23 & Me: Your Identity is Rooted in the Garden with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the Medicurch podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at Medicurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life.

God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

This song, Son of a Sinner, it's blown up.

Most of you have probably heard it at some point on the radio.

If you listen to Country Radio, you've heard it a thousand times, right?

And when I first heard this song, and I knew we were going into this series, I thought this tells almost the whole story.

It's someone who is struggling, wanting to do right, but keeps getting pulled back, swearing they've changed, but going right back to the things that are causing all of the stress and trauma in their life.

And yet, how does the chorus start?

I'm just.

It's an identity statement.

It's a false narrative.

It's how they see themselves.

And until your identity changes, where your life is and who you are at the core, how you see yourself, until identity shifts, behaviors will struggle to shift.

Worst ways will struggle to shift.

Relationships will struggle to heal.

Identity is everything.

It's the core of who we are.

Throughout these last five weeks, and listen, if you've missed some of these or all of these, you can get caught up really easily.

YouTube.com/slash metachurch.

We've been building throughout this series.

It works the best as a whole.

In the first five weeks, we learned five things.

To know who you are, you have to know why you are here.

You have to know where you are going.

To know who you are, you have to know who you belong to and how you fit.

To know who you are, you have to know what shapes you.

All of this has been meaningful and hopefully enlightening.

I know I have been challenged in so many ways, even just studying and preparing to preach every week of this series.

We've seen it all series long.

Our culture is in an identity crisis.

The culture doesn't know why we are here.

There's no sense of mission.

We don't know where we are going.

We're aimlessly searching for direction because we don't have clarity on the destination.

We don't know who we belong to.

And so we try to leverage the people around us to build our lives on those relationships, only to learn that those people cannot bear the weight of your life or hope or future.

We don't have somewhere that we truly fit.

Instead, the world is convinced that we don't need the people around us to help shape our identity.

We can just look inside of ourself and create our own identity out of whole cloth.

And last week we saw that we're unaware of what is shaping us in life.

We're living as victims to the information that is bombarding us in culture, that is shaping and molding us into a cheap imitation of who God actually created us to be.

And so we end up stuck right in the middle, stuck in the middle between the identity in Christ that we aspire to and the life that we have known thus far.

Stuck in the middle between the purpose that God has placed in our life and all of the things we run to in the world to try and alleviate our pain.

Maybe that's where you find yourself today.

Maybe you've been inspired by scripture throughout this series and you want it, man.

You want to cling to this new identity, but you feel like you are torn.

All of these truths and the answer to how to begin to cement our identity and to live it out, we found all the way back in week one, all the way back when we looked at what God says about us.

This is the reality for those who are in Christ.

We've said it every week.

Your identity is rooted in the garden.

Your identity is rooted in the garden.

But what is the garden?

And where is it exactly?

And when do we get to go to the garden?

How do we experience it in our everyday life?

Today's message is going to explore all of that.

If your identity is rooted in the garden, it's time to understand what that actually means for you, what it actually does for you, how it actually affects and changes you, and what it offers you.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we're coming to your word today, and we are just seeking you, almost ambitiously seeking you.

Like we want to hear, we want to be transformed.

God, we want you to do a work inside of us to show us something that we can never pretend we do we do not know.

God, that we would just uh walk in faith.

I thank you for a place like Metachurch, a place for people from all different parts of their faith journey.

Got a place where people can belong even before they believe.

And I pray that all together, all different people, all different walks of life, that we would humble ourselves and seek after you, and I believe that we will find you.

And we pray all this in Jesus' name.

If you're ready to get going, say amen.

Amen.

Last year, my dad sent me a sermon from a guy named Tim Mackey.

If you don't know who that is, he's the guy behind the Bible project.

And uh, to be honest, I hadn't really read a lot from Tim or listened to many of his messages, um, but this one really, really struck me.

In fact, it became the inspiration for the entire 23andMe series, and it just packaged together so well and so concisely so many things that we believe about who we are and who God is.

And um our aim today is a lot different than his aim in that message, but our beliefs are aimed in the same direction.

