Made To...Team Up with Tony Albano

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.

Good morning, MetaCurch.

How you guys doing today?

Matt's really cool.

That's something to celebrate.

Ben is an awesome dude, and I love what he's doing.

There's not a lot of young people meeting around a table discussing Jesus, right?

That's not a typical thing.

That's something we should celebrate.

That's something that is awesome that's going on, and I love to see that.

Welcome today, guys.

If you are new with us, welcome.

My name is Tony.

I serve here in a lot of the ways.

One of the ways I get to serve you guys is uh doing this once in a while, giving our pastor a break, which is very cool.

Uh I want to welcome you.

I don't know if you still call this uh July 4th weekend.

I don't know if you guys are off on Monday.

I'm not, I work for myself, but uh it's all good.

All good.

I didn't give myself the day.

But um it's 4th of July weekend, so how many guys are gonna be doing fireworks?

Raise the hands.

Few people, Tory's the only one shooting fireworks, okay?

Yeah?

Anyone doing sparklers?

Tori's doing sparklers, cool.

None of y'all are doing anything.

Nobody's celebrating 4th of July on Tuesday.

Hey, that's cool.

Uh a little bit about me though.

So you guys are just like me.

We're right at home.

We're we're more of people who watch what's going on, right?

You guys can be watching some fireworks, everyone cool with that.

Uh a little bit of background though, there's a reason why I only watch fireworks.

Uh, if you do not know, I used to work at a church in South Florida, and um, I was uh I was leading a youth ministry, and uh part of leading a youth ministry, don't know why this is the case, in the fine print, when you sign up for your job description, somewhere deep down in the fire uh in the job description, it says that you're a firework professional.

It makes absolutely no sense.

When everyone had the idea, you know what?

This would be great, 4th of July.

People on their way out, or hey, we had this meeting, I think it would be awesome to have some fireworks on the way out.

They were never the person who had to shoot the fireworks.

You know who had to shoot the fireworks?

Oh, let's get the youth guy to do it.

You know, it makes sense, he's a guy, he's young, he's hip, he's cool.

Let him blow these things up.

Well, guess what?

We have a place in South Florida you might not be familiar with.

It is called Phantom Fireworks.

This place is out of this world, just full of TNT and explosives.

The crazy part about it is if you roll up with two or three hundred dollars, you will walk out with an ungodly amount of TNT.

I don't know why it makes it makes no sense, no questions asked.

Everything is buy like two, get 15 free.

They're like they're called like warfare, nuclear bomb.

That makes absolutely no sense, and I am not exaggerating when I tell you this.

I have almost killed my wife doing this for the church.

I have almost killed a group of middle schoolers doing this for the church.

Uh, we lost a little tube that goes in.

I decided, you know what?

PVC pipe makes sense.

This thing goes five feet off the ground and explodes.

Everyone hits the deck, and that is part of why I will never be doing fireworks again.

I've had the fire uh fire department called.

I lit our church dumpster on fire.

Flames, I'm literally, this is not it.

Flames 14 feet high.

I get woken up at one in the morning.

Hey, and all those fireworks you threw in the garbage, the whole entire dumpster has caught fire and we're hitting with a fine.

Hey, I didn't sign up for this.

I didn't.

The rest of my life, I am just going to be part of the show.

Is that cool with y'all?

Y'all are my people.

No one really raised hand.

Do some sparklers, but uh, if you do decide, I mean it's a couple days.

I know how boys hang out, I know it's like it gets closer, a little bit of pride gets in the room.

Like, you know, they got those fireworks stands all around.

Maybe we should do this.

Don't do it.

Don't do it.

It's not a big deal.

Enjoy the show.

Um, but yeah, guys, we have a lot of cool stuff going on.

We've been in a series called Made Two.

Before we do move on, what I want to do is um tell you guys about something going on.

Our pastor works really hard every week to bring us uh applicable teaching that we can bring out, that we can do, we can learn.

We have our wrap sheet on our website, which we can apply these things during the week.

One thing he does with the amount of time, I don't know where he finds the time to do this, uh, he has started a brand new podcast.

Um he started before COVID, but he's back on it consistently.

