What You Started: We Do Whatever It Takes to Get People to Jesus with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch 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.

So excited to announce that on December 8th of this year, we will be opening a meta church venue in Helotus, Texas, at the 4H Activity Center, right across the street from O'Connor High School.

We need to consolidate to be healthy as individuals so we can be healthy as an organization.

To do this, we are going to pause our Sunday services at our Helotus venue.

When the time is right, we will reopen Helotus.

We ran for about nine weeks and COVID shut everything down.

We still hold that lease.

In faith we never broke it.

Our goal in the next five years is to have enough metachurch locations that everyone in town is within 20 minutes of a metachurch that they can visit, and our plan is to start next year by reopening our Helotus location.

So we are planning this year to open our second location.

We already have our physical building.

It's a Helotus 4-H.

Our targeted date to open is October 20th of this year.

For what you started, you will complete what comes against us.

You will defeat.

So thankful for those here at Potenko as well and those here with us online streaming with us.

God is moving in incredible ways.

We're in a series called What You Started.

If you're wondering the you and what you started, that's God.

Okay, what God has started here among us.

We saw two weeks ago, two Sundays ago, we baptized 71 people in our three services at MetaCurch.

God is on the move, and then today, October 20th, uh we are now a multi-site movement.

We are one movement.

We have one mission, but we meet in multiple locations as God is expanding our reach in this city, and we're so excited to all get on the same page, to meet here together, so that we can then go move together and make a big difference in our world.

You know, this is a big Sunday, and big Sundays, you know, you might imagine there's like a little bit of pressure to get the sermon right, you know.

So I was really praying about where to go in scripture, and it dawned on me that the best place to go as we start something new, we are now in something brand new, is to go to where we went in scripture when we started MetaCurch.

In December of 2018, I preached out of Mark chapter two.

Now, for a lot of you, you know the timeline, you know that MetaCurch started in January of 2019.

This was literally one of the sermons announcing that this new movement was coming to San Antonio.

And not only was this instrumental in speaking into the kind of culture that we were going to have, but it also gave us what became our mission statement that has guided us and set the expectation for us for five and a half years now.

And if you've been here, you know our mission is we do whatever it takes to get people to Jesus.

At both venues, I want you to say that with me.

We do whatever it takes to get people to Jesus.

That is the cry of our hearts.

And so we're gonna go to Mark chapter two.

We're gonna look at five very unique friends who had a very unique meeting with Jesus.

Before we get into scripture, would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you, and we're overwhelmed by your love for us.

I thank you for MetaCurch.

I thank you how you are expanding it into new parts of our city.

God, we are expectant that you will continue to move.

I thank you for a church that is desperately trying to prioritize what you created this movement to be: a place for all people at all different parts of their faith journey.

God, a movement where you can belong and be loved even if you don't yet believe.

And so, God bless us today.

Holy Spirit, speak to us.

We are listening.

We give this time to you in Jesus' name.

And if you're ready to do whatever it takes, say amen.

Amen.

We're gonna be in Mark's gospel.

That's Mark's historical account of the life of Jesus.

We're gonna be at the very beginning of chapter two.

It says this when Jesus entered Capernaum, again, after some days, it was reported that he was at home.

So many people gathered together that there was no more room, not even in the doorway, and he was speaking the word to them.

And they came to him, bringing a paralytic carried by four of them.

And since they were not able to bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and after digging through it, they lowered the mat on which the paralytic was lying, and seeing their faith, Jesus told the paralytic, Son, your sins are forgiven.

I remember hearing the story.

I grew up in church, I was a good badist boy, and so we went to Sunday school, shout out Sunday school.

We were very low tech back then, no screens, right?

We had a felt board, and I've just lost half of the audience that met at church.

A felt board is a board, you're not gonna believe this, made of felt, right?

And then they had these little cutouts and they would stick to it.

And so they would have the paralytic and they'd have him on his mat and they'd have a home with a little hole in the roof, and they would tell the story.

It was really engaging, okay?

We never fell asleep in Sunday school, right?

I remember hearing this, and the focus of the story was always on the paralytic, and it should be.

It's a key element of the story is this this person who is desperately in need of something that only Jesus can offer.

And it's very easy for me, and it's appropriate for me and for you to see ourselves in the paralytic.

