Love, Marriage and the Baby Carriage: Love in a Hopeless Place with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the Medichurch podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life, that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Well, I want to welcome you in.

If you're new with us, my name is Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

I'm so glad that you joined us for week one of our relationship series.

Whether you're here at our Holotus venue, our Petrenko venue, or streaming with us online, I'm so glad that you jumped in with us on this.

Now, uh each week throughout this series, we are going to be rooting our teaching in the ancient wisdom of Proverbs.

This is an Old Testament book that was written by King Solomon, the wisest man to ever walk the earth.

And uh this has so much for us.

So one of the things that we're gonna do, I want to invite you in on this, is together as a movement, we are going to read the Proverbs together over the four weeks of this series.

We're gonna follow along online.

So if you're not following us on social media, on Instagram or Facebook, make sure that you're following us and that you check it daily because every day we're gonna put out a prompt and a deep question and the reading for that day.

Most days it's just like one chapter out of Proverbs.

A few days it will be two chapters.

So I hope you'll do that with us.

Now, uh, we're gonna talk about everything from falling in love, dating, marriage, all the way to the baby carriage.

We're gonna talk about parenting in our fourth week.

And you may be thinking this is the type of series where you can opt out of some of the weeks.

If you're single, then why do you need a marriage talk?

If you're married, why do you need a uh a dating talk?

If you're just dating, why do you need a parenting talk?

But here's the thing about wisdom wisdom is cross-functional, it will apply across domains.

And I believe no matter where you're at in your romantic life, if you come every week and you lean in, that God will speak to you uniquely.

My opening message for our series is love in a hopeless place.

Love in a hopeless place.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you.

We thank you for your great love for us.

Uh, we're here trying to discover how to organize our romantic lives according to your word and in a way that will allow us to thrive and allow us to follow you more fully.

And so, no matter where we're at on our faith journey, I just ask that we could humble ourselves, open our minds, open our hearts.

Holy Spirit, we believe you're here and that you're wanting to speak to us.

And so have your way in this service in Jesus' name.

If you're ready to find hope in a love, in a hopeless place, say amen.

Amen.

Uh, in 2011, Rihanna had an absolute smash hit with her song, We Found Love.

Here's kind of some of the records.

She spent 10 weeks as the number one song in the entire world.

She won a bunch of awards, including a Grammy, and at the time it was the 29th biggest single of all time.

There's been millions and millions of songs written throughout time, the 29th biggest song ever.

And it's a love song, you know?

Uh however, the thing that makes all of those accolades so insane is if you actually read the words to We Found Love, they make absolutely no sense.

It is a nonsensical song.

And that's weird because it's a love song.

And most love songs, the lyrics carry them.

Most love songs are like poetry, just kind of like set melodically to a rhythm.

Most love songs like speak to your soul because of the actual words of the song.

Elvis saying, wise men say, only fools rush in, but I can't help falling in love with you.

That's beautiful.

That's a beautifully written love song.

It's supposed to be simple, you're supposed to understand it.

Boys to Men literally made it numerical.

You can't miss it.

One, you like a dream, come to two, just wanna be.

It goes all the way to five, but I'm on a time limit here, right?

It's like so simple and so obvious, and the words make sense.

Let's look at we found love.

Yellow diamonds in the light.

You know what that means?

Nothing.

It means nothing.

I asked Google, the only response I got was one person who was like, I think this meant that they were in the club and dropped acid.

That's what the yellow diamonds are.

If that's true, it totally makes me understand the rest of the lyrics, right?

Yellow diamonds in the light, now, now the word now is causal.

It's like the thing that came before it has caused this.

Because there's yellow diamonds in the light, which means nothing now, we're standing side by side.

As your shadow crosses mine.

Now, uh as is connected to a dependent clause, which means that line doesn't make sense, and surely the next line is going to explain what as your shadow crosses mine means, but it doesn't.

It just says what it takes to come alive.

It's not a question, it's not really a sentence, it's not really a statement, it's just nothing.

That's verse one.

Verse two says, shine a light through an open door, which I guess sure, why not?

