Pursuit: Trivial to Intentional - Pursuit Requires Peace 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.

Well, I want to welcome you in to week six of our pursuit series.

We are deep into this series.

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

I'm the lead pastor here.

And if today's message sparks your interest and you want to get caught up on the other weeks in this series, we've tried to make that really easy.

You can go to youtube.com/slash metachurch.

All of our past sermons are on there.

We're in this series because we know that everyone is pursuing something with their life.

That's what gets you out of bed in the morning.

It's what keeps you going.

However, we also acknowledge that a vast majority of people are spending enormous sums of energy, attention, and investment into trivial pursuits.

Now, trivial simply means of little importance or value, of little importance or value.

At Meadow, we start with the belief that God created you on purpose.

That means it is by no accident you're here on planet Earth, and that God created you with purpose.

That means there is something inside of you that God wants to unlock and unleash on the world, and that desire that all of us have just as a part of being human, for our lives to matter, to have impact, to live a life of purpose, to find fulfillment.

That's the fingerprints of God on your life.

And you will find that ultimately by submitting to God and pursuing the life that He created you to live.

It's a bit of an uphill battle in the culture that we're living in.

And so we turn to God's word.

We are in the New Testament in a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Philippi.

We call it the book of Philippians.

Over these seven weeks, we are going through every single verse of this letter, and we are pulling out seven keys to proper pursuit.

So far in this series, we have learned that pursuit requires partnership, perspective, pursuit requires humility and role models.

And last week we saw that pursuit requires redemption.

Today is maybe the most practical of all of the keys, and it is going to speak to an issue that plagues us in our culture today.

But before we get into the word, would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you and we thank you for loving us.

We thank you for a place like Metachurch, where all people from all different walks of life, all different parts of their faith journey can come, where anyone can belong and be loved, even if they don't believe.

And so, God, I thank you and I pray that we would be humble enough to open our minds and open our hearts to whatever it is that you want to say to us.

We love you, we pray all these things in Jesus' name.

And if you're ready to get going, say amen.

Amen.

We're gonna pick up in chapter four, where we read our passage for today.

We're gonna read all of it and then start breaking it down together.

We're gonna start in verse two.

It says, I urge Eodia and I urge Sentiki to agree in the Lord.

Yes, I also ask you, true partner, to help these women who have contended for the gospel at my side, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers whose names are in the book of life.

Rejoice in the Lord always.

I will say it again, rejoice.

Let your graciousness be known to everyone, the Lord is near.

Don't worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's any moral excellence and if there is anything praiseworthy, dwell on these things.

Do what you have learned and received and heard from me and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

Paul is near the end of his letter, but before he signs off, he wants to address a few more things.

And I want to look at the structure of this passage.

I kind of just hit you with all of it, so I want to break it down into three parts.

First, Paul is going to address a specific conflict that is happening in the congregation in Philippi.

So he is going to call out by name some people in the congregation who are causing a rift that might doom the entire movement.

So then he's going to leverage this conflict that's very specific to two people, and he's going to use that conflict to teach a concept.

And that concept is not just written to the people in Philippi, it is written to all of us.

And it will lay out a template that, if you can apply to your life, will revolutionize your life.

That's how significant this template is.

We're going to spend most of our time looking at that.

And then once you understand from conflict to concept, we get the outcome of applying that template into your life: a life of peace and a life of pursuit.

Here's something you need to know about Paul.

We're going to start looking first at the conflict.

Paul will absolutely put you on blast.

He is not afraid, okay?

And so in Philippi, there are two women and they are at each other's neck, okay?

This is ancient Drake and Kendrick happening right in front of us.

And they have so much influence that they are threatening to tear the entire congregation apart.

Maybe you grew up in church and you've seen this happen where two influential leaders take opposite sides of an issue, and then they go through the congregation and they start recruiting people to their side.

And then pretty soon you have half the congregation on one side and half the congregation on the other, and the church splits in half.

