HomeTeam: State of the Movement with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire.

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

I'm the lead pastor here at Meta, and you've joined us during a season of transition.

About 10 months ago, God gave us this building.

We were able to purchase it.

For the last 10 months, we have had a tenant in here like five nights a week, lucky draw bingo.

We recently bought them out of that contract.

They're in the process of moving out.

We're in the process of waiting and waiting for our comfortable chairs to come in.

They're on a ship somewhere between China and here right now.

It could be a minute.

We are in our oldie foldies right now.

I think I counted nine different kinds of chairs on the ground today, just as diverse as MetaCurch is.

And so, look, transition often equals progress.

And so we just want to thank you for hanging in with all these different transitions as God moves us into different places and different seasons.

And I look forward to seeing what all he's going to continue to do through this movement.

Like Pastor Noel mentioned, in June I did a sermon called Home Team, and now we're coming back in a series.

And if you were here, and if you remember, I know that was a long time ago, but during that home team sermon, I made kind of an audacious ask for people to courageously stand up and identify themselves as potential life team leaders.

Life teams are one-third of our strategy of how the MetaCurch movement actually moves.

This is where we get people in community in smaller circles out around our city.

And many people responded to that.

Now we're coming back to Home Team in a series.

At the end of this series, on August 28th, we are going to launch those life team leaders as well as a few of our OG life team leaders, which means we're gonna have room for many of you to sign up and get in community.

And that's really what we're honing in on throughout this series is the power and the critical importance of community in your life.

At the end of that sermon in June, we landed at Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

We got this beautiful picture of the first church.

It says this they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.

Every day, they themselves were meeting together in the temple and broke bread from house to house.

They were meeting together in the temple, in the big setting, and they were gathering together from house to house in community.

They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, praising God, enjoying the favor of all the people.

And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

At Meta Church, here's what we do.

This has been our vision from the beginning.

We meet together and we move together.

In fact, we meet together in order to move together.

What we're trying to do here as this local church, as this movement we call Meta, is we are trying to understand Jesus' original intention for his movement, and we're trying to put it in the context of 2022 in San Antonio, Texas.

And here's what we see: that the early church met together and they moved together.

That movement is the application of God's word into our hearts and into our actual lives.

Here's what religion does: it meets together.

End of story.

And what we have, and the burden on our heart, is we have millions of people sitting in Sunday services week after week after week, thinking that they have done something because they learned a lesson, read some scriptures, and sang some songs.

And there is a world outside of Jesus who is dying, who's living in hell on earth, who's living without hope, who doesn't know what comes next, and they don't feel any effect of just meeting together.

We meet together in order to move together.

It's all about application.

If we don't do application, which is turning the power of God, the truth of God, into the power of God in our lives, if we're not applying his word, then we are missing the mark entirely.

And here's what we learned, and here's what we believe application happens in community.

You need a community around you in order for application to truly take place in your life.

If we are not applying what we are learning, then we are just another social club.

We're just another religious exercise.

Scripture says we are deceiving ourselves and we are missing out on the opportunity for our lives to make a real impact in the world during our time on this earth.

This series is all about application through community.

And here's how we believe that happens.

Here is like the recipe for community.

It looks like this accountability plus authenticity plus alliance.

That's how you get true biblical community.

Accountability and authenticity and alliance.

And those are the key elements that lead to real, real application.

Today, we're gonna focus in on accountability, a word that many of us have grown very, very uncomfortable with.

We don't like it.

It conjures up all of the memories of getting in trouble, of never being able to please our parents, of missing out on our assignments, of our boss always being on us.

We don't like accountability, and I think it's because we don't really understand it.

We're gonna talk today about accountability and a message, a home team message called Ring Chasers.

Ring Chasers.

Would you pray with me?

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

I thank you for a place like MetaCurch that is truly for all people and all different walks of their faith journey.

God, some seasoned believers following you for decades and decades, and some who are on the fence.

Some who've come in agnostic, maybe atheists, not even really sure if you exist at all.

And I pray no matter where we're at, we'd be humble enough to lay down our own preconceived ideas to seek you.

And I believe, God, like you said, if we seek you today, we will find you.

We love you.

And we pray these things in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Ring chasers.

We don't like accountability because we don't like expectations.

And most of us, if we defined accountability, we would define it as like getting in trouble for things I did wrong or things I didn't do.