This is why many people end up venturing back to church after years of separation.

Maybe you were hurt by the church, or maybe you had big questions that no one could answer.

But eventually your life ends up not lining up the way that you thought it would.

Eventually things aren't going in the direction that you had imagined they would 10 years ago.

Perhaps, like in my story, you hit some kind of rock bottom which finally caused you to look up and wonder if there really is a God and He really does love you.

It's obvious to us that we have needs and we search the world for the safety and security and significance that we long for at the deepest part of our souls, and we cannot find it.

We need something transcendent.

It's easy to see ourselves in the paralytic, and yet the paralytic had four friends.

And the story doesn't happen without the four friends.

And we're gonna spend time focused on both the paralytic and his friends today.

A little bit of context.

We're in Mark chapter two, and in Mark chapter one, Mark starts his gospel off talking about Jesus going to this same area of Capernaum.

And when Jesus went to Capernaum, it said, everyone who was sick that came to Jesus was healed.

Like with that exception, if you were sick, if you were in need, if you were blind, if you were deaf, if you were paralyzed, you came to Jesus and you were healed.

It says that Jesus went home.

This was his home base of operations.

We learn in Mark chapter one that that is Simon Peter's house.

Peter became one of Jesus' early disciples and closest friends, and Peter's mother-in-law lived with him, which guys, we love that, right?

When your mother-in-law comes and lives with, I actually would love that.

I love my mother-in-law, but I know we've got some tough mother-in-laws.

Peter's mother-in-law grows like deathly ill.

And Jesus is in town and he's healing everybody that gets within 15 feet of them.

And so he's gonna go to Peter's house, which means Peter's mother-in-law is about to get healed.

And Peter was like, Jesus, I'm sure you're busy, you know?

Like, you don't have to stop by if you don't have time.

Jesus shows up, heals Peter's mother-in-law.

This becomes his home base of operations, and you better believe he has top-notch hospitality from Peter's mother-in-law, who was on the brink of death until she met Jesus.

As you can imagine, if someone pulled up into San Antonio and every single person who was sick could go and get healed, the mobs became overwhelming.

Not only that, but we see all throughout the story of Jesus that he became a threat to the power of the religious leaders.

And in Mark chapter one, it says, it came to the point where Jesus could not openly enter into towns.

And so at the end of chapter one, he goes away and he spends some time alone, just him and our heavenly father.

And so we get into chapter two, and it says, when he entered Capernaum again after some days, it was reported that he was at home.

Jesus came in under the radar, he came in inconspicuously.

And yet the light of hope that emanates off of who Jesus is is so bright that it could not stay hidden.

And pretty soon the rumors were swirling, and people understood that hope and healing and love was back in Capernaum.

And so what happens in verse 2?

So many people gathered together that there was no more room, not even in the doorway, and he was speaking the word to them.

He was speaking the word.

Jesus shows up, and people are packed in the house, shoulder to shoulder, they are spilled out into the road, they are straining to listen, getting up to the door, opening up the windows, shoulder to shoulder.

Have you ever been to like an outdoor concert or a festival and got kind of close to the stage and it's just you and you're sandwiched in, and you can like lift your feet up and you don't move, and then all of a sudden you kind of gotta go number one, you know?

You're like, there's there's nowhere to go here, right?

Just so you know, that's my hell, okay?

Like that is my nightmare.

This is Peter's house.

It is shoulder to shoulder, it is jammed up, and it's that way because of Jesus, who he is and what he represents.

And it says he was preaching the word.

And we know what that means because we have the rest of Mark's gospel and we have the gospels of Matthew and Luke and John, and we know what Jesus taught everywhere he went.

He taught about the eternal kingdom of God.

And he invited normal, everyday, jacked-up people just like me, just like you, to come and play a significant role in building out this kingdom that will last forever and ever and ever.

Jesus would say things like, you are the light of the world.

You are the salt of the earth.

The way we say that every Sunday here at MetaCurch is that God created you on purpose.

That means it's not an accident that you're here on planet Earth, that God created you with purpose, which means He's placed something inside of you that he wants to unleash, and the way you live out that purpose is by joining the movement of Jesus and watching as the Holy Spirit unlocks the giftings inside of you.

We all long for this.

We all long for impact and purpose and meaning because God placed it inside of us.

