Formed by His Presence // Formed Pt. 3 // Luke Humbrecht

Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast.

Church of the Lookout is in Boulder, Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love.

Visit us online at the lookout.church.

Hey, good morning, everybody.

Good morning.

Good to see you all.

Yeah, if you have your Bibles, you can open up to the gospel of Luke today.

You can do that.

Good to see you guys.

Let me just get oriented here.

Yeah, let's just take a moment and pray while our students are leaving the room.

And let's just become aware together.

Just wherever you're sitting, close your eyes for a moment.

And feel your feet on the ground.

Take a deep breath.

Breathe out.

Yeah, just receive the gift of breath today, the breath that God's put in your lungs.

And Jesus, I thank you today as we open your word.

What a privilege it is to be able to worship freely today.

What a privilege it is to be able to gather together as a people, unashamedly.

Not in secret, but in public, God, we get to come together, unlike other places in the world.

God, let us never lose the wonder of what it means to come together in your presence.

And I just thank you for this morning.

And this time, I just pray for a spiritual alertness, awakeness to your presence today.

We love you.

In Jesus' name.

We pray.

Amen.

Amen.

So uh yeah, like Piper said at the beginning of the service, just want to thank uh all of you who participated in the Global Week of Prayer.

We did a uh a prayer gathering on Thursday night.

It was a fantastic gathering.

Many of you guys made extra space this week just to be with Jesus.

We want to encourage you.

This is the life that we get to live, all right?

And uh and we're gonna talk about a little bit more about that today, but uh I I just I I shared this on Thursday night.

I'll share it with you.

I do think we're in a season, I believe we're in a season where the phrase that came to mind uh this last week was I felt like the Lord said to fire up the furnace, and particularly as it relates to prayer, to fire up the furnace.

And that there is a, you know, you guys need to know the way that we move forward as a church, the the one of the key activities, the key places that we hold together as a church is in a place of prayer that happens individually, of just tuning our lives to his presence, and it happens communally.

So as we move forward, there's gonna be more opportunities to come together in prayer.

But I just want you guys to know that they're not peripheral things, they're not outside things.

This is central to staying in tune with what God is doing in this church and staying awake to his purposes.

Are you guys with me this morning?

Anyone with me this morning?

All right.

All right, you guys gotta wake up today.

Um, so we're gonna jump back into the series that we've been in for the last couple weeks.

I do want to encourage you to go uh to go back and listen to the first two messages of the series.

I'm not gonna re-recap them, I'm just gonna recap a couple key ideas.

Number one, you are always being formed by something.

The question is not if, but what, and into whom.

So we are all a product.

We are all being shaped into a certain kind of person, and that is what a life with Jesus actually means.

And every generation of Christians has to learn how to faithfully follow Jesus among the pressures, the forces, the temptations of our day.

Every generation of Christians has to ask the same question.

What does it look like to live faithfully to God with the unique pressures that we're facing today?

And this means that what that means is all of us in this room, believers everywhere, in every country, have to ask this question.

And then we need to position ourselves to let Jesus renew our minds in order to give ourselves to a way of life together.

A way of life that looks different.

It has a distinctness to it.

Um, some of the language in the New Testament talks about a peculiar people.

Do you guys understand that Christians ought to live the kind of lives that cause people to go, huh?

Right?

Cause people to go, there must what is happening in that person's life that would cause them to live like that?

That ought to happen with believers everywhere.

But sometimes we just we just kind of end up in a flow.

And we over time it becomes so normal we forget to even question it any longer.

Fish do not question the water they're swimming in.

They cannot see the water they're swimming in.

And a lot of times it's hard to see the pressures that and and the forces all around us that shape us into a certain kind of people.

So in the third and fourth century, the desert fathers said, We need to preserve ourselves unto the Lord.

Desert fathers and mothers, excuse me, they need to preserve ourselves unto the Lord.

So they created a way of life, they called it a rule of life, and basically it was a commitment to counterformational habits.

Like we're gonna give ourselves to something that a way of life that forms us into people who look like Jesus and where the love of God is at the centerpiece of everything we do.

So today we're gonna talk about three of those kinds of habits that we are uh embodying here at the Lookout.

