The Danger of Fitting In 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.

Man, it's so good to see you here.

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

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

I am so glad that you joined us.

And I want to make sure you stop by Connect.

After the service, we have a gift for you or for your family.

Uh, if you aren't new with us, throughout the month of January, we did a series where we were really focusing on the five-year vision that God has given us over the next five years to have a meta church location within 20 minutes of everyone in San Antonio.

We decided that we were going to increase our giving incrementally so God could use our movement exponentially.

You guys came through in a big way.

The way we did that is we had a huge brick wall.

Every brick represented an increase of$50 a month.

That was the commitment.

You guys need to know that you moved over 500 bricks last month.

Blew away expectation.

506 bricks to be exact.

That's paving the path towards us really increasing our impact in this city and beyond it.

Today, I want to focus on a social reality that can hold us back from being the kinds of people as individuals and the kind of movement as a metachurch that God has called us to be.

The message for you today is the danger of fitting in.

The danger of fitting in.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you.

We thank you for your great love for us.

I thank you for Matichurch, a place for all people, all different walks of life, all different parts of their faith journey.

God, where we can come and wrestle with life's biggest questions.

And you know our heart it is for people to meet you, Jesus, to put their faith in you, and then to follow you into a life of purpose and of power.

And so help us to that end.

Holy Spirit, we know that you're here.

We ask that you would speak to us whatever we need today, that you would challenge us, encourage us, convict us, empower us, that we would just really be humble and open to whatever you might have for us.

We love you and we pray these things in your name, Jesus.

And everyone said, Amen.

The danger of fitting in.

There's something interesting that I've noticed is um we're all pretty comfortable admitting that in middle school, high school, even really in college, uh, that peer pressure was very powerful in our lives.

As adults, we become very ready to admit that because we know that if we tried to act like it wasn't real, we have this very damaging evidence called our middle school yearbooks, right?

Like you can just go and see the effects of peer pressure real fast.

Like only the pressure of a very misguided group of guys could have us dudes rocking Gene Code jeans in middle school and high school.

Gene code jeans, you could smuggle some secrets in those pants, you know?

You could smuggle a friend into the house in one leg of your pants.

And women, y'all are not immune to the peer pressure as well.

I don't know what this was about.

At one point, y'all had NFL-sized shoulder pads all the time.

It was confusing.

We didn't know if we should date you or just keep you from the quarterback, you know?

All kinds of fashion choices, hair choices, style choices, the way that we talk, all influenced by the peers around us and everybody just wanting to fit in.

And no harm, no foul, we can look back and laugh at that.

But some of you also can look back to middle school, maybe especially high school, college, and you can remember some of the choices that you made because of the pressure of people around you.

Some of those choices that you still regret to this day.

Maybe you were like me, and somewhere late middle school, early high school, because of your insecurities, you wanted so badly to fit in, so badly to feel like one of the cool kids, that you did things that you knew were against your moral compass, were against who God had asked you to be.

You did it anyway because you would do whatever it took to just fit in.

Or maybe you were on the other side of it.

You were ostracized, you just felt very left out coming up as a kid.

You had no hope of ever fitting in, so you just kind of put your head down and tried your best to get through it.

We remember, and we're ready to admit, the overwhelming power of peer pressure in school.

Something interesting happens though.

We get kind of grown, we get into our late 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and we have this idea that somehow we just magically mature out of peer pressure.

Like we can say, oh man, in middle school, I wanted to fit in really bad.

Oh, in high school, man, I did some wild stuff, you know, just trying to get along.

But we think that now we're grown, and without any effort or even acknowledging it, that the social pressure around us doesn't have any bearing on us.

Here's the problem.

Throughout the last, especially 50 years, psychologists and sociologists have studied the power and the pressure of the social circles around us, and what they find flies in the face of what most of us just automatically believe.

We haven't actually escaped the power of the social pressure around us.

It just often looks different than it did when we were all congregated together in the halls of our middle schools and high schools.