And the power of this movement that could have been is lost because two people could not elevate their perspective, focus on the gospel, focus on eternity, focus on the mission.

Instead, they let their petty grievance tear things apart.

So let's read it.

It says in verse 2 I urge Eodia and I urge Sentiki to agree in the Lord.

Those are two women's names.

If anyone's pregnant in the room, those are available, Eodia and Centiki.

You can grab those for yourself.

We'll call her Sin for short.

No, that's not good.

We'll call her Ew.

No, that's not good.

Eodia and rough names.

They might have just been mad about that still, you know.

They're really mad at their parents.

Eodia and Sintiki are the names of these two women in the church, and they are in this fight.

And Paul has written them and he's called them out by name.

And so I want to give full context to this because this is kind of a wild moment.

So just remember that Paul started the church in Philippi on one of his missionary journeys.

On another missionary journey, he stopped back in and checked on him.

He wanted to come back, but he got arrested, and this time it's stuck.

And so Paul is in prison in Rome, and he will die in this prison.

He never gets out.

And so the Philippians, who are partners with him, they really are a very unique, very special part of the movement of Jesus.

They gather a large financial offering and they send it to Paul in prison, hand-delivered by one of the Philippians named Epaphroditus.

Ephroditus goes, he brings the offering, he spends some time, and then this is common.

Paul would dictate a letter to the church, hand it to the messenger, Epaphroditus in this case, and Ephroditus' job was to take that letter, which would eventually become scripture, bring it back, gather the entire congregation together and read the words of Paul.

And so imagine you're in the congregation that day, you're now hearing from Paul who you dearly love.

Not only that, he is the one who introduced you to Jesus and helped start your church in Philippi.

And you are so worried about him because he's in prison giving his life so that your life can thrive.

And you are hanging on every word.

And Epaphroditus calls everyone together and he is reading this letter, and they've never heard it before.

And that's really key to what's about to happen.

They've never heard it before.

Now he's going through all of it.

I love you.

I thank you for your partnership.

Live as citizens of heaven.

You have a high calling on your life.

Choose humility, all the different things that we've learned, and it's just filling them up, man.

And you're listening, you've got goosebumps running down your arm.

You're hearing from Paul again, right?

Now let's add to the hypothetical.

You're not just in the congregation, you're Sintiki.

And you're listening, like, I mean, this is the best thing I've ever heard.

I mean, Paul hit it out of the park on this one.

Oh, I gotta write that down.

Be humble just as Christ was humble, who did not consider equal.

Oh, that was so good.

That one was good.

I'm taking notes on the next one.

Oh, you know what?

He's right.

Paul was crazy, and then he started pursuing Christ, and that's what I need to do because I got some more sways, but if I give them to God, God can redeem him and I need redemption.

Like they're all in it.

And you're Centicki, and you're just leaned into this letter and you've never heard it before.

That's really key to what's about to happen.

And all of a sudden, Epaphroditus kind of pauses because he's like, All right, this is about to get real awkward.

And then he goes, and I urge you, Eodia, and you're Centicki, and you're like, get her, Paul, get her, Paul.

It's about time, right?

Because I've been dealing with this chick forever.

Paul, I urge you, Eodia.

And you know, Centicki was like a little one because she didn't want to be petty, but she was like, Amen, you know?

And then he was like, and I urge you, Centicki.

And she was like, Hold up, what?

Something I experienced quite a bit is right after service, some someone comes and they're like, Pastor, it's like you wrote that sermon for me.

It's like, Pastor, it's like you've been following me around the last two weeks.

It's like you've been reading my mail.

Imagine you had that feeling, and then I was just like, and guess what, Paul?

You know, guess what, Stacy?

And just put you on blast in front of everybody.

That's what just happened in this letter.

Iodia and Sentiki got called to the carpet.

So let me give you some context because that feels really wild and really harsh.

First of all, this is 2,000 years ago.

Paul is in prison.

Paul cannot just FaceTime these women and have a conversation with them.

He can't just like get on a plane, take temporary house arrest, and just go.

