Chasm of Chaos with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at Medichurch.

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.

I want to welcome everyone here, everyone watching online.

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

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

Uh I want to thank Pastor Sherry and Pastor Tony for doing such a great job, bringing absolutely fire messages the last couple of weeks.

I had the opportunity to go out and lead worship for the last couple of weeks for about 2,000 students in East Texas.

It was wonderful, but there is no place like home, and I'm so glad to be back here at MetaCurch.

Today I have a really important message for us.

This is something that is crucial for us to understand, both as individuals and as a community, this movement that we call MetaCurch.

Uh, my message title, I'm gonna be honest with you guys, it's it's a little bit extra today.

It's a tad dramatic.

Okay.

Uh my message is the chasm of chaos.

I told y'all, yeah, y'all are in for it today, the chasm of chaos.

Would you guys pray with me?

Uh Jesus, we love you.

I thank you for a place like MetaCurch for all people, all different places in life, different parts of their faith journey.

Um, God, a place where we can come and it's safe to just wrestle with life's biggest questions.

We believe you created us on purpose and that you've placed inside of us a great purpose.

That if we were to live that out, we would experience the power and impact that our lives were created for.

I think today's message is important to that.

So I pray we'd be humble enough to just open our minds and our hearts to what you might be saying to us.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

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

Amen.

The chasm of chaos.

I want to start by demonstrating this with uh a little bit of basketball history here.

Um, Shaquille O'Neal, without a doubt, uh, the most dominant human being to ever play basketball.

Uh, you may not agree with that.

It's fine, you can be wrong about things.

Um, however, there was one embarrassingly awful part of his game.

You know what it is.

It was his his free throws.

So that's part of his legacy.

I think we have a video actually uh of just like just how atrocious that this you can't make that up.

And he gets a lot of hate for this, um, but he's not the only big man in NBA history to be to be bad at free throws.

In fact, one of the greatest players of all time made Shaq look like a sharpshooter from the line.

Um Will Chamberlain shot 40% from free throw.

Now, if you're not a basketball fan, uh if you're in the NBA and you shoot 70% from the free throw line, you're terrible, okay?

He shot 40% embarrassingly bad.

But that's not what he's known for.

Wilt Chamberlain is most known for scoring 100 points in a single NBA basketball game.

It's something no one had ever done and probably no one will ever do again.

100 points by one man in one game is a lot.

This happened in March of 1962.

100 points is almost like a miracle, but when you know what we know about Wilt Chamberlain, here's the real miracle.

He shot 32 free throws that night.

That's a lot, and he made 28 of them.

If you're doing the math, that's about 88% from the line from a 40% free throw shooter.

And so, how did he do it?

Did he just catch fire like he was playing NBA jam on his Sisega Genesis?

You know, like did he just did he finally just get his form down?

Did everything come together?

None of that.

The way he pulled off shooting 88% from the line.

One move, two words, you know it.

Granny shot.

That's how he did it.

88%.

If you don't know a granny shot, uh, it's like this.

Oh, you need a side angle?

It's like that's a granny shot.

It's not cool, if you're wondering.

88% though, that's that's not bad.

Scored a hundred points.

And really, this was the only flaw in Will Chamberlain's game.

And it is a big flaw because if you can't shoot free throws, the other team has a big strategic advantage.

What they'll do is they'll take their bench players and they'll put them in and they'll foul you all night, knowing that if you go to the line six out of ten times, you're gonna miss anyway.

If you can't shoot free throws, you become a massive liability to your team late in close games.

Because at the end of games, all they gotta do is foul you.

Odds are you'll miss.

They get the ball back.

He found out the solution to the one issue in an otherwise flawless game.

And he scored a hundred points once he fixed it.

You would think that after this moment where it all came together and now he was a complete player, that he would dominate from here on out, score a hundred points every night.

You know what's crazier than scoring 100 points in a game?

Is that after that night, Will Chamberlain never shot a granny shot again.

