Fear Makes a Hostage; Only Love Makes you Family | Who Told You That? (Week 6) | Chad Belew

Good morning. Hey, we're continuing our who told you that

series. I've got I think two more weeks to this and then should

wrap it up. Thank you. But today, I'm going to start out with a

story about my dogs. We have two dogs, a white boxer. Same as

Desmo. And then a he's I think he's a Frenchie. That's what

body tells me. French Bulldog. His name is Rev. I should, I

got a picture of him. Like these, these are our two, these are

two guys. Anyway, they're cute. But at our house, we have some

rules for the dogs. One of those rules is no dogs on the

couch. And definitely no dogs on this big love sack that we

have in the living room. They're not allowed on there. And

when I'm home, they obey perfectly. Like model citizens

couch what couch? They stay away from it typically. If it's

just me at home, they're definitely not on the couch or

the love sack. There's some violators in our home that allow

them to. At one point, there was someone who spent a lot of

time at our house. And she would call the dogs up onto the

couch. And I was like, no, Brittany, stop it. So I've had to

try and break that. But when I'm home, they don't go on the

couch. But the second I leave, they're on it. Like they

ride up on the couch every time the boxer, the white boxer is

like the main offender. And I like he knows, he knows. I'm not

sure that the Frenchy understands really anything. So he

just looks at me with his tongue out most of the time. So I

don't know if he really knows what's going on. But the boxer

Desmo, he knows, he knows the rules. He knows what he's

supposed to do. He's known for years. Sometimes I'll come home,

and he doesn't hear me pull in. And I'll catch him. I catch him

on the couch. And it's the funniest thing in the world.

Because when I catch him, he like, tries to slide off the

couch, like just like, try to say is low like like slide slithers

off the couch to pretend like he wasn't there. It's like this

slow motion, like guilty slither, just like, I don't you

don't see anything. It's hilarious. But other times I don't

catch him. But it's obvious that he's been on the couch,

because he's a white boxer. So he has small white hairs. So

then there'll be hairs all over the cushions of our gray leather

couch. And I will stand at the couch and just brush all the

hair off. There's more looking at him. And he's like, I don't

know what you're talking about. Or if I don't catch him and I

lay in the love sack, in my black t shirt. And I get up, it is

covered in white hairs. They were taught what to do like they

know, they know the rules, Desmond knows the rules. I put the

hair on the couch should have a love sack that is the receipt

that he's not following the rules. I love my dog dogs. I love

them both, not equally, but both. No, I love my dogs. But in

Desmond's not a bad dog. He's just a dog. And I'm telling you

about him, because a lot of us myself included were taught a

like kind of obedience that works exactly like this, behave when

God is watching, and get away with it when he's not kind of like

what nobody would actually say that God's not watching. Obviously,

if we ask any of us, like, is God always watching? We would

say, yes, of course, God's omnipresent. Of course, he's

always watching that that's as we've talked to the series, that's

our God concept. That's the knowledge that we have of God. We

know that he's omnipresent, that God is everywhere. But our God

image, the way that we feel in this relationship with God, most

of the days, I would say that we don't feel a God who is

watching until like shame creeps in. And they're like, Oh, like a

cat, I'm in trouble. I do what I wasn't supposed to do. Suddenly,

like the watching is everywhere. And we're my boxer sliding off

the couch like you didn't see this God. So we do these like

mental gymnastics of God's kind of watching, but I could do

this. And he's not like we compartmentalize, because if we

really felt watched by God all the time, we couldn't function,

not in that type of belief system. So underneath this, like

whole arrangement is a question that if any of us said out

loud, might make us kind of uncomfortable. And the question

is this, it's the one that we've kind of been hovering around

this since like week four of the series. It's the one that I get

from a lot of you. When I'm teaching something like this, the

question is, if there's no fear in the theology that we're

teaching, if we're saying that fear based theology is not it,

if there's no fear of like punishment, or hell or losing

myself, like, what's to keep me from doing whatever I want?