He's gotta wait for Epaphroditus to come to him.

And likely he learned about this situation from Epaphroditus.

We can also assume that Ephroditus had followed Jesus' instruction on how to deal with conflict in the church, which is you try to deal with it one-on-one.

And then if that doesn't work, then you bring a few wise people with you.

And if that doesn't work, then you go to the leaders of the church.

So we can assume they had followed that.

Here's the other thing that's so interesting about this.

This is the ancient world.

This is almost 2,000 years ago.

And Eodia and Cintiki are women in the church who have so much influence that their disagreement between each other is about to tear the entire congregation apart.

This is one of the things that is unique about Philippians, and it gives us some real insight into Paul because Paul is the one who wrote to the Galatians and said, There is no Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free, there is no male or female in Christ, we are all one.

The ancient world didn't operate like that.

It was men, then women.

It was locals, then foreigners, it was wealthy, then poor.

That's how the world worked prior to Christ.

And in Philippi, Paul is practicing what he preaches.

In Acts 16, we hear the history of the church in Philippi, and it starts with women.

Women have key roles.

Eodia and Sentiki are women who are such high-level leaders that they have so much influence that Paul has to call them out by name in order to keep the continuity of the church together.

And so while I'm sure it wasn't fun to be put on blast by Paul in front of the whole congregation, it's also in its ancient context quite a compliment to the power that he sees in these women and the influence that they wield in Philippi.

And so, how does he address this?

What does he call them to?

In the next verse, verse 3, he says, Yes, I also ask you, true partner.

Now, we don't know exactly who true partner is.

Um, my best guess, many scholars agree, that that's apaphroditus.

Whoever it is, it's someone who is wise that Paul is saying, I need you to be an extension of me to make sure that we squash this beef.

I need you to represent me to help bring this conflict to an end.

I think it's apaphroditus who he's dictating the message to.

It really doesn't matter.

Paul is asking someone there to help him, to help these women who have contended for the gospel at my side.

This is what I'm saying.

Eodia and Centicki are not just like brand new to the church, not involved, not participating, not sacrificing.

He says they're out there building the movement, spreading the gospel.

They've been at my side.

They've been doing this with me.

You guys are leaders.

What does he say next?

Along with Clement and the rest of my coworkers whose names are in the book of life.

What's Paul doing here?

He's emphasizing unity, he's reminding them that they have the same call, they have the same mission, and then he is elevating their perspective.

He is giving them perspective, and he's pushing them towards pursuit.

He's pointing out the fact that they are in a trivial argument.

It's of no importance or value.

And in week two, we said pursuit requires perspective.

And one of the things that happens when you take your eyes off eternity and you take your eyes off Jesus, you take your eyes off of the mission, you take your eyes off of the message, is you put your eyes back down right here in the world.

And these little petty grievances, arguments, fights with one another get escalated in our mind to the most important thing.

Paul's like, Eodia, Cintiki, you guys have been out here putting your life on the line for the spread of the gospel of Jesus, and you're gonna break up this movement because y'all are mad at each other?

This elevated perspective is necessary.

What does he call us in the very beginning?

He said, we are citizens of heaven.

It's like, as citizens of heaven, is this fight worth it?

When you stand before Jesus someday on the other side of this life.

How are you going to explain the damage that you have done to his movement because you couldn't get along with each other?

Paul doesn't even tell us what the fight is.

Presumably, everyone in Philippi knows.

Everyone's kind of picked sides.

One of the reasons that this is being read to the entire congregation is because we assume the entire congregation has become involved.

Part of how he's disarming Eodia and Sintiki is by telling everyone who has picked one of their sides we're done with that.

He calls for unity, he calls for perspective, he calls for them to get back on a proper pursuit.

What is the last fight that you had?

What is the last big argument that tore a rift in your marriage or in your friend group or in your work environment?

What was the last big blowout?

No one wants to raise a hand and tell me their last baby.

What did it cause?

How long was their tension?

