is like, well, Nineveh, and you heard who they are.

It's like, you're gonna die.

You know, you got a word like that, isn't it?

That ain't good.

But at the end, chapter four, Jonah tells us, he says, I knew you're a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love.

He's quoting Deuteronomy, the very character and nature of God.

Because he knew that you he's going to Nineveh to proclaim this news.

What has he given them?

He's given them a warning.

He's given them a heads up.

You ever wonder why you give somebody a heads up?

Hey, heads up! I was playing golf the other day.

Four.

Look out.

Why do you give somebody a heads up?

Well, you give them a heads up and let them know that harm is coming, destruction's coming, a ball is flying through the air, and if you don't look up, you might get hit in the head with it.

And so I'm gonna give you a warning, I'm gonna yell it out because I wanna keep you from harm.

Heads up.

And Jonah says, I don't want to give them a heads up.

Because I'm afraid they'll listen and repent and they won't get what they deserve.

Because I was thinking, like, okay, so who do I give a heads up?

Who do I say, look out?

Who do I let them know?

Man, don't go down that direction.

Well, certainly people I love, and I was like, well, it's just people you love, and I start like, no, it's more than that.

It's more than just people you love, it's people I like.

Like, well, no, it's even more than that.

Man, you see a ball coming at a total stranger, what are you gonna say?

Heads up, watch out! Why?

Because you're just a good person, and that's what you should do.

So, who are the people that you would not say heads up or look out to?

The people you hate.

The people you want to get hurt.

Now, chances are you don't have any Ninevite at your workplace.

And these extremes sometimes cause us to miss out on the moment.

You know, in Jesus' day, in the cultural customs of their day, when he said, Love your enemy, an enemy defined was simply one whom you would not have into your home.

All of a sudden, it expands.

And heads up, there's heartache coming.

I don't think we do a good job at this because we live in the world of like you do you, and you you know what?

You're gonna get what you deserve.

Like when we get God's heart for the world, he so loved that he gave, he sent.

He's like, I don't want any harm.

I so love the Ninevites, and I know what they're doing is so broken, but I'm gonna send you there to give them a heads up because I love you, God's heart, and we take this verse so personally, and it's wonderful, and that's absolutely true, but we have to expand it out to your neighbors, to your coworkers, to your classmates, to that person who posts that just annoys you online, to the person of the opposite political party, and where we begin to get God's heart that he has this everlasting, all-consuming love, and he sees that there's a direction and a path that you're headed, there's a process of the state of your heart that you perish, destruction, harm is coming, and we can't help but say we love you heads up.

First fundamental shift is that we have to embrace God's heart for the world, he's clear on that.

Secondly, is then respond to God's calling on your life.

If that is true, then what am I to do?

If that is true, then what am I to do?

God's calling on your life.

And you're like, well, Ryan, I don't have a calling.

Thank you very much.

You're a pastor, you have a calling.

In fact, you're paid to be good.

I'm good for nothing.

No, wait a second.

That's not wind.

Right?

That's for prophets.

Notice what Jesus said.

Final words to his disciples, we know it as the Great Commission.

And Jesus came to them and said, Therefore, all authority or all authority has been given to me.

By the way, real quick, all authority, that word authority means Jesus has the final say.

Jesus gets to say, and be able to be the one who is like, hey, this is what is going to happen.

He's in charge.

He has all power, all authority in heaven on earth.

It's been given to me.

Then he says, This, therefore, in light of that reality, go.

Not just pastors.

Us.

Go and make disciples.

Go and tell people heads up.

Go and let them know that he loves them with an everlasting love and has done what we could not do.

And you no longer have to work your way to God, but God has worked his way to you, and he's done and covered the cross and the pain and the punishment and invites you into the family of God.

Therefore, go.

And then when we hear the go, we're like, well, is it Nineveh?

550 miles away from home.

So one day I'll go do that, Ryan.

Thank you very much.

It's interesting the tense of that word in the Greek go is actually while you go.

While you go.

Therefore, as you go about your day, make disciples.