Right, anybody ever had that question? Just me, and the

people my DMs? I've heard this question for years. There's

the situation that happens quite a bit where pastors who

disagree with me on some theological place that I've

landed. Usually someone like I have a relationship with me,

I'm sitting with them, we're talking, they're asking like how

I got somewhere, like they're genuinely trying to figure out

like where, where's the break in my theological car, right?

Where do you stop on where the breaks at? It's a fair question.

And I'll try and answer it as honestly as I can. But first,

these pastors whenever, whenever a pastor pushes back on what I

believe about sin, repentance, hell, my beliefs on LGBTQ inclusion,

the conversation, it almost always goes to the same place,

not almost, it always goes the same place. Within a couple

minutes, it always goes to LGBTQ. And the pastor is saying

something like, well, I mean, if I just wanted to cheat on my

wife, wouldn't that be wrong? Wouldn't that be a sinful lifestyle?

Would you be okay with me living in a sinful lifestyle? Like

literally, I've heard this version of this question so many

times. And so now when we're having this conversation, I start

listening, I'm like, all right, I'm just waiting for it to come.

And for me, like, gently because I do love these guys and trying

to be as honest as I can. But when a man tells me that the only

thing keeping him from cheating on his wife is the threat of

divine punishment. He's telling on himself a little bit. And it's

not and it's not always cheating on wife. There's another part of

it that I get. But I think there's kids in here. So they're

always like, well, if I'm addicted to watching this thing, or

would you be okay with that? You guys know where I'm going with

this? He's admitting that fear is the break for him that without

the threat, he'd do exactly the thing he's warning me about. And

I want to ask as kindly as I can, if fear is the only thing

keeping you faithful to your spouse, to your kids, to your

community, like, then how solid is the love underneath that? Because

it's not the obedience of a husband who adores his wife. That's

like the obedience of a hostage. Really, like, they're in

those are two very different things. Because fear can make you

comply to the rules. But only love can make you want to. And

Jesus was always after the want. So last week, I said, fear

changes behavior, but it doesn't change the person. It

produces compliance without transformation. So people who

act right in public fall apart in private under this, this fear

system fear can produce that hostage, but it can't produce

like a child of love, like someone who believes they're an air

to the kingdom. And here's someone I want you to hear today. We

don't have to argue this in theory, because we have decades

of receipts. Look at what fear based theology has actually

produced every week. And the Christian leader is in the news

for something hidden. sexual abuse, financial fraud, affairs,

cover ups. In 2019, our own paper, the San Antonio Express

news, along with the Houston Chronicle, did a six month

investigation called abuse of faith, exposing the Southern

Baptist Convention leaders, and how they spent two decades

covering up sexual abuse, about 380 leaders and 700 victims were

found in this study. Many of the abusers had been moved quietly

from church to church. And then in 2022, the SBC Southern Baptist

Convention, they finally, they were forced to release like a

public list of accused abusers. And the list was 205 pages long.