About 50 years ago, what sparked this line of research was a terrible crime that happened in New York City.

It was the killing of a woman named Kitty Gino Visi.

She was stabbed outside of her apartment, which unfortunately 50 years ago was kind of common in New York City.

What made this so uncommon is the way, first of all, that the attack happened.

It happened over a long span of time, something like 30 minutes to an hour.

The attacker would come, stab her multiple times, get scared and run off, and then come back minutes later, stab her more and run off.

Did this three or four different times.

What also made this so wild is she was screaming for help the entire time, for about half of an hour.

She was screaming for help, and there were 38 witnesses to the crime.

Kitty ended up dying, not just because of the attack, but because out of those 38 witnesses, virtually none of them ever called 911.

No one ever reached out to the authorities.

People just couldn't understand how this happened.

Well, after studying this and having social experiments and looking at other circumstances of large groups of people failing to take action, they coined a term in the psychological community.

It's called the bystander effect.

The premise is pretty simple.

The more people who witness an event, the less likely any one individual in that group will do anything about it.

In just one of these social experiments, they would put people in a room and then they would start pumping smoke underneath the door of the waiting room.

Here's what they found.

When people were in there by themselves, just one person, they would report the smoke coming under the door every single time.

However, if there were even as few as four people in the room, the smoke only got reported 30% of the time.

It's the bystander effect.

The more people who give witness to an event, the less likely any one individual will do something about it.

There are two primary reasons that they've discovered that this happens.

The first they call diffusion of responsibility.

This is the false premise that the responsibility for the situation is spread out over all the members present.

When you're the only one who's witnessing an emergency, it's obvious that 100% of the responsibility is on you.

However, when there are 38 people watching something happen, you naturally only feel like you carry about 138th of the responsibility.

This seems to be a psychological state that we typically live in.

If there are 10 people who all see the same thing happening, we feel like we only personally carry 10% of the responsibility.

So we're less likely to do something about it.

The second factor is called social mirroring.

We all understand this one.

As humans, we tend to monitor the behavior of those around us to inform us how we should be acting as well.

This is basically monkey see, monkey do.

This is like the baseline level of peer pressure.

You look at the people around you to take your cue for how you should act or how you should not act.

These two factors compound on each other.

Individuals don't feel a sense of responsibility because they think others share in the weight of that problem.

Others feel the same, and so they don't act.

Then you see other people not acting and you mirror that, all of you affirming the diffusion of responsibility that you felt in the first place.

To put it really simply, standing up would mean standing out, which goes against one of our deepest desires, which is to fit in.

Sometimes there are real dangers to fitting in.

At MetaCurch, we talk all the time about your purpose, that God created you, put you on earth on purpose, that he created you with something significant to do, to have impact with your life.

Not only that, but if you're a follower of Jesus, that means every single situation you find yourself in is an opportunity for you to live out your purpose and to be a powerful witness, which means you're showing other people how Jesus actually matters in your life and why Jesus actually matters in the world.

When someone is being attacked in front of you, there's no question what should be done.

Jesus, who came and sacrificed for the good of everyone, is our example as a Jesus follower.

We should sacrifice and do something about it.

However, the bystander effect, the power of the group around us, can keep us from even the most obvious courses of action.

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at a few examples from the Old Testament of the bystander effect in action and see just how dangerous it can become to your life if you live your life simply trying to fit in.

We're gonna start all the way back in the first book of your Bible, Genesis chapter 11.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

This is a story we typically call the Tower of Babel.

It goes like this the whole earth had the same language and vocabulary.

And as people migrated from the east, they found a valley in the land of Shinar and they settled there.

And they said to each other, Come, let's make oven-fired bricks.

They used brick for stone and asphalt for mortar.

And they said, Come, let's build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky.

Let's make a name for ourselves.

Otherwise, we will be scattered throughout the earth.

Now the building of the tower started with very intentional disobedience against God.

Why do they want to build something large enough for everyone to live in?