You know, when you're in a real fight with someone, it produces incredible anxiety.

It weighs on your mind all the time.

When you hate your boss, it ruins your life at home, isn't that weird?

You can't just like clock out of a terrible team they follow you in your heart, in your mind.

Was it worth it?

More specifically, in light of eternity, how important was it actually?

How much time that you could have been putting towards pursuing the things of God that it did steal from you?

You see, Paul starts his passage dealing with a specific conflict between Iodia and Sentiki, two powerful leaders who up to that point had not listened and were threatening to derail the movement of Jesus and Philippi, but now he's gonna use the conflict to teach all of us a more broad concept.

That doesn't just apply to your relationships, it applies to your possessions, it applies to your career, it applies to your habits, to your past, present, and future.

Here's how he says it don't worry about anything.

Yes, he is talking to Eodia and Sintiki, he's also talking to us.

This can also be translated: be anxious about nothing.

Don't worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God.

You see, Paul is echoing the words of Jesus.

In Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount, back in Matthew's gospel, he said this, therefore I tell you, don't worry about your life, don't worry about what you will eat or what you will drink, don't worry about your body or what you will wear.

Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing?

So don't worry, saying, What will we eat or what will we drink or what will we wear?

Those who don't know God, the Gentiles, eagerly seek those things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

Instead of worry, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.

Don't worry about anything, be anxious for nothing.

Instead, seek God.

It's the same prescription we get from Paul.

Don't worry about anything in everything through prayer and petition with Thanksgiving.

Make your request known to him.

The problem with worry is that it's almost magnetic quality.

There's nothing we want to do more than to stop worrying, and yet when worry comes, we give it more and more time, more and more focus, more and more attention, and that's a problem because worry grows when it is fed attention.

There's a broader truth, which is anything grows when you feed it.

And so we don't want to be worried, but the thing that we worry about, we start thinking about how it could get even worse.

And then we start dwelling about what would happen if it got worse, and then we go to the worst possible scenario.

And then we're in the worst possible scenario and we start reverse engineering.

Oh man, when I'm in that worst possible scenario, how will that affect my career?

How will that affect my kids?

How will that affect my finances?

And we give it more and more and more and more and more attention, and it grows and grows because anything you feed grows.

Worry has a magnetic quality, it pacifies us in some ways, and yet it makes us miserable.

It shrinks our perspective down to the issues of today.

It takes our eyes off of our actual pursuit, living a life to build the kingdom of God.

We end up feeding all of our time, energy, and attention into worry and neglect seeking God and the life He's designed us to live.

And I'm not here to shame you on that.

I get it.

I've had incredible seasons of anxiety in my own life.

It's easy to say, you know, feed what fills you and starve what kills you.

It's way more difficult to actually put that into process.

And the real issue is we don't have an action step to get us walking away from our worry.

And that is what Paul is giving us in this verse.

And if properly understood, this could be a life-changing reality for you because we are a society that is plagued with worry.

Plagued with anxiety.

We don't know what to do about it.

He says, Don't worry about anything, but in everything, in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God.

Notice, at the beginning of this verse, he has anything and everything.

What kind of requests are you supposed to bring to God?

Anything.

And if that's not clear enough, also everything.

And part of the problem is, as a society, we're not praying, we're not going to God.

We're trying to live life on our own.

We have bought the lie that we build our own future, we build our own possibilities, we build our own kingdom, we build our own dreams.

We don't go to God.

Even as believers, most people are carrying their burdens themselves when the God who created the world is like begging you to take those worries and place them on his shoulders where he can actually carry them and free you to live the life of pursuit you were created to live.

We try to carry it.

And then when we do pray, we're selective in our prayers.

Anything and everything present at all.

The thing you think is just way too dumb to bring to God, the thing that is way too embarrassing to bring to the king of the universe, the thing that is so small and petty that you don't think he worries about, the difficulties you're experiencing in your life that you know are actually made of your own poor decisions.

You don't want to bring them, and here's the problem.