He went right back to being a 40% free throw shooter for the rest of his NBA career.

He was teammates with a guy named Rick Berry.

You might know the name.

Rick Berry's son, Brent Berry, won some championships with the greatest team of all time, the San Antonio Spurs.

Rick Berry is the greatest free throw shooter in NBA history.

There was an entire season where Rick only missed nine free throws.

The whole season.

He shot his free throws underhanded.

He taught Wilt Chamberlain the granny shot.

But Wilt wouldn't do it.

For one night and one night only, he could shoot free throws.

And after that, he went right back.

Why?

Here is Wilt's explanation.

He stopped shooting underhand because I just felt silly.

Like a sissy.

Shooting underhanded, I know I was wrong.

I know some of the best foul shooters in history shot that way.

Even now, the best one in the NBA, Rick Berry, shoots underhanded.

I just couldn't do it.

Shaquille O'Neal, years later, when he was in the league, he was almost a perfect player, but he couldn't shoot free throws.

And one day his team had Rick Berry come in to teach him how to shoot the granny shot.

This is Shaq's famous response.

I'd rather shoot 0% than to look like that.

Wilt and Shaq, they both knew that Rick was right.

This was the way to eliminate the only weakness in their game.

They were convinced it would work, they were 100% sure it would make them a better player, it would benefit their teams, they'd probably hang more banners in the rafters, they just simply would not do it.

So, what explains this?

There's a simple truth that I think I can show with a relatively simple picture, and it is what I'm calling the chasm of chaos.

It separates the two steps of how we actually live an effective life, and those two steps are simply inspiration and application.

Or more specifically, inspiration that leads to application, inspiration that results in us actually taking action and doing something about how and what we've been inspired by.

A lot of times what we think is we get inspired and then we do the things that we're inspired by, but that is not how life works.

How it actually works is that inspiration and application are separated by a wide gap.

And it's this gap that I'm calling the chasm of chaos.

You see, this is you.

You're looking very nice, by the way.

You're happy, you know, because you're inspired.

And more now than ever, it's pretty easy to get inspired.

You can curate your whole life and your whole social media presence to just have inspirational things in front of you all of the time.

And so, you know, you you watch about three hours of TikTok clean eating videos, and you get inspired, you know.

I'm about to start fueling my body right.

No more of these processed sugars, no more of this fast food.

Like, man, I have been inspired.

I'm making this change, and then 7:30 p.m.

comes and you're whipping up some oodles of noodles again, and you're not sure what happened.

You got inspired, but you just fell right into the chasm of chaos back to your old habits.

You get inspired because you follow 65 different Instagram channels that are all about lifting weights and working out and calisthenics.

And so 78 months ago, you signed up$40 a month for a gym that you've never walked into one time.

You got inspiration, but it didn't end up in application.

Or maybe you read a great book about how to improve your marriage, or maybe you recently met a couple and it just seemed like they were on the same page, and you know that in your marriage you're always right on the edge of murdering each other, and so you're not really sure how they do it, but you want to learn from them.

Instead, though, you get right back into the chaos of life.

You don't change any of your habits, you still just try to win all of the arguments.

You aren't selfless, you always try to get your way.

It's easy to get inspired.

We want to change our habits, we want to get our finances in order.

What's difficult is moving from inspiration and bridging this massive gap over into application.

And application is the life that you actually want to live.

Application is where purpose happens, it's where your power resides, it's the significance that you're looking for.

This is where peace is, this is where hope comes from.

This is impact, the way that you know, like at the core of who you are, that you were created to actually change things and make a difference in the world.

And so often we're unable to get here.

We just cycle back down, like almost like there is a magnetic pool.

And the reason it's because life is very, very complicated.

And in this chasm of chaos, it's full of things like the false narratives that you live with, the things that were said to you when you were really young, maybe by parents or siblings or teachers, or the neighborhood bully, or maybe the words of your ex that ring in your head all of the time, the things that convince you that you're not worthy of love, or you'll never be smart enough, or you might as well not even try.