But just to bring it back, and and for some of you who are new, newer to the church, this is gonna be helpful for you to understand why we do what we do and what is the heartbeat here.

We say this a lot, and we'll just say it again.

Our vision is Jesus.

This is what we say.

When we talk about beholding God, it's not something else.

It's like at the end of the day, the reward for following Jesus is Jesus.

Okay, can we just some people are like, hey, that's that's like that seems like you know uh a no-brainer, but it's it's actually not because we make the reward a lot of other things.

We think the reward is something no, the reward for following Jesus is Jesus and living life with him and inviting others to do the same.

So the way we say it is our vision is Jesus, abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe, inspiring love.

Everybody, high-five the person you're sitting next to.

There we go.

All right.

That was so enthusiastic.

I appreciate that.

So that first phrase, abiding in his presence, is what I want to talk about today, this life of abiding in his presence, because we are people that are formed in his presence.

So if you have your Bibles, we're gonna start in Luke chapter 10 and enter into this story.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

Many of us know, and we're gonna enter back into it again.

Luke chapter 10, starting in verse 38.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

Now, as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house, and she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching.

But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she went up to him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?

Tell her then to help me.

But the Lord answered, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.

Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken from her.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Yeah.

So a few years ago, we hosted an event here at the church, and uh it was uh it was a marriage event, and some of the speakers came in that some of you, a couple of familiar names, Pete and Jerry Schizero, they were here and they were preparing for an event.

We were doing sound checks and seating arrangements kind of like before a gathering, you're getting everything right and making sure you know we prepared for all the people coming in, you know, registration.

We were a little bit behind on schedule.

And uh, and so they were coming in.

I was like, oh man, we got to do these sound checks.

And so I was starting to feel some anxiety because I was the one hosting this thing.

And uh and so before before the thing started on that Friday night, I I remember uh Jerry Schizero, she was uh she was over here and she was taking in the view, as we all do in this room for the first time.

And you're like, Are you kidding me?

This is incredible, right?

And she was over there, and in this particular moment, it was when the sun was setting, and it was a sunset that could kind of look something like this.

I think we have a photo of that.

And you know, a very familiar, we don't see the sunset on Sunday mornings, but it's spectacular in the evenings.

And uh, and she was just blown away.

So she's over there sitting.

I'm I'm over here feeling, all right, I gotta get her up to the stage to do the sound check.

She's over there sitting and watching the sun.

So I approached her gently and said, Hey, hey, hey, Jerry, uh, we're ready for your sound check.

And then she she just like she held up her hand, she's like, Shh, look at that.

Wow.

And I was like, Did you just shush me?

Are you allowed to do that?

I'm the pastor here.

Nobody shushes me.

And she didn't even let me finish my sentence before she judged me.

She judged me a couple times.

And it pointed.

She's like, Look, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

She's just waiting for that sun to just go right before.

And and what happened was she wasn't trying to be rude, she was being attentive, and she was refusing to let the kind of the urgency of what needed to happen block her from being able to see maybe the most important thing of that particular moment.

So I did my best to share her enthusiasm.

Like, oh yeah, look at that.

That's great.

Wow, beautiful sunset.

But inside I was thinking, we gotta go.

We don't got time for this.

There's a million sunsets.

Find another one, right?

And I was thinking about all of the things.

I we had ministry to do, people.

Like we have things to do.

People are coming in, we're creating an environment, right?

So while I was thinking about all the people coming in, she was consumed with thinking about the one who made the light.

And to be clear, she never communicated that the gathering was unimportant.

She never, you know, she of course she came in and did the sound check and all the thing, but it was a moment like that that I realized that there's there's there's there's times when things are happening, but oftentimes God is calling us to a different kind of attention in every particular moment.

It's possible to be at church and still miss where God is at work.

It's possible to be carried away in our lives and miss where God is at work.

And that's that's really what it is.

It is possible to be so carried away by the life God has given us that we forget to enjoy it with Him.

And this goes for all of us and not just ministry moments.

This is the life that we've been given, the life that you've been given, the work that you've been given to, the family you've been given to, the things that you have your hands on.

So many times we're carried along by the life that God has entrusted to us that we forget that He's calling us to be with Him in a new kind of way.