Love and life, I will divide, that's like a math problem.

I don't really want to touch.

Turn away because I need you more.

Now that just doesn't make sense.

If I need you more, it should be like, come closer, because I need you more.

Turn away because I need you more.

That doesn't make sense.

And the cherry on top of this convoluted Sunday is the very last line which says, feel the heartbeat in my mind, right?

I'm not a doctor, but if you have a heart in your mind, you're in trouble, right?

The whole song is nonsense.

And I love love songs, and so this just frustrates me to no end.

And it's the 29th biggest song of all time.

And the reason is because the verses don't matter.

Nobody knows the verses.

The verses are just an excuse to get you to the hook.

And they sing the hook over and over and over and over again.

We found love in a hopeless place.

And so everyone could cling on to the song, even though the verses are just complete and utter nonsense, because everyone has experienced feeling hopeless in their pursuit of love.

We have all experienced thinking we found our somebody, and then our somebody isn't who we thought they were, and they break our heart into a million pieces.

In the app dating world, we've all experienced, like, you know, having an online connection, and their profile says six foot three, and they're really four foot three, and it's like, I don't think that was a typo, you know?

It's like the world can feel very hopeless, and we have this deep longing for connection.

I'll be honest, I really thought this idea that, like, I need to find my soulmate, I gotta find my person.

This idea that we're searching for our other half, that that was like very modern.

I thought for most of human history, you know, everything was kind of ordered and structured.

And what I found as I was preparing for this series is that the idea that you have a longing, and that longing will only be fulfilled by your other half, it's actually a very ancient idea.

Most people have probably heard of Plato, he's a famous philosopher from about 2,400 years ago.

Plato put together a symposium.

He just brought together some of the great thinkers of his time, and one of those thinkers was named Aristophanes, and Aristophanes stood up at the symposium and he he told this pagan mythical story to explain this deep longing for connection that's inside of all of us.

And what Aristophanes said is that originally humans were whole.

And to Aristophanes, a whole human is both male and female in one.

And so he told the story that a whole human would have two heads and four arms and four legs, and just because it's important to the story, both sets of private parts, right?

That's a whole human to Aristophanes.

And he said, whole humans were so powerful.

As a matter of fact, they were so powerful that the gods, the pantheon of gods, became threatened by humans and thought that they might take a run for their power.

And so Aristophanes said that to solve this problem, Zeus came down and divided humans in half.

Now, just one head, one set of arms, one set of legs, male and female.

And because of that, that describes this deep desire that we call love.

And that love is actually us trying to find our other half, and because we all have our other half, we will not feel complete and fulfilled and satisfied and whole until we find them.

That idea has permeated our cultural imagination.

Most of us have lived most of our lives as if that idea is true, and even more dangerous than that, most of us hold that as so essential to how we view our life and our romantic relationships that we read a pagan mythical idea into scripture.

We see this in the shows that we watch, in the movies that we watch, in the songs that we listen to, in the books that we read, we have to find our other half.

Maybe the ultimate example of this is the reality show, The Bachelor, you know?

It's like you have one guy and he's so handsome and he's usually rich and he's so successful, but he's incomplete.

Because he has to find his other half.

And so there's one bachelor, and how many, how many women?

It's like, okay, now I know who watches The Bachelor.

Great.

There's 30 women.

And then he's gotta like find and the women, uh, their goal is actually not to marry him, their goal is to come in second place so they can become the bachelorette and get more time on TV, right?

Like, that's how the game actually works.

But it's informing us you have an other half, and your life can be great, but if you don't have that, then you're nothing.

It's a very dangerous idea.

Now, in my message today, uh, we're not gonna specifically talk about dating or specifically talk about marriage.

Today we're just talking about our quest for love at like the highest level and how we view this.

And there's something I think is is really interesting at pastoring and working in church for the last 15 years, spending a lot of time with people.

When people come to faith in Jesus, uh, you know, your motivations begin to change, and you believe in Jesus, and then you need to start following Jesus.

And that means you gotta change things, right?