All series, we have pointed back to the garden, and that is definitely helpful.

We can go back to Genesis and we can see what God says about us and how to root our identity.

However, it's also not a complete picture of the garden.

The Bible has much more to say about this, and once we realize what it has to say about it and the implications for our life, then we are compelled as followers of Jesus to begin walking in that way.

And so we're gonna take this like piece by piece.

We're gonna look at when, where, and what.

When, where, and what.

And I know that over the course of the first six weeks of this year, 2023, we have become a note-taking community.

It's so beautiful.

A lot of y'all are taking mental notes, I can tell, right?

If you're going to become a note-taker, even in your smartphone, or you can watch it back later on YouTube, this might be a good one because we're gonna cover a lot of ground.

Let's first talk about it.

If we're gonna understand the garden and actually apply it to our life, when is the garden?

Like when does it happen?

When do we get to experience it?

If our identity is rooted in the garden and all the garden is, is something that happened like thousands or millions of years ago, then when do we actually get access to it?

When is the garden?

Now, most of us feel like we know this.

The garden is at the very beginning.

The garden is in the creation narrative, and that's correct.

In Genesis 2, 7 and 8, that says the Lord God formed a man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man that he had formed.

So, when is the garden?

It is in the beginning.

That's how the whole book starts.

In the beginning.

Like there was nothing, and then there was the world, and God formed humanity and placed them in the garden.

And that's true.

And the garden is so beautiful to study.

It's only three chapters, really two and a half chapters of the very first book of our Bible.

But in it, we learn God's original intention for his world.

In the Garden of Eden, we learn God's original intention for humanity.

We learn the mission that he placed on our life.

We learn how he feels about us.

We learn his desire to be with us, to walk with us, and talk with us.

We learn his desire to resource us, to give us every single thing that we need.

All that we need to know about anthropology, that's the study of humanity, all that we need to know about the world around us, all we need to know about our mission, all we need to know about the character of God.

We glean all of that at the very beginning, the beginning of the book and the beginning of creation.

When is the garden?

It's in the beginning.

However, that's not the full picture of the garden.

It's not quite that simple.

When you read all of Scripture, you find out something very interesting about our destination.

And this is what we got clear on in week two that we have to have what we call at MetaCurch a pilgrim's perspective.

It always reminds us this is not our final home.

We're not just living for today, we're in this world.

But Jesus said that as his followers, we are not of this world, that we are living for tomorrow.

We are living to one day stand before Jesus at his throne.

On the other side of that evaluation, when Jesus judges our lives and rewards us for how we follow him, then we will work alongside Jesus to eventually bring about the redemption of all creation in what Scripture calls the new heavens and the new earth.

So this is the very end, the end of it all.

This is eternity, where all believers in Jesus will spend in perfection.

And I want you to really pay attention to how this is described.

God gave a revelation of eternity to the apostle John.

And in Revelation 22, this is how John describes the new heaven and the new earth.

He says, Then he showed me the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the throne of the Lamb.

And down the middle of the city's main street, the tree of life was on either side of the river, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit every month.

The leaves of the tree are for healing the nations.

Down the middle, there is the tree of life, the throne of God, the throne of the Lamb, and the tree of life.

And that should make us pause because in scripture we have heard exactly where the tree of life is before.

We're in Revelation, that's the very end of your Bible.

Let's jump back into Genesis, the very beginning of your Bible.

In Genesis 3, the Lord God said, Since the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out and take from the tree of life, eat and live forever.

And so the Lord God sent him away from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.

Where is the tree of life?

The tree of life is in the garden.

Let's go back to Revelation.

It says in verse 3, and there will no longer, in the new heavens and new earth, there will no longer be any curse.

The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will worship him.

The reversal of the curse, where did the curse take place?

Okay, I'm at a church, you can talk back to me.

I'll be all right.

Where did the curse take place?

In the garden.

Where is the curse reversed?

In the garden.

So we've gone from the very beginning of the book.

That's what we know of the garden.

That's the garden of Eden.