In the chasm of chaos, it's really rooted in our pain, and our pain creates things like fear and anger and insecurity and coping mechanisms, and all of the ways that we try to deal with things are addictions that take over our pride.

In the chasm of chaos, we have unmet needs, maybe even all the way back to when we were kids and didn't quite get the love or support that we should have got.

We have unhealed wounds, the things that we haven't confronted in our life that are still damaging to us, that keep us from loving people appropriately, or are make us to where we just can't really organize ourselves, can't stay on top of things.

And the chasm of chaos is the need to prove everyone wrong.

And so you do succeed, but even your successes are never fulfilling because you're not succeeding out of a love for the Lord or the purpose he's placed inside of you.

You're succeeding to finally convince someone that caused pain in your past that you're worthy of something.

Life is very difficult.

And all of these things that sit kind of in the core of our lived experience, they are almost magnetic in their ability to take all of this inspiration and drag us away from applying that into our life and back down into the chaos where most people live.

The status quo of life.

I can definitely be overstating this, you'll decide that.

But I'm fairly convinced that this simple picture is what separates a successful life from a status quo life.

That the ability to bridge this gap from inspiration to application is the difference between excelling at the things that God has given you to do and purpose to your life for, and living with a lack of contentment, peace, and hope.

On a bigger level, because you're not just an individual, you're a part of the movement of Jesus here as a part of his church, his movement on the earth.

This is the difference between the movement of Jesus, his local churches that impact his world, and those that are largely irrelevant to his world.

This is not a new problem.

We get inspired all of the time.

Will Chamberlain was inspired by Rick Berry.

Death fool only missed nine free throws in a whole season.

He was like, I gotta try this.

Tried it one time, scored a hundred points.

Applied it one time, scored a hundred points.

But could only do it once.

His pride and insecurity brought him right back down.

This happens in every area of our life, but it's most significant in our spiritual life.

As crazy as it is, and as humbling as it should be, we are the hope for the world.

Jesus made his church the plan for getting the message of Jesus, who is the center of our hope, out to a hurting and broken world.

And so often what you find in church is just religious exercise.

And religion is this picture.

In religion, you show up to the right events at the right time, dressed the right way, thinking and voting the right way, talking the right way, singing the right way.

You check all of the boxes to get inspired, but once you walk outside of the doors, your job is largely done.

You just wait till the next gathering where you all come together and get inspired again, just to go do nothing about it.

The movement that Jesus started is all about moving from here to here.

We say that we meet together, and when we meet together like we're doing right now, we get inspired, but inspiration isn't the end goal.

Meeting together is just the fuel for the end goal of moving together and actually applying the truths of God into the power of God in our lives and out into a hurting world.

But often we come in, we get inspired, maybe you get inspired on Sunday because we have, without a doubt, the best band in San Antonio.

I'm not trying to brag, we just have the best band in San Antonio.

And sometimes you get a good word, and you go even maybe to your life team and you get inspired, and you listen to a good podcast, and hopefully you guys are like spending time in the Word and in prayer, and you're getting inspired and inspired, but often you get really inspired Sunday, and by Monday at 9:02 a.m., you have fallen right off the cliff.

Back into the chaos.

Not making a real visible difference in your life.

This isn't a new problem, and you you should find some encouragement in that.

This is a very human problem.

We're gonna spend most of our time in the Christian scriptures in a letter that was written by James, who interestingly enough was the half-brother of Jesus.

A guy who did not believe in Jesus at all.

Scripture tells us that, and who would?

He was his brother, right?

That's tough.

Your brother comes to you and claims to be the God of the universe in human form, and you will laugh them out of the room, right?

That's kind of how James approached things, until his brother told him he was gonna die and come back to life and pulled it off.

And James was like, okay, you might be onto something here.

And actually dedicated his life and saw his brother as his Lord and his savior.

James became the leader of the church in Jerusalem, and the church in Jerusalem came under severe persecution.