All the things that you try to hide from God by shoving them in the corners of your life are the seeds that end up growing your worry and anxiety over time.

God says, anything and everything, don't worry about it.

Bring it to me.

This is the broad template for relieving worry and anxiety from your life.

This is the broad template for having peace as a daily experience, which means we can reverse engineer it and give you the prescription for anxiety.

The prescription for anxiety is just the opposite.

Worry about everything.

And don't bring anything to God.

Worry about everything.

And don't bring anything to God.

That is the recipe for worry and anxiety.

And it is how most people live every day.

We worry about everything.

We bring nothing to God.

He says instead, don't worry about anything, but in everything, make your requests know.

Here's a deeper truth.

The things that you are not bringing to God, the things that maybe even in your mind you're trying to keep hidden from God, He already knows them.

God is the undisputed, universal world champion of hide and seek.

You just can't hide from God.

Maybe you remember in the garden narrative, right after Adam and Eve sin, they go hide from God.

And God comes through the garden and he says, Adam, where are you?

God knows where Adam is.

God doesn't ask for his own benefit, he asks for Adam's benefit.

So that Adam can choose to trust God.

Adam can choose repentance.

Adam can choose truthfulness.

Scripture isn't asking you to bring all of your worry and request to God for God's benefit.

He already knows the things you're trying to keep hidden.

God asks you to bring anything and everything because he loves you, because he created you, because he knows intricately the way that you work, and he knows that if you will choose to trust him, even with the things you don't want to bother him with, the peace that it will bring to your life and the anxiety it will relieve from your daily experience, it's not for his benefit, it's for yours.

And most people are not taking advantage of this benefit.

We worry about everything.

And we don't bother God with anything.

Paul gives us a template for how to do this specifically.

He doesn't leave it to chance.

He gives us a three-step process for alleviating worry and anxiety in your life so that you can get on living a life on purpose and with purpose and stop pursuing trivial things.

This template centers around three prepositional phrases.

Let's look at them.

Don't worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and through petition and with thanksgiving.

Three steps through prayer, through petition, and with thanksgiving.

It starts with through prayer.

And prayer is simply conversing with God.

It is communing with God.

It is fellowship with God.

It absolutely can look like a set time in your schedule where you wake up and you have prayer time.

That's great.

You have set aside time.

Sometimes, Katie and I, because we live kind of busy lives and we have three kids, and one's in college and one's in high school and one's in middle school, and we're all over the place, and we're helping lead this church.

So sometimes it's like, man, we haven't had time to talk about this important thing, and we will put conversational time on our calendar.

Some of you who are young and newly married and are like, oh, that's gross, that's not romantic, grow up, okay?

Sometimes you gotta put it in the calendar, right?

And then we know, so that's fine.

It's like I've got prayer time, it's on my calendar.

But that is not the only time I talk to my wife.

As a matter of fact, I talk to her all the time.

I text her all day long.

We talk every time we're next to each other.

Prayer is conversing with God.

So I I love it if you have prayer time.

It's like I wake up, pray, I pray before I eat, I pray before I go to bed.

Also, pray without ceasing.

You do not have to light candles and get on your knees and put on worship music.

You don't need all that.

You can be in traffic and just talk to God.

God, you know I I am tempted to murder the person who just cut me off.

God, you already see it inside of me.

You said bring anything and everything.

So you already know.

I'm just bringing it to you all the time.

That's prayer.

Now here's what's important.

On my first date with Katie, she was so far out of my league, and uh when I get nervous, I talk.

Okay, I don't let there be any dead space.

And so we got to the end of the first date, and also, I'm an idiot.

So at the end of the date, I want to evaluate the date because that's how my brain works.

I'm very, you know, pragmatic.

And I'm like, how'd you think that went?

It's real romantic.

How'd you think that went?

Scale of one to a thousand.

How do you know?

And her answer was, uh, it was really good.

I I learned a lot about you.

I didn't even know what that meant at the time.

What she was saying kindly was, uh, I said six words the whole two hours, you know?