And everyone who hears the garden in the church context, we're not thinking of the botanical gardens in downtown San Antonio.

When we're talking about the garden in church, your identity is rooted in the garden, we all go to the Garden of Eden.

And that's a good starting place because that's where the world was perfect.

And that's the world as God intended it.

And that reveals God's intention for our life.

But then we see something really, really worth paying attention to.

When is the garden?

It is in the beginning, and it is in the eternal future.

It is out ahead of us and it is into eternity.

The garden will return.

The garden is coming back.

And maybe you're learning that for the first time today, that that's what the Bible teaches.

That the garden that we lost, paradise lost, it is coming back.

And Eden 2.0 will be everything that the first Eden was meant to be, and yet it will last eternally.

And a lot of people wonder, well, maybe just the exact same thing will happen, you know?

And you know, I mean, maybe you're thinking, like, my wife, she's a little, you know, wild.

She might eat some fruit she's not supposed to in Eden 2.0, you know.

And here's what you have to remember in the working out, and and I know we're not all super clear on this, and that is okay.

But the last thing that happens before the new heavens and the new earth is the final battle against evil and all sin and all evil, and Satan and all of his companions will be defeated and locked away forever.

There will be no temptation in Eden 2.0.

It will go on as God intended for it to be.

And what does that mean?

That means that right now we're living in the messed up middle.

That the story of Scripture is something like from garden to garden with a lot of mess in between.

That the story of Jesus is how to come in the world, not be of the world, take the pain and suffering of the world on yourself for the redemption of that world.

And then we're called to what?

Take up our cross, deny ourselves daily, over and over and over again, and be like Jesus.

And so, what do we do in the messed up middle?

Because the problem in the church world is when the garden is in the beginning and the garden is in the eternal future, then this is kind of how we end up feeling about it.

We almost had it and screwed it up.

And we're gonna get it someday, and we'll just wait.

And so we'll just be here in the messed up middle, and we'll kind of hate everyone who's not just like us, and we'll call it righteous anger, and we'll judge all of the sins that we're uncomfortable with and rationalize our own sins, and we'll just kind of do this whole thing where we practice religion so we can feel superior to the other people around us, because we lost the garden and we're not in the garden yet.

And I'm telling you, it's actually not that simple.

There's more to the garden.

And if it's just something we lost in the beginning, and if it's just something that we're waiting for in the end, then we should probably do what most Christians across most churches, across most of the West are doing, and just lock our doors to anyone who makes us uncomfortable, and do all of the little right motions so we can feel good and be pacified and just be scared as hell while we wait for heaven.

But there's more to the garden.

Jesus came and he was the perfect example.

We're talking about identity.

We're gonna get there.

He was the perfect example of living out and walking out your God-given identity every moment of every day.

And something very interesting happens right at the end of Jesus' life, right as he's dying on the cross, and we we know the story, it's not the actual end of his life, but everyone thought it was.

And you may remember that Jesus was hung right next to two criminals, thieves, and they were being crucified as well.

And they both took very different approaches to Jesus.

One of them joined in with the crowd and began to mock Jesus and ridicule Jesus.

And the other thief had reverence and actually demonstrated belief that Jesus was who he said he was and was there to do what he said he was there to do.

And that thief on the cross desired to go wherever Jesus was going.

While Jesus was on earth, he preached the kingdom, but the kingdom is coming, the kingdom is coming, the kingdom is at hand, the kingdom is right here.

And so the thief on the cross in Luke 23, he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Now, this guy had not earned remembrance.

This is so important to what we believe here.

Our theology, what we believe about God and Jesus and salvation, this is so important because uh he didn't have time to get baptized, he didn't have time to give any money, he didn't have time to do any good works, it was one moment of faith.

And what does Jesus say?

Jesus said, truly, I tell you, today, today, right now, today, present tense, today, you will be with me in paradise.

Today.

All it took, one moment of faith, one moment of belief, trusting in Jesus.

No sacraments, no religious rites or practices, one moment of faith.

What does he ask for?