So, this story of Mary and Martha, this classic story, we've read a million times.

Now, this painting I want to show you is a painting finished in 1655 by the Dutch uh painter Johannes Vermeer.

I'll talk about this in a second, but one of the things in the story of Mary and Martha that's really interesting, I've heard this story my whole life, and traditionally the way this story is taught, it's just easy for us to categorize it right away.

It's a very clear kind of moral to the story, if you want to put it like that.

It's a story, and it has like, you know, it's it's clear.

Okay, there's a good sister and there's a bad sister.

And you want to be more like the good sister, less like the bad sister.

Don't make Jesus mad.

Don't be working too hard.

Stop what you're working and sit on the floor for hours at a time.

And I've always I've always like read this story with this kind of underlying tone in Jesus.

I just mad at him just being like almost scolding Martha, like Martha, don't you get it?

You know, like this whole thing of if you just like got with the picture, you'd understand what the most important thing is, right?

And I always got this like tone of Jesus almost like disappointed, almost like you should know better, Martha.

Um but it's really interesting when you uncover the story.

I don't think that's what's going on.

No, let me just ask, how many get-it-done people do we have in the room here?

Really?

Like more than that, probably who's married to a get-it-done person?

Okay, yeah, there we go.

Um, I'm married to a get-it-done person.

Woo! Oh my god, I married up.

She's not here right now because she's getting things done with the with our kids.

Um, but like uh my wife is a get-it-done person.

I love get-it-done people.

I love I love get-it-done people, and and I think we just need to just back off on Martha for a second.

Okay?

If you're hard on Martha, I'm just saying, back off.

Because she's a get-it-done person, and we need get-it-done people, okay?

So listen, let me just point out a few things.

Martha, can I just point out this is her house.

So, Mary, you know, thank you, Mary, for taking your seat on the floor.

But this is Martha's house.

All right.

She she's paying the mortgage.

She was the one that actually invited Jesus in.

This whole party wouldn't have happened unless she went out in the street.

She she and she what she was the one who welcomed Jesus into the so she hosted the party.

It's just her idea.

So let's not be so hard on Martha, right?

Mary is not more spiritual than Martha.

I just want to put this in here.

If you're a get it done person, and then you look at the other people who just, you know, you know, people who have an easier time lingering or just being present.

It's we're not talking about personality styles.

Mary is not more spiritual than Martha.

There's different things going on here.

Now, I want to point out that hospitality, especially in the first century, this was the expectation.

Hospitality is the right, right response when you find out God is in town.

Okay?

God's coming to Erie.

You get your house ready, you make some food.

Okay?

Hospitality is a good thing.

And here's the here's the interesting thing in the story we read about the way Jesus addresses Mary and Martha.

Jesus never tells her to stop serving.

He never says, Stop what you're doing.

You're wasting your time.

He never said that.

Jesus never said that what she was doing was wrong.

He never said that.

And in fact, the word that's used here for her uh her service is the word diokenea in Greek, which we know this is where we get the word deacon from in Acts chapter 6.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

It's a it's a it's a it's a beautiful word that talks about service and ministry.

So she's ministering to the Lord.

Now, in fact, in John's gospel, there's another scene where Martha is serving again.

It's after her brother was resurrected from the dead, and she's serving dinner to Jesus and guests in the same way, and nobody corrects her in that scene.

Okay?

So there's nothing, I don't want to over-emphasize the point, but I just want to say in reading the story, it is not a uh a diminishment of her gifts.

In fact, I think there's a different invitation here because what Jesus does with her, it was not to convince her that what she was doing wrong, what he was doing is diagnosing an internal condition that he was calling anxiety.

She was anxious and troubled about many things.

He didn't have a problem with her activity.

What he was highlighting is Martha, there is something going on inside of you that's distracting you from maybe one thing that you should be paying attention to.

So this word anxious, the word means to be pulled in different directions.

Anybody ever feel pulled in different directions?

I would say that is the sign of the times.

We live in an age of anxiety and nobody quite knows why.

But we feel pulled in many different directions, right?

The problem was not that she was working, the problem is that she was being torn apart while she was working.

And so Jesus, he addresses her and he says her name not just once but twice.