So 205 pages. And the part that she like sit with us, straight

from the Express News editorial board says this, SBC leaders

have used the lack of hierarchy as an excuse for why they've done

so little to punish predators. Yet they've been able to expel

churches that violated their rules by having female pastors or

welcoming gang lesbian worshipers. I read that again. They

couldn't act on sexual abuse. But they could act on women in

ministry and LGBTQ affirming churches. This isn't a structural

problem. It's a values problem. It, it tells you exactly what the

framework prioritizes. And exactly what it doesn't. And these

aren't outliers. This is a pattern. And if we stop ignoring it,

maybe we can address it. I don't want to sound like I'm just

attacking the church, but I think we have to call it out that

like my attention here is not to just attack. My hope would

really be that we would start asking better questions in the

church. Like actually look at the fruit of what our theology

and frameworks produces. Matthew 715, Jesus says, watch out for

false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing. But

inwardly, they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit, you will

recognize them. Which is always funny because this verse will

get thrown at me. I'm like, I mean, okay. Let's look at some

fruits. One aren't always good. But I think that love, joy, peace,

kindness, fate, like these are the things that we're trying to

achieve here. If the fruit is producing things that harm

people and I don't protect the vulnerable, then I think it's

absolutely mandatory that we start asking questions. And the

push back all here on this question or on this push on this

like approach is you have a chat that the church does like so

much good. Like enormous amounts of charity work. Church gives

billions every year. They're in hospitals and food banks and

shelters. They're often the biggest organization serving

people in need. And all of that is true. That's real work. It

matters. But my thought there is that there's still something

underneath all of this. You guys know that I'm in school

doing psychological research. Some I'm I've got lots of

questions. And when I look at things like the psychology of

religion has long produced like paradoxical literature

findings on religion and repeat like religiosity. In the way

this is what I mean, the paradox here. Religion in studies

correlates with both pro social behavior and prejudice or

religion correlates with compassion and authoritarianism.

So basically when psych psychology researchers say someone is

more religious. Like what they actually mean, it's a

combination of a few measurable things. But how often does

somebody attend church? How important do they say their

faith is to them? How strongly they hold their religious

beliefs? How central religion is to their identity and how they

see the world? So you ask all these questions. And once you

get some like the list of people that score high on

religiosity. So their religion matters to them. And most of

these studies are on Christianity in the US right

now. You score high. So these things get measured. And then you

add them together and you get a score for how religious a

person is. And the more they show up, the more they pray, the

more central their faith to hire their religiosity score.

Right. And then researchers will take that finding and they'll

correlate that score with other things. Like, are these people

more generous? More likely to volunteer? More likely to help

a stranger? Yes, oftentimes, when they're studying this, the

high religiosity leads to giving more to charity or serving

more hours. But are the same people also more likely to hold

prejudice views? More likely to support authoritarian leaders?

More likely to discriminate against people outside of their

group? Also, yes, those correlate in the psychological

research findings. So in the same study, the same people can

give to charity and volunteer their hours, and also be highly

prejudiced. And this doesn't shock anyone. How does the same

thing produce both? How does high religiosity produce both of

these things? Well, that's the question I'm trying to find

out. That's the question that I want to test. That's why my

focus, one of my focuses in the research, but my my growing

belief in this is that the God image that we've talked about a

person carry, like the God image that a person carries, how they

feel about God, who they feel God is, is God a punishing God, a

God that is evaluating their performance, or is God a loving

God, a kind God, one that forgives one that is unconditionally

loving? Like, which which way do you experience God? And I think

my belief is that that God image that a person carries matters

more than how religious they are. And a lot of the studies don't

don't measure these things. So studies are finding like

religious religiosity reliably predicts compassion. This is an

interesting one. But it doesn't reliably predict empathy.

That one stood out to me, there's like lots of studies, high

religiosity, compassionate people, high religiosity, not really

empathetic. And most of you probably don't live in this world.

But watching over the last few years, pastors have become like

anti empathy in a lot of their content. Empathy is not Christian,

is and is not Christ like, which is mind blowing. But here's my

my thought on this. Here's here's where I'm landing right now.

Compassion is it is the impulse to help. Like it can come from a

beautiful place. But I also think it's performance compatible.

Like it can coexist with an evaluating God who rewards moral

effort. So a God who is getting like grading your performance in

that God image, compassion can can fit in that, because the more

compassionate I am, the better I look. And I'm not saying that

everyone that that's the reason they're compassionate. But I

think this is where this correlation happens. You can be

compassionate and still believe certain people don't deserve

your help. Empathy is feeling with someone entering their

experience. And empathy requires what compassion doesn't. You

have to feel safe from evaluation yourself to enter another

person's pain. Because if like, let's just use a an analogy,

like, if someone is messy, and you're being graded on your

performance of how clean you are, when you get into their mess,

and you become messy also, because you're in it, then you're

being evaluated. So with empathy, if you are in the mess with

someone, you can't be unless you can live in a place where

evaluation isn't the focus. Only a non evaluative God image

makes that possible. Like watch how this plays out. The church

builds hospitals and supports wars that destroy them. After 9/11,

American evangelicals became one of the most consistent blocks

supporting military action against Muslim majority countries.