And you gotta submit to God and you gotta start walking in new ways.

And and what I have found is that people are usually pretty quick to try and follow Jesus when it comes to their career and their friendships and their finances and their habits.

But for some reason, the culture has its hooks so deep in us, and we have bought so firmly into this idea that Plato put forth that while we're following Jesus in other areas, we're still trying to do things on our own when it comes to our romantic lives.

And so you can kind of imagine this.

It's like Jesus had this metaphor he used when he was on earth.

He said, uh, narrow is the way that leads to life.

And that's like the fullness of life: a life of purpose and power and fulfillment, where you are complete and whole and you know who you are and you're secure.

That's a narrow way.

And we use this culturally when we're trying to behave, we say, I'm trying to stay on the straight and narrow.

That's actually an idea that we got from Jesus.

He he goes on to say, and wide are the paths that lead to destruction.

And these are all the ways as we're trying to follow Jesus that we deviate and we try to do things on our own.

And just what I've observed is that there is no category of life that we do this more often than in our romantic relationships.

And I think it's because we don't actually know what it means to follow Jesus.

Here's our proverb that we're rooting ourselves in is Proverbs 3, verses 5 and 6.

Proverbs 3:5

This is a great one to memorize.

If you memorize scripture, it just becomes a part of you and you start to live it out.

It says, Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding.

And all your ways know him, and he will make your paths straight.

One more time, trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding, and all your ways know him, and he will make your paths straight.

Now, I I love this for several reasons.

Number one, uh, it gives us a do and a do not.

It's very thorough in just two short verses.

It says, do not rely on your own understanding, your own intuitions, your own skill sets, your own ideas.

Do trust fully in the Lord with all of your heart and know him in all your ways.

We get a do and a do not and a promise.

If we follow those instructions, the Lord will make your paths straight.

I want to show you what this looks like because it's almost like we're over here.

We feel incomplete, we have a deep longing for something more, and and we're lonely, but we want to be loved, and we're incomplete, but we want to be whole, and we're struggling for purpose, and we want to be purposeful, and we we feel insecure, but we want to be powerful, and we want to walk the straight and narrow and we want to follow Jesus, but we don't know exactly how to do it.

Uh, I asked my friend Lalo to come help me demonstrate this.

Would you guys help uh welcome Lalo up to the stage?

Uh I I didn't give Lalo like a ton of instructions on this, I just I just told him that it might get kind of a little bit awkward.

So uh Lalo, it you're gonna be Jesus, but don't get a big head.

It's just an illustration, but you're gonna be Jesus for me today.

And um, what we want to do is follow Jesus on the narrow path that will lead to the life that we're longing for, and we want to do that in all ways.

And I think how we think about this is like when I was a kid, and we would go somewhere really crowded, the mall was crowded or a crowded restaurant, when I was a little kid, uh sometimes my parents would say for me to just grab a belt loop.

Any parents in here?

So I grab a belt loop, and then where I go, you know, you're I'm not gonna grab your belt loop, dog, just so you know, that's not about to happen, right?

I'll just hold your shoulder.

But that's the idea, and I think like that's how we kind of follow our parents and don't get lost in the mall.

And so we think, like, if I follow Jesus, and we'll kind of go slow here, but I'm just gonna kind of hold on, I'll just kind of grab hold.

And then as he walks, it's like, I'm gonna line up, I'm gonna line up my finances, I'm gonna line up my friendships, I'm gonna line up my career.

But when it comes to our relationships, as we're trying to follow Jesus, we're kind of like, oh, okay, you look good, girl.

You look good.

Okay.

And Jesus is very patient, and he'll kind of, he'll just like wait and he'll pursue us and he'll allow just the natural consequences of me trying to go out on my own apart from him, because it's not gonna work because I'm trying to do it without the power of Christ inside of me.

So he's very patient, and then when that just like goes, you know, down in flames, Jesus is like, okay, are you ready to like really follow me now?

And it's like, you know what?

That was a disaster, but I'm I'm back on the straight and narrow.

Let's go, Jesus.