He says, Martha, Martha.

And it's really interesting because when a name is said twice, there's actually it's almost like a term of endearment.

There's a tenderness to it.

Martha, Martha.

And he would do this with Simon, Peter, right?

And he'd say, Simon, Simon.

And by saying his name twice, it was it was this, it was it was a friendship kind of play on words of like, hey, Martha, it wasn't Martha, Martha, you know, it was it was it was Martha, my friend.

Do you see what's happening to you on the inside?

He says, one thing is necessary, one thing is necessary, and and and that that automatically pulls us back into the scriptures and to particularly the Psalms, Psalms 27, as David would write that very thing, Psalm 27, 4.

One thing I asked of the Lord that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord.

And there was a single-mindedness to David that Jesus is pulling on, like, hey, as you're sharing this space with me, I want you to change like there's an invitation to change the way that you're showing up.

The one thing that Jesus is referring to is to be fully present with him and to enjoy his company.

He never said stop what you're doing, but he invited her.

The one thing that you get to do when Jesus is at your table is to be present with him and to enjoy his company.

It's a beautiful painting when you spend time with it.

And I know it doesn't quite do it justice, putting it on a screen, you can't see it super well.

But there's a great composition, almost a triangular flow to this piece.

And you see, you f you experience and somewhat the tenderness of Jesus.

He's relaxed, and the way he's looking at Martha is uh it's not in a an angry or scolded way.

Mary is relaxed.

Martha is not relaxed in this photo.

Martha is hunched over, she has things to do.

And and what's really interesting when you when you actually spend more time with this painting, if you zoom in a little bit, you can see in even in their eyes, Mary there on the left.

Her eyes are open, they're alert, they're attentive, they are just locked in to Jesus.

And and Martha, her eyes are almost shut.

Her eyes are almost closed.

And there was a there was something different.

It's almost like the painter was highlighting this thing of two people in the room, two people with Jesus.

One could see him and one could not see him because she was anxious about many things.

And the difference between Mary and Martha in this particular thing is one of them could stop while the work was unfinished, and one of them couldn't.

And her anxiety, this internal condition of being torn apart, being pulled apart, this was shaping how she was showing up.

This was forming her.

Okay?

So in her anxiety, she's blind to the fact that she's got God at her table.

I don't know if you imagine how absurd that would be to have God at your table.

And so somehow the condition from the inside was that she was blind to God sitting at her table.

She was unable to listen to his voice, she's unable to commune with him, she's unable to stop what she's doing, and she's becoming resentful.

She's becoming resentful of her sister.

Because that's what anxiety does.

It produces a lot of different kinds of things in us, right?

It shapes us into a certain kind of person.

And you know, but but the thing is for us, as we as we pull back a little bit, Martha, Martha's objection is this exact objection every one of us makes.

Lord, do you not care that there's work to do?

Don't you know what's happening?

See, nobody argues against prayer.

Like in this room, everybody believes prayer is such a good idea.

And stopping to be with Jesus, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love that.

I'm so into that.

But when it comes down to it, creating untime uh unrushed time with Jesus, we we we it's just too easy to be able to basically make a case that I want to do that, but right now and in this season, there is just too much on the table.

And I will get to that soon, but right now it's just not realistic.

And so what happens is our time with God gets squeezed out of our life.

We always think that there's a next time I'll get to it.

Prayer meetings.

This is why prayer meetings are generally just not well attended in this church or any church.

And this isn't a condemning statement.

This is a real the realistic statement.

Because prayer meetings, when you look at the scope of your life, and I got kids in sports, and I got, I got, I got things I got to get to that I didn't finish at work today, and we got other things, and we just need around, it just it just it just diminishes because it very rarely rises to a place of, yeah, that feels like a priority in my life right now.

I'm gonna go pray with other people.

And this is what happens in an age of anxiety, in an age of manyness and muchness, is the things that just the simple act of creating environments to be with Jesus end up being the last things that kind of make the list.

I got kids at home, I got, I got, I got things I gotta get to.

But Jesus says to Martha, he said, Listen, Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.

Now, a portion is an interesting word.

This is a very interesting word.

So a portion refers to a couple different things.

One, it refers to food.

And so this is a scene about food.