That's what we think about accountability.

But the definition for accountability is in the word itself.

It's really not rocket science, it is the ability to give an account.

So, yes, when you miss the mark, it is the ability to give an account for how you fell short.

At the same time, it is also the ability to give an account for the good that you have done.

I've studied accountability at a pretty deep level when it comes to running an organization or a business.

And one of the things you find is that the difference between mediocre companies and great companies is great companies always have a very high level of accountability.

And here's why.

Because just as bad as it stings to get called to the carpet for something you didn't do or something you did wrong, it is equally frustrating to continue to do things right and to never know when you win.

Clear expectations, clear accountability allows people to know exactly where they are, whether or not they're succeeding, if they're meeting or even succeeding expectations.

Accountability really does matter.

And yet, we are the individual generation.

We have a sense of individualism like no one has ever had in all of human history.

And because of that, we feel like accountability is impeding on our own individualistic freedoms and rights.

We do not like it.

And we see that in the sports world.

We are in the generation of ring chasers.

That refers to the championship ring that you win if you go all the way to the finals and win the finals.

And one of the things that we love about old school sports stars is that they had a dedication to their home team.

On June 19th, 1984, Michael Jordan was drafted to the Bulls.

Another Michael Jordan illustration.

Y'all choose to come here, okay?

The Bulls were horrible.

They were not known for basketball.

They were most famous for the parties they would throw in other towns after the games.

Booze-filled, cocaine-filled parties.

That's what they were known for.

They were absolutely horrendous, and Michael Jordan went.

And for seven excruciating years, he fell short.

And every year he would have to go back to Chicago.

He lived in Chicago.

He trained in Chicago, and he'd have to give an account to the city of why they kept falling short of the championship.

Year after year.

They couldn't get past the Celtics, they couldn't get past the Lakers, they couldn't get past the Pistons.

Finally, in 1991 through 93, he went on his first three-peat.

He went and played baseball.

We won't really talk about that.

He came back, another three-peat, and he's seen as the GOAT, the greatest of all time, not just because of his skill, but because he stayed put.

Kobe Bryant, he stayed with the Lakers through the high highs and the low lows, the peaks and the valleys.

An early three-peat when he was a young gun, followed by years of being at the bottom of the barrel, only to once again take a team and climb that mountain again.

Even Steph Curry, you gotta give him his props.

He went to the Warriors, they were not on the radar, but he stayed through injury and disappointment and being looked over and built them into one of the key franchises in the league.

They stayed put and they allowed themselves to be held accountable to a front office and a fan base.

And that is slowly but surely going away.

We now have ring chasers.

This really got kicked off years ago when LeBron was first a free agent, and everyone wanted to know where he was going.

And so he had a whole ESPN special.

It was called The Decision.

And LeBron, everyone thought he's gonna be the hero.

He grew up in Akron.

Cleveland is literally his hometown.

He's gonna be MJ.

He's gonna stay and see them through to the promised land.

And instead he said, I'm gonna take my talents to South Beach.

He put together a super team, not just Chris Bosch, but Dwayne Wade, who'd already won a championship with Miami without him.

So he went and he got his hardware.

He won a couple championships.

But when you ask, real NBA fans, they see those as hollow victories.

He had to give up on his home team in order to go get them.

Years later, Kevin Durant and the Oklahoma Thunder, the franchise that drafted him, were up three games to one in the conference finals.

All they had to do was win one game.

They were against Steph Curry and the Warriors, and Steph led the Warriors to win three in a row.

The Warriors went on to the finals and won it.

And after beating them, embarrassing them, and then winning the championship, Kevin Durant left his team and went to the team that had already won it all.

He got his hardware, he got some championships, but across the league, across the fan base, they're seen as hollow victories.

So for those of you who don't know anything about sports, and I lost you four minutes ago, ring chasing is pursuing your own glory at the expense of others.

Ring chasing is seeking your own glory by stepping on or stepping over whoever is getting in your way.

Ring chasing is deciding that instead of belonging to a community that you bring up with you, instead of winning together, you would you would much rather pursue winning alone.

Ring chasing is when you seek your own glory, and here's the oddest effect by seeking your own glory at the expense of others, your glory is actually diminished amongst the viewpoint of everybody else.

And so we don't like to be held accountable.