They were actually run out of town.

And that was a real problem for about half of the church.

See, half of the church was very wealthy.

And when they came under persecution, it wasn't fun, but they were fine.

They were able to provide for themselves, they were able to find lodging.

For those who were impoverished, when they were run out of town, they were in real danger.

Like their actual lives were on the line.

And James didn't like that when things got hard, the wealthy began to hoard their possessions.

In James chapter two, he says, What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works?

Can such faith save him?

I want to pause for just a second because most of us have very particular Christian lenses that we often approach scripture with.

And anytime we see the word save or saved or salvation, we automatically think it means go to heaven, don't go to hell.

You might be interested to know that the majority of times that the words saved, saved, and salvation show up in the Christian scriptures, that isn't actually what it's referring to.

And in the context of James 2, it's clear what he's talking about is whether or not your faith is useful or useless to the world around you.

In other words, we can talk of the game, but if we don't put it into action, then what good is it?

James gives an example.

He says, if a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace, stay warm, be well fed, but you don't give them what the body needs, then what good is it?

And in the same way, faith, if it does not have works, is dead by itself.

In verse 20, he says, Senseless person, are you willing to learn that faith without works is useless?

Inspiration without application is dead.

It is useless.

It is doing no one any good.

Wilt could rightfully say, I know how to shoot 88% from the line.

And he did.

He was inspired and even learned how.

But if he does not actually apply that in the game, it is useless to his team, it's useless to the organization, it's useless to his game.

That skill might as well not even exist if it never leaves the inspiration category.

The same is true of our faith.

And you guys know this.

Like the world looks at Christianity as a joke.

And here's the problem is we live in a generation that has all the information, all the knowledge of all human history exists, right here in our pockets on our smartphones.

And most people know the beliefs, at least at a high level, of Christianity.

They know the inspiration of scripture and what we're called to do.

They know we are supposed to be a people filled with grace, but they look at the church in the West today and they see some of the least gracious people on earth.

They know that we are called to forgive as we have been forgiven, and they see Christians constantly bearing a grudge, they know that we claim.

That the man that we follow defeated death itself.

And they still see Christians living scared to death.

They see the inspiration without the application.

And can that kind of faith save us?

Can that kind of life show any use to a world who is dying without the hope of eternity in their lives?

Your inspiration to get fit, to build your marriage, to parent better, to get sober, most importantly, your inspiration to actually follow after Jesus.

It is useless if it only stays on the side of inspiration.

It only becomes effective when it begins to affect the world around us.

The call to follow Jesus is a call to radically go against the grain of culture.

It is not the call to religion.

Come and sit in a service, come and memorize some lines, come and sing some songs, come and dress your best, come and judge everyone else with us.

That's not the call that Jesus came and gave.

It was the call to the adventure of a lifetime.

To give up things of yourself in order to pursue the greater good of the world that is around us, to take our faithfully.

Seriously, in the gift that we've been given, to put it into use for the world that is around us.

Paul begins to explain this by using an example that was so, so unique and so special to the audience that he was speaking to.

He says in verse 21, Wasn't Abraham, our father, justified by works in offering Isaac, his son, on the altar?

You see that faith was active together with his works.

And by works, faith was made complete.

And the scripture was fulfilled.

That says Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

And he was called God's friend.

James was the pastor of the church in Jerusalem, which meant he had an almost exclusively Jewish audience.

And so he takes them to their ultimate example, Abraham, the father of their nation.

Abraham's life was a constant test of whether or not he could bridge the gap between inspiration and application.

When God meets Abraham in scripture, Abraham is like way too old to be living in his mom's basement, okay?

That's where Abraham's at.

God is like, there's more to life than just chilling on the family estate, eating out of your dad's pantry.

It is time to get up and get going.

He calls him to blindly follow him to a new land.

Doesn't even tell him where he's going.

Just to courageously step into the unknown.

He tells Abraham, in order to follow him, he will have to leave behind the idols of his family.