Remember me in your kingdom.

And what does Jesus say?

He doesn't say, I got you, you'll be in the kingdom.

He says, Today you'll be with me in paradise.

And I want to show you something because if we hear this, how Jesus' original audience heard it, if we hear it, how the thief on the cross heard it, if we hear it, how those surrounding him heard it, I think it will change everything we think about the garden.

You might know this.

Uh, the New Testament was written in Koine Greek.

It's an ancient Greek language, and it was the common Greek, the Greek that everyone could speak, the the language of the marketplace in that time.

And in the Koine Greek, the word paradise that we transliterate, not translate, transliterate, is the Greek word paradesos.

And you may not be surprised that the Greek word paradisos actually means the garden.

Luke records Jesus telling the thief on the cross, he says, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom, and Jesus says, Truly, I tell you today, you will be with me.

Today, not at the eternal future, not in the new heavens and new earth.

Now we're gonna rewind and go back to Eden today.

You will be with me in the garden.

This was a Jewish context.

The thief on the cross and those in the crowd below, they only had one reference for what the garden meant.

It's Eden.

It's God's intention, it's God's actual design, it's perfection, it's what we were created for, it's what our identity is meant to be rooted in.

This isn't the only time in the New Testament that someone experiences paradise in real time during their actual life.

The apostle Paul was unique among the apostles because um he never really interacted with Jesus that we know about in the scriptures, and all of the other apostles did.

They were mostly Jesus' disciples who then became the apostles.

And yet, we have recorded when people started questioning Paul on his apostolic ministry, and he lets them know in a very sidestepping way that he in fact had gone and he had met Jesus.

Here's how he says it in 2 Corinthians 12.

He says, I know a man, right?

And he's talking about himself, which makes the whole thing kind of hilarious.

I know a guy, all right, in Christ, right?

That's where our identity is, who was caught up to the third heaven 14 years ago.

Whether he was in the body or out of the body, I don't know.

Only God knows.

Let me explain the third heaven.

In Jewish thought, there were three heavens.

The first is our atmosphere, where the birds fly.

The second heaven was outer space, where the sun and the moon and the stars were.

And the third heaven was the domain of God.

I was caught up to the third heaven.

He says, I know this man, wink wink.

I know this guy real well.

Like every time I look in a mirror, it's like I keep seeing him, you know?

I know this man.

Now, whether in the body or out of the body, I don't know.

I don't know if my literal body went to heaven or if it was a vision.

He's not pretending to know.

I don't know, only God knows.

I was caught up into paradise.

I heard inexpressible words, which a human being is not even allowed to speak.

He says, I was caught up into heaven in verse 2.

In verse 4, he says, I was caught up into paradise.

They're synonyms.

They're equal, they mean the same thing.

And we know what paradise means.

What Paul actually wrote to the church in Corinth is I was caught up into the garden, the dwelling place of God, where there is perfection, where Jesus rules and reigns, where you're perfectly resourced, where you see for the first time everything you need to know about yourself because you see yourself how God sees you.

Most of all scholars agree this is Paul speaking about himself, and you can tell this experience tripped him out.

He's not trying to be an expert on it.

He's going, There's a lot I don't know about this, but I know it happened, and I was taken into heaven.

I was taken into the garden.

John, when writing Revelation, was swept up in real time into the garden.

So this isn't as simple as we think it is.

When is the garden?

It's in the beginning.

It's where we see God's original intention.

It's where we came in and decided to create our own identity instead of allowing God to create our identity.

In our pride, we tried to be like God, and the whole world fell into chaos.

It's in the beginning.

And it's in the eternal future.

It's where it's all going to land someday.

And the garden is right now.

Paradise, perfection, the garden, the root of our identity and purpose and power.

It is available to you right now.

It's in the past, it's in the present, it's in the future, it's in the eternal future, it is everywhere that God is, and God is everywhere all at once.

In Revelation 1.8, God says, I am the Alpha and the Omega.

That's the first and last letter of the Greek alphabet.

He's saying, I am the beginning and I am the end.