A conversation is talking and it's listening.

And and I ended up marrying someone who I listened to a lot, and she has made the biggest difference in my life outside of Jesus.

So you're talking to God.

He knows more than you.

He has all the answers and all the wisdom.

So through prayer means talking, asking, making your request known, and then listening.

What's the voice of God sound like?

I don't know what it sounds like for you.

Some people say, man, I hear a real audible voice real clearly.

Some people say, I just feel an impression on my heart.

God speaks to us through his word, God speaks to us through other people, God speaks to us through affirmation.

We'll never know if we don't listen.

Through prayer, the second is through petition.

Prayer is communion, it's fellowship, it's conversation.

Petition gets more specific.

This is when we ask for what we want and what we need.

We are petitioning God.

We're asking him to move on our behalf.

We're asking him to bring something we need, to remove something that we don't need, to intervene in our life, to bring clarity to a situation, to endow us with wisdom, to unlock our giftings.

We're asking for anything and everything that we need.

Through prayer, through petition, and finally, with Thanksgiving.

With Thanksgiving.

Jesus demonstrated this in what's called the model prayer.

This is often called the Lord's Prayer.

I know a lot of us grew up Catholic and we pray these exact words over and over and over again, our Father.

But it's actually the model prayer.

They said, teach us how to pray, not teach us what to pray.

See the difference?

Teach us a structure for how you talk to the Father.

And Jesus modeled prayer and petition, asking for what you need, asking for forgiveness, asking for daily bread, asking for wisdom, asking for protection, but all surrounded by thanksgiving, by gratitude.

How does it start?

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

That's thanksgiving.

It's gratitude.

I'm recognizing who you are.

You are not me, you are not a human, you are the king of the universe, you are separate, and yet you love us, you're right here with us.

I want what you want more than what I want, even though I'm about to ask for what I want.

How's it end?

Yours is the kingdom, not mine.

Yours is the power, not mine.

I give you all the glory, not me.

Forever and ever.

Amen.

Do you see how that works?

Because here's the danger: you get into prayer and you talk and you never listen, and you bring all your petitions, not like he's the God of the universe who knows a lot more than you'll ever know, but as if he is your genie, and you just rub your magic leather-bound King James version, and now you get your three wishes for the day?

And so you give your petition, and the expectation is like God will either answer my prayers the way I want them answered, or else he's wrong.

It's a very interesting word with Thanksgiving.

The word is in the Greek, if we put it in there, it says, don't worry about anything, but in everything through prayer and petition, with, this is the Greek word Eucharistia.

Eucharistia.

In English, Eucharistia is Eucharist.

And for those of you who know, the Eucharist is another word for the Lord's Supper.

This is the same word that Paul used, Eucharistia.

It's the same word that Jesus used during the Lord's Supper when he said, This bread is like my body that will be ripped for you.

Take it and Eucharistia.

Remember me.

Be thankful for me.

Show gratitude.

This is this cup is my blood.

Pour it out for you.

Drink it and Eucharistia.

Remember me.

Be grateful for me.

Recognize what happened.

It's the same word.

It's not like I'm gonna pray, I'm gonna pray and petition, and I'm gonna be like, yes, God, you are good.

God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good.

Hashtag too blessed to be stressed, thank you, God.

You know, on my Instagram post, I'm like, you know what, child of God, hashtag child of God.

I'm living like a child of Satan, but I'm a child of God out here.

So it's deeper than that.

It's like in your state of prayer, you are recognizing the absolute heights of who God is, the best that your finite mind can understand it, and you are recognizing the depths of what God has done for you.

And by doing that, you will trust God as your heavenly father to bring him anything and everything.

And not only will you trust him enough to bring it, you'll trust him enough to do whatever he wants with it.

In Jesus' own greatest moment of worry, in the Garden of Gethsemane, right before the cross, he petitioned his father.

If there's any other way, let this come pass from me.

But not my will.

See, gratitude is in essence the antidote to anxiety.