In fact, some scholars actually think that Jesus was commenting, or his comment to Martha was about how many dishes she was preparing.

And so it almost like, hey, Martha, you're concerned about making all of these different dishes, but only one dish was necessary.

Like chips and guac would have been fine, right?

But you've made 10 things for me, right?

I mean, some scholars like the one thing he's referring to is you don't have to make a lot of things, just make one thing, you'll be fine.

So that may have been part of it.

He may have been making a joke and then pulling it back into, but Mary is feasting on me.

That's what she's feasting on.

So that could be it.

But the word portion also in the Old Testament refers to what else?

Land.

And you look at the 12 tribes of Israel, they were allotted land.

They all got land except for Levite, the Levites.

Levi.

What did he get?

God.

You think he felt gypped?

Probably at first.

Everybody got land, and I just get you.

And so they all got land, and you know, but the Levites were preserved from God.

He said, No, you're not going to get land because I am your portion.

And the reason why that is actually very important to remember because land as a portion is great, but land can be taken by debt, by famine, by a king who wants your vineyard.

The whole exile of Israel is about losing its portion.

They were losing their portion all the time.

They all lost their portion.

But not Levi, because his portion could not be taken from him.

His portion was God Himself.

And so it's almost like Jesus is saying, look, listen, when you give yourself to me, you're giving yourself to something that can never be taken from you.

This house can be taken from you.

The food that you're preparing, your gifts, even, your ministry, your work can be taken from you.

Some of you, you need to be reminded, you are more fragile than you think you are.

You are one breath away.

I mean, we don't know, we don't know when we'll breathe our final breath.

You don't know how much capacity you will have in your body and in your mind, in your soul and your spirit.

You don't know.

But one thing we do know is that the time that you spend with him when you feast on him, when we prepare ourselves for Jesus, it cannot be taken away from us.

It is a portion that is eternal.

And this is where Jesus, his invitation to Martha wasn't into a passive way of life.

He isn't saying, you know, I hope all my, I hope all my people for all time just quit their jobs and just, they're just laying on the floor around me.

That's not what he's saying.

He's saying, no, there he his his invitation to Martha is this that it's possible to live in such a way where you are not pulled apart into many directions and away from my presence.

It's possible to live and work in such a way where you're not divided in your being.

That sounds like a good invitation.

That sounds like a that sounds like an invitation I want to respond to.

And this is no different than what Jesus always called us his disciples to.

Mark 3, 13.

When he when he called his disciples for the first time, he says, it says he went up on the mountain and called him, called to him those he desired.

That's so good.

And they came to him, and he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons.

That sounds fun.

But just look at the sequence here.

He calls to himself those he desired, that number one, they might be with him.

Do you guys know that your first assignment with God is not casting out demons, it's being with him.

Yes, he wants you to walk in authority.

He has things, he has gifts, he has purposes and plans for your life, he's work that he's given you to do to be a good steward.

Your number one call as a disciple is first to be with him.

That's what he called you to.

That's the same as true.

He desires you, and he desires that you be with him.

And then out of that being flows doing.

This is the design of the God-aware life that out of our being flows doing.

And what I love about this passage, in this one passage, you have both presence, family, and mission.

It's being with God together and then doing the works of God together.

Come on.

This is a good thing.

And so Jesus, he's been, he's always been inviting his disciples for all of time in the same invitation to Martha, and the same invitation to the twelve.

And the invitation is to learn how to spend every waking moment aware of his presence and attentive to his voice, and to practice that until it becomes a normal way of life, until you don't know any other way.

We practice it until it becomes habituated that we actually, this is the life that we live.

Now, listen, I know I'm a little bit preaching to the choir.

This is this is not a new idea at the lookout, right?

This is why we linger in worship.

This is why we do meetings, times of prayer, and fasting throughout the year.

This is why we always create moments.

It's one of our core messages.

But again, I believe it's one of those things that it's easy to love talking about, but then still get swept up into the motion of our everyday lives and formed into a different way over time.

We can it can never be overemphasized that the kind of people that we are called to be is first people that cherish and love being with him as our first assignment.

Are you guys with me?

So Jesus, he continues unfolding this as an imagination.

John 15.