The text tells us.

It's so they won't be scattered throughout the earth.

Who wants to be scattered all throughout the earth?

It sounds like a lot of work.

Traveling, overcoming obstacles, splitting up from acquaintances that you've made, having to build new settlements.

Sounds like a lot of walking and sweating, and who knows what's out there.

It could be very dangerous.

You might as well just stay put, build a high rise, get a nice loft, and stay right where you are.

Here's the problem: God had given the people very specific instructions.

In fact, this was a command for the people alive on earth at that time.

Two chapters earlier in Genesis 9, we get these instructions.

But you, God said, be fruitful and multiply.

Spread out over the earth and multiply on it.

See, this takes us back to purpose.

God created man to be his image bearers on the earth.

That means we have a purpose, we have a job to do.

He outlined the very first step of ruling and reigning on earth, which is to spread out over the earth the exact opposite of what the Tower of Babel is trying to accomplish.

The people value their convenience and their power more than their God-given purpose.

They've made their own plan, their own agenda, the highest value, and they're unwilling to sacrifice that to pursue the actual purpose God has placed in front of them.

They're giving up on the chance to join with God in taking dominion over the entire world.

Part of what the Tower of Babel shows us is that you have no idea just how impactful your life could be if you were able to stand up against the flow and the current of culture, if you were able to go against the grain, knowing that standing up for the things of God will make you stand out in your current cultural environment.

And maybe you won't quite be able to fit in the way you have up until this point.

You need to know that what was true in Genesis is true today.

We are still image bearers of God, which means God is still looking for people who will join him in the rescue and redemption of all of humanity and all of the earth.

This isn't about authority that comes through power, this is about power and purpose that comes through humility and even being willing to endure humiliation.

If you think that out of all the people building the tower, not one of them thought, we're kind of like directly going against God right now, right?

As they're swinging their hammers, as they're baking their bricks.

You see, they had been evolving technologically to build buildings forever.

You had to go get stone, and stone was very hard to source, and once you sourced it, you had to move it, and once you moved it, you had to stack it.

Their technology was advancing, they figured out how to make bricks, and bricks they could customize, and they were much lighter, and they found out how to bind them together, and so now they have a good thing that they could use as they're spreading out and spreading the good news.

Instead, they take a good thing, a technological innovation, and they don't use it to try and praise and worship God, they try to use it to make themselves God.

And now we're thousands and thousands and thousands of years later, and all of those thousands of years, technology is just advancing and advancing and advancing.

And the phone in your pocket, it can be used to spread the good news of God, and it can be used to lift up and encourage other people, or it can be used to try to make yourself God.

And by the way, to try and make yourself God by using your technology, all you're doing is what everyone else is doing.

Just going along with the flow, staying under the radar.

Often we're not willing to stand up because we lose sight of the unbelievable opportunity that we have to join with God and what he's doing on the earth.

We live to be our own kings, we live to be our own gods, we live for the here and now instead of keeping our eyes on eternity, and so we build a tower.

You know, thousands of them had to think like, man, this is gonna be easier, but it's definitely not what we're supposed to be doing.

You look around, a thousand other people swinging hammers, building a tower, and you think, surely this isn't all on me.

Thousand other people firing up bricks, surely this isn't maybe I maybe I'm like one one thousandth responsible, but how can you be mad at that?

You look around and everyone else is following suit.

Social mirroring tells you what they do I should do.

I don't want to stand out, so I'm not going to stand up.

The Tower of Babel is a story of heartbreak.

It ends with God confusing the languages, people break off into new tribes, they're now forced to scatter throughout the earth, and all of those nations, for a time, are disinherited from the plan of God.

The next chapter, God calls one man and starts a new nation.

The nation of Israel for a specific time and a specific season will be his one chosen nation.

It's a story of heartbreak and what happens when you're not willing to stand up and you lose out on the life of purpose you could live.

One more example.