Generations of what they have known, generations of what made them comfortable.

He was promised that he would be made into a great nation, and yet Abraham and his wife Sarah were unable to conceive a child.

To be a great nation, you have to start with at least one offspring.

And finally, when Abraham was far too old to conceive, and Sarah was far too old to conceive a child, they have Isaac.

And it's then that God asks Abraham to give up what is most important to him.

All the way back in the first book of our Bible, Genesis chapter 22, after these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, here I am, he answered.

Genesis 22 · chapter mention

Take your son, he said, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.

Abraham was a relatively young man when God had promised him a legacy and he had followed him every step of the way.

Now there is no chance of another offspring.

It's just not gonna happen.

Which means by offering up Isaac, he is killing his only shot at the legacy that God promised him.

God is literally asking him to put everything on the line.

And so Abraham got up early in the morning and saddled his donkey and took with him two of his young men and his son Isaac.

And then Isaac spoke to his father, Abraham, and said, My father, and he replied, Here I am, my son.

And Isaac said, The fire and wood are here, but where is the lamb?

It's the burnt offering.

Every single step of the mountain.

Abraham's heart would shatter all over again.

I can say with quite a bit of confidence that none of us will ever be asked to bridge as significant of a gap as Abraham was asked to that day.

He knew what God had asked of him, but could he actually do it?

You might know the story, Abraham was willing to follow through, but God had never intended to take the life of his son.

He was testing Abraham.

Scripture is clear about that.

In his place, God provided a substitutionary lamb, a foreshadowing of the Lamb of God who would one day come and take our own place by giving his life for us.

When God saw that Abraham was willing to give him anything and everything that he asked of him, he knew there was no gap too wide for Abraham to bridge.

He knew Abraham could be trusted with anything.

And Abraham not only is the father of an entire nation, he is seen as the founding figure of the world's three largest religions.

Other than Jesus himself, Abraham might sit alone as the most important historical figure in human history.

And it began with Abraham's ability to move from the inspiration of God to application into his actual life.

Remember what James said?

Was an Abraham our father justified by works and offering Isaac his son on the altar?

You see, that faith was active together with his works and by works, his faith was made complete.

His faith was made complete.

All we are asked to do to be in relationship with God, to have the promise of eternal life, is to believe in Jesus.

That's it.

That's what scripture testifies of.

All we have to do is become convinced that Jesus is who he says he is and that he has done what he says that he's done.

And yet, even though Jesus meets us exactly where we are and brings us back into relationship with our Heavenly Father, does not mean that He is content to leave us exactly where we are.

And something that is common in the life of believers is they put their faith in Jesus.

They move from eternal death to eternal life.

Maybe even go through the baptismal waters.

It's a great moment for them, but as time moves on, they still feel incomplete.

And what is happening so often is we have eternal life.

We have all the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us.

We're very inspired to do something with our life.

But we never quite figure out how to navigate from inspiration to application.

We know that heaven will be our home someday, but we just seem to be living chaos day after day, right here and right now.

The very beginning of James's letter in James chapter one, he says this.

But be doers of the word and not hearers only.

Deceiving yourselves.

This is like one of the key texts at Meta.

This is one of the verses that built this movement.

But be doers of the word and not hearers only.

In other words, it's not enough to just come and hear and read and listen and get excited and inspired.

We must be doers of the word, applying it into our life.

And notice it doesn't say if you're hearers only, you're gonna deceive the world.

Hearers only deceiving all those non-Christians out there, hearers only deceiving your friends and family.

Trust me.

They'll see right through it.

The person you're deceiving is yourself.

Why don't I feel complete?

Why am I still longing for significance?

Why don't I feel fulfilled?

It's like I'm going to heaven someday.

Why do I not have peace?

I'm in relationship with the God who spoke and the universe came into existence.

Why do I have no hope?

Abraham.

He became complete.

And his faith resulted in action.

Paul summarizes it all by saying, all of this is about your faith expressing itself in love.