And so we start going and we start going, and then I get in the app store and I'm like, Tinder, what is this?

You know, like you're telling me that if I swipe and they swipe, if I I swipe, you swipe, we swipe?

Like that's how that's how Tinder works.

That sounds easy.

And you know, you've like been in the dating pool for a little while, and it's very frustrating, and you're sexually frustrated, and all of a sudden with Tinder, it's like a hookup app.

It's like I can find people and have all this sexual conquest, and maybe I'll feel valuable because I'm insecure.

So maybe if I can like get a bunch of people to sleep with me, I'll feel better about myself and more valuable and more worth.

But for some reason, it's like every time you go through that process, you actually feel less valuable and more insecure, and it's not working, and everything implodes, and Jesus is just like this guy, you know, like and he's just waiting so patiently, and then we come back and we're like, all right, Jesus, here we go.

Where are we?

That the problem is that's not what it means to trust in the Lord with all your heart and not rely on your own understanding.

So I'm gonna go back to the beginning and I want to show you what this actually means.

Can we put Proverbs 3 up?

When you put Proverbs 3 up, trust in the Lord with all your heart.

That's a Hebrew word, batash.

And it doesn't mean uh grab Jesus' belt loop and then follow him, you know, a little bit.

The problem with the belt loop is I can just let go.

I still have freedom.

Batash is actually a word picture.

That's the best way to explain it.

And what it actually means is you have a weight and you trust something enough to put all of your weight on it.

You are batosh across our venues, whatever chair you're sitting in, you batash, you trust it enough to put all of your weight on it.

But when it comes to following the Lord on the narrow path towards life, we are not called to just kind of put a hand on Jesus' shoulder and close our eyes and feel it out and get distracted and go apart from him.

What the picture actually looks like is lean on the Lord fully.

And now, even if I see homegirl over here, I can't get to it.

Y'all think Lalo.

The reason we have to put all of it on Jesus is not because we have to just trust Jesus, it's because I can't trust myself.

And I've lived long enough to know that.

I have leaned on my own understanding too many times and seen the devastation it has caused in my life and the lives of those that I love.

And so we think about following Jesus, but there is a precursor to following, and it's implied in the actual Hebrew word, Batosh.

Before you can follow, you have to submit.

Jesus, you know, I used to see these bumper stickers in the 90s, and it was like, Jesus is my co-pilot.

Like you have Jesus in the car, and you're the one driving.

Jesus isn't like your tour guide.

You're just Jesus becomes your walk.

Jesus directs your steps.

If you will, but relationships are heavy.

Romantic relationships are heavy.

So who carries the weight?

If you're leaning on your own understanding, if you're leaning on your spouse's understanding, you are putting a weight on your relationship that neither of you can bear.

And Jesus is here.

He's like, not only have I come and died for you and rose again so I can give you new life, but I will now take you upon myself.

I will carry the weight for you, cast all of your cares upon me, because only Jesus has shoulders broad enough to carry the weight of your relationships, and all of a sudden the pressure is off.

We want to walk in our own ways, and Jesus has called us in his word very specifically how to navigate our relationships, how to lean on things, how to pursue holiness, and we want to follow on with our money, and we want to follow on with our career, and we want to follow on with our finances, but we have bought the lie that what Plato said 400 years before the birth of Christ is actually how relationships work.

And they don't.

And here's the devastating part that Plato got wrong is you can find your other half and still find yourself hopeless.

And you're all in love and you're dating and it's all good, and things are actually good, and everyone's like, oh my gosh, hashtag goals, you know.

But there's still something like this deep longing, you're like, it's still, and so you think maybe if we get engaged, you know, because if we get engaged, I get to put the ring on IG, I get a bunch of likes, like, and that lasts for a minute, but everywhere you go, there you are, and then you're like, you know what?

If we tie the knot, because then, right, the two become one, my other half and I were whole.

Now I'll be whole.

If we get married, I'll be whole.

And so you get married in you get a honeymoon period, most people get a little honeymoon period, and all of a sudden it's like, it's still hard, and it's still heavy.