Jesus is preaching and teaching the word, and it is magnetic.

Everyone within walking vicinity has showed up because Jesus is there.

God has blessed us here in this local movement we call Metachurch.

He's blessed us so tremendously.

Here in Helotus today is evidence of that as God continues to expand this movement.

But it's not us, and it's not magic, and it's not because we have the greatest sermons every Sunday.

Uh my mom thinks that.

She comes here, she loves the sermons, man.

She will tell you the best in town, maybe the best in the world, honestly.

She might be biased, okay?

We have an incredible band, an incredible band, and I know their hearts, so I think they're the best.

There are other places with incredible bands.

It isn't because our programs are the greatest programs.

We work very hard at all of those things.

We we bring God our best offering in all of those things.

The reason that God has blessed us and grown us again and again and again, and we are growing.

We see it numerically, which, if you know me, you know that's what I care about the least, attendance numbers.

I don't really care.

What I care about is he's grown our impact, the impact we're having in lives, in marriages, in families, in communities.

God has been growing us spiritually.

Over five and a half years, we've baptized 569 people through this movement.

God is growing us and moving us.

And you may not know the secret.

So I'll tell you.

It's because we decided from the jump to just get out of Jesus' way.

You see, religion has this thing where it claims to be building bridges, and so you've got five hoops to jump through, and you've got three ladders to climb, and you have four processes to make sure that you're clean enough and holy enough, and know all the unwritten rules, and know how to speak the language, and know how to dress in your Sunday best.

Religion says it's building bridges, but to anyone outside of the religion, those bridges look a lot like barriers.

And Jesus came with a whatever it takes attitude and destroyed every single barrier that would hold people back from being in a relationship with their heavenly father and expects his movement to do the same.

When you come to Metachurch, you don't get my word, you don't get my truth, we're not searching for a truth, I'm not helping you discover your truth.

We are preaching the word.

We are focused on the living word of God, Jesus Christ.

We are understanding him through the written word of God, his holy scriptures, and we are coming together, breaking down barriers and doing whatever it takes to make sure anyone who wants to come and meet their Heavenly Father can come and meet their Heavenly Father.

And we will continue to expand this movement to the ends of the earth.

Say amen if you're ready for that.

Amen.

In verse 3, they came to him bringing a paralytic carried by four of them.

Now, we're gonna see two groups of characters by the end of our time today, and this is the first.

It's one paralytic and his four friends.

And we don't know his exact condition.

We don't know if he was paralyzed from birth, we don't know if this is something that developed later, we don't know if this was an accident that he had, maybe while he was working, but we know he was paralyzed, which meant he would have been laid horizontally on a mat that would have had some structure, think of like an ancient stretcher.

It would have had ropes on the ends of it, and those ropes were carried by his four friends.

We don't know how far away he was from Peter's house.

But we know those friends picked him up and carried him the entire way.

These are friends who have an attitude that says we are going to do what it takes to get our friend to the one who can heal him, the only one who can actually offer him hope.

We also don't know why this paralytic missed it the first time Jesus came to Capernaum.

To be disabled in any way in the ancient world was seen as a curse from God on you because of sin in your life or even sin in your family's life.

You were cursed and you were treated as such.

And so you were fed the scraps of society, you lived on the margins of the culture, it was an incredibly difficult existence, and yet this guy had four friends who were willing to stand in the gap, who were willing to go reach out to the marginalized.

He had friends who I think, if they lived today, would find themselves comfortable as a part of the movement here at MetaCurch.

And can you imagine being a paralytic, and two days after Jesus leaves Capernaum, you hear the news that there was a man in town who is helping the lame to walk again?

No telling how long you've lived this way, but you have no hope in your life, and you find out in retrospect that hope came to town and you missed it.

Can you even imagine?

And then the rumors start circulating.

He's posted up at Peter's house.

And if you can just make it to Jesus, you can get your life back.

He has four friends who are willing to carry him no matter how far it takes.

But in verse 4, they were not able to bring him to Jesus because of the crowd.

They got there, and remember, it's packed out, it's coachella, it's shoulder to shoulder, nobody can move.

It's spilled out into the road, people are coming.

By the second they show up.

I'm sure they bargained and begged and pleaded, they did everything they could.