Generations later, God had just rescued Israel, his one chosen nation, from bondage in Egypt.

The Israelites had watched ten miraculous plagues convince the wealthiest nation on earth to set them free.

A million plus people they had as free slave labor, they set them all free.

On their way out, after the tenth plague, the Egyptians are so afraid of the one true God, they don't just set the Israelites free, they just start handing them all of their gold and precious jewels.

Just go and leave, leave us alone.

On their way out, God parts the waters of the Red Sea, they walk through it on dry ground.

Once they're in the wilderness, there's no food, and God is door-dashing manna to their tents day after day.

They're just surrounded by miracles.

God gives them the Ten Commandments to help guide them.

And then in Exodus 32, God calls Moses upon a mountain.

And Moses takes a little bit longer than the people anticipated.

In Exodus 32, verse 1, when the people saw that Moses delayed in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron, who is second in charge, and they said to him, Come, make gods for us, who will go before us, because this Moses, the man who brought us from Egypt, we don't know what's happened to him.

Exodus 32:1

And Aaron replied to them, Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives and your sons and your daughters and bring them to me.

And so all the people took off the gold rings that were on their ears and brought them to Aaron.

And he took the gold from them and fashioned it with an engraving tool and made it into the image of a calf.

And then they said, Israel, these are your gods who brought you up from the land of Egypt.

And when Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of it and made an announcement.

There will be a festival to the Lord tomorrow.

And early the next morning they arose and offered burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings, and the people sat down to eat and drink and got up to party.

Now, if you don't remember the Ten Commandments, here's the first two.

Number one, you are to have no other gods except for me.

That's not clear enough.

Number two, you are not to make any graven images or fashion any idols and offer worship to them.

It's literally the first two of the ten.

And Moses is gone like a little bit longer than they want him to be, and they fall into full-on idolatry.

Here's what makes this worse when you know this in the context.

Bulls and calves were two of the most common idols in Egypt, where God had just rescued them from.

Some people are confused about how they have enough gold after 400 years of slavery to build giant idols.

And the answer is that God miraculously handed them gold as a free will offering from the Egyptians on their way out because of the power of the one true God.

And now they are taking the gift that was given to them from God and fashioning false gods out of it, bowing before them.

It says they made offerings and they ate and they drank.

And let me just tell you, when it says they drank, it probably means they drank, okay?

And then it says they got up to party.

And it's almost a euphemism because the way in Egypt, these pagan offerings would go, these pagan traditions to their false gods of golden bulls and golden calves were perverse and grotesque and sexual in nature.

Everything about this moment is an affront and an offense to the one true God who just miraculously rescued them, parted the waters for them, and then swallowed up the Egyptian army.

I read that passage a lot slower than I typically read or say anything.

There's so many steps.

I mean, these people know the Ten Commandments.

They know them.

They first have to go petition Aaron.

Ample opportunity for someone to stand up.

We're gonna do what?

Y'all don't remember number one and number two?

And then everyone has to remove their jewelry.

There's no text messaging.

It's like they're having to go person by person and spread the word.

We're making some idols, we need all your gold.

You know, the gold God gave us, now we're gonna take it.

Gonna use it for these perverse means.

And then they got to melt it down in the middle of the wilderness and take some time.

And then they got to use tools and fashion it into the actual shape of the bull and the calf while all this is happening.

A nation of a million people, and no one was convicted.

Of course they were.

Thousands upon thousands of people knew it was wrong.

But they looked around and everyone else was given their jewelry?

You're gonna be the one family that doesn't do it.

Everyone else is waiting with anticipation for what the new idol is gonna look like.

Everyone else is bringing their offering.

You think not one of the Israelites got up to that altar?

And as they're getting down on their knees to worship a false god, not one of them was like, I should say something.

This is out of hand now.

We've gone too far now.

Diffusion of responsibility and social mirroring.

You look around and you go, you know what?

A million other people are doing it.

There's power in numbers, right?

We see this in real time.