It's called the Clayton Tiner Podcast.

And uh really it's a space where he takes relevant topics, things that are going on in the world, like crazy stuff, because you know, everything's breaking news, everything is getting the light that's um either controversial and all this different stuff, politics.

So, what Pastor Clayton has done is he's created a space where he can take relevant topics like this and actually have a platform where we can look at these things, but with a biblical perspective.

So it's really cool.

Um, it's kind of like about an hour, you can skip through them.

He's actually doing shorts and different things like that on YouTube.

One of the best places to follow him would be the Clayton Tyner Podcast on YouTube, where you can find shorts, you can listen to the whole thing, you can watch it.

Or if you're like so many business Americans like ourselves, we can't watch this, we can go on podcasts while we drive, right?

So he has that as well.

Anywhere that podcasts are streamed, you can find him on there.

Uh, show him some love in the comment section.

Uh blow it up.

He does so much for us, and uh, I really do believe that it will allow us to now see things because we see it all day long.

All these negative things happening in our world.

But he gave he created a space where we can now start to think biblically about when we hear about these things going on in our world.

So, you guys can do that for me?

Cool, we're gonna follow him, we're gonna do that.

Yes, seeing some nods?

Awesome, excited for it.

He didn't tell me to do that.

I just want to do it.

I've been like, dude, we gotta tell people about this.

So I'm excited about it if you did not know about it.

Um, we're continuing our series today called Made to.

Pastor Clayton's been walking through our seven principles about the way that we're made to live.

And these guiding principles have been basically the foundation of MetaCurch since the very beginning.

And it's really cool for me to jump on.

I've learned about our values as I've jumped on, and Clayton sent me some stuff, and I've been really trying to dive in and learn it, but really they are these things that if we grab hold of, if we shape our lives around them, these parameters, they actually bring tons of freedom.

Tons of just good things and positive things in our life if we would allow ourselves to just live in some parameters and some guidelines.

And today we're gonna be talking about one of our values, which is called made to team up.

Made to team up.

We're gonna look at the key idea.

The Christian scriptures give us this premise over and over today.

As followers of Christ, we are called to live and do life and grow with one another.

I got a buddy of mine today to uh kind of record the video for today's message.

You guys check this out.

Another one, another one, another one.

Yeah, he did that personally for me.

Turn to your neighbor on your left and tell them another one.

And the person on your right, go ahead and tell them another one.

Father, thank you so much for this group of people, God.

I pray that you would speak to us, Lord.

I pray that you would convict our hearts.

I pray that you would show us, enlighten us to what it is in your word that it teaches us about one another, about being in community, living in unity and love and all these different things.

Lord, speak to us in these next moments.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Maybe you're like me and you grew up hearing uh I could be Christian without going to church, right?

I know a lot of people, everyone's spiritual nowadays, no one's going, everyone's spiritual, uh, or the church really just turns me off, right?

Those people in there, they're hypocrites.

I it's just not for me.

I'll just I'll hang out with Jesus on my own time.

And people really do believe that, that their faith is really between them and just God.

And I'm sure you've heard these statements.

I've I hear these statements all the time.

Uh, maybe some of us today in this room have actually claimed these statements.

You see, there's a problem with that.

There's a problem when we start to believe that, because the truth is a lot of us really do enjoy meeting together, right?

It's really easy to show up and we enjoy meeting together and in passing.

Maybe if you're like some people, I know people who like, how can I get as quickly to the parking lot, to my seat, and then immediately back to the parking lot as quick as possible.

Or maybe you're like some people where you got a facade the whole time.

How you doing?

Highly blessed, right?

Everything's good, God's good, he's all time, right?

Do we we hear this and it's everything shallow, right?

We sometimes we never feel like we can actually open up and let people into our situations, let people know what's going on in our lives, and we have this facade, and we're missing out on a key aspect of what the New Testament teaches, which is that we need one another, we need another one in our life.

And we come up with personal boundaries just raised up, these walls, and we feel like we can't just let people in because the fear of being judged, right?

People looking in our lives, everything's supposed to be good, right?

No, God is good, right?

He's good all the time, but that's God.

That's not you and I.