I'm the one who is, who was, and who is to come.

I am the Almighty.

God is everywhere.

And God is always in the garden, which means the garden is happening all of the time.

So we know when the garden is, then, later, and right now.

So where is it?

Where is the garden?

It's described to us at the beginning of Genesis, it's in between where four rivers meet.

It's all of these things.

But where is it?

If it's happening like right now, and if it's available to us, where is it?

Remember what the thief on the cross has for.

He said he wanted to be brought into Jesus' kingdom.

Jesus, will you bring me into the kingdom?

And Jesus doesn't say yes to that.

He says, Today you will join me in the garden.

What did John say was in the garden, in the new heavens, in the new earth?

He says, In the garden where the tree of life is, where the curse will be reversed, in the garden is the throne of God.

And the throne of the Lamb of God.

We got to start getting this picture together.

Jesus came to earth preaching the coming of the kingdom, but not the kingdom the people of earth want it.

We have been so deluded by the culture that has informed our identity and our goals.

We've been deluded into thinking by the context of our current reality.

We want the kingdom.

And to us, the kingdom means power and might and influence and authority, but we don't see the garden.

And in the garden, we have peace and complete dependence on God and ultimate humility and unconditional love.

And that's a huge problem because no garden, no kingdom.

The garden is in paradise.

It's what we think of as heaven.

The garden that's coming to earth and the new heavens and the new earth, that is the seat of power.

That is where the throne is located.

We want the kingdom.

And this is what the people in Jesus' day wanted.

Because the people in Jesus' day were occupied by Rome.

They no longer had their autonomy.

They were overpowered.

They were enslaved.

They were taken advantage of.

And they kept saying, Jesus, we want the kingdom.

And what they meant was, we want the kingdom of Israel.

We want you to sit on the throne.

We want you to raise up an army.

Jesus, we love, we love the parlor tricks, you know, water into wine, walking on the water.

We love the healing is cool, you know, because the blind guys are getting annoying every day yelling at us on the street.

We love all of that.

But we'd like for you to take some of that sparkle and use it for some military action, you know?

Call down fire on these fools.

Get them out of here.

And we can get so preoccupied on our definition of the kingdom that we miss what we're actually called to pursue.

The kingdom isn't ours.

The kingdom is God's.

And the king invites us in.

He invites us in to the garden.

He invites us in not to where we get to rule and reign according to our own authority and agenda.

He calls us into where we get to experience perfection and endless resource alongside of God that we put our complete dependence on.

Where is the garden?

In Luke 17, it says, when Jesus was asked by the Pharisees, those are the religious leaders, when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, the kingdom of God is not coming with something observable.

You're not going to be able to see it with your eyes or touch it with your hands or smell it with your nose.

It's not coming with something observable.

No one will say, see here or see there, for you see.

The kingdom of God is in your midst.

Another way of interpreting verse 21 is the kingdom of God is within you.

The kingdom of God that sits in the garden of God is within you.

The garden is everywhere that God is, everywhere that Jesus is.

Where is the garden?

It's everywhere the Holy Spirit is.

Read through the scriptures and you see God at work in all types of situations.

Where is the garden?

Where is it?

It is anywhere and everywhere that the work of God is activated.

It's anywhere and everywhere that the people of God are actually living out their identity in Christ.

It's anywhere and everywhere that the people of God are turning their back on the things that they have run to in this world to be their little gods, to numb their pain, to help forget all of their past and instead pursue the purposes of God, even at cost to themselves.

This is why it matters so greatly to know how you fit.

Where is the garden?

The garden is found when the body of Christ gets active, not when it gets religious, not when it sits in a Sunday service, not when it memorizes scripture.

Those are all great things.

You should be doing those things.

But you can do all of those things and be miserable and judgmental and depressed and anxious.

The garden is found where the Spirit of God is actively at work in the life of believers.

And here's what we're learning so far, and this is new because for most of us, for most of our life, the garden is back there.

It's that thing we almost had.

And then I guess someday we're gonna, you know, go to heaven, whatever that means.