You can see this with mob violence, where people will act in ways that you know that person they would never act that way on their own, but you get swept up into the moment, you feel like you're not fully responsible for the crime that you're committing or the fight that you're in, you look around, social mirroring, everyone else is doing it.

I'm gonna be the one crazy person who puts my head on the chopping block to try and stop this.

And so we go along with the flow.

And we allow the social pressure around us, and we allow the culture that is often moving in ways that are the antithesis of how God has asked us to move, to set the agenda for our life, our actions, our decisions.

And how heartbreaking to think that the people at Babel were God's people.

That they had a purpose to rule and reign on earth alongside God, and they gave it up because no one could break away from the crowd.

The story of the golden calf is a story of heartbreak.

Number one, Moses does come back.

And if you want to know how seriously God takes his people breaking his first two commandments right after he drugged them through the Red Sea, um, everyone who headed this thing up got slaughtered.

Yeah, we yeah, we we we really like the parts where God is super nice, right?

God is just as well.

Those same people continued in their unfaithfulness and never made it to the promised land.

They wandered for 40 years until that generation died out, and the next generation got to inherit the promise.

It's a heartbreaking story.

And what it should teach us, learning from it, for our own lives, is that there's a chance if you don't learn how to stand up, if you don't learn how to go against the grain, if you don't learn how to swim up current from the culture, a life of unimaginable power and purpose that God created you for could be forfeited by the exact same thing, the peer pressure around you, that has been a part of your life since you were 10 years old.

We think peer pressure is for middle schoolers, high schoolers, college kids.

We outgrew that a long time ago.

But did we?

The bystander effect is seen in full force all of the time.

You can even see this in the church world.

Maybe some of you grew up in religious environments that were very judgmental, and now you're on the other side of that and you're reading about Jesus who went to the people who were most marginalized and most ostracized and stood up for them and brought them in and broke bread with them, and you're wondering how could an entire church of people live as judgmental lives, angry at the world, casting judgment on everyone?

How do you even get to that place?

And we, that's not like one church in America.

That's like throw a rock and hit one.

Diffusion of responsibility, social mirroring.

You think there aren't people who are stuck in judgmental religious environments who aren't convicted by that, who don't think this doesn't sound a lot like Jesus, but they look around and everyone else does it, and no one feels fully responsible, and so they just don't say anything.

If we are really seeking to follow Christ, if we have our eyes open and we're paying attention, you are going to find moments of injustice that you bear witness to.

There are people in your places of work who are not being treated correctly.

There are things happening around you that are immoral and unethical.

There are things in your friend group that are not okay.

There are people you know who are cheating on their spouses that their spouses do not yet know about it.

And you just sit in silence.

I'm not gonna be that guy.

I'm not trying to rock the boat, I'm trying to fly under the radar.

I don't need the drama, I don't want the smoke, it's not my problem.

And so we diffuse the responsibility and we mirror those around us, and we miss out on opportunities to stand up and to do what Jesus has called us to do.

I know men who love their wives really well, they don't really have any complaints about their wives.

And then you get in a group of men, and sometimes when men and women split off into groups, they play that game of you'll never believe what my husband did.

You know that game?

Oh, you will never believe what this girl did, you know?

And there's a key and peel skid about that, but we won't talk about you will never believe what this.

And there'll be a man who has no complaints, you know?

And it's like this guy's like, this girl, man, you have no, oh man, my wife, you know, and then the next guy's like, oh, you won't believe, oh, you think that, and then the next guy's like, you think that's bad.

Listen to this, and then you get to this guy, and you better believe he's not gonna be like my wife walks on rainbows and sleeps on clouds, baby.

No complaints here.

You're just not gonna put your head above water like that.

You'll just make something up.

Go along with the crowd.

You're not gonna be that guy going, I don't know, man.

I know your wife.

And I know you.

I think you got lucky.

You're not gonna be that guy.

This happens all the time.

Young people, this happens all the time.

The number of young people taking their own lives is skyrocketing.