I'm broken, I'm messed up, I sin, I fall short of the mark.

I always fall short.

No matter what happens, I can do the best I can and I get better, right?

I get better, but I backslide.

If you're like me, you know you have good seasons and you have bad seasons.

And the whole point of getting closer to God is to get better, but to realize that there is a group of people around us who are meant to hold us accountable.

How would you guys describe the relationships to those people sitting around you?

Like, really, do you know them?

I don't know many of you, no, I don't know a lot of you.

I know since I've been here, I've surrounded myself by a lot of you and really got plugged in.

Like, really, when me and Tori moved in, we knew that there was a need to get plugged into our community.

The most life change we've seen was being part of a church, being part of a group of people like-minded, just tied to the body of Christ.

Ask yourself today, don't look around and make it weird, like I don't know this person, but like how would you describe those relationships to those around you?

Some of us feel like something's missing or something is probably lacking in our life, or maybe you feel unfulfilled.

And I want to suggest that because today we're gonna learn that we were meant to team up.

I mentioned this phrase that we hear about over and over in the scriptures, it's this act of one-anothering.

And this phrase is used over a hundred times in scripture, 47 different times, it's actually spoken to the group of followers on how they are to interact with each other, Christ's followers.

Why am I telling you this?

It's because Christ meant us to live with one another, to interact with one another, to challenge one another.

And you and I were created for community to really do life together.

And we decide not to do that, we decide to run to the parking lot, we decide to put the walls up, put the barriers up, and not actually let people into our life.

We're collectively missing out on what God intended for his church, and you're actually making other people miss out on maybe what God has for you to give them in return.

It's not about all what I can receive, it's maybe it's like what can I actually give in this season of my life?

Life is good, and there's nothing wrong with having a season where life is good, but maybe, just maybe, God wants to use you to encourage someone, to build someone up.

We're gonna start with one of the most foundational one-anothers we find in scripture.

And obviously it's gonna come from Jesus, right?

So, this is the words of Jesus we find in John 13, verse 34.

John 13:34

It says, So now I'm gonna give you a new commandment.

Love each other just as I loved you.

And you should love each other.

Verse 35 Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.

You see, being a follower of Jesus looks like something.

Loving one another.

There's a byproduct to following Jesus, there's a byproduct to being part of a community.

It actually shows those who do not know Christ that there is a God, there is a loving God, and that this loving God can actually impact a community.

Because look at the way they're treating each other.

You see, there's a byproduct, but there's also a byproduct of the lack of that.

If we don't actually get in community, if we are actually involved in a bunch of drama and disunity, like you hear about in some old school churches where like people are fighting about what color the carpet's gonna be.

When people hear that kind of stuff, it's like, why in the world would they follow this God?

Is this God doing anything for you?

You might ask yourself, well then, who is one another, right?

Is it everybody?

Is it my crazy uncle?

That guy that tried to stab me when I was younger.

Is it that that didn't happen to me?

I don't know why.

Just there's someone in the room, maybe.

I have no idea.

I don't want to throw my uncle out like that if he sees this later.

That did not happen.

But like for real, is it the weirdo on the street who's getting really hard to love?

Is it the homeless person you see on the street?

Is it the person who stabbed you in the back?

Is it the person that continues to get on your nerves?

You see, that is true.

Jesus tells us that in Matthew 5 to love our enemies.

But look at the context of what Jesus is saying this in.

If we read up a couple verses, we will actually see that he's talking to his closest followers.

He's talking to the people who've been doing life with him, doing ministry with him, his closest boys who've been doing life and seeing the work of God happen.

They've been literally on the road together, traveling together.

I'm sure things are getting crazy.

Sometimes you're tired, you're hungry, and they're traveling together and doing this.

And Jesus is giving them the context of this right before the day he dies.

He tells them, This community, your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.

You see, God gets glorified through us.

The way we live our life actually brings glory to God, and that's why this is one of the foundational one another's we can look at because everything seems to steam off this, to stream right off of this idea that we need to love one another.

We need to actually take that and prioritize that.

No matter what your crazy uncle is saying and all these different things, or the person sitting in the row behind you who doesn't know when to lower their voice, and you're trying to like all that doesn't matter because people are looking in, people who don't know God, people who are far from God, your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.