You get married, oftentimes things get harder for a season.

And so many people have this idea if I can just find my other half, I will finally be whole.

And what's really devastating is when you find love, and you're still in a hopeless place.

We're leaning on our own understanding, we're leaning on our own knowledge.

And here's what's crazy: if we will batash, put all our weight on the Lord, it says, He will yesar, he will make our paths straight.

It's the picture of someone smoothing out the road in front of you, removing the obstacles to your success, patching the potholes of pain and trauma that keep derailing you from the life that God has called you to live.

The psalmist painted a similar picture in Psalm 37.

He said, Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart's desires.

Now it's interesting because we can read that through a platonic lens and say, He'll give me my heart's desires.

That sounds like leaning on my own understanding.

I already know what I need, and God will give it to me.

But it's sequential.

You first must take delight in the Lord.

This is the picture of being molded.

It's literally the word picture of a lump of clay on the potter's wheel as Smooths out imperfections and transforms you into what you were purposed to be.

When you take delight in the Lord, when you trust him and lean on him and know him in all of your ways, God will give you the desires of your heart, because the desires of your heart will be God's desires.

And so we have to compare and contrast because whether we know it or not, we're coming up on Valentine's Day, and most of the marketing and most of the gifts and most of the commercials, they are built through an ancient pagan mythological construction that at one point you were whole and now you're incomplete.

And so you gotta find your other half.

This is the cultural imagination.

You're incomplete.

And so you have to lean on your own understanding and you have to follow the paths of the world, and then if you can find your other half, you'll finally be made whole.

And so you go down the paths that are outlined by the culture constantly.

The paths of lust and pride and hookup apps and meaningless sex and selfishness and looking out for yourself and withholding and manipulating and dominating and playing the field and watching pornography, and that, as the dominant cultural imagination for how relationships work, is why the most poorly written song in history is the 29th biggest song of all time.

Because we all feel hopeless when it comes to our romantic lives.

People who are single don't feel like they'll find anyone.

People who are dating feel like they can't find the right person to date.

People who are married feel like they're no longer married to the person that they signed up to be married for.

It just feels so hopeless.

And so we have to be clear: Plato's version of reality is not the version of reality given to us in God's word.

Scripture tells us that we were created first and foremost, not to find our other half.

We were created first and foremost for relationship with God.

And it is only in relationship with God that we are made complete.

King David came to this conclusion in Psalm 62, he said, Rest in God alone.

And he's talking to his own soul, my soul.

Rest in God alone, for my hope comes from him alone.

You see, in the creation narrative, we read a platonic myth into it.

God designed us for relationship, it's part of his eternal plan.

Here's what he says in Genesis 2.18.

The Lord God said, It's not good for the man to be alone.

I will make a helper corresponding to him.

Now I want you to look at that verse, and here's what it doesn't say.

It is not good because the man is lonely.

This seems like semantics.

It actually matters.

It is so cemented in our worldview that we are incomplete until we find our other half that we read it into verses like this.

Scripture does not say that Adam came to God and was like, I don't know, man, I just feel like something's missing.

I feel like I, you know, I feel like I don't have my person, I don't have my soulmate, I feel like I'm incomplete.

Adam was made whole because he was in relationship with his creator.

It wasn't Adam's plan to have a wife, it was God's plan for Adam.

God knew that in relationship and in community we have the best chance at reaching our potential, at continuing to grow and continuing to mature and continuing to pursue the purpose that God has created us for.

We read it as if God was like, What was I thinking?

Oh, I really screwed this one up.

Look how lonely he is.

That's not what it says, but it's how we read it.

And it's dangerous because that's not a biblical idea.

It's a pagan idea.

Relationships are a blessing from God.

The fact that he made Adam a helper who was like him, but not like him, a helper corresponding to him, someone who complimented him, who fit together with him spiritually and emotionally and physically.

But you need to know biblically, earthly relationships are not what give us hope.

Earthly relationships are not what make us whole.

Which means if you are single, you are not literally searching for your other half.

If you have chosen a life of singleness dedicating it to the Lord, you are not forever incomplete.