We're gonna be like on top of the clouds, I guess, and we're all gonna be half nude angel babies with harps or whatever, you know.

We have these pictures of what's coming.

It's like, dude, on the other side is the garden that you were designed for, that you weren't meant to live in, where your identity will finally and fully flourish, and every moment that you spend on earth is an opportunity to prepare your life for the garden.

Every moment that you spend with your time on earth is a moment to practice living in the garden, rooting yourself in the garden, every moment of every day.

It is available to you.

Let's review, because this is a lot.

We're doing a lot.

When is the garden?

It's in the beginning, it's in the eternal future, and it's right now.

Where is the garden?

It is anywhere and everywhere that the work of God is activated.

All of that is informative and it's interesting.

It's everywhere all the time.

It's always available to you if you belong to Christ.

But it's not applicable if we can't answer the most important question.

And the most important question is: what is the garden?

What is this?

What do we actually do with it?

How do we actually live it out?

What does this actually look like in my everyday life?

We started in the garden, and we read about that in Genesis.

And then we forsook our identity that God gave us to try and create our own.

We were tempted and we gave in.

And the earth is cursed and humanity is cursed, and what we see is we see this falling out of reality, and you need to understand this.

This is a lens you need to have for your life.

Because this life is incredibly difficult.

And this life is full of pain and it's full of suffering, and it's full of broken expectations, and it's full of wounds in your life that come from other people, some of them so far back when you're so little that there's almost nothing you can do about it except forbear those scars for the rest of your life.

And it can get so demoralizing.

And what you need to realize is what we're considering reality here, and it's quite real.

You can feel it and touch it and taste it and smell it, and you live in it, and you think in it, and you sleep in it, you dream in it.

But this isn't reality as it was created to be.

The earth is fallen, the original intention is broken.

This is a subversion of reality.

And subversion is when something gets destroyed from the inside.

That's what happened in Eden.

They lived in the midst of perfection, and yet from within perfection, sin came, and it rotted it from the inside out.

But subversion also means like a subversion.

We are living in a suboptimal version of reality.

This isn't what it's meant to be, and this isn't what it's going to be, and if you can view your life through the lens of the garden, the eternal future.

The time you get on earth, it's a blink.

And for right now, we're in whatever you want to call it, the darkest timeline, we're in the upside down, you can call it whatever you want.

It's it's a subversion, not what it's meant to be.

And we feel the effects of that every day.

And yet, even though we're in the messed up middle, the garden is available.

And it's available right here, and it's available right now.

In Acts 17, the Apostle Paul, he's talking to people who don't know God, and he's trying to describe God, and he's actually using their own things to try and describe him.

And here's this great line: he says, For in him, that's our identity, we live and we move, and we have our being.

We don't know who we are outside of him, outside of Jesus.

When we're not in Christ, we are not ourselves.

We are a subversion of ourselves.

And we do that often.

And we get mad at Adam and Eve because you know they they ate the they ate the fruit, you know.

It's not a competition.

Eve did eat it first, you know.

Um Eve ate it first, and the world didn't fall until Adam followed suit.

And it's like, you know, what's worse?

You know, being a leader who does wrong or just being a follower, you know.

And we get mad at them because we look at the state of the world and how much pain it causes us.

And yet, if the garden is available to us right here, right now, every day, it means the only reason that we don't experience it and actually live in it is because every day we choose to eat the fruit.

And how did the serpent convince Eve to take the fruit?

He spoke a new identity.

I'm just a long-haired son of a sinner.

I'm trying, and I can't figure out why I can't quit doing the drugs, why I can't quit cheating, why I can't quit lying, why I can't feel secure, why I can't be content.

But it's obvious, you've already stated who you are.

You've already pegged yourself to the core of your being, the core of your identity.

When our identity is rooted in the garden, it means we are fully dependent on God for who we are.

We know when the garden isn't, and we know where the garden is.

But what is the garden?

The garden is the realest reality.

It's the realest reality.

And it doesn't feel that way to us.

Like, can we be really honest?