And what would our response to this be?

Will we prove to the world what the love of Christ looks like?

Or will we push that under the rug and only love the people who love us, the people who are easy to love?

So the body of Christ is a big body, and there's a lot of unique individuals part of this body, and we're called to love each and every single one of them.

Another role of the family of believers is to encourage one another, encourage one another.

In Hebrews 10, it says in verse 25, and let us not neglect the meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.

We don't really, uh some scholars said they don't really know exactly who the writer of Hebrews is, but we know the context of what was written.

It was written to a persecuted church, it was written to a group of people under the Roman law where they were being persecuted for following Christ.

You see, and it tells us not to neglect meeting together.

They're reminding them to get together.

That's a reminder today as well.

I mean, it's really hard sometimes.

I mean, if you look at attendance, sometimes people come here a week out of the month, two weeks out of the month.

Maybe they're off and on.

See, it was a struggle to get people to the church, but they were being persecuted.

It's a little bit of a difference.

For us, maybe it's that Sunday brunch that we can't really put to the side, we can't give the time to.

Or maybe it's recreational sports, or maybe it's the cowboys playing on Sunday.

Tori told me not to dog on you guys.

I won't.

They're not a great team.

I get it.

I'm from Miami, it's all good.

Dolphins aren't great either.

It's okay.

We'll move past it, we'll move past it.

It's not a reason to miss out on church.

But really, we give this excuse to not meet together.

When the writer of Hebrews is reminded of people who were being persecuted to remember to meet together, and not only just to meet together, but to encourage one another.

And maybe you're like me, and um there's a difference in definition of the word encouragement, and then maybe what your parents told you uh to encourage you growing up.

Um, my parents' form of encouragement was telling me about all the things they were worried about in my life, right?

Like, hey, this is going on, you need to fix this, and uh, we would constantly be reminded.

My dad actually calls me all the time, and I work for myself, so it's a weird comment.

Uh, but he calls me all the time and tells me I need to get a real job.

I'm a contractor, he tells me all the time, you need to get a real job, you need a pension.

He comes from the generation where, you know, having a pension, security, all these different things, and I get it from my grandparents as well, but that's really their form of encouragement.

They don't know any better.

Or maybe you're some of your parents, some of you growing up heard things like they were just calling out the mistakes in your life, right?

Hey, you're not doing this right, you gotta check this, check that.

And that was their form of encouragement.

That's not the type of encouragement we're talking about, thank God.

So let's define it.

Some of us, we don't know what encouragement is, so let's define it.

The action of giving someone support, confidence, or hope, persuasion to do or to continue something.

Now that sounds nice.

I like that form of encouragement.

You see, part of encouragement is actually helping others in the body of believers to actually discover the gifts that they have.

Maybe there's something that you see in someone that they don't see in their self.

It's your job to tell to talk to them, encourage them, and to bring those things out.

Because God wants to use each and every single one of us individually for the work of his kingdom.

A lot of us, we never know, we never find out what those things are in our life that God wants to use because we've been talked down to.

You see, another part of this scripture is that they were being persecuted.

Why should they not forsake in the gathering together?

Why do they need to encourage each other?

Because they were actually being persecuted against.

People were actually dying for following Christ.

And what happens when you're being persecuted, when things look like they were easier before you decided to claim Jesus, you tend to push back a little bit.

All right, it's getting a little crazy.

People don't need to know about this in my life.

Maybe I can do this on my own.

But no, the writer of Hebrews tells them to step into it, continue to meet, continue to encourage each other.

Because the world, the world back then is kind of similar to today.

There's things back then, architecture was speaking these things, they had um, they had to write on coins because they didn't have the news.

You know what I mean?

They would put like political agendas and stuff on their coins, um, and they would see people worshiping false pagan gods throughout the uh land they were living in.

And it would be easy once you start feeling persecution, once you start feeling like, okay, this isn't as easy as I thought.

Following Jesus sounds great, but I'm starting to get a little backlash, it'd be easy to just dwindle away and go back to your old life.