We just need to see Jesus for just a moment.

That's what everyone else was trying to do, too.

Nobody had the time of day.

Now, one of the things we try to do at MetaCurch is when we approach the scripture, we try to be really honest with ourselves because it's really easy to make ourselves the hero of every story.

But a good question is if I were one of the four friends and I had just carried your heavy self all the way to Peter's house, and I tried and begged and pleaded and grobled and offered to pay you, and I could not get you to Jesus, what would my next move be?

At that point, I've been a pretty good friend.

We can walk back to wherever I got you from singing friends of friends, forever.

Like we're good friends at this point.

I really tried.

What more could you even expect?

You see, these four friends understood.

We do whatever it takes to get people to Jesus.

And sometimes we've made a really concerted effort, and we call it whatever it takes.

What is it?

These friends were willing to get messy, to destroy private property, to create a moonroof in a house that had not purchased a moonroof, you know.

They kept trying.

And they looked around and they assessed the situation.

Sometimes doing whatever it takes requires unique problem solving.

We started this movement in 2019.

We called it meta church.

You may or may not know what that means.

The word meta is a Greek prefix, it means change.

I grew up in church.

I grew up in some churches that my friends who desperately needed the hope that you could find at that church didn't feel welcomed into the church.

And so, if that's the case, that's not what Jesus set out to start.

If we need to change church, we will.

They were not gonna take no for an answer, they were not going to be deterred, they were gonna do whatever it takes, and so they removed the roof above him.

And after digging through it, they lowered the mat on which the paralytic was lying.

Let me explain to you what this actually means.

This is the ancient world, this is 2,000 years ago.

Maybe you're picturing like a thatched roof, maybe like straw or palm fronds, and they just had to move some leaves out of the way.

No, in ancient Capernaum, every house had a flat roof with a staircase leading to it.

It was basically an open-air second story.

The entire family could go on that roof at the same time.

They would dry their laundry out there as Jewish people, they would do their prayers up there.

This is a roof that can support the weight of human beings.

It is a thick roof that would require extreme effort to dig all the way through.

And let's talk about the hole that they dug.

This was not a peephole so that they could shout down to Jesus.

They lowered a man who was horizontal on his mat.

This was a man-sized hole in the roof.

You know what?

The one thing I wish we had in the story is we don't get the reactions of the people who were in the house.

Can you imagine at one of our venues if all of a sudden in the middle of the sermon just some pieces of roof started coming down, you know?

That's why we keep adding services and locations so y'all don't get any ideas, right?

We'll just keep making room for y'all.

This was Peter's house.

I don't know how much you know about Peter.

This is the guy that chopped some other fool's ear off.

Y'all remember that?

Peter was prone to some four-letter words that they don't let me say on Sunday mornings, you know?

Peter would not have been happy about this situation.

And that's okay.

And sometimes people aren't happy when you live with a missional intent to do whatever it takes.

I love it.

When I was studying this in the original Greek, when it says that they were digging through the roof, if you take the Greek that Mark was written in originally and you translate it literally, it says they unroofed the roof.

In other words, it once was a roof.

It is not a roof.

Anymore.

It is now a human-operated elevator, right?

Like this is something brand new.

We called it Meta Church because I grew wary of watching people who are on the outside of the movement that Jesus started specifically for those who are spiritually sick and spiritually injured and looking for hope and they can't find it because of religious barriers that we put in the way.

We will unroof the roof.

And if we have to, we will unchurch the church.

I don't know how active your imagination is, but I want you to try to access it.

And I want you to imagine being the paralytic.

And your friends, man, they are drenched in sweat.

They have dug a hole that you can reasonably fit through.

And now they are lowering you right in front of Jesus.

And as you are descending, you know that your life could forever change.

That the source of your pain, the source of your marginalization in your community.

You're about to get your life back.

Can you imagine the friends as they're painstakingly luring this guy?

What has he been eating?

This is crazy.

Getting him down, dropping him, waiting, like, man, this was crazy.

We we unroofed the roof.

This is crazy.

They'll tell this story forever.

They just know, man.

We got him to Jesus.

We carried him in, but he's walking out.

In verse 5, seeing their faith, Jesus looks at the paralytic.

The paralytic is ready.

Heal me.

And Jesus says, Son, your sins are forgiven.