The idea of walking in the spirit, walking by faith and not by sight, walking and living in Christ, walking in a way where we're experiencing the garden, we're experiencing paradise, we're experiencing perfection.

Even though we are in the midst of incredible suffering, here's what being in the garden doesn't mean.

It doesn't mean the great disservice many churches have done for us, which says if you just have enough faith, you're never gonna suffer again, you're never gonna get sick again, you're never gonna be poor again, you're never gonna have a medical bill again.

Everything is going to be health and wealth and prosperity coming your way.

And more people have walked away from Christ because they were sold a version of reality that doesn't exist and is never taught in the Bible.

The call is to take up your cross and to deny yourself daily and to be like Jesus.

And Jesus said to his followers, In this world, you will have trouble.

But take heart, for I have overcome the world.

The garden doesn't make you immune from the suffering of the world, from the pain of the world, from the emotions that are inbuilt into your life.

What it does is it positions you where you are so sure of who you are, and you are so sure of who God is, and you are so sure that He'll take care of you, and you have so much faith in His resource in your life, and you are so confident in walking out your faith that you can endure the suffering of the world, take it upon yourself, and find redemption for it like Jesus did.

You're now living in the realest reality, and it changes everything.

We're escaping the subversion.

We're escaping what we think and we've been almost programmed to believe is the realest.

What if the realest reality isn't just what you can touch, just what you can think, just what you can reason, just what you can use your logic and your senses to get your mind around?

You're living in that right now.

And if you live long enough, what we think is reality, it will be a lot for you to bear.

And you will look for hope.

And you'll look for a way to escape the pain that this world causes us.

And hear me clearly every escape from your pain that is not in Christ is the fruit of the garden.

And we go to it over and over and over again.

And it's not just because we're bad people, and it's not because we're just trying to misbehave or trying to make our lives miserable, it's because we don't know who we are.

And you find out who you are in the garden.

If paradise, the garden, is everywhere, and if paradise, the garden, is all of the time, then your identity is rooted in paradise.

It is rooted in the place of perfection, endless resources, the ultimate connection with your heavenly father, who desperately wants to walk with you and talk with you, give you good things, show you clarity.

If your identity is rooted in that, it truly gives you the power to overcome everything, to bear up under the weight of anything.

We don't know who we are because we live like the garden is just something that happened somewhere back there and we lost it.

And maybe we know that the garden is coming again, and we don't really know how to think about that, and we don't know what to do about it.

And then we look at the mess here in the middle, and we have no way of associating these things together and putting a plan together for how to live our life.

But everything changes when the garden is right here and right now.

And we're called to a pilgrim's perspective where we know that here in the messed up middle, here in this subversion of reality, this is not our home.

But a pilgrim's perspective doesn't say we just sit and wait.

It says we get busy building our home right here.

We don't believe in Jesus and then wait to go to heaven someday.

We believe in Jesus and we start walking and talking and acting and living in the garden where we start seeing evidence of heaven right here and right now among us.

That is what we're called to live.

That is who we're called to be, and when a movement of God's people begin to understand that and begin to live that out, there is nothing in this world that will stop that movement's impact.

A life in the garden is a life that's aware of spiritual realities.

If you want to have a marriage like you cannot imagine, a marriage filled with peace and unbelievable love, support for one another, then you have to love your spouse in the garden.

In the garden, you don't have to leverage them and manipulate them, you don't have to get your way, you don't have to build your life on top of them.

In the garden, you can come alongside of them and love them.

In the garden you can come up under them and lift them up.

We should parent in the garden.

All of these things that are so difficult and so hard to figure out.

In the garden, there is faith, complete faith in who God is and what he can do for us.

Outside of the garden is fear, fear of the unknown, fear of how to navigate life.

Fear creates things like anger and rage.

Fear turns inward and creates things like depression.

Inside of the garden is complete dependence on God and all that he has for us and the life that he's giving you, and complete trust and complete surrender.

And outside of the garden is pride, that you can be your own God, that you can make your own way, that you can arrogantly assess your own life, that you can create your own identity apart from what God says about you.