But you see, the purpose of meeting together, as we still do today, is to sprue each other one on, is to continue to follow Christ and allow us to look at the world and identify what's going on, instead of the world identify what's going on in the world in the workplace or in the place you travel or the people you follow online.

Like all these things are speaking to you, but we as a body are supposed to continue to come back together, continue to get regrounded, and actually look at the world.

You see, the quickest way to abandon your beliefs, maybe you've been following Christ for a season, maybe you've been following Christ for a long time, but the quickest way to abandon your beliefs is to face the world without a community around you.

Again, the quickest way to abandon your beliefs is to face the world without a community around you.

You know, I did youth ministry for quite some time, me and Tori, and we've met a lot of young individuals who uh were on fire for God, even young adults in young adult ministry and different things.

And we met a lot of people who were on fire for Christ, young individuals in high school, and it was really encouraging.

But the most discouraging thing, you see, they were showing up, they were partaking, they were doing outreach, they were coming to our small groups, they were coming to services consistently, and they were on fire.

But then they graduated and they went off to college.

See, they lost the community, they lost the accountability, they lost the encouragement that we were supposed to give one another.

Because life gets difficult.

Life has seasons, right?

When things happen in life, when things get hard, we're called to spur each other on, to encourage one another, to find out hey, so and so has been missing.

Let's pull them back in community.

So and so, this happened to their cousin, their mom.

Let's go there and visit them.

Let's continue to show them the love of God.

That's all this is, the foundation.

It fulfills the law of Christ, the love we have for one another.

Look what Paul says in Ephesians 5.

He says, Be filled with the Holy Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melodies to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in reverence for Christ.

And then in Colossians 3, verse 16, it says, Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing.

Colossians 3:16

That means like counseling.

So teaching and counseling one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and praises and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Singing songs of worship, reminding ourselves of actively texts in Scripture, things that are going on in our world, being able to go back to Scripture, tell people, okay, this seems like it's crazy, this seems like maybe it's the end of the world.

But if we can look back at a story, if we can be reminded of a group of people who God saw them through it, if we can look back, and that's the purpose of all these stories in the Bible, to be reminded of these things, to refocus and worship God, to bring all these things that look negative, but to find hope and restoration in them.

And singing songs and hymns and getting these things focused in our mind.

Paul talks about the renewal of your mind.

If we can focus on these things, if we can bring them up in conversation when people are talking negative or when things are happening around them or to them.

If we can just take the conversation and turn it on its head and continue to encourage one another and show them the love of Christ.

All these things have the power to encourage a brother or sister, to remain faithful.

And usually it's a difference of someone staying faithful or someone drifting away, these things, being plugged into a community where people are encouraging them, no matter what's going on in the circumstances, or just showing them the love of Christ.

Them just seeing, even if they're not plugged into the body, them seeing what's going on in your own community could be a huge impact.

Which leads us to our final point in Galatians 6.

It says, Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path.

And be careful not to fall into the same temptation as yourself.

Share one another's burdens.

And in this way we obey the law of Christ.

Another one another is to carry one another's burdens.

God calls us to love one another, to encourage one another, but to also share or carry one another's burdens.

You see, followers of Christ are instructed to lovely restore their brothers and sisters, especially when it comes to sin and temptation.

A lot of times when we're isolated, even though we have been redeemed through Christ, a lot of us when we backslide, when we're isolated, things tend to come up.

Even in community, things tend to come up.

In different seasons in my life, I've had different temptations come up, strong temptations.

And if you are literally dealing with this yourself, if you are bearing this stuff, then it's just what it seems.

You are alone.

You have Christ and you can bring these things to him.

He says, cast his cares for he cares for you.

But what do we need?

We need constant encouragement because sooner than later we will just give up.

And what we need is a group of people who are constantly speaking life into our situations.

And each and every single one of us, now we're called to carry our own load, right?

We're called to have our responsibilities.

But what happens when something happens unexpectedly?

You lose a mom, you lose a dad, maybe you lose your job unexpectedly.

Or maybe you're just dealing with something that you've been dealing with and it's kind of come up from your childhood and you're trying to figure out how to deal with it.

You see, you and I are meant to come up together and take some of the weight off of each other.