And this is important.

If you are married, you are not literally married to your other half.

There have been so many marriages doomed by both spouses thinking, if I marry this person, I will finally be made complete.

And then you get married and you realize that yes, it's difficult to find love in a hopeless place.

But the hopeless place is not what's happening outside of us.

The hopeless place resides inside of us.

And we try to fix it externally.

And you get a year into marriage and you wonder why you're still longing for more, and you get two years into marriage and you wonder why everything feels so hard.

And the natural thing, because we have bought the lie of the other half, is to look at them and go, why aren't you making me happier?

Why aren't you making me feel more fulfilled?

Why isn't this marriage thing bringing me the happiness I thought it would?

And we don't even have to talk about the extreme percentages of marriages that end in divorce, mostly because we enter into them thinking the other person will make us complete.

Let me say this clearly: you don't have another half.

That is not God's idea.

That is based out of a story of Zeus, a false God from 2,400 years ago.

You are not going to find your completion in an earthly relationship at the same time.

That does not mean you've been made whole.

You see, there's this other idea in about the last 15 years creeping into our culture, and it sounds something like this.

I don't need a man, I'm a strong, independent woman.

Now I know.

My team's gonna clip that right there and put it forever in a vault.

Men who are like, I don't need a woman.

Marriage is the worst contract you can sign.

All women will do is destroy your life.

I don't need a woman, I'm a strong, independent man.

There's a Shakespeare line, he says, uh, Thou dost protest too much.

In other words, the more you try to convince me that that's true about you, the less I'm going to believe you.

We're not just complete and whole and perfected in and of ourselves.

We need something else.

And it's not just us.

Look at what Paul wrote to the Romans.

He said, For we know the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now.

We're all longing for something more.

We're all longing for something deeper.

The prescriptions the culture is giving us, leaning on our own understanding, our own skill sets, our own ideas, following the paths of culture, it will not get you there.

It's time for a new way forward.

Here's our verses for today.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Do not rely on your own understanding, and all your ways know him, and he will make your paths straight.

Rihanna's saying we found love in a hopeless place, and the hopeless place isn't what's happening externally, it's what's happening internally.

You know who found this out?

The Apostle Paul.

Before Paul came to Jesus, he was on the come up.

He was powerful, he was influential, he was wealthy, he was one of one.

People looked up to him, they revered him, he was young but more intelligent than anybody else.

Here's what Paul says: he says, everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ.

More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ, Jesus my Lord.

In all your ways know him.

Delight in the Lord.

Nothing ultimately satisfied, nothing ultimately fulfilled, nothing made him whole until he knew Jesus.

God made you for relationship with himself, and for many people, God made you for relationship romantically with someone who you can come together, the two, becoming one and pursue Jesus together for life.

However, if you don't learn to lean all of your weight on Jesus, your relationship will struggle.

Your spouse cannot be the source of your hope.

You are putting a weight on them that only God can bear.

Your spouse is a support to you, and you are a support to your spouse, both aiming each other up towards hope in Jesus.

The world can feel very hopeless, but here's the good news.

When you find your hope in Jesus, you are finally ready to find love in this world.

When you source your hope in Jesus, you are ready to manage romantic relationships in this world.

When you find your hope in Jesus, you will not look for someone else to complete you.

As believers in Jesus, we do not look to find a romantic partner to make us whole.

We find our completeness in Christ, and then we move forward, trusting that he will lead us into the relationships that we need.

Aristophanes, about 400 years before Jesus was born, he said that humans were so powerful that Zeus came down to tear us apart.

Here's what John says in his gospel.

In John 1, it says, In Jesus was life, and that life was the light of men, and that light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.

John seems to be saying that Jesus came down not to tear us apart, but to illuminate the path towards life.

In verse 14, he says, the word, that's Jesus, became flesh and dwelt among us.

You have one worldview that says that the gods came down to tear humanity apart, and you have Christianity, which says that God loved you so much, He came down to make you whole.

What's so hard about romantic relationships is it can really be hard to find the right person.

