Triggered: Bury The Cycle - Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

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

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Alright, MetaCurch, how you guys doing?

Yeah.

Hey, it's uh it's baptism, so we're gonna try that again with uh a little more energy.

Metachurch, how you guys doing?

Yeah.

Today is a day of celebration.

I'm gonna keep my part kind of short so we can get to uh the main event that we came here uh for today.

Uh I want to go to the first baptism uh right at the moment that the church actually started.

We're gonna be in Acts chapter two.

In verse 1 it says, When the day of Pentecost had arrived, they were all together in one place, and suddenly a sound like that of a violent rushing wind came from heaven, and it filled the whole house where they were singing.

And they saw tongues like flames of fire that separated and rested on each one of them.

And then they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak in different tongues, literally different languages, as the Spirit enabled them.

And when the people heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what should we do?

And Peter replied, Repent and be baptized, each one of you.

Each one of you.

Baptism is not a requirement.

It's not how you get to heaven.

Simple belief in who Jesus is and the work that he did is how you can have security of your eternity.

Baptism is not a requirement, but it is a scriptural request.

Repent and be baptized, each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

For the promise is for you and for your children, and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord God will call.

With many other words, he testified and strongly urged them, saying, Be saved from this corrupt generation.

And so those who accepted his message were baptized.

And that day, about three thousand people were added to the church.

What we're gonna do today is we're gonna walk back through our triggered series.

We're gonna quickly recap the different things that we have been learning out of scripture, that we have been learning through some behavioral science, and we're gonna look at all of it through the lens of baptism.

Back in week two, we started looking at the process of really changing our behavior.

And we had a message called Break the Cycle today.

I want to take it another step further.

My message today is called Bury the Cycle.

Would you guys pray with me?

God, we love you.

And uh, we're so thankful, God.

We're so thankful to be celebrating baptisms and just this demonstration, this visual representation of the new life that you've given us.

And so, God, I pray that you would teach us something new today.

And we know you're speaking, God.

We believe that you're here, that your spirit is in this room.

And God, I ask that we'd be receptive to what you want to say to us.

God, I thank you for those who came ready to get baptized today.

And I pray that you would already begin to work on the hearts of people who did not come here to get baptized, but who you are going to draw into baptism today.

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

And everyone who agrees say, Amen.

Amen.

We uh we really started looking at how to make deep, meaningful, and long-lasting change in our life.

And to understand that, we realize we have to understand our habits.

If you're new here, we've been learning that about 50% of our lives happen at the subconscious level.

They happen at the level of habit.

And that means that if you can change your habits, you can actually change your life.

It's an incredible reality.

And so we we looked at what we call the habit cycle, a very simple three-step process, so we can begin to understand how we get caught in all of these unhealthy patterns over time.

The first step of the habit cycle is called a cue.

And cues are all around us, and what they do is they trigger a craving in our minds, and once that craving is there, our minds will stop at pretty much nothing to satisfy that craving.

And so, for some of you, the smell of coffee is a cue, and it creates a craving for coffee that is overwhelming.

It's like if I don't get some coffee in me in the next few minutes, man, my whole mood is going to shift, I'm gonna be a terrible person to be around.

Your phone vibrating, it's a cue.

There are cues all around us, and these cravings move us from cue to routine, and the routine is the actual habit.

When you think about the behaviors in your life that you want to change, or maybe behaviors and habits you don't have in your life that you want to add, that's the routine.

And the point of the routine is to try and satisfy whatever craving was triggered by the cue.

And if the routine is right, then you go from cue to routine to reward.

And the reward is the satisfaction of the craving, and it also closes the loop on that habit cycle.

And so you smelled coffee, which triggered a craving for coffee.

You drank the coffee and you got the reward of the caffeine boost and the taste and everything that you love about it.

And so now every time you smell coffee, it will be associated with drinking it so you can get the reward.

And around and around it goes.

And something like coffee, it's it's you know, it's it's not really like life-changing, it's not really good or bad.

But over the course of the series, we've talked about other habit cycles that can run our lives, and if we're not careful, can ruin our lives.

Once we kind of understood how the habit cycle worked, we began to become investigators into our triggers.

The trigger is the entryway to the habit cycle.