He tells his disciples, abide in me.

That's where we get the abiding language.

You know, abide in me and I in you.

As a branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.

I am the vine and you are the branches.

Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

And so this word abiding is this word meno.

It actually means to remain, to stay, to dwell, to make your home in.

And that's the call to action, he said, abide, which is something that you can practice.

And basically, the the over the overarching idea is we're all actually abiding.

You are abiding in something.

If you want to know what you're abiding in, it's wherever your mind goes when you're done doing a task or where you're waiting in line at the bank or at the gas station.

It's the gap in between the thing, this thing, and the next thing.

Where does your mind and your heart go?

That's the litmus test of where you're abiding.

No, what am I saying?

Don't think about anything else.

I'm like, no, no, no.

But listen, a disciple of Jesus has a regular way of returning home through the course of your day.

We return home.

Your home is nowhere else but his presence.

Your home is his face and his gaze.

That's your home.

Your home isn't anywhere else.

That's the only home.

That will be your only home for all of eternity.

It's him.

And so if we find that we're not returning to him over the course of our day, then we haven't actually responded yet to that invitation of learning the abiding life.

Of we get to come back to him in our thoughts and in our prayers and in our awareness that he's just with us.

And Paul seems to think we can get here.

He writes some crazy stuff like this in 1 Thessalonians.

He says, Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God.

In Christ Jesus for you.

Oh my gosh.

Anybody praying without ceasing?

How are you guys doing?

How are you guys doing with that one?

Pray without ceasing.

He's he rattles it off.

Like it's, yeah, did you deal a little this, a little that, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.

But he he he he says it almost like he's like, yeah, what else, what other option do we have?

But it it does cause us to kind of pull back and say, what does he mean by prayer?

So many, so many times we think that prayer is just this endless dialogue of communication.

It is that it is communication with God.

But even more than that, it's a posture of continual openness to God.

It's a way of life where there's just this, there's like every moment, there's an openness of, huh?

Let's we get to do this together.

So you're changing the diapers and you're praying without ceasing.

You're getting your oil changed, you're grocery shopping and you're praying without ceasing.

You're filling out the tax, the tax report, you're praying without ceasing.

Because it's not just about praying for things and asking for things, it's about a way of life that is so completely aware of the withness and the fullness of God that we forgot that there's any other option.

How do you get there?

Well, according to Paul, according to Jesus, apparently you have to practice that.

And this is what I love, Brother Lawrence.

He has this seminal book called Practicing the Presence of God.

That's the language that he uses.

Um, that it's something apparently you get to practice.

And he's a Carmelite uh monk in a monastery in Paris.

He was actually a dishwasher, which is pretty wild.

And he had this revelation that, like, oh, I get to practice, I get to actually like practice this.

Like, oh, it's almost like you practice anything else.

You practice law, right?

Which okay, practicing medicine, practicing piano, practicing Spanish, practicing the flute, you practice basketball.

And what does that mean?

It means you're showing up regularly to get better at it, to work on it.

To like, I'm gonna I'm gonna habituate this as my everyday way of life until it's something that just becomes normative in my life.

So here's what Brother Lawrence said.

He said, The time of busyness does not with me differ from the time of prayer in the noise and clatter of my kitchen while several persons are at the same time calling for different things.

I possess God in his great tranquility as if I were upon my knees before the blessed sacrament.

So he's like, Listen, man, I'm having a great time washing dishes.

And that's something that Martha could have heard much earlier on.

If she knew that while she was in the kitchen hosting Jesus, she may have been able to do the same thing.

She may have not changed anything she was doing, but done it without feeling pulled apart.

There's a single mind, there's a quality of life in Christ that uh we're invited into a single-mindedness.

And how refreshing of a picture of a group of people on the face of this earth, believers who are living single-minded in the age of anxiety.

It's what we need, it's what you need, it's what I need, and by God's grace we're gonna get there.

Jesus modeled this.

He said, I and the Father are one.

The Son, he's like, I don't do anything of my own accord.

I only do what I see my Father doing.

He's like, My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.

So he said he didn't separate his life out.

It was all this just breathing in and breathing out, just this beautiful fellowship with God.

And even, but even Jesus had to practice the presence of God.