You see, someone who's just carrying so much weight, if we can have several people come around them and lift weight off of them, they can now bear this weight.

They can now bear this burden, they can lift their arms to worship, they can continue to come, they can maybe get their kids watched so they can come and serve, they can check in.

That's why we do all these different things in kid ministry.

We give these opportunities to partner with you.

Each and every single one of us is part of this.

You have a unique position in this, and we're called to rally around each other, to mourn together, to celebrate one another.

This added strength is usually the difference between pressing on and giving up.

But what happens when things in life get crazy and you don't have a community?

What does that look like?

I brought this cabinet.

Y'all been staring at it?

Why does the dude have a cabinet?

Um, I am a handyman.

Uh, carpentry is one of my favorite trades.

And uh I've had the opportunity to build kitchen cabinets, build furniture, different stuff like that.

And uh, it's fun to look at your own trade or your own work and you can like learn stuff from it.

So I want to demonstrate a point with this cabinet today.

This is nothing special.

It's a oak frame cabinet, some particle board.

I already got some, uh, if you know what I'm talking about, I already got some backlash on it being particle board.

It was 60 bucks, it was cheap, relax, it's all good.

I wouldn't make this cabinet for you, but um, this is a cabinet.

This is the body of the cabinet, the sides, the structure here is the body of the cabinet.

On the face of the cabinet, we have something called a frame.

And the purpose of the frame is to one, add structural integrity to this cabinet.

Maybe you got some little ones, or maybe you're a hot head and people be slamming doors, and uh you don't want particle board to be holding up the door, right?

It also acts as a point where you can actually fasten the door to the cabinet.

Another part of another reason for the frame is actually to protect the cabinet.

It protects the body of the cabinet.

So we have this face frame on here, and um what I want to do is just to illustrate my point, is I'm gonna just add another frame piece onto it, right?

Super easy.

I'm not gonna use a level, don't get crazy on me, all right?

We're just gonna shoot it in there.

Now, it looks like it's there, right?

It looks pretty solid.

Now, someone in the back row is like, yo, it's a little off, it's not straight.

Hey, it's fine.

Okay?

It's there, right?

It's doing its purpose, right?

You see, I wanna suggest though that a lot of us are living our life just like this.

See, how easy would it be for me just to come in here and pull this right out?

It looked like it was secure.

A lot of us, our faith is hanging on by a nail.

A lot of us, maybe it's coming once a week and hearing the preacher, and we put all our faith into the preacher's word and what he has, we put all this faith into him.

We're called never to do that.

I'm a sinner, I fall short of the mark.

I do something, I slip up, all your faith was in me.

What happens to your faith?

It was pulled out from right underneath you.

A lot of us are hanging on by a nail.

See, that's not how God calls us to live our life.

You see, there's so many parts and different parts of the body that we're supposed to be part of where maybe it is showing up on the weekend once a week, right?

Maybe that is it.

Maybe it's hearing your pastor.

Maybe it's actually going over the word and the rap sheets that we have every week and finding it online, right?

Maybe that's another aspect of it.

Maybe it's joining a life team, getting involved in a community of followers who can encourage you and take on some of the burden and some of the weight, and you can actually be part of a community and see what it looks like to love people.

Maybe you're already part of that, or maybe you that sounds a little crazy.

You've been just hanging out with us a little bit.

Maybe you could just join a volunteer team, right?

You can just vote, join a team, uh, something simple.

Um, you could join our welcome team and uh just introduce yourself, welcome people as they come in.

If you got some serious skills, maybe that's you can do some production and you're kind of an introvert.

I don't, I'm down, I'll do it, I'll be part of the group, but I don't want to talk to nobody.

That's cool, we'll put you behind a screen.

It'll be all good.

It glorifies God.

There's things that need to get done.

Or maybe it's getting a little courageous and seeing that, hey, I'm I'm meeting, I met this girl or I met this guy, and uh, we're gonna start this next part of our life together.

And maybe it's doing premarital counseling.

Right?

Or maybe right now your marriage is on the rocks, and um, it'd be easy to pack up shop, right?

And just separate.