If you're dating with intention, then you know you're out there, you're looking for someone who really loves the Lord and is trying to follow Jesus and is like purposed in the same direction as your life and like has proper sexual boundaries.

Like, all of these are really, really hard boxes to check out in the dating world right now.

And then, like, you also have to get along, you know, your personalities might clash.

Like, it can be so difficult to find someone.

Here's the good news the relationship you need to actually make you whole, you don't have to go searching for Jesus came down and found you.

Jesus stepped out of heaven and into our mess and came after you with intention.

And if you're here at one of our venues or you're watching online and you're going to, I don't know about that because I don't want to have anything to do with Jesus.

I don't really believe the claims of Jesus.

I'm doing my own thing right now.

I'm figuring out my own life right now.

You may not know that Jesus is pursuing you, but he is.

I discovered that when I hit my own rock bottom because I was running from God and everything that I knew was right.

And when the bottom fell out, I thought God would want nothing to do with me, and yet there he was.

I didn't even have to run back to him.

He was running after me the entire time.

You don't have to go looking for relationship with Jesus.

It's right here, it's on offer to you right now.

All it takes is belief.

And here's the good news because maybe you are destined to meet someone and come into a loving, romantic relationship and marry them and have children and have a house and the white ticket fence.

Without Jesus, you will live in a hopeless place, even if everything is going your way externally, the hopeless place is inside.

But if you find hope in Jesus, you can find real love that fulfills in this world.

As we close across our venues, would you just bow your head and close your eyes?

There's nothing magic about that.

Just create some space for you and for the people around you.

We like to end with some time of reflection.

I wonder from jump, I just wonder how much of your worldview has been informed, not by what scripture says, but by what an ancient pagan philosopher said 400 years before Christ.

Perhaps your eyes are really opened to that reality today.

You've bought the lie that there is this other half out there, and nothing's gonna be right until you find it.

What are the ways that you have been leaning on your own understanding?

Leaning on your own skill sets, your own abilities, your own intuition?

What are the ways that you've been leaning and trusting in things that are not of God?

Trusting in your astrology sign, trusting in your friends who are leading you astray.

What would it look like for you to put all of your weight on Christ?

To actually allow him to direct your steps, to stay on the narrow path, trusting God that it will lead to the life that you were created to live.

As always, I want to address the fact that there may be people here at our venues or watching with us online who have never taken the very first step of becoming whole.

What you need is a relationship with Jesus.

Jesus came and he pursued you.

He proved his love for you by dying the death that scripture says you and I actually deserve that the wages of our sin, what we've earned, is death.

And Jesus came and said, I love you so much, and I want so badly for you to experience the fullness of life that I'll take your death for you.

Jesus went to the cross, he was buried, and three days later rose again.

We believe that as a historical fact, that Jesus rose again to prove that he could give us life after death.

The resurrection of Jesus sparked a movement that 2,000 years later we're still a part of, right here at Meta Church.

And our job is to spread the good news.

The good news is that Jesus loves you, he gave his life for you, and all he asks for in return is your faith.

Faith to believe in him, and by belief you'll be given eternal life.

And then faith to follow him.

And by following him and leaning all of your weight on him, you will experience the life on earth you were created to live.

And so if you're here across our venues and you've never had a moment in time where you've put your faith in Jesus, I want to give you the chance to do that.

With everyone's eyes closed, I want to ask you if today you're ready for the first time to put your faith in Jesus, to simply lift your arm up in the air.

By raising your hand, it's a symbolic gesture and it's saying, Today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

For those who raised a hand, I want you to know that God sees and accepts your faith, which means your sins, all of them, are forgiven.

It means you've been given eternal life, a gift that no one and nothing can take away from you, and that you've been adopted as a child of God.

And now, as you follow him, you won't need your other half.

God has already made you whole.

Here's what I want to do for those who raised a hand, I want to very simply acknowledge this moment through a prayer.

I'm gonna ask you to repeat this prayer with me, and I want all the believers at our venues to pray this as well.

Let's pray like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God, that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps.

You can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

Man, I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.