And superstar athletes, they don't want to be held accountable to a front office or a fan base, and we don't want to be held responsible to our spouses, and our kids don't want to be held accountable to us, and you don't want to be held accountable to your boss, and the people that you supervise don't want to be held accountable to you.

And everyone is running away from accountability when accountability is the key aspect of knowing how you win and when you win.

Today we're going to look at a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to a church he started in Galatia.

And we're going to be in chapter six, but we're going to start at the very end of chapter five.

And remember, when the Bible was written, there weren't chapters and verses.

The Galatians just got this as a letter, and one thought flowed directly to the next.

At the end of chapter five, it says, And let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

We are, by all available metrics, the most conceited generation that's ever existed, the most narcissistic generation that has ever existed, the most likely to chase rings, chase our own glory at the expense of others.

That word conceited in the Greek that Paul wrote this letter in is a compound word.

And when you translate it literally, conceited means empty glory.

Winning the championship at the expense of everyone else.

Empty glory.

Winning in business while you have a string of bodies behind you.

Empty glory.

You getting sexually satisfied, but never actually committing your life to anyone else.

Empty glory.

And you'll know this because if you live long enough and you chase rings long enough and you prioritize your own win over the well-being of everyone else, the more success you have, the emptier you will become.

That's the life of conceit.

It is a life of empty glory.

And he's writing to a church, and even in the church, there were ring chasers.

There was a small group who saw themselves as the spiritual and religious elite, and they didn't just try to follow the law of Christ.

They followed the law of Moses, the Old Testament Jewish law.

613 rules and regulations that guide and govern every single aspect of your life.

And what they did is in their arrogance, in their conceit, they came into the Galatian church and they saw anyone who was struggling, and anyone who was trapped in any kind of wrongdoing, and anyone who was down and out in life, and anyone who had some sin that they were really working on but couldn't quite get a handle on.

And what they would do is they would sit in their conceit and they would judge.

They would remove people from the church.

They let everyone know that they were the superior.

And Paul noticed this and he had a real problem with it.

He wrote the entire book of Galatians largely to address this issue.

And in Galatians 6:1, he says, brothers and sisters, if someone is overtaken in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual, restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourself so that you also won't be tempted.

Galatians 6:1

Now, that first word overtaken, that's the word for trapped, like a bug in a spider's web.

And maybe you've been trapped like that in life, and maybe it was in a relationship, or maybe it was with an addiction or a pattern in your life that you just couldn't break, or maybe you've been trapped by anxiety or trapped by depression, and you know what it's like to really be trapped.

Because if you've ever seen a fly in a spider's web, the harder they try to get out, the more stuck they become.

Say if anyone's been trapped in any wrongdoing, and yes, this could mean sin and this could mean temptation, but it doesn't just mean that.

It can be stuck in patterns, it can be stuck under a burden that is not a consequence of what you've done, but what the people around you have done.

He says, if anyone is trapped, you who are spiritual, now I can't prove this theologically, but I have become convinced, really studying this context, that Paul is using sarcasm.

That if you would have heard Paul say this, he would have said, You guys who are so spiritual, he's talking to the arrogant religious elite in the Galatian church.

If you are actually so spiritual, then instead of condemning and removing, then you who are spiritual restore such a person.

That word restore is the picture of mending something that is broken back together.

To restore requires community, it requires proximity, it requires closeness.

And to the spiritual elite, they would not come within contact of anyone who is struggling in life because they believed that that dirty sinner might rub off on them and make them look bad in the process.

They weren't a very good teammate when their teammates were struggling.

Instead, they would just demand a trade and head on down for their own pursuit of glory.

Watching out for yourself so that you also won't be tempted.

This is the opposite of community.

When someone would fall off, instead of restoring, they would remove.

You see, here's what happens is you will not be held accountable to someone that you think you are superior to.

Your boss that you affectionately call your idiot boss.

There's a reason that if you do what they say, and you might not do it, but if you do what they say, you will do it begrudgingly.

Because at some level you believe you are superior to them.

All they really are are an obstacle in your way to the glory that you feel like you are entitled to.

We will not be accountable to someone that we think we are superior to.

The problem with accountability is we just don't fully understand it.

We don't understand all the aspects or the role that it plays in our lives.

He says, You who are so spiritual, instead of condemning and removing, mend them, restore them, build them up, get close to them, circle them in, bring them into community.