So if we can disrupt negative triggers, then we can get out of negative habits, and if we can add positive triggers, then we can begin to see better habits formed in our life.

And so we started digging in.

We looked at the three primary triggers in our life: people, place, and time.

Last uh couple weeks ago, we looked at this idea of people, and just by acknowledging the enormous impact that the circle of people around us has on our lives is a beautiful starting point.

That the company you keep often determines the direction that you go, and we spent some time wrestling with this tension of how do we keep people who are ahead of us in maturity, ahead of us spiritually, ahead of us in our marriage, ahead of us in our career, ahead of us in our parenting, and really anchor ourselves to them so we can continue to move forward, but still living out the gospel message of finding people who are behind us spiritually, who don't think like we think, act like we act, behave like we behave and believe like we believe, and wrestling with that tension so that not only can we progress, but we can be the kind of people who aren't just happy to come in and meet together and think that we've actually done church, but realize that we are the church and we're meant to go out and move and reach people who are living without hope with the hope of Jesus inside of us.

You can clap for that.

We looked at the triggers of time and place.

Time and place has this massive impact.

They're triggers, they lead us into these habit cycles.

We looked at King David.

The Bible calls him a man after God's own heart, but he intentionally put himself at the wrong place at the wrong time, which led to lust, which grew to adultery, which led to manipulation, which ultimately led to murder, time and place.

It's these massive impacts in our life, and we began to investigate and try to find the triggers that are leading us to negative actions and disrupt them.

If we can break those cycles, we can change our habits, we can change our habits, we can really see change in our life.

What I want to suggest to you is that baptism has the potential in your life to be the ultimate trigger that begins to create a craving for you to not just believe in Jesus and wait for heaven, but to begin to follow him and live as if you are bringing heaven right down to the earth.

You see, there is the most powerful combination of triggers.

It takes all three of the primary ones in our life, people, place, and time, and combines them together.

And when people, place, and time come together, we call that a moment.

And all of us have had moments in our lives that are transformational.

Your wedding day is a moment, and you exchange your vows, and then you get married, and you have a couple months of marital bliss, and then they use your toothbrush.

You didn't know that was gonna happen.

Like, that's new.

Like, like I get it, we you know, we uh we we share some DNA sometimes, but but my toothbrush?

Like you're getting in the cavities with it, like I don't know that I'm okay with this, and all of a sudden you realize they're a they're a snorer.

You didn't know they were a snore.

And the first two months they didn't even sleep because they didn't want you to know they were a snore.

They slept at work, and and you you quit being so careful around each other.

It's like, did he just break wind in front of me?

Is that is this happening now?

I do not know.

And it's like you get a few months in and she wants a dog and you want a cat.

It's like, wait, what?

And it's like hard all of a sudden.

And when it gets really hard, a lot of times what helps us hold on is the moment.

We can go back to that moment where we were so in love, and we exchange some vows and we remember those vows.

Like for better or for worse.

It's moments.

We have rituals in in different cultures and different societies that are moments.

You know, in the the Jewish culture, they have bar mitzvahism, bat bar mitzvahism.

These are these moments of transitioning into adulthood here in San Antonio.

In our culture, we have kinzen yetas, which uh I that's the best I've ever said in my life.

It took me five years to know how to pronounce it.

I got to be the pastor at a at a kinch and yed, and the first thing that the family said is, Where's the priest?

Everyone wanted the priest, I was just the pastor, and I really know, but I didn't I didn't understand.

It's a moment.

And man, you guys, some of y'all are are spending some stacks on these kints and yetas.

Like, you get the right place, you pick the right time, it's a it's a certain time in this life, this this transitional moment.

You make sure the right people are there, people fly in, it's a moment.

It's a moment.

These moments are like keystone triggers.

We talked about keystone habits, these are like keystone triggers.

These are things that can remind us of who we are and who we're becoming.

And if we look back to that first baptism, it says when the day of Pentecost arrived, the day of Pentecost, this is a certain day in the Jewish life, they were all together in one place.

Place and time, the day of Pentecost, all in the same place.

And when the message starts listening, it says, uh Peter replied, Repent and be baptized, each of you people in the name of Jesus Christ, for forgiveness of your sins and the receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit.