It actually making it to application.

Religion feels so hollow because religion deceives itself.

It tricks us into believing that because we sat in the seat on a Sunday, or went to a class on a Tuesday, or joined a life team on a Thursday, or read a book at 7 a.m., that we've done something.

Hearers only, deceiving ourselves.

And so how do we mind this gap?

How do we become more than hearers, more than people who get inspired but never move out of the status quo and live our lives down in the chasm of chaos?

If you pay attention to the New Testament, what you'll find, this is how it's broken down.

You have the four gospels, these are the historical accounts of the life of Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Then you have the book of Acts, and that's a historical book about the beginning of the church.

And then almost everything else in the New Testament are letters that are written to brand new churches.

And so you get this insight and you begin to see these trends showing how they helped believers like you and I move from just the inspiration of the gospel to the application of a powerful, purposeful life.

Everyone would show up and they would first preach the gospel.

This was the beginning of the pattern.

They would go to a new town and they would preach about Jesus, come down from heaven, lived a perfect life, died the death that we deserve, defeated death itself, and is one day coming back for us.

That's the gospel.

You're separated from God because of your sin.

Your heavenly Father wants you back so badly, he sent his one and only Son to bear the price of all of your sins, give his life for us, defeated death, and promises that we can do the same if we just believe in him.

That is the gospel proclamation that they would show up and preach.

And people would put their faith in this man, Jesus, who had defeated death itself.

After that, they would teach something like today's message.

If you really want to be effective, you don't just believe in Jesus, you follow after him.

You deny yourself and pick up your cross and follow after Jesus.

And then they would go on to help people know how to actually do that.

They didn't just leave them with the inspiration.

They almost seemed to have an understanding of what I'm calling, you're not gonna find this term in scripture, the chasm of chaos.

And so, what did they do to help ensure that people can actually bridge that gap?

The church in Thessalonica gives us a little bit of a clue and it talks about Paul's ministry there.

Paul started this church and many people believed.

In 1 Thessalonians 2, he says, we cared so much for you that we were pleased to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become so dear to us.

For you remember our labor and hardship, brothers and sisters, working night and day so that we would not burden any of you.

We preached God's gospel to you.

We know the history of the Thessalonian church.

Paul was there for about three weeks, and he would spend as much time with them as people would give them, helping people learn how to get healthy.

What we see throughout scripture is there are four areas of health that allow you, when you're healthy in these areas, to move from inspiration to application and to avoid falling back into the chaos of your life.

Broadly, these are spiritual health, emotional health, financial health, and relational health.

Again, that's spiritual, emotional, financial, and relational health.

When you become healthy in these areas, what you end up doing is almost building a bridge across the chasm of chaos.

What happens is you begin to get healthy in your money and healthy in your relationships and healthy spiritually and healthy emotionally, and this supports your journey from being inspired to actually putting that into action.

And the opposite is true.

When you become unhealthy in even one of these areas, you now have a liability that can very easily move you back down into the chaos of your life.

Why these areas?

Because these are the areas you're actually living in.

You exercise your faith in how you steward your finances.

You exercise your faith in how you steward your resources.

You must be spiritually healthy in order to do the hard work of following Jesus, and you must be emotionally healthy in order to make the right decisions, both relationally and financially.

When these areas are strong and these areas are healthy, when we are growing and maturing in these areas, we have a strong foundation to be able to actually do the work that God has placed in front of us to do.

And when these areas are unhealthy, we so easily fall back down into our worst ways and insecurities and fears, our pride, our false narratives, and our unhealed wounds.

If you have just amazing finances, you live on a budget, you don't have any debt to your name, and you're really taking care of your mental health and you're doing all those things, but your relationships are terrible.

Those relationships and that lack of health will sabotage the significant path that Jesus is calling you to.

So often when people continue to find themselves down here in the chaos of life, they are not on an intentional journey of spiritual growth.

They are not intentionally maturing in their lives.

You'll find people who are so frustrated to be down in the chaos.

And when you ask, do you have a Christian community around you?

No.

Paul says, we didn't just give you the gospel, we gave you our lives.

You need to be surrounded by other people who are on this spiritual journey with you.

You need them to encourage you and to pick you up and to hold you accountable and to love you through the hard times and to point out the things you need to work on.

We need Christian community.

And you guys know this that scripture calls us to love the world.

But did you know that scripture shows us there is an order to that?

That you love God first, and then you love your brothers and sisters in Christ.

And only then are you equipped to love the world that does not yet know Christ.

That is the Bible's prescription.

And yet, so often people who've believed in Jesus have no Christian community around them.

Sunday services are just optional based on convenience.

Post-COVID, we have seen that in a way we've never seen it before.

People just come if they want to, and things line up, and there's nothing better to do, and they're not tired, and it's not inconvenient.

Like that's it.

They're not coming week after week, getting together with the body, getting filled up, getting inspired, getting enlightened.

We're not in the word.

Statistically, Christians are not reading scripture at all.

I never hear from God.

You never read his letters.

We're not praying.

Can you imagine the God of the universe desperately wanting to communicate with you?

And we never pay attention.

Some of it is back to the very elementary elements of obedience: spiritual maturity, spiritual growth, spiritual development.

Here's how we think about things at Metachurch.

Uh, when we're convinced that something is essential to unlocking the purpose and power that God has placed inside of you, we do our best to resource you with that.

We want you in Christian community.

If you don't have that in your life, we have worked really, really hard to develop a network of life teams so that you can find and get involved in Christian community in a very intentional way that will be good for your growth.

We work hard on our Sunday services.

And throughout the years, we've worked hard on spiritual formation programs and processes.

And yet, that's been the one area we've been really honest with you guys that we're just still building.

It's been a long haul.

And even this year, at the beginning of the year, we hired Pastor Andre Jennings to put his full time and attention on this.

And I am so excited to let you know that we're still working on it, but we're getting very close, we're getting our ducks in a row to launching a new spiritual formation process.

We want to call you guys to a higher standard.

We want to call you to bridge the gap.

And when we make a tough call, we also want to bring resources.

Starting soon, we'll be launching what we're calling the Meta Movement Academy.

This is an opportunity for you guys to come in to give a few months of your life to a series of programs and processes so you can get spiritually, emotionally, financially, and relationally healthy.

So you can go from just meeting together and start actually moving together.

And I want you to know this as your pastor, I want you to go through this.

This is something we plan on doing twice a year, every year.

The first one we're hoping to actually run this year, it will be small because we're figuring it out, we're building it as we go.

But starting next year, we're hoping to be able to accommodate a lot of people at a time and do it twice a year, every year, to get you healthy, to get you moving.

And here's why.

Because we start with a belief that God created you on purpose.

It is no accident that you're on planet Earth.

And I know we have our false narratives, and people have convinced you that you're worthless and no one will ever love you, and you can never amount to anything, and you're not smart enough, you're not educated enough, and you don't know enough.

You are on earth on purpose.

God put you here.

And you were created with purpose.

There is something inside of you that the world needs.

And for the world to fully see it, we've got to be healthy.

The Meta Movement Academy is starting maybe even sooner than you might imagine.

And our call is for you to do that.

In the meantime, be in Christian community.

Quit being a casual Christian, showing up just when it's convenient.

Get in his word.

Reach out to him.

You don't know how to pray, just talk to him, man.

Talk and listen.

It's communication with God.

Start building, start growing.

Because God has something inside of you that he's ready for the world to see.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you.

And we thank you for the humbling and overwhelming opportunity to be a part of what you're doing on the earth.

God, I pray that you would be with us as a staff as we're trying to build this movement academy.

Um, God, that all the pieces would come together, that it would be effective in our lives, that it would be something that takes our movement to the next level.

God, I pray we would be impactful in our city and beyond.

That we would get healthy and move from inspiration to application.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' 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.