Gratitude, thanksgiving, Eucharistia, recognizing who God is.

Gratitude and anxiety cannot coexist in the same space.

They're like oil and water.

You pour one of them in, it will displace the other.

It's very hard to hate someone if you constantly sit down and think about all the things you're grateful for about them.

Try it.

You're mad at somebody right now.

Try it.

Through prayer, conversing with God, through petition, bringing anything and everything to Him, and with Thanksgiving.

That is the template, the prescription for alleviating worry in your life.

But you gotta follow all of it.

You gotta talk and you gotta listen.

You gotta bring anything and everything.

And anything you try to shove away and hide in the corners of your life will come back to produce the anxiety you're trying to get rid of.

And all of it has to be with Thanksgiving, surrounded by and imbued with gratitude for who God is and a recognition of what he's done.

Some of you are actually really good at petitioning God.

You bring everything you want to him all the time, you're just not grateful.

You're not expressing it through a level of gratitude that allows you to trust God with the outcome of your prayer.

Some of you are very good about talking to God, and he's desperate to get a word in, you just don't ever stop and listen.

And for the majority of people, we actually live this in reverse.

We worry about everything, and we don't bring God anything.

Peter said it this way: cast all your cares upon him, for he cares for you.

All the worries and anxieties that you're holding, take them all, all of them, cast all of them, throw them off of your ledger and onto God's.

You can't carry them, and he can, and you have an important life to live, a life lived on purpose and with purpose.

And here's the promise.

Don't worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with Thanksgiving, present your request to God.

This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible.

And, right, this is falling action.

If you do that template fully, here's what will happen.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

A peace that passes understanding.

In other words, the kind of peace that will be present in your life that will make people who know what's going on in your life go, How are you doing this?

How do you have peace right now?

How are you not falling apart?

How are you not setting something on fire right now?

How are you navigating life this way?

This is part of how the gospel spreads when people look at us and they see something different.

This brings us today to today's key to proper pursuit.

Pursuit requires peace.

The kind of peace that passes understanding, the kind of peace from bringing all requests to God through prayer and petition, surrounded by gratitude.

If we look at the structure of today's section, we have the conflict between Iodi and Santiki that allowed Paul to teach us this life-changing concept.

And then here's the outcome of living a life of peace.

He says, Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, if there's any moral excellence, if there's anything praiseworthy, dwell on these things.

Do what you've learned and received and heard from me and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

We've gotten to the close of service about 10, 12 minutes earlier than we normally do, on purpose.

Because we're gonna close today by practicing what I just preached.

We are going to walk through how to pray in this way.

And by practicing this, for some of you in this room, this will be the longest single period of prayer you've ever been in, about 10 minutes of just committing yourself to communion with God.

And that's beautiful.

And I'm so honored to get to be a part of that.

For some of you, you spend a lot of time in prayer, but this will be a good reminder of the elements that makes prayer effective.

And so I'm gonna ask you as we go into this time to bow your head and to close your eyes.

There is nothing magic about that.

I just want to create some space.

I want you to be distraction-free.

And we're gonna walk through this piece by piece.

I want to give you space.

And so this will be a guided time where we start with Thanksgiving.

We move into some different petitions.

We pray and we listen.

During this time, the band is gonna play over you.

When it's your time to pray, the band is gonna sing over you.

But this is not meant for you to sing.

They're gonna sing over you in this time.

This is your time to pray.

Metachurch is that safe space to wrestle with life's biggest questions.

That's what we're doing here together.

So wherever you're at on your faith journey, I encourage you to commit.

Just practice it.

I want to start by guiding us through what we've learned today.

We're gonna enter into prayer.

This is a time between us and God.

We're gonna get to petition in just a minute, but first, I want us to start through the lens of thanksgiving and gratitude.

Even Jesus began his model prayer, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

He ended with yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Jesus' prayer and petition was surrounded by gratitude.

And so, right now, I want to invite you to take the next few moments and in your own words acknowledge who God is to you.