For the promise is for you and for your children, for the people that you have influence over, for your neighbors, for your co-workers, for all the people who the Lord our God will call.

With many other words, he testified and he urged them, the people, be saved from this corrupt generation, and those who accepted the message and were baptized.

That day, 3,000 people, the day of Pentecost.

There's a time, all together in the same place, and all around the people who would start the movement that 2,000 years later on the other side of the world, we are still a part of, still having a moment of baptism.

People, place, and time.

Moments are powerful.

Moments shape and sometimes change our lives.

And I wish that I could tell you that when you come out of the baptism waters today, that your life is miraculously going to be easy and you're going to be wealthy, and all of your problems are going to go away.

But I try to be really honest about this.

Sometimes people get baptized and they're willing to go public with their faith, and their life actually gets harder.

And you might have people in your life who you care about who just aren't really able to wrap their minds around this new religious spiritual journey thing that you're on.

You might lose friends.

You might feel like you're under spiritual attack.

Your kids will not magically become respectful little angels after you go through the baptism waters.

Your marriage might still be on the rocks.

Your addiction still might have its grip on you.

Life does not magically get better.

And what you need is a moment that you can go back to.

A moment that matters, that shifts and transforms.

I've baptized people before who go out and they get the date of their baptism tattooed on their body just so that they'll see it every day, so that they will remember that they are a certified, sealed child of the living God.

And when life gets hard, they have something to trigger a memory that creates a craving to continue on the path of following Jesus even when it's difficult.

And if you get baptized today, you need to put it in your calendar.

You need to set an alert, it'll tell you every year, because I promise, a year from now, Satan is gonna be doing everything he can to knock you off course, and you're gonna get a reminder, and it's gonna pop up February 23rd, 2020.

Don't you remember that you went in the water?

Don't you remember that Jesus gave his life for you?

Don't you remember that you have a purpose?

Don't you remember that you were made for more?

And all of a sudden, by remembering, you can expand your faith and expand your vision and deepen your walk.

And some of you have kids who are getting baptized, or maybe they'll get baptized someday, and you need to put that in your calendar because they might hit high school and go astray, and they might hit college, and they might become adults and just live a life you never thought that they would live.

They might be unrecognizable to you someday.

And you look at them and you can't see your precious little boy, your precious little girl.

You need a reminder.

You need to go back to the moment and remember that they might not look like you're a kid, they used to look, but they are still children of God because when we are in the Father's hand, nothing can take us out of the Father's hand.

It's a reminder.

It's a trigger, it's a moment, it's a combination of a time that we have set aside, a place where we come and gather, and surrounded by people who care about you, but love you, and want you to live the life that you were created to live.

It's like a keystone trigger.

Now, last week we learned about keystone habits.

One habit that we can focus on that begins to knock down many of the other habits and clear a path for our purpose.

A keystone habit is a small change or habit that, when introduced into your routines, creates a domino effect that changes many areas of your life.

And we started talking about meta church's keystone habits, which are to invite and to invest.

Today we have 54 people signed up to get baptized, and a good handful of those are getting baptized at our Holotus venue that did not exist two months ago.

And hope is being brought into a new area of our city because you were willing to invite and invest.

And I'm just telling you, this is what God's waiting for.

He's waiting for a group of people who are not content to just sit in a chair for an hour and feel like they've done church.

He's waiting for people who aren't content to just meet together, but know that the actual church, the actual movement of Jesus is when we go out and move together and impact the world around us.

And I'm telling you right now, 54 baptisms matter.

Two venues matter, and maybe someday 10 venues matter.

And you will want to have been on the ground floor of seeing all that God is getting ready to do.

And where I want to kind of end my message today is where we began our series.

Because before we ever talked about Keystone habits, and before we ever investigated our triggers, and before we ever learned the habit cycles, or even began to talk about behavior at all, we started with something deeper.

We knew we needed to anchor the change in our life to something that was deep at our core.

Before we talked behavior, we talked about our identity.

And we learned that when we look to see changes in our life, we usually start with the wrong question.

The question is not what do I want to change?

That's a question of behavior.

That is looking at change from the outside in.

The question is, who do I want to become?

And when you can begin to get the picture of who God actually created you to be, when you can see what a life of purpose and impact would look like, you can get in the process of achieving it.