Therefore, as you're going to work, make disciples.

Therefore, as you go to your school, therefore, as you go to your CrossFit, therefore, as you go, you know, to uh your spin class, as you go to the coffee shop, as you go wherever you go, as you go, that you embrace, you are a called one by God, separated out, immensely loved to share and express his love to a hurting and broken world, one in which he died for, he died for you, you experience his grace, and how could you not share that?

Friends, that is the more.

That is the more.

In fact, the apostle Paul, when he was writing to Philemon, he said this.

It's a short little book, it's a letter to this church leader, and he says, I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith so that you'll have a full understanding of every good thing you have in Christ.

Like there's something about this that when we're active and sharing, when we begin to just share what God has done in our life, we experience the more we're made for.

It sets your heart afire and you begin to experience him in unique and profound ways.

I think we run from that.

I think we're running from our calling.

I think we're running from our calling in our day, the same reason maybe that Jonah ran.

See, he he prophesied that Israel would be, you know, successful in this campaign and expand their borders.

Well, you know what happened to him?

He's a hero.

The wealthy, the elite, the noble loved him.

He, I'm sure he got paid handsomely.

He had a very comfortable life.

Can you imagine what they would think of him if he went to their arch enemy and gave them a heads up?

He'd be hated, wouldn't he?

See, I think we get so concerned about what other people think, so concerned at what they might say, that we say nothing and we don't give anyone a heads up.

And you're like, Ryan, don't you know there's so many crazy Christians out there?

Don't you turn on the TV?

Like, people are gonna think I'm one of them.

Crazy Christian.

Well, yeah, if you don't start speaking up and showing Jesus and the light and what it really looks like to be a follower of Jesus.

Friends, in this area, let's just be real.

You at your workplace, at your campus, or wherever you're signing onto Zoom is probably the only follower of Jesus, the only light that they know, and they don't even know your light oftentimes.

Where we begin to say, no, no, no, God's heart for the world.

God, would you begin to knit my heart with your heart?

Would you begin to allow my heart to be with your heart?

May I begin to see others around me the way you see them.

May I begin to have that heart desire that you love them, every single person that came across my path, and then you called me.

Not somebody else.

Called you.

Called you.

You're his game plan.

Go and make disciples.

I want to give us just a very simple application.

And if you would pull out your three by five card, I believe this is one of the most profound, powerful spiritual tools that you've ever held in your hand.

Might be an overstatement, but here we go.

I want to call our church to what I'm calling the three by five challenge, where you'd write down three people that's in your life, in your world, who do not know Jesus.

And then pray for them every single day for five weeks.

Remember when John, John, and Christy were here?

There are missionaries to Haiti, and Christina asked him, like, hey, do you have any kind of final word or word for a church?

And he just said three words.

Remember that?

So simple, but he lives it out.

I've gotten to know him for the over the last decade.

He lives it out.

He said, prayer, care, share.

It's as simple as that.

Prayer, care, share.

Say that with me.

Prayer, care, share.

See we complicated.

Would you write down three names?

At least and pray for them.

Like, isn't it the least you could do, the least caring thing you could do is at least pray for somebody?

Like, if you really long for them to know Jesus, like, like, can't we do that?

And you're like, Ryan, I don't know three people.

I'm living the like little holy huddle of church.

I've been here, I don't know any non-Christians, so get a new hobby.

Seriously, get a new hobby.

Join the CrossFit crew.

Spin cycle.

Start going to a coffee shop.

Get to know your barista.

But and you're like, okay, well, maybe there's one person who cuts your hair.

Just imagine what God wants to do in and through you and use your life to be a light to those around you.

Prayer, care, share.

Would you, on the backside after you write this, then on would you write John 3.16?

And then the prayer that I have underneath there.

And this is a prayer that we've prayed as a church often throughout the years.

But I want to invite you to pray this on the daily.

Heavenly Father, would you give me an opportunity to share with someone in some way about you today?

Heavenly Father, would you give me an opportunity to share with someone in some way?

It's not like I'm sharing everything and I'm breaking out the Bible and going through all the scriptures.