And the very next verse, verse 2, says, carry one another's burdens.

And in this way, you will fulfill not the law of Moses, not the law of the Old Testament that has been replaced by something superior, that has been fully fulfilled and now has been brought into a new light.

You will fulfill the law of Christ, the law that the church actually is under, the law that we are actually held to, and the law of Christ says that you love God and you love others, and more specifically, you love God by loving others.

You demonstrate just how committed you are to God and his purposes in your life by how radical and willing you are to love the people around you without question and without hesitation.

Carry one another's burden.

The word for burden is actually a word picture.

It's a picture of a heavy stone, something that is cumbersome, that's difficult to navigate, something that goes with you everywhere that you go, something you would love to put down, but you haven't figured out yet how to.

You see, the first aspect of accountability is communal accountability.

Carry one another's burdens, restore one another, mend one another back together.

This can only happen in community with other people, and we all, we all have our burdens.

It can be sin.

A sin that you just, as hard as you try, you can't seem to get it out of your life.

It can be a sin that has gone so far to become an addiction, something you become dependent on.

It can be something mental, something in your mental health, it can be depression, it can be anxiety, a burden that you carry with you everywhere you go.

It can be something that you cause, that is a consequence, a natural consequence of your actions or reactions or behaviors.

It can also be something that you didn't ask for and that is a consequence of the actions of people around you, situations in your family or losing your job.

The burden that you might carry could be a physical ailment.

When I was 17, I had had some burdens up to that point in my life, but at 17 I found my biggest burden.

I was diagnosed with uh incurable autoimmune disease, something I live with to this day.

And at that point, I thought that my life was spiraling to its finish.

How could I go on?

You see, we all have something, and we are all called to carry one another's burdens.

That is in the imperative mood in the Greek grammar.

That means it's not a suggestion, it is a command.

We are called as Christians to get in community and to get the weight off of others.

And listen, if you have a very light load in your life right now, if you are not under the crushing weight of burden, that means that God has given you capacity to significantly stand in the gap for somebody else.

If you are carrying a burden right now, it means you need Christian community around you to help you navigate the burdens you're carrying in this life.

And this is important because in our culture, it's not just a command to carry others' burdens, it is a command to let others help carry yours.

And there are some of you who will help everyone all day and all night, every day and every night.

You live to help other people, but when it comes to your burden, you hold on as tight as you can.

You don't want to talk about it, and this is what you say you say, I don't want to put anybody out, I don't want to inconvenience anybody.

It is the lie of self-sufficiency.

I can handle your burdens and I can handle my own.

And you need to hear this.

Self-sufficiency is not a mark of bravery or power or machismo.

Self-sufficiency is a clear sign of pride and fear.

And at a core, core reason that you don't want anybody to have a look inside your burdens is because you wonder if they really saw all that you were carrying, if it would change their opinion of you.

We are called to carry one another's burdens and to have our burdens carried by others.

And here's what's so unique about God and just how good God is and how unimaginable his ways are, is when you are under the heaviest burden, the antidote to that burden, the antidote to that depression, that anxiety, that loneliness.

The antidote is to find someone else's burden to carry as well.

How does that work?

How does me carrying my burden and loading on more burdens alleviate my burden?

I don't really know.

It's a promise from God, and it's something where you just have to test it.

Sometimes our jobs can be a burden, and a lot of people talk to me.

I did a message last year about quitting your job.

And a lot of people are burdened by their work, and I always give them the same advice.

When you show up, besides your responsibilities of like dotting the I's and crossing the T's and doing whatever you have to do to get a paycheck, besides that, your one and only initiative for the next week is to find somebody who's also burdened at work and to serve them all day, every day.

You go to work on mission from God to make someone's experience of that job a little bit better.

And the most incredible thing happens when we take our eyes off of constant focus on our own burden and we begin to look around for the burdens of others.

It's like magic.

When we look up instead of in, our burdens get lighter and lighter and lighter.

And it's actually not magic.

Yeah, that's good.

That's how good God is.

It's actually not magic because here's what you do: when you begin to be the kind of person who carries others' burdens, you put yourself in a community of people who do the same.

And maybe your burden is suffocating and it is crushing you, and you are under the weight of it right now, and you don't know how you're gonna get out.

And what you need is a group of people, a circle of people.