Still are. Prominent Christian leaders publicly call Islam a

wicked religion. While their church funds mission work in

those regions, because there's an evaluation part of that. So

compassion for the convert, and then warfare on everyone else.

The church runs food pantries on Saturday on Sunday preaches

that immigrants in the poor don't deserve government help. They

need to work for prove they deserve it. The deserving poor

get charity. The undeserving. They get policed. That is

compassion without empathy. It's selective. It's evaluative.

It's performance compatible with a God image that most of us

inherited. But my thought is the fruit testifies. So what's the

alternative? Jesus said something that almost every Christian

this room has heard a hundred times. It's usually quoted as a

warning, sometimes a threat, almost never like a description.

But Jesus says, if you love me, keep my commands. If you love

me, you'll keep my commandments. Most of us read that verse like

this. If you love me enough, you better keep my rules. A test,

a condition, a door, you have to keep proving your worthy to

walk through. I think we've been reading it wrong. Jesus isn't

making a condition here. That's not how Jesus worked. He's

making an observation, stating a fact about how love actually

works. When you genuinely love someone, you don't need a rule

telling you not to hurt them. The love itself makes harm

unthinkable. The relationship protects the relationship.

That's not lowering a bar of obedience. That's relocating

the source. And when Jesus says, keep my commands, we typically

want to ask what commands, right? And the church has spent

2,000 years importing all kinds of things onto that list. The

entire Old Testament code, pause letters as a rule book,

centuries of moral codes that varied by culture and era.

We hand all of that to people and say, this is what loving God

looks like. Keep all of this.

But in the same set of scripture, Jesus told us in his own words

what loving him looks like. He gave us a specific picture. He

said, for I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty and you

gave me a drink. I was homeless and you gave me a room. I was

shivering and you gave me clothes. I was sick and you stopped

to visit. I was in prison and you came to me. I'm telling the

solemn truth. Whenever you did one of these things to someone

overlooked or ignored, that was me. You did it to me.

When Jesus tells us what his commandments actually are, he

doesn't list the things the modern church spends most of its

energy on. He doesn't mention sexual ethics. He doesn't

mention dietary purity. He mentions hunger. First, homelessness,

sickness, being a stranger and experiencing the relationship,

being in prison and experiencing someone visiting the

commandments Jesus is asking us to keep are about how we treat

each other. And the part that I think should sit with us is in

this, the context of it, Jesus is not talking to like

outsiders. He's not warning outsiders about what it looks

like and how they're going to get kicked out or he's standing

in front of his own religious community, the people who

consider themselves God's people and telling them that on the

day of judgment, the question is how they treated the hungry,

the sick, the imprisoned, the stranger. Look at what some of

the early church fathers said about this. Not to share your

own wealth with the poor is theft from the poor and

deprivation of their means of life. We do not possess our own

wealth, but theirs. Thomas Aquinas, Aquinas, 13th century

theologian, probably like the greatest Catholic philosopher.

Aquinas says this when talking about this, in cases of need,

all things are common property. If the need be so manifest and

urgent that the present need must be remedy, then it is lawful for

a man to succor, succor, his own need by means of another's

property, nor is this prop properly speaking theft or

robbery. So if someone needs something and you have it and

they take it, that's not theft because they needed it. This

is how far Aquinas goes with this.

So when the pushback happened, and Aquinas was responding, when

they say, but isn't sharing supposed to be voluntary?

Aquinas says no. In cases of genuine need, sharing isn't

voluntary, withholding is the violation.

In Matthew 25, the people being told depart for me, I never knew

you are not pagans, they are religious people, church

people, they thought they were on the right side. This was an

indictment on his own faith community.