And the paralytic was like, Wait, what now?

I appreciate it.

I actually had booked a different kind of appointment today.

Like the the kind where my sins, that's great, got plenty of those.

Also, I heard recently from other people in my position, they got to like pick their mat up and walk.

So I don't know if that's in the cards.

Is there too many people here?

Is it because we went through the roof?

Is that why?

Imagine the friends.

They're looking at each other like, so do we have to pull them up now?

Like what is the next move?

And it's worth noting because if you're anything like me, you're finally investigating God because you you hit some kind of rock bottom, or you realize something was missing in your life, or you needed something that's bigger than this world to put your hope in.

And it's natural to come with your problems.

And we all have what we think is our first problem.

Our marriage is on the rocks, or an addiction has taken back over our life, or we're depressed, or lonely.

We have what we think is our first problem, but what this moment tells you is that what we think is our first problem is often not our first problem.

Jesus lived every second with an eternal lens.

That's how he viewed things.

He knows that in our world today we get maybe 70 or 80 years in this life, and then our real life starts.

In our real life, that comes next, it goes on forever, and ever.

Endeav.

In the ancient world, you maybe got 40 years, 50 years if you were wealthy and had access to some medicine.

His first problem wasn't his first problem.

He was worried about getting back up on his feet, and Jesus was worried about him coming into relationship with his heavenly father.

And what Jesus wants to do, first of all, is heal you at the deepest level, at an eternal level.

He cares so much about this that he came out of heaven and to this earth.

You talk about unroofing the roof.

Jesus tore back the roof on planet earth and stepped down from perfection into our mess and brokenness.

He lived a perfect life that you and I could not live, making him the perfect sacrifice.

And when he spread his arms and was nailed to a cross and bled to death, he did it to exchange his life for ours.

That's how much he cares about solving your first problem.

He doesn't just want to fix something that is temporary now here on earth, he wants to heal you forever so you can live with him in his kingdom.

I can't promise anyone, and I won't promise anyone that joining this movement called MetaCurch, that putting your faith in Jesus is going to make every single thing in your life right.

We're never promised that.

If you miss that, the scribes thought that they did not say it out loud.

Jesus knew they were thinking it, and what they didn't say out loud, he responded to out loud.

That would be terrifying, right?

If you were just a little mad at your spouse and just kind of thinking, throwing some shade, and she just said, I don't like when you talk about me like that, you would faint, bro.

You would fall out.

That's power.

They're thinking this, and I want to give credit where credit is due.

The scribes studied the scriptures day and night, night and day, and they weren't wrong.

They knew the scriptures.

It is true, only God can forgive sin.

The problem they were having was not their scriptural interpretation, it was that their religiosity had blinded them to the reality that the God who can forgive sins was standing in the room with them.

Religion says it's building bridges, and often it just puts up barriers.

And the real work of the movement of Jesus, which is often intense and messy, sometimes it is less than organized, sometimes you have to remove some roofs, sometimes you have to fight the crowds, sometimes you have to not take no for an answer.

Religion will frown at activity that is actually infused by the very Spirit of God that religion is supposed to be serving.

We say we do whatever it takes, and even if religion draws offense to what we are doing, we will stay the course knowing that Jesus didn't come to start a religion, Jesus came to call the world back into relationship with our Heavenly Father.

These uh religious leaders were very smart.

They had all the information, they had all the knowledge, and they loved to show off their knowledge.

The movement of Jesus is not just about information gathering, it is about applying the truths of Jesus.

Religion says what we're doing right here in Helotus, right here in Petrenko, coming to a service, coming to an event, coming to a program, that's church.

Jesus says, you are the church.

We come together to get inspired and get enlightened.

We meet together so we can move together if you want to know what I think.

Church starts when you leave these buildings.

That's when the movement moves, and that is when the gospel spreads.

That is when we do whatever it takes.

Jesus knew what they were thinking, and he hits them with a riddle.

I love this.

In verse 9, Jesus asks, which is easier to say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven, or to say, get up, take your mat, and walk.

The scribes would have known this was actually a trick question.

Both of these things, the forgiveness of sins and the healing of a paralytic, both of those in Scripture are power that only God possesses.

It's a trick question, and what Jesus is doing is he's saying, a miracle of causing a paralytic to walk again, that's hard evidence.