And baptism is a moment, and baptism is a trigger, and the reason why it is so powerful is because it is a statement of your identity.

And that's just not my thought.

That is what scripture tells us.

In Romans 6, the Apostle Paul writes, What should we say then?

Those of us who have believed in Jesus, will we have our eternity secure?

Heaven is ours someday.

What should we say?

Should we continue to sin so that grace may multiply?

Because it's like the more that we sin, the more we get to see examples of God's grace, because God's grace is so great that it covers all our sin.

So maybe if I sin more, everyone gets to see more of God's grace, right?

And so it's like we come in every week and we say, Listen, we're jacked up, I'm jacked up, you're jacked up, we're all jacked up together, but then I say, and we're working on it.

Should we just keep sinning the more we sin, the more God's grace stands in?

Paul says, Absolutely not.

How can we, who died to sin, still live in it?

He goes on to explain in verse 3.

Or are you unaware?

And this is a real question for you are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

You see, the problem between you and God is your sin.

Anything and everything you've ever done, any action you've taken or not taken, or thought that you've had, anything that is in opposition to God.

And we have all sinned and we have all fallen hopelessly short of the standard that God has set for us, and it's a real problem.

In fact, it's a hopeless situation.

There had to be something that bridged the gap between us and God.

And the only thing that could suffice was the perfect sacrifice of his son.

And when Jesus went to the cross, all of the sin, all of the sin of all of the world, past, present, and future, was put on Christ.

And when he died, our sin died.

And when they buried Jesus in a hillside in Jerusalem, Jesus and all the sin of the world went into the tomb, and three days later, the glory of God raised him back to life.

Jesus left the tomb, but the sin stayed buried inside.

And this is what baptism is in verse 4.

It says, Therefore, we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life.

This is the picture of baptism.

This is your water grave.

And what we do is we lower you in.

And before we lower you in, we say to you, you are buried with Christ.

And if you're up here, it means you've believed in Jesus.

And if you believed in Jesus, your eternity is secure.

And so now you know Jesus.

And if we wanted to, we can make it real quick, and we can help you go meet Jesus.

We'll just hold you under.

Make it real quick.

Listen, the world sucks.

It's hard, it's broken, there's a lot of pain, a lot of pain ahead of you.

And you know what?

You're out here trying your hardest to break these cycles in your life, to get better, to get closer to your purpose.

Get buried with Christ.

And we pull you back up because number one, that'd be murder, but number two, we we pull you back up because we believe you still have a life to live.

And you are raised to walk in newness of life.

That's your identity.

You've been given new life, and you're still gonna struggle.

And the addiction might still have its grip on you for a little while, and some of you might get freed from some of those cycles by the power of God instantly, and it might fall off of you like chains, and some of you may have to suffer and strive and work, and God is in it.

And although while you're living here on earth, you will never be perfect, you'll always be struggling, you will always be working to bury and break the cycle.

What isn't true yet here is already true in heaven.

You have a new life right here and right now, and when you get to glory, you will see the fullness of it.

And what this means is we put you in and we say you're buried with Christ, and you are dead to your sins, and there is no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ.

And you will stand before God someday, and he will see you through the shed blood of his own son, and he will say, Enter into my rest.

And so listen, you're gonna still work to break the cycles, and we're still gonna strive to get closer and closer to the picture of who we were actually created to be.

But I need you to know why you're suffering, that this is a moment, and you can look back on it and you can say, I'm still jacked up, and man, I'm still failing, and I'm still struggling.

But man, God didn't just break my cycles, He buried them, He buried my lust, He buried my adultery, He buried my manipulation, He buried my hurt, He buried my shame, He buried my anxiety, and I will see it on the other side of this life.

It is the reality of what baptism shows us that allows us to walk out of the life that we were created to live.

Would you guys pray with me?

Father, we love you.

We thank you for the opportunity to go through the waters.

God, I pray for those who came expecting and ready to get baptized today.

I pray that this will be a moment for them.

A moment that shapes and changes them, a moment they can look back to and remember who you are and what you've done for them.

And God, I pray if there's anyone that your spirit is drawing to be baptized today who did not come prepared, that they would not leave this service without following through with what you're calling them to do.

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

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

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If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

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And I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.