And so we have to ask questions about ours. Because again, the

fruit testifies to what we believe or we're teaching and how

we see God and experience Jesus. I'm not saying let everybody

steal your stuff. But we have to be honest about this.

It's a hard time right now financially. We are still in

the greatest, like place we could be ourselves, comparatively

speaking. There's a guy that sleeps in the back corner of our

church every single night. He's been there for five years,

probably. Buddy, Buddy and I have had so many conversations

over five years. He calls me Pops, which is weird because he's

older than me. I've tried to get Buddy into housing and

apartments and just different types of like programs and

help. And he's always like, I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready,

and then we'll try. And then he fights with someone. And I've

heard Buddy's story. I love Buddy. But if we're not taking

care of Buddy, then we're not taking care of Jesus. And we

have to ask, what is the fruit of what we believe? In the same

move, the same idea, Jesus is talking again to religious

people. He's talking to the religious lawyer. And the

religious lawyer asking him a question, who is my neighbor?

Because he's trying to figure out who am I supposed like they

were talking about the commandments, keep my commands,

love God, love your neighbor as yourself. And this guy's like,

cool, who's my neighbor? Just so I know who I have to love.

Which if we're honest, that's the question we ask in the

church, in the modern church, like, okay, who really is my who

do I really have to take care of? Not long ago, J.D. Vance

gave a talk about this like belief, this Catholic belief

that like, I'm supposed to take care of myself, my family, and

then others, it was this list. And the pope was like, you got

that all wrong. Which the pope he's he's ready, he's ready, he's

ready to go. So who's my neighbor? The question, it's a

boundary question. Who do I have to love? Who's in my circle?

Who's out? Jesus doesn't answer the question. He tells the

story, right? The story of the Good Samaritan. He, a man is

beaten and left for dead. A priest walks up and walks past

him. He can't get dirty. The rules say he can't get dirty.

Believe I another religious walk worker walks past, both are

busy, both have rules that they have to follow in order to stay

pure and clean and religiously holy. They walk past him. Then a

Samaritan, the cultural enemy of the Jews, a heretic, the wrong

kind of person gets down in the dirt with him, cleans his wounds,

carries him to an end, and pays for his care. And says, if

there's anything left, I'll pay the balance. I'll be back. And

Jesus in this story flips that question. He doesn't answer who

is my neighbor. He asked the lawyer, which of these three

prove to be a neighbor? Do you hear the move there? The lawyer

asked who counts, who's in? And Jesus says wrong question. The

right question is, who acted like a neighbor? Who is loving

others? The priest and the Levite, they probably gave the

charity, their compassion, but they didn't have empathy. They

didn't enter the man's suffering. The Samaritan did. And

honestly, like by that test, a lot of what gets called Christian

in this country today fails miserably. We've built an

industry around policing who people sleep with while ignoring

the people sleeping outside. We've built movements around

protecting our preferences while abandoning the prisoner, the

immigrant, the poor. Jesus told us the test. We just didn't

want to take it. Now, someone here is already thinking, okay,

what about Paul? Because we're Christians and Paul's kind of

our guy, right? Because Paul has lists. He gives us some list.

Galatians five, First Corinthians six, Romans one, their

behaviors, things that keep you out of the kingdom. And the

modern church has built theological systems around those

lists, made them into like rule codes, use them as ammunition.