You need a home team who will come alongside you, who you can be accountable to, and they will be accountable in return.

And y'all can divvy the weight around where it is manageable for everyone, where you can get the breathing room that you need to allow God to come in and work in your life.

So, what does this mean?

It means you are called to carry one another's burdens and you are called to have your burdens carried.

What does this not mean?

This does not mean that it is your job to go in and discover other people's burdens just so you can go fishing and get the hottest tea so that you can then go spill the tea with all of your closest confidants.

And if you think this doesn't happen in the church, you didn't grow up in church.

This happens all the time.

I promise you, if this culture at Metachurch starts turning this way, y'all are gonna get a very different kind of sermon.

Because I grew up in these churches where people acted like they were coming along to carry a burden and what they were really doing was just fishing for information.

I grew up in the churches who would gossip through their prayer requests.

I just think that we should pray.

Um, I just heard that Jeannie, mmm.

We should pray because she told me she put on 15 pounds.

We should just pray for her.

We should pray.

I heard Mr.

Mark, y'all know Mr.

Mark, Brother Mark.

Brother Mark lost his job.

Can you imagine all that money he has?

Probably gonna have to sell his Lexus, probably gonna have to, with a smile on your face, asking for prayer for people just as an excuse to gossip about what they're going through.

Carrying one another's burdens, the apostle Paul says, is how we fulfill the love, the law of Christ.

And the law of Christ is loving and living like Jesus Christ did, which is carrying one another's burdens without any expectation of getting anything in return, without placing any further burden upon them.

It is the realization that the way to win in life is to come alongside a community and find out how to win together.

Communal accountability is a piece of the puzzle, but it isn't the whole picture.

For communal accountability to be done properly, we also have to exercise personal accountability.

Personal accountability.

The people who really end up succeeding in life, they succeed in their relationships, they succeed in their marriages, every job they get in their career, they're always up and to the right.

Those are people who have found out that if you don't wait for someone else to hold you accountable and learn how to hold yourself accountable, that you will be able to succeed in unimaginable ways.

Personal accountability is saying, I welcome accountability because you're not gonna hold me to a higher standard than I've already held myself in verse 3.

For if anyone considers himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

You see, the people in the church in Galatia who thought they were the religious elite and were there condemning and judging and removing everybody else, man, they really thought that they were the spiritual champions.

They really thought that they had made it.

They were living out of conceit, they were pursuing empty glory because they were fulfilling the law of Moses.

They thought they were doing something because they were fulfilling a law that is no longer required in the church.

They thought that they really had a leg up because they don't eat shrimp.

They thought because they go to Denny's and say, I'll take a BLT, hold the B, that they've got a leg up on everybody.

It's like all you're doing is switching your diet.

And this is what Jesus taught.

He taught you can fulfill all 613, all the dot all the I's cross, all of the T's.

You can follow the letter of the law and misunderstood the heart of the law, which is the heart of God from the very beginning.

And this is where you get religious people who they talk a big game and they've got all the scriptures memorized and they've got the right outfit for Sunday, and they can sing the harmony to do it again, but they treat everyone around them like absolute crap.

And Jesus says that your religiosity is not worth burning in a fire if you're not actually using God inside of you to express his love to the world.

That's what personal accountability is about.

You have deceived yourself if you think that you're chasing the ring, chasing your own glory at the expense of everyone else, is impressing anyone, including God.

He says in verse 4, let us each person examine his own work, examine his own work.

And then he can take pride in himself alone and not compare himself with someone else.

Let each person examine.

The word for examine is the Greek word uh dokimazo, which is the word used for the fiery testing of precious metals.

How pure is that gold, how pure is that silver.

You can only discover it through the refiner's fire.

To test ourselves is to examine our own lives and use it in comparison and contrast to God and his standard.

Spoiler alert, when you take your life, your behaviors, your actions, your thought processes, your patterns, your rhythms, your habits, when you take those things and hold them up to God's perfect standard, spoiler alert, you're falling short.

You're not living up.

And that can feel like what accountability has always felt like to us falling short again.

The parent you could never please.

The spouse who you you give and give and give, and it's never enough.

And we reflect that on God because we have a broken and distorted view of God.