Maybe God's calling you to put another one in your situation and allow someone to counsel you, like a pastor, to give you counseling in your marriage.

You see, over a period of time, what happens is this becomes secure to the body.

It becomes to the point where it is almost inseparable from the body of believers.

And that's how God calls us to live.

Now, I could probably rip this thing out if I wanted to, right?

If I really wanted to get a crowbar in there, but you know what would happen?

Before I just pulled it right out.

No big deal.

If I were to pull this out now, there'd be damage.

There would be damage to the body of this cabinet, it would be ugly.

People would know it's going on.

You see, if I'm easily just coming in parking lot to parking lot, if I'm in and out, if I'm not getting in community, if I'm not serving on a team, something happens in my life.

I stop showing up.

I could easily rip myself away from the body quickly.

Like it almost wasn't ever there.

But when you get involved in your community, when you start securing yourself to the body of believers, you become inseparable from the community of God, and you start to partake in the community of God.

Why am I telling you this?

Why are we talking about all this stuff?

You and I were not created to do life alone.

No matter what you think about church, or you've heard so many people getting hurt in church, or maybe drama going on, all this church hurt, maybe you've been affected by that personally.

That does not change the design of how God created you to be.

People mess up, things happen.

God calls you, calls us to become part of the body, to become inseparable of the body.

See, uh, I didn't really grow up a Christ follower.

Um, my family went to church, you know, in seasons.

Uh my dad taught like CCD.

Um, but really we were there like Christmas and Easter where we were getting forced to, or random weekends.

Like it was no like set thing.

And uh really, though, I grew up despising God.

Um, I grew up thinking God's people were basically hypocrites, putting up this facade, everything's all good.

And then I met Christ when I was about 16 years old.

And I wasn't looking for him.

I really wasn't.

I was struggling and I was, you know, crying out, and like I had some things going on in my life.

I had Tory as a support system, but really I met Christ in this moment, and it wasn't far along then where Tory decided to invite me to church one weekend.

It was a Valentine's Day weekend.

It'd be kind of hard not to say, okay, fine, I'll finally go, because she didn't ask me for a little bit.

And um, I won't say my life was changed that day, but I will say God started to work in me.

And uh after some time, I gave my life to Christ, and I actually got involved.

There was a men's study going on in our old church in South Florida, and um I just I joined, I signed up, and we did these uh four weeks together as men, learning what we were created to be.

And um, there was a call at the end of it, similar to there would be a call at the end of today's message.

Some of y'all freaked out.

It's okay.

But there was a call for someone to start up their own live team, to start up their own group.

And uh, your boy's always been a little bit of a rebel, uh, probably still got a little bit of that in me.

So I was like, you know what?

I'm not gonna do that.

I'm gonna start my own Bible study.

And I have no qualifications, I don't know where I got this confidence in.

And I started my own underground Bible study, like there was this illegal thing going on in my church.

And uh I started inviting people to it, and after about several months, we had about 15 men coming.

Between the ages of uh 17 to about 50.

I've never been involved in a community where people were like, I've been involved in like family settings, but like my mom or my uncle or my grandma, they weren't taking advice from me, you know what I mean?

But I was now part of what it looks like for heaven to come down on earth and people to actually uh do life together and actually encourage one another.

Things were happening in the lives of these men I was encouraging and leading, and um, I was changed.

Things happened, people repented, people came to Christ.

KJ is a very good friend of mine, government named Khalid.

I said every time I see him, what's up, KJ?

Government named Khalid, he doesn't like it, but I like it.

But KJ, he comes from some sketchy background.

He was one of the first people that I ever actually helped walk to Christ.

KJ now is on staff at our old church in South Florida.

God literally has worked through me at such a young age when I didn't know what a Bible study was, I didn't know what it was supposed to sound like, look like, how long it was gonna be.

But people repented, people found Christ, people were encouraged.

We came along each other and we carried each other's burdens.

People cried.

The crying was mostly me, I will have to admit.

I still get some phone calls to this day.

Like, yo, remember you were in that Bible study.

But yeah, I do.

I remember a bunch of men letting their barriers down, letting their walls down, and allowing one another to build each other up, allowing one another to be a community of Christ followers and to actually experience the love of Christ.