But Paul himself told us what happens when you turn his

teachings into a rule code. Listen to Romans seven says this,

but I need something more for if I know the law, but still can't

keep it. And if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my

best intentions, I obviously need help. I realize that I don't

have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I

decide to do good, but I don't really do it. I decide not to do

bad. But then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are,

don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within

me and gets the better of me every time. Paul's describing

exactly what we saw earlier in this like fear based rule based

self monitoring, monitoring obedience. And he's telling us

it doesn't work. He actually says that the law where the rule

code is that increases sin. When you have these rules that

you're trying to follow and you're trying to follow them

because they're the rules, it increases sin. That was the

point of it. So that grace can abound. And then when he's

asked the question like, okay, so we have grace like we can

just keep on sending he's like, man, you got it wrong. Like

you're still trying to put it in the rule book. We don't play

that game. There's a school story. William Paul Young, I

think it's his name, together with the shack. I heard you tell

the story about this guy dies. He was a pastor, most his life

like didn't ministry for 30 years gave the charity did

everything right. He dies. He goes to the pearly gates. He

stand there talking to Peter and Peter's like, Hey, welcome. And

he goes, Okay, so what do I got to do like, like is it like a

hundred points like I got to prove myself and Peter's like,

sure, go ahead. So I've been a pastor for 30 years. I've been

ministering like most of my life and Peter's like, all right,

I'll give you two points and he's like two points. But okay, I

get to charity and I did this. Okay, I'll give you another

point. You guys like how am I going to get to a hundred

points? And while he's doing this, a guy from his town, who he

knew was kind of sketchy, but he was there and like, everyone's

in a while. He would see him. He'd be nice. But he'd spent some

time at the bar. Like, this wasn't the guy that you would

say. This is the best Christian in the world. And the guy comes

walking and he's like, Hey, Peter, Peter says, what's up? And he

walks into the to the pearly gates. And he's like, wait, that

guy had a hundred points. And Peter goes, no, he just doesn't

play that game. But keep going. And I think this is what Paul

saying, the rules aren't what this is about. He's describing and

saying that this doesn't work. When you really look at Paul's

letters, he is, he is putting the law and grace and freedom next

to each other and saying, this is what we're in. We are no

longer under the law. We're in grace and freedom. And it leads

to loving others. Like, the more you focus on not doing the

bad thing, the more the bad thing becomes all you can see.

Right? We've all say we were all kids, but we're all adults

like we know this like, this is the pastor saying, well, what

if I cheat on my wife? You're focused on something. And it's

not the right thing. A corrupted mindset, it finds validation

easily. Tell someone they are fundamentally sexual beings

who desire whose desires must be suppressed. And that's all they

will think about. Tell them they are inherently selfish. They will

only see their own selfishness. The framework reinforces what it

claims to fight. So how do we read Paul's list then? Realistically,

what does this look like? We read them relationally, not as a

rule code, as relational diagnostic tools. Here's his

vise list in Galatians five is obvious, what kind of life

develops out of trying to get your own way all the time,

repetitive, loveless, cheap sex, stinking accumulation of mental

and emotional garbage, frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness,

trinket gods, magic show religion, paranoid loneliness, cut

throat competition, all consuming yet never satisfied once, a

brutal temper, an impotence to love or to be loved, divided homes

and divided lives, small minded and lopsided pursuits, the vicious

habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival, uncontrolled and

uncontrollable addictions, ugly parodies of community. Every

item on that list is a description of harm to somebody,

harm to another person, or a corrupted self view that is

spilling out onto others, loveless sex, harm, brutal temper,

harm, depersonalizing others, harm, addictions that consume the

people around you harm, like these are all harmful things in

relationships. Paul isn't handing us a checklist of things God

doesn't like. He's describing what corrupted self perception

produces when it leaks into relationships. Then the fruit

list from last week, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,

goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control, also

relational. Every item is a way of treating others well. He isn't

handing us to opposing rule books. He's describing what comes

out of a corrupted body versus a regulated one. The vice

list is what flows from shame driven self. And the fruit list

is what flows from a body that knows it is loved. You can't

white knuckle your way from one list to the other. You can

only, as Jesus said, change your mind. Metanoia, receive love

at a level deep enough that your body starts producing different

fruit. There's so much like psychology on it, like how

motivations extrinsic extrinsic and intrinsic and what what

actually motivates us and what doesn't. And you guys can look

that up. Or even developmental research with kids, like if you

tell a child for 10 years that they're fundamentally corrupt

that their desires are dangerous, their bodies are sinful,

their natural impulses must be suppressed to be acceptable.