This is wild.

Even Jesus, he had to practice this.

How did he practice this?

He withdrew to desolate places to pray.

He did this all the time.

He would be with the crowds and he'd minister and he would withdraw to desolate places to pray.

In Mark 1.35, it says, and rising very early in the morning while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place and he prayed.

So Jesus had a habituated way of life that oftentimes early in the morning, even at night, he would go, he'd have secret places all around Jerusalem, Galilee, where he knew he would go meet with God.

He had secret places.

It became a habit where he had a place to be loved by God and to be with his father, able to stay attentive, so that he had something to overflow even in his ministry, right?

I just want you to picture this.

So we're talking about formation in a certain sense.

We can get formed in an age of anxiety, an age of muchness and maniness, or we can be formed as people of presence.

And what happens is when you're formed into a person of presence, it changes not just your time with God, it changes your time with everybody.

Do you know when so have you ever seen when somebody, you know somebody has been spending time with Jesus?

Like you, there's a quality.

There's a quality about them.

You just know.

It's like what Piper is praying earlier.

There's a fragrance, there's a lightness, there's a joy.

Someone with an interior condition of rest allows others to come into rest.

You know what I'm saying?

One person is anxious in the house.

It's everybody's anxious.

If you're at work and you know you have that one co-worker who's always uptight, and then everybody's uptight around that person.

So everybody's like walking on eggshells.

That's what how this is how this works.

Anxiety is actually contagious.

But so is peace.

So is the presence of God.

So when you come to rest, others can come to rest.

When you're able to be interrupted, it allows people to relax as well.

When someone can genuinely unhurry and stop their lives and not just repeat cycles of work and exhaustion and burnout, but stewards their daily and weekly rhythms in such a way that it preserves the giving and receiving of the love of God, you can tell.

There's a quality of life to that.

It's it's somebody who know it knows the voice of God well enough to be led by it and to tell it apart from the other voices.

It's somebody who does actually works hard and is generative and lives with great purpose, but is very single-minded.

My will is to do the food, my food is to do the will of the Father.

That I have one thing that He's given me to do.

That sounds like somebody without real problems, right?

It sounds like that person needs to get a real job.

Um, because that sounds a little pie in the sky.

But listen, guys, Jesus wouldn't talk about it, Paul wouldn't talk about it if it weren't the an actual invitation for everyday followers of Jesus.

And if it doesn't work for the mom with kids and it doesn't work for anybody, it it can work for all of us, and that's the invitation, but it happens as we practice it.

So, how do you practice?

Um God, there's so many markers we could point to.

There's so many things.

As a community, we just want to name a few things, overarching practices that we desire to be true for all of us at the lookout.

Okay?

And we've shown this photo a couple last couple weeks.

This is a photo of a trellis.

And this is similar to, you know, when we use the language, a rule of life, not rules for life, but a rule of life, basically a scaffolding around our life that allows us to be a part of what God is building, building our lives.

We sing this song about I will build my life upon your life.

Well, how do you do that?

Well, you do that by practicing in every part of life, being with Him.

And so in the place of practicing the presence, there's three things that I want to highlight.

And we're gonna I'm gonna highlight these and then we're just gonna take a moment together before Jesus.

But three three things in particular that we want to keep coming back to, we want to talk about, train, give tools in, resource you, that everyone just becomes proficient in actually following Jesus in these ways.

And these are gonna sound very basic, but I'm just telling you there's layers, these are counterformational.

So three things.

One, through scripture, so that we can become a community of fidelity to God's word in a culture of compromise, through prayer, so we can become a community of communion with God in a culture of distraction, and through Sabbath keeping, so we can become a community of rest and delight in a culture of hurry and exhaustion.

And our hope is that as we hold these things before the Lord, um we can trust that as we avail ourselves to God to God in these particular ways, it allows us to resist, to not conform to the patterns of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind.

Now, I just want to talk about each three of these for a moment here.

Scripture, of course, we're Christians, we we read the scripture, but so many of us, if we look at our scripture practice, if you're honest, there's so many of us that read the Bible when we think of it.

It's like, you know, we have a Bible in our house and we think about it, we do it.

But very few of us have a daily habit on par with the amount of times that we do other things on a daily basis.