And statistics say that, like, if one person, literally one, would show that they care, it would make the difference in the decision that they have on their mind.

Like one person.

But it's tough.

Because no one else is reaching out.

And it's tough because you might get marginalized as well.

We don't stand up because we don't want to stand out.

Because as much as we want to be unique and cool and different, what we really live for is just to fit in.

There are sins in our own life that are done in our circle of friends, and you're not making changes because of what it would cause in your circle.

Are you going to be willing to stand up even if you stand out?

And if not, then you're making a decision to allow your purpose, your power, and your impact to be sabotaged by the same peer pressure that puts you in Gene Code genes in seventh grade.

And how heartbreaking would it be to not rise to who God created us to be because of the peer pressure around us.

At Medichurch, we talk all the time about living with a pilgrim's perspective.

We talk about it constantly because we think it's one of the keys to you actually living out a life of purpose God created you for.

And just to kind of remind you, a pilgrim's perspective is the reality that once you've put your faith in Jesus, you are no longer officially a citizen of this world.

You are a citizen of heaven.

That is your home.

You are now a pilgrim who is passing through.

Peter wrote to one of the churches that he was helping to lead, and he called them strangers and exiles in this land.

Jesus prayed for us in John 17.

Did you know that?

Jesus prayed for you in John 17.

And you know what he said about his disciples, those who learned from him?

He said, Just as I am not of this world, they are not of this world.

I'm not asking you, Jesus said, to take them out of the world.

They need to be in the world, but know that they're not of this world.

We're living for another day.

And that's really important because if every day you are focused in keeping your eyes on eternity, then the danger of standing up and standing out and maybe being humiliated or ostracized will pale in comparison to the opportunity to live the life that God's actually created you to live and the difference it will make in eternity someday.

But if your eyes are focused on the here and now, the danger of not fitting in will feel overwhelming to you.

There's more.

There's something else that matters in this conversation with having a pilgrim's perspective.

Here's how the Apostle Paul talks about our entrance into our real life, in our real home in eternity.

In 2 Corinthians 5, he says, For we must all appear.

That's corporate language.

All of us, we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each, that's individual language, each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

There's a corporate truth to that.

All of us will stand before the throne of Jesus someday, and all of us will have to give an account for the life that we've lived.

But scripture makes it clear, while we all go, we don't all stand together.

Each of us.

When you stand before Jesus, you will stand before him as an individual.

And the question is not going to be, how did the person next to you steward the life they were given?

How did the person who works beside you influence how you did or did not follow me?

The question will be: what did you do with the life that I gave you?

You may feel when you're in a crowd that you only bear a percentage of the responsibility to stand up and act on behalf of whatever injustice is happening, but when you stand before Jesus someday, that excuse will fall eternally short.

Jesus expects you, as a follower of him, to stand up and stand out, even if it costs you.

As followers of Jesus, you were not made to fit in.

You might be in the world, but you're not of the world.

You were made to stand up.

And this is what Jesus did.

When you read the life of Jesus, he wasn't out there seeking attention.

He wasn't trying to build himself up, but every time there wasn't justice, he stood up.

And because he always stood up, he began to stand out.

And not only does he stand out as the most important figure in all of human history, he stood out to those who held power.

He stood out so much that it ended up putting him on a cross.

Jesus came and scripture says he was tempted and he was tried in every way that we are, which means that that weight that comes from no longer fitting in, that pressure that comes from standing up and being that guy, being that girl, actually standing up and saying something when something's wrong, he felt it too.

And yet, he did it every single time.

You were made to stand up, even if it costs you.

It's a part of how you live your life of purpose, it's a part of how you impact the world around you, and it's a part of how you live a life like Jesus.

This can be very difficult for some of us.

We're going on 30, 40, 60, 70 years of using this same coping mechanisms to deal with our same insecurities to just try and fit in and get along.

And so you heard about it earlier, but I want to remind you about something we have to offer here at MetaCurch.