Inside of the garden, there is provision.

Outside the garden, there is insecurity, a lack of contentment, always needing more, always jealous, riddled with envy.

We're full of anxiety.

We're full of depression.

We're hopeless.

We're the people of God.

We can look back at the garden and see what he intended for us.

We can look forward to the garden and know what's coming.

But we are the people of God meant to live in the garden right here and right now.

And yet, when we don't, the people of God live without any hope, like the rest of the world.

Living in the garden is every day deciding that you will cement your identity in Christ, that you will know who you are because of what God says about you, and anything that you believe about yourself that's not from God must be dispelled from your life.

In the garden means that you walk completely in faith, that you trust God, even in the most difficult circumstances of your life.

And this idea of being in the garden is deeply spiritual.

And yet, the things that are the most deeply spiritual are experienced through the most practical obedience.

Actually living it out, actually spending time with God, actually walking in faith, actually loving others, actually serving others ahead of yourself.

You want to live in the garden, it's not in theory, it's not thinking about it, it's not reading about it, and it's not sitting today and listening about it.

We live in the garden when we recognize it's everywhere all the time, and when we get active in actually following Jesus and living our life in Him.

It's easier said than done, but if you can cling to the fact that the version of reality that you are in right now you were not meant for, and you can experience the realest reality, not just when you die someday, not just when you get to heaven, you can experience the realest reality right here and right now.

We're in a unique season of resourcing.

I mean, we're coming alongside you guys in some big ways to help you discover this identity.

The first is starting next Sunday in our Learning to Listen series, where we're gonna spend 21 days together reading scripture, praying every day, giving things up that matter to us so we can grow our dependence on God.

That's called fasting.

I want you to go to learning to listen or metachurch.tv slash listen and sign up for the newsletter.

We have over 200 people already signed up, which means you've raised a hand to say, I'm doing this.

I'm gonna invest in this, I'm gonna learn to listen to God, I'm gonna build new spiritual disciplines in my life.

I believe that the spiritual is deeply practical, so I'm gonna take practical steps of faith so I can start living in the garden right here and right now.

That's metachurch.tv slash listen.

And you guys have been hearing week after week that we have a class that's starting.

It starts on the 21st.

Registration opens today.

It opens right before kickoff at 5 p.m.

Let me tell you a couple of things.

Last time we did starting point, starting point is going to help you find your false narratives, understand your worst ways, come to terms with the pain in your life, and turn that pain into purpose.

It's a lot of work.

If you want an easy class, do not sign up.

If you've been through it, you cannot force someone to come.

You have to choose to go through and put something into this class.

There is homework and vulnerability required.

This is a life-changing program that can help you get to the core of your identity and discover your purpose.

It is really, really powerful.

Let me tell you, we opened it at 5 p.m.

last time and it filled up the entire class in 13 minutes.

We're opening it at 5 p.m.

today.

You can sign up at metachurch.tv slash starting point.

If you want in, you're gonna have to be on the ball.

We put it right before kickoff, so a lot of people will be distracted probably.

If you want in, make sure that you sign up.

This is a resource, it's it's a limited number that we can take, but this is a resource that can genuinely help you learn how to take the pain in your life and quit going to all of the things in the world instead to live in the garden.

Choose to bear up under the weight of the suffering of this world and trust that in God's hand you can be used to find redemption, even in the hardest parts, even in the suffering of your life.

You are not just a long-haired son of a sinner.

You are not whatever the world has said about you or whatever you believe about yourself.

You are a child of God meant to live your life in Christ and meant to root your identity in the garden right here and right now.

Would you pray with me?

Father, I pray you would help us uh understand this, you'd help us apply it, you would help us live it out.

We love you.

We thank you.

That we don't have to wait, we don't have to be depressed because the garden is gone.

We don't have to wait because it's so far ahead of us.

That you give us access to walking out a life in the spirit, in the garden, right here and right now.

And over these next three weeks, I pray you would help us to actually apply that to our life.

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.