And if you have a proper view of God, which is that he created you and he placed a purpose inside of you, and he cares about you deeply, and he pursues you every millisecond of your life, and that he loves you so much and holds you in such high regard, has put such a high value on his life that he gave his one and only son and traded his son's life for yours when you start with that baseline and you start with that foundation.

Then you begin to see who God actually is.

And what you begin to realize is that the ability to give an account for where you have fallen short is not for fear, it is for opportunity.

And if you are living with communal accountability and you're finding ways to give your life away and to love like Jesus and to carry one another's burdens, then when you measure your life and you examine your life against God's glorious standard, what you will see is progress towards the person that God intended for you to become.

And you don't have to be afraid, you don't have to stand in fear, you can be filled with joy at the opportunity that lies ahead.

That's what real love does.

And we don't really understand that because so many people, and you've had those bosses and you've had those friendships, and you've had those relationships, and maybe you had those parents, and they never saw the good.

They always held you account to the bad, but they never gave you the ability to give an account for the progress that you were making in life, even if it's incremental progress in your heavenly father who loves you so much.

He sees the burden that you're under, he sees you struggling, he sees that you are not sprinting towards your God-given purpose.

But from last month to this month, under the weight of unimaginable burden, you took this much stuff and he said, Son, daughter, I see you, I love you, you're on your way.

That's our God.

God will take an incremental step forward over standing still any day for all of eternity.

God will take you under the burden of a broken world, under the burden of the pain from your past.

And he will take the smallest baby step forward and he will love you through it.

He will show you the opportunity for progress.

But it's not out of fear, it's out of opportunity.

And if you are burdened by the weight of the world, he is desperate for you to come into community with others.

You know it.

You know it.

And there's two, there's two sides.

There are people who all they see is their own burden.

All they see is their own burden.

Oh, they're crushed by the weight of it.

It's all they look at, it's all they see.

And what you really need is a circle of people to get your eyes up and see that you have a role.

By carrying others' burdens, your burden will come under a smaller weight.

I don't know how it happens.

God's just that good.

Then there are others.

There are others who seem to not have any clue they have a burden.

You know, Jesus said one time, be aware of spotting the speck in your brother's eye when you, in fact, have a plank in your own.

And we know these Christians as well.

You've got this, but your brother has got this.

And it's like yours does not exist.

Did y'all see Tony has a football?

Did y'all see that?

That little yellow lemon-shaped football?

Can you believe he's carrying that around?

How does his spouse put up with him?

How does he keep a job?

Did y'all see the football?

And people are like, I didn't really want to say anything to Clayton, but he's carrying a 20-pound medicine ball.

Does he not know?

Oh, and we love to point out, we love to point out the little, little faults, the little burdens, the little corrections that need to be made.

See, when you're not in the process of self-examination, you will fall into other examination.

If we look back at verse 4, the end of it says, and not compare himself with someone else.

You see, there's a difference between self-examination and introspection.

Introspection largely came from Eastern religions.

It has now become one of the foundational pieces of our American culture.

This idea that we look in, that we dive deep into ourself, that we we plunge into our own ego.

This is called narcissism, it's called navel gazing.

It's not for you to compare yourself to another standard.

No, no, no.

You are the standard.

You introspect so you can discover your truth.

And what can make you happier than living your truth?

Self-examination is not about diving in and finding some mystical self-truth for you to live out in opposition to the actual realities of the world.

Self-examination is looking in in order to hold up to God's perfect standard and to not discover your truth, but to compare your life to the truth, the fundamental truth of how this world works, who you are created to be, and how you will make an impact in the world around you.

You are called to examine yourself, to submit your life to the refiner's fire and see just what opportunities you still have to be more like Jesus, to get closer to your purpose and to make a bigger impact on this world.

It says in verse 4, do not compare yourself with someone else.

In verse 5, for each person will have to carry his own load.

Each person will have to carry his own load.

And it gets kind of confusing because it's like, am I supposed to carry my own load or am I supposed to carry other people's burdens?

And the answer is both.

See, the word for burden is like a giant stone crushing, crushing you under the weight of it.

This word for load is the same word for like the cargo on a ship.

It's not something extra that has been added by the brokenness of our world.

The load that you have to carry is the responsibility and purpose that God has placed in you.

The load you are to carry is not something that has come upon you, it's something that was always in you.

We start with the belief that you were created on purpose and you were created with purpose.

And a massive part of how that purpose is lived out is by getting in community and carrying one another's burdens.