We try to give you direct application and we try to resource you.

For some of you, you're stuck.

And to really get past all your hurts and pain and hangups and stand up into the life that God's created you to live, you're gonna need some help.

And so I hope that Tuesday night you'll come out to the info session about the Meta Movement Academy.

This is a semester of programs to get you healthy spiritually, emotionally, financially, and relationally healthy.

The reason we focus on those areas, if you are unhealthy in any of those four areas, it will sabotage your journey to standing up and being the person that God created you to be.

As we close, I want to give you a time of reflection.

So right where you are, if you'll bow your head and close your eyes, there's nothing magic about that, it just creates some space for you and for the people around you.

And I want to start by talking to those.

Maybe you've been a believer for a while, maybe you're a new believer in Jesus.

Maybe honestly, you're still just investigating.

But if you're honest, you know that the social pressure around you is keeping you from taking actions that are right, that are righteous, that are needed.

It's keeping you from confronting evil and injustice.

It's keeping you from reaching out to someone who is marginalized.

It's keeping you from the conversations you need to have and the decisions you need to make.

And I wonder if even now you would begin to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to give you the strength and the courage and the humility to begin standing up.

I wonder if even right now the Holy Spirit is bringing to mind situations where you have not spoken up and you've not acted out because you just want to fit in.

Fly under the radar.

I wonder if you're at a place where you know you need help.

And if you'd be willing to consider investing a few months into going through some real processes, some real programs to help you break free of what's holding you back and walk into the life of purpose that God created you for.

I want to talk to those who are in the room who haven't yet put their faith in Jesus.

You're not sure what happens after this life.

Maybe you've been investigating Christ for some time now.

Maybe the Holy Spirit has been impressing on your heart.

Maybe now that you're paying attention, God is even revealing himself in some unique ways.

I need you to know that Jesus stood up.

He left a perfect heaven to come down to our broken, messy world.

That Jesus stood up.

Every time someone was in trouble, every time there was injustice, the people who had been pushed to the edges of society because of their sin, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the people who were untouchable, some who now lived outside the walls of the city, so engrossed by their shame.

The very people that the religious leaders had pushed out, Jesus stood up, he called them in.

Because Jesus stood up, he stood out.

As they nailed him to a cross and they hung him naked above the ground, he stood out.

He was humiliated, mocked, scorned.

With his last breath, he stood up.

And with that, he died.

And when Jesus walked out of a grave, it was a promise for you, and it was a promise for me that if we put our faith in him, there is no fear that should have any sway in our life, because even death itself has now been defeated.

We have an eternal life, which is our truest home.

Our citizenship is with heaven, and even if they kill us for standing up, they're just transitioning us home even faster.

There is a hope and a peace and a power that comes from putting our faith in the one who stood up.

And so if you're here and there's no pressure, every eye is closed.

If you're here and you've never put your faith in Jesus, I want to give you an opportunity to do that today.

And in this moment of courage, I'm gonna ask you to just lift your hand over your head where I can see you.

That's an acknowledgement.

I've never put my faith in Jesus, but I'm ready today.

Amen.

I see you.

Amen.

Here's what we're gonna do.

I'm gonna help you acknowledge that faith through a very simple prayer.

And if you're a believer already in this room, I'm gonna ask you to pray it with us.

And so for those praying for the first time, and all the believers in the room, let's pray something simple like this.

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

I believe you are God.

I believe you came to earth, that you died for my sin, and I believe you rose again.

And I thank you for a new eternal life.

For those that just prayed this for the first time, I'm gonna pray over you.

Jesus, we are rejoicing alongside all of heaven for the most important decision that these people will ever make.

The one decision with eternal consequence.

I pray today is not the end of something, but the beginning of something brand new.

The beginning of finding out all that you have for them in this life.

And I pray for all of us that today would be the day that we decide to do whatever it takes to stand up.

We love you, and we thank you, Jesus, and we pray it all in your name.

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.