And and in an age where we are inundated by information and opinion, um, we need a habit of being in the scriptures.

Now, being in the scriptures doesn't necessarily mean we've been with Jesus.

Even Satan knew the scriptures.

A lot of well-meaning people who know the scriptures, it's clear, you're not, you haven't been with Jesus.

You've been in the scriptures, but you have not been with him.

But when we come to the scriptures, or what when we come to Jesus, so let me say it like this you can be in the scriptures without actually having been with Jesus, but you cannot have been with Jesus without having been in the scriptures.

It is our food.

So, in a world that prioritizes our opinions and our thoughts and our feelings over the foundation of God's word, we counterform into the image of Christ by doing exactly what Jesus did.

He immersed himself in the scriptures, he was able to quote the scriptures because he memorized them.

Even as a young child, he would be in the temple learning the story of God.

It was so inside of him that he was able to still live from that place.

And so, what does that mean for us?

I just want to, and I'm not even saying you need to rush out and do something.

I'm wanting, I'm inviting you to hold a question before the Lord.

What does your daily rhythm look like of being in the scriptures?

But whether that's a Bible reading plan or even your Bible app, or having having a way to move through the scriptures, preferably with each other, but even by yourself, just to be with Jesus and the story of God.

How often are you doing lect you to vena and actually slowly unfolding the story versus cramming cramming a reading plan in, right?

There's so many ways to be with God in the scriptures.

But I'm telling you, without this, we we can lose, we can compromise our fidelity to God and a world that has an opinion on everything we ought to be doing.

But as a community, we're gonna be ones who stand on the word of God here.

Amen.

You guys alive?

But prayer, it's a community of communion with God and a culture of distraction.

This is why we did the week that we just did.

This is why we have all kinds of different prayer: intercessory prayer, listening prayer, prayer walking, silence and solitude.

But at its core, as we've already talked about, it's communion with God.

It's returning to Him over the course of our day.

For many of us, we say a prayer in the morning or maybe at night, but then we're just kind of the whole middle kind of drops out.

And it's a series of endless to-do list disruptions and distractions.

But what if we upheld the traditions of Daniel and David, who actually ordered their days around morning, noon, and night, several times a day, actually setting alarm?

Uh, Travis and Jeanette, one of the things I love about Travis and Jeanette is they actually have an alarm on their watch that they set every hour.

They set every hour and it goes off, and it just and it and every hour and that alarm goes off, they just turn their attention back to God to enjoy Him, even if it's for 15 seconds, and then they go back to whatever they're doing, right?

But they're training.

themselves to be aware that no matter there is no part of my day that is not touched by the presence of God.

And so we create rhythms of prayer even in the middle of the day.

Some of us it's like, man, I have a really hard time doing that.

But I'm saying it doesn't even need to be, you need to stop and find all these things to say, but just stop and in silence, being in prayer with Jesus at lunch or in the middle of the day, not because it's a duty, but because how could your day get any better than if you just stopped and were with him?

How can it get any better than them?

And so we want to give you tools.

There's even books out in the in the foyer right now.

How to pray.

If you feel like, man, I suck at praying.

I'm terrible at this.

Like, listen, you're not alone.

It's really hard, especially like we're living in a time of attention deficit.

It's not just a diagnosis for a few.

It's like, I think we're in mass attention deficit disorder.

Everything is getting shorter, sermons are getting shorter, concerts are getting shorter, shows are getting shorter, books are getting shorter, everything's getting shorter because we're trying to accommodate for people shrinking attention.

But what if, as the people of God, we taught each other how to grow in our capacity for attention?

What if we actually grew in our capacity to behold so that we could receive more of Him?

This is what we want to get into over this next year, is growing in our capacity.

And the last practice, though, that you're going to continue to hear more about, especially around here, and some of you already practice this.

Some of you, this is kind of a kind of a bizarre thing, probably the least practice out of all three, but Sabbath keeping.

And it's about becoming a community of rest and delight and a culture of hurry and exhaustion.

And it's maybe the most challenging thing to order our time in this way, but this is why in the Ten Commandments, this was the longest out of all the Ten Commandments, that you ought to honor the Sabbath because you ought to have at least