In your own words, express how thankful you are to him.

If it's true at this point, in your own words, express why you trust him with all things.

And so this is your time.

Let's pray together, thanking God for who he is and what he's done.

I've got nothing to do.

How could I express all my gratitude I could sing these songs as I often do with every song must say in you never do?

So I'll throw my hands, praise you again and kill.

I'm nothing else before the key.

Except for a heartina.

For the next few sections, I'm gonna guide you through some different petitions.

I want to remind you, this is prayer.

We ask, and then we listen carefully for what God may want to say to us.

First, I want you to petition God for something that you feel like you need.

Take a minute to ask specifically for what you feel you need in your life, and then listen for what God may impress on your heart.

Bring it all to peace, the storm surrounding me, let it break.

At your name still, call the sea still, the raging meat is still everywhere at your name, Jesus, Jesus, you make the darkness tremble, Jesus, Jesus, silence with Jesus, Jesus.

You make the darkness tremble, Jesus, Jesus.

We've asked God to bring something into our life.

Now I want you to ask God to remove something from your life.

Bring this request to Him.

It could be a worry, a habit, a health concern, an issue with your career or your finances.

Be bold.

God already knows, but he wants to hear from his children.

So spend this next time asking God to take something out of your life.

I've got just one with my arms stretch one.

This could be something in your family, in your marriage, with your kids, with your parents, a situation at work.

Part of petitioning God is recognizing He does actually care.

Trusting that He sees you, He sees what you're going through.

So in this last section, let's go to God.

You know what's going on.

You know what's the situation in your life that's producing the most worry and the most anxiety.

Bring it to Him.

Cast your cares upon Him as we continue to pray.

Call these bones to live, call these lungs to sing once again.

I will pray Jesus, Jesus.

You make the darkness tremble.

Jesus, Jesus.

You silence feel Jesus, Jesus.

You make the darkness tremble.

Jesus, Jesus.

Now that we've petitioned, we're going back to gratitude and trust.

We petition God realizing that we are human and therefore fallible.

What you asked God for may be exactly his will for your life, and you can trust it will be done.

What you asked for may not be near as good as the plan that God has for your life.

And part of trust is believing that his will is greater than ours.

So in gratitude, I encourage you to even pray the words of Jesus.

I know you love me.

Not my will, but yours be done.

Let's express our gratitude again.

I believe there may be some in this room who are dealing with worry and dealing with anxiety.

You would love at least the idea of casting all of that on a God who could handle it for you, but you have not taken the first step of coming into relationship with God.

That relationship starts by simple faith in Jesus, believing that he is who he says he is, and he has done what he says that he has done.

And so, with everyone's eyes closed in the room, if that's you, if you've never had a moment in time where you have put your faith in Jesus, trusting him for this life and the life to come, I want to give you an opportunity to express that faith.

I'm gonna ask you in this moment of courage, if that's you, to just lift your hand up in the air where I can see it.

And by raising your hand, you're saying, Jesus, today I choose to trust you.

Amen.

Praise God.

Amen.

For those who raised a hand, I want you to know that Jesus sees your faith and accepts it, which means your sin that has separated you from God is forgiven.

Past, present, and future, you are clothed with the righteousness of Christ.

You are born again as a child of God.

You've been given the gift of eternal life, and no one and nothing can ever take that away from you.

What I want to do is simply help you acknowledge this decision.

I want to ask you to repeat this prayer after me, and I'm gonna ask all the believers in the room to pray it with us.

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 that you rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

Now let me pray over you.

Jesus, we give you our worry, we give you our anxiety, we trust you with all of it.

I pray that we would keep nothing hidden, nothing in the dark.

God, I thank you for those who have put their faith in you today, whose lives have been forever changed, whose eternities have been forever changed.

God, I pray that you would show them what it means to follow you.

That this would be the first day of experiencing new life in Christ.

I thank you for this movement.

Pray you would continue to grow our impact.

We give you all the praise and all the glory in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

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.