You can see it, it's tangible.

Anyone could say, your sins are forgiven.

And who really knows what that means in the heavenly realms?

But if Jesus can assert his authority as God by healing a man that everyone knows is paralyzed, he is also asserting his authority as God to forgive that man of his sins.

Here's what he says in verse 10 But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he told the paralytic, get up, take your mat, and go home.

This is a miracle.

It's incredible.

In verse 12, immediately he got up, he took the mat, he went out in front of everyone, and as a result, they were all astounded, and they gave glory to God, saying, We have never seen anything like this.

And once again, Jesus went viral, and the movement continued to build, and the movement continued to move.

Jesus healed that man.

His power and his power alone, Jesus gets all of the glory, Jesus forgave his sins, Jesus and Jesus alone brought salvation.

We've been talking at Metachurch about how there is God's power, and in his power, he allows for our participation.

Jesus healed him, Jesus forgave him, Jesus saved him.

But that moment does not happen without four friends who were willing to get messy.

They got culturally messy by showing grace to someone who was marginalized in society.

They were unwilling to take no for an answer.

They literally got messy, unroofing the roof, to get this paralytic down to Jesus.

They were willing to do whatever it takes.

We use that language to force us out of the box of religion and tradition that the church so often falls into.

This was a messy miracle, and we must be okay with getting messy.

We follow Jesus.

He left a perfect heaven, he came down to this earth.

Jesus was born into a barn, he was laid in a feed trough.

God got messy for us.

Too many churches for too long have done everything in their power to stay out of the mess.

They view their buildings as the church itself, as the house of the Lord, a concept that isn't found in the New Testament.

They get their parishioners into their buildings four days a week, five days a week.

It's a safe place where the right people come in and they protect themselves from the wrong people who are out there.

They build bridges so if someone wants to come in, they can jump through a thousand hoops to go from the wrong person to the right person.

Jesus said, I am calling out a movement of ordinary, jacked up, powerful, purposeful, intentional people who will join with me to do what Jesus did, to get out into the world, to get into the mess, to get into your circle of influence.

I preach almost every Sunday here at Medichurch and I love it.

I love coming and preaching.

But my sermons pale in comparison to the actual power of the movement of MetaCurch, which is the sermon that your life is preaching every single day that you live bearing the name of Christ.

You are the movement, you are how this grows.

And when we get Jesus right, when we knock down all of the things that are holding people back, from knowing that they have a heavenly father who loves them, from knowing that this isn't a religious exercise, you don't have to earn your way, you don't have to climb the ladder.

That hope will shine through you in the darkness of this world.

At all of our locations, at Petrenko in Helotus, the other locations that God may allow us to open in the future as we do whatever it takes to get his message and his movement to the ends of the earth, people will continue to come and they will continue to meet Jesus there.

They will continue to get baptized, they will continue to discover their purpose.

Not because of us, but because we are getting out of the way and allowing the light of Jesus to shine through our lives.

This is how the movement moves.

It's how it changes our lives, it's how it changes our marriages, it's how it changes our families, it's how it changes our neighborhoods, and this is how you change a city and eventually the world.

Small group of people did it 2,000 years ago.

And Jesus has presented us with the same opportunity today.

Back in 2018, when we were announcing the start of MetaCurch, I preached on this passage in Mark chapter 2.

Mark 2 · chapter mention

My friend Bobby Krim, he built me this giant house that I had on stage with me.

It's very fun.

I actually got to tear a hole in the roof of this house and show what that might have looked like.

And then at the end, I asked those who were going to be a part of this movement to come through, to take markers, and to write names all over this house.

And we filled it up.

And those names, this is just one side of the house.

Those names were the names of people that we were going to do whatever it takes to get to Jesus.

Brooke and George Luaveno, who have been a part of Metachurch from the very beginning, they went, they put some names on this house, including the name Randy.

This was for their longtime friend uh friend Randy Bonias.

Randy was far from God.

He was struggling, he was living without hope.

This was six years ago.

Randy finally started showing up to Metachurch about two years ago.

God got a hold of his heart, he put his faith in Jesus.

About a year and a half ago, we baptized Randy.

He went through our academy and started learning how to live a life of purpose.