No, just some way.

How can I encourage you?

I've found if you ask somebody if you can pray for them, even in Silicon Valley, they don't say no.

Everybody's pretty open to that.

That's an incredible way to share in some way about Jesus today.

And it's amazing that when you pray for somebody, God changes and shifts your heart.

And when you pray for an opportunity, God changes and shifts your lens and how you see those around you.

When we begin to pray this, and we just begin to do the three by five challenge, and we begin to align our heart with God's heart, and we embrace that we have been called, you have been called by God.

When I was a senior in high school, this became a reality.

It was the summer before my senior year that God got a hold of my heart.

Um in high school, I wasn't really walking with Jesus and was trying to, you know, just fit in.

I mean, uh I just want to fit in.

It was so intimidating, right?

Um I wasn't popular, I just was trying to like hang out with anybody that would hang out with me.

And then over the summer, like like Jesus got a hold of my heart.

And and there's something that happens, like when you encounter Jesus and he gets a hold of your heart, like it's like you're so excited, and you want everyone to experience what you just experienced.

You're like, this is amazing.

And so I was sitting in my US Gov class at the beginning of school, or football coach was teaching it.

It was dreadfully boring, and there's like we're sitting around tables, there's like five of us at a table.

And so, like, I have this newfound passion and excitement and faith in Jesus, and I turned to Preston Caffrey.

Now, Preston was the most popular kid in our school.

I mean, like, he knew everybody, everybody knew him, everybody wanted to be him.

He was like, I mean, so cool, and I was so not.

And I just turned to him and I said, Um, this is how sophisticated I was at 17.

Um, has anybody told you about Jesus?

Now, mind you, the football coach is lecturing on about something, who knows?

Has anybody told you about Jesus?

And then Preston kind of looks at me and goes, No.

And I ask, can I?

Sure.

And I gotta believe it was just simply because we were stuck in class and it was boring as all get out.

And he's like, Yeah, why not?

I don't know.

This crazy kid sitting next to me, I've seen him around, and sure.

And I just began to share how Jesus changed my life.

That was as simple as that.

At the end of class, you know what he said to me?

He's like, Could we talk more about this?

I was like, Yeah.

And he's like, Could I come over to your house and talk about this?

Yeah?

Could I invite some friends?

Sure.

And all of a sudden, a guy who doesn't know Jesus started a Bible study at my house to know Jesus.

And I began on a three by five card, and I wrote down the names of every one of those guys.

And I just began to pray for them every day.

It just sat by my bedside table.

And I know this isn't the way it always ends up because sometimes we're praying for people for years and years and years, and eventually God shows up, but I gotta see every single person on my three by five card comes to know Jesus.

Preston, was April 24th, 1999.

It's tattooed on his arm.

Years later, he'd get married on that day because it was so significant in his life.

To this day, one of my dear friends, my wife from my 40th last year, had people share, send in videos to share who are significant in my life and pressons on there, thanking me for a moment that a 17-year-old kid just got out of sight of himself because Jesus had changed his life and couldn't help but share it in probably the worst way.

And God honors that.

Thank you.

The entire course of his life.

God, it's hard for the world.

He loves.

And where we would embrace that God's calling on our life is the people in your world to just simply begin to love them.

That's the more.

Oh, that we'd be that people and we'd get to share these stories together and get to see people 20 plus years later and their story of how God met them.

Because you had the most powerful spiritual tool.

A three by five card.

It's as simple as that.

Jesus, thank you so much for our time.

Thank you for your grace.

Thank you for your incredible love that has extended and poured out to us.

Thank you that you have called us to be a part of what you're doing on this planet.

And Heavenly Father, I just ask right now, because I think there's names that are popping up into people's minds that they haven't even thought of or uh recognized for years, that they would write them down and they'd reach out, and your spirit's prompting would be uh there would just be a responding to that.

God, that you would get our hearts beating with your heart, even a quickening of our spirit to lean into what you have as make us this kind of church for your name's sake, for the world's sake.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

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