You produce exactly what the headlines show every single

week. Hidden lives repressed shame, eventual collapse. Because

shame based formation does not produce holiness. It produces

hiding. It produces double lives. It produces the very thing it

claims to prevent the fruit testifies. So what is love based

or love sourced obedience actually look like on a Monday

morning? It looks like honesty. Now, not because lying is on a

prohibited list. But because deception fractures the

relationship you care about, or generosity, not because the tie

this 10%, this is the this is the moment you guys ready? But

because a person who knows they're provided for finds it easy

to give. And they give to things that they believe are doing

good work, or fidelity, not because of the consequences of

failure, but because the relationship itself is worth

protecting. Welcoming up with a stranger, not because Jesus

said to, but because you know what it feels like to be welcomed

and you can't stop extending that care for the poor, the sick,

imprisoned, not because Matthew 25 commands it. But because

once you've been seen, you can't look away from someone the

world has stopped seeing love sourced obedience doesn't look

like fear based obedience like with the volume turned down. It's

a completely different thing sourced from somewhere else

entirely. And here's the thing that nobody told me when I was

younger. You are never going to figure this out. Nobody in this

room has this figured out. I've literally been studying this

stuff for like 20 years now. And I still can't figure it out. And

I mean, this is good news. We think the goal of the Christian

life is to eventually arrive somewhere to get to a point

where we're mature enough, holy enough, sanctified enough to

finally have the answers. But if the goal is to experience God's

love and to love others, well, you can't arrive. There's no

figuring it out. There's no destination where we suddenly

have it worked out. Paul tells us in Ephesians 3, we've read

this verse throughout this series. Like the love of God is so

vast that his prayer is that you would just continue to find

it, just continue to find the edges of it, chase it. Paul says

God's love is so vast, wide, long, high, deep that it will

never find the edges of it. Not in this lifetime. Not in the

next. There is always more. We don't arrive. We don't graduate.

We keep going. Hebrews puts it like this, let us run with

perseverance. The race marked out for us fixing our eyes on

Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. Notice what it

doesn't say. It doesn't say finish the race. It doesn't say

win the race. It doesn't say it just says run it. Keep running.

Eyes on Jesus marked out for you. What are we running toward?

Paul tells us in earlier in Ephesians, for we are God's

handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God

prepared in advance for us to do? Good works prepared in

advance. What good works? I would argue the ones Jesus

described in Matthew 25, seeing people, loving the person God

puts in front of you in this moment. There's like 8 billion

people on this earth. 8 billion good works. God is prepared.

8 billion opportunities to show love, to show up. We keep

learning. We keep growing. We keep finding new ways to love

every day, a new adventure. Every day someone new to love

well. Every day a creative challenge to figure it out. How

do I love this person in front of me in this moment in this

season? What can I do that is loving them? You can't find the

edge of that because there's always more people and there's

always more ways to love. The journey of this life is the

adventure. Like that's it. The journey is it. The

destination is just the moment we get to look back at where we've

been. So here's a question I'm going to leave you with. Sit

with it. Don't answer it today. What would it look like to

approach that same area of your life that maybe you've been

living from fear? You've been trying to white knuckle your

way through it? What would it look like to approach that same

area from a place of love instead?

Think about the area of your life where you're still trying to obey

out of fear. Still managing, performing, white knuckling it,

behaving when you feel watched and falling apart when you're not.

What would it look like to approach that same area from a place of

love instead? Because this is the only kind of change Jesus

ever asked for. Not effort, reorientation. Not working

harder, a new desire. Fear can make you comply. Love can make you

want to. And Jesus was always after the one. It's a different kind of

obedience sourced not from fear but from love made

complete. And the way that love is made complete is what we say

every single week. Arsenal, go love well. It's who you're made to be.

I love you guys. Go do that. We'll see you next week.