He started submitting himself to following Jesus, to meeting together and moving together.

About six months ago, we opened a couple of staff positions to get Holotus started.

And Randy took a long shot and applied.

Two months ago, we hired Randy, and he's one of our leaders in Helotus.

Now you see, God is on the move.

And it takes time sometimes.

It didn't happen overnight.

But Brooke and George were willing to pick up Randy's map and to walk with him and to walk with him, and if they have to, to unroof some roofs and to do whatever it takes.

And if you trust God and you stay in the fight and you're willing to get messy and you won't take no for an answer, we can change our city and we can change our world because it's not us, it's the power of the God of the universe through us.

If that is something that gets your heart beating and your blood pumping, then join us.

Be a part of this movement.

Find your next steps.

Get connected.

Begin inviting people in.

There are so many people that you know that are living without hope.

Hope is here.

This is Jesus' movement.

Hope is here.

Invite them out with you.

Invest in what we're doing.

Invest your time, your energy, your resources.

There is nothing as important as the movement of Jesus that you can invest your life into.

It's the one thing that will have return, not just here, but in eternity.

As we close, I want to invite everyone in both of our venues, right where you're at, to bow your head and close your eyes.

We like to end service with just a time of reflection and application.

I wonder as we go back through the story, who you might see yourself as.

Maybe you're here with us today, and you're honest enough to say, really, I've kind of been one of the scribes.

I've had a very religious outlook.

I sit, I observe, I doubt, I judge.

Perhaps today the Holy Spirit is moving on your heart to move you out of that seat of judgment and into a place of activity.

Calling you to get moving, to break down barriers.

Maybe in the story it's easy for you to see yourself as the paralytic.

It's very easy for me to see myself as the paralytic in such desperate need of Jesus, so broken and so jacked up.

And what if your first problem isn't actually your first problem?

What if what Jesus wants to heal first in your life is your heart?

Change that comes from the inside out, change that lasts eternally.

I hope that we will begin to see ourselves as one of the four friends.

That as the movement, you are the movement, that you will begin to take on an attitude, an intentionality to do whatever it takes.

Jesus said, You are the light of the world, you are the salt of the earth.

So let your light shine.

Before we close, and with everyone's eyes closed, I also want to acknowledge that you might be here in one of our venues, you might be streaming with us online, and you've never taken the first step of faith.

There's never been a moment in time where you have put your faith in Jesus.

And I want to give you the opportunity to do that.

I want to make sure you know what it means.

Scripture reveals that all of humanity has a real problem, and that problem is our sin.

Sin is all the ways we miss the mark on God's design and desires for our life.

Our sin separates us from God, both now and more critically in eternity.

And God loves you so much that he sent his only son Jesus.

And Jesus, who existed as God Himself, put on human flesh, came down into our mess, lived a perfect life, and offered himself as the perfect sacrifice.

Jesus does not ask you to earn your way into relationship.

He does not ask you to work your way into relationship.

He just asks for your faith.

Jesus did all of the work, and all he wants is your belief.

A moment of faith is choosing to put all of your hope in Jesus, to believe that he is who he says he is, and he's done what he says that he's done.

At that moment, your sins, past, present, and even future, will be forgiven.

You'll be given eternal life, a gift that no one can ever take away from you.

And you will be adopted into the family of God.

If you're here at any of our venues and you've never had a moment in time where you've put your faith in Jesus, with everyone's eyes closed, I want to ask you, right where you're sitting, to just lift your hand.

It's a small gesture to acknowledge that today I am choosing to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

For those who raised a hand, I want you to know that Jesus sees and accepts your faith.

Your sins are forgiven, and you have been clothed with the righteousness of Christ.

You have eternal life now and forever.

What I want to do is very simply help you acknowledge the decision you made today.

And so I'm gonna ask you, if you raised a hand, to repeat a prayer with me, and I'm gonna ask all the believers at our venues to pray this out loud 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.

Now let me pray over you, Jesus.

We just continue to give you all the glory for what you're doing here.

You are moving in remarkable ways.

You are using this movement, and you intend to do even more.

We believe the best is yet to come.

I pray that just like you modeled for us, Jesus, we would do whatever it takes to get people into relationship with their Heavenly Father.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Give the Lord a hand, he keeps moving here at MetaCurch.

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.