The load that you will be responsible to have held on to and to live out is the responsibility to carry one another's burdens.

Each person will have to carry future tense.

Verse 7 says, Don't be deceived.

God is not mocked.

For whatever a person sows, he will also reap.

This is the way that the world works.

You reap what you sow.

All of this future tense, you will have to carry.

What you reap, you will sow in the future.

And what this is pointing to, and what the apostle Paul is always pointing to, is what I believe is the realest reality.

That someday every one of us will stand before Jesus.

And we don't like accountability, but we must learn to embrace it if we are going to meet our potential.

Because where this is all headed, is someday when we will give to Jesus an account for how we lived the life that He gave us.

What we did with His salvation, He purchased for us.

One day we will be ultimately accountable.

And when we stand before Jesus, we will review our life in granular detail, who we were and how we lived.

You see, there's communal accountability carry one another's burdens, and there's personal accountability because you will have to carry your own load, your own responsibility, your own purpose.

And it's all leading to eternal accountability.

One day, standing before the throne of Jesus.

This matters.

It matters because it's the realest reality.

And when we're before Jesus, he will broadly want to know two things.

Did you carry your own load?

Did you pursue the purpose I placed inside of you?

What did you do with the life that you were given?

Did you carry your own load?

And second, did you carry others' burdens?

Did you actually live like Jesus lived?

Did you get into community and help others?

And when you stand before Jesus, he will care way more about who you championed than the championships you secured.

He will care way more about your relationships than the resume that you stack up.

He will care way more about your community that you created, than your accomplishments that you achieved.

Paul is letting us in on a deep truth.

It isn't just if you win.

It isn't just whether or not you secure the ring, it is also how you win.

And there may be nothing more deflating than empty glory.

Stepping on and over anyone and everyone who gets in your way to summit to the very top, only to find that at the top you are completely alone.

And if you live long enough and you pursue your own glory at the expense of others, what you will find is the more you win, the emptier you will become.

We were meant to win together, and it is community that sustains the greatness of our mutual endeavor.

And God has invited us in to be his ambassadors, to join with him in writing the pages of history on the greatest rescue and redemption mission.

People who are lost, who are separated from their loving father, their father who is desperate for them to come home and has sent his other children to make a way for them.

You need this.

You need accountability.

It's time to stop running away from it.

You need the accountability of a community, all carrying one another's burdens.

You need to test your own work and continue allowing God to refine you.

And you need to live with the end in mind.

Eternal accountability is coming.

It's time to carry one another's burdens.

Here's what we know application happens in community.

This is not community.

Community does not happen, hundreds of people at a time.

You will never roll up to Meta and see welcome home signs.

This isn't your home.

We want you in each other's homes.

This isn't your home.

This isn't church.

This is Sunday service.

And when you come here, the church comes here because you are the church.

Application happens in community.

And Pastor Andy Stanley, I love it.

He says community does not happen in rows.

Community happens in circles.

Application happens in community.

And community requires accountability.

What we do is we have life teams, and if you're already in organic community, we don't want to take you out of that to put you on a life team.

We just want to equip you.

But for those who need good Christian movement-based support around you, who need to get in community, you need to get on a life team.

We have so many stories of what God is doing through these teams.

One of them is Danny and Vinny can too.

People who have such a deep heart for the people around them.

They facilitated a life team for a long time and eventually God called them to step up and lead a life team.

And they have seen the power of community in their life.

We want to show you a little bit of what God is doing.

Y'all check out this video.

Looking at my wife at the time, I'm like, can I say?

Can I say?

We're having a conversation before we get into the draft feature.

I like you like her.

We got my head.

I like the way this is the burdens of life alone.

On August 28th, we're gonna launch our life teams, and what we do is very simple.

You review Sunday sermon and then you apply it to your life.

And by committing to how you're going to actually turn the truths of God into the power of God in your life, you're allowing yourself to be held accountable by a circle of people who love you and who care about you.

This will be your opportunity to get into intentional community with others.

It's time to quit running from accountability.

We're not called to live as ring chasers.

We are called to live as burden bearers.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we love you and we thank you.

God, we thank you that you came down to carry our burdens.

We thank you for your love for us, and I pray that we would show that love to each other, that we would get into community and seek the life that you're calling us to live.

We pray all 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.