We're called to love one another.

In Ephesians 4, it tells us he makes the whole body fit together perfectly.

As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

What makes you healthy?

It's getting connected to the body.

What makes you unhealthy?

It's when you become removed from the body, when you're separated from the body, when you have no one able to lean on, no one to encourage you, no one to love on you.

How do we get connected?

Well, we give you plenty of ways here at MetaCurch we're gonna talk about.

Um, but one of the things we need to continue to remind ourselves is that the gospel, the New Testament, their prescription for life change is one another.

Christ does the saving, but you and I together as a body that comes together perfectly, each and every single one of us has a specific reason, a specific purpose for being part of the body, uniquely coming together.

You and I do that by finding a team, getting on a team.

And you might have a team today, and that's all good.

If you do have a team, I'm not asking you to remove yourself from the team.

I'm not asking you to go find another team.

No, I hope this encourages you to be reminded of why you are in that team.

And I hope it encourages you to continue to pour in, even when seasons get difficult, where times get difficult, when it seems like you don't actually have the time to show up.

But remember when they actually impacted your life, I pray that you would continue to allow yourself to be used by God in that situation.

But today, if throughout this whole entire talk, God's been kind of knocking on your heart.

And you've been realizing that I need people in my life.

I want us to do something, I want us to reflect.

Um, I don't want it to be weird, but would you guys go ahead and bow your heads?

I don't want it to be weird, but I want to do is I want you guys to think about maybe some of the times in your life where you actually needed love.

Maybe that's right now.

Think about the time in your life where you could have used encouragement, right?

Like growing up, sure, we could have used the encouragement, but like what about on your daily life, in your parenting, or in the workforce, or just in daily life, or just being, you know, unsettled with the world we live in?

What about the encouragement?

How can we get around people that would continue to pour into us and reframe us and push us towards timely scripture, push us towards hymns and songs about God?

Maybe you can think about a time where you really felt burdened.

Maybe that's right now.

Maybe you feel tremendous amounts of weight.

You see, God created this movement called the church, He created it with you in mind, with me in mind, and this fallen world that we find ourselves in.

You and I were made to team up.

You and I together are stronger.

You and I together are a picture to the world, people who are far from Christ of what God's love looks like.

You meeting weekly, you serving together regularly is a picture to the world.

That things are different.

I remember when I got in church and uh people started saying, Ann, you're hanging out there a lot, you're hanging out with some uh different types of people, you're acting a little weird.

I'd be called like the church boy for showing up at dinner.

Oh, here's the church boy.

But you know what was crazy?

At the time, I thought I was being persecuted.

Really, it's because someone saw something different in me.

And I give that to Christ, but I also give that to his followers.

You guys.

Tori and I are thankful for the community that we have here at Meta.

So many of us here are thankful for the community we have here in Meta.

Our lives would look a lot different.

As you're leading today to think about whether this is really for you, I want to encourage you.

After we worship today, I'm actually gonna rem I'm actually gonna call us to respond on our way out.

I'm gonna call you to sign up for a life team or to actually volunteer to get plugged in to your community.

See, because when you team up, when we have one another, when we come and we serve, we actually meet people here, we start doing life with people here.

Your walls come down, people start learning about your life and they're able to step into it.

And if you're doing well, if you have wisdom, if you have experience, you now allow God to use you into those life, those people's lives that you have met here.

Father, I pray that those who are struggling right now, who are putting the barrier up, maybe saying, This isn't for me, God.

God, I pray that you would work in their heart.

I pray that you would remind them of all the times where they fell short, where they needed someone to encourage them, where they needed someone to carry their burdens, where they needed to see and experience the love of Christ.

You offer that right here to us, God.

And I pray that we would respond today on our way out, that we wouldn't run back to the parking lot and get back in our car, drive off as if things are just normal.

We wouldn't check the box of showing up on the weekend as if this is some kind of show, some kind of movie that we just experience, but that we wouldn't be consumers, God.

And we would allow you to start working in us, God, and working in others through us.

Help us, God, as we worship together to stand firm in your truth and to seek to live in the way that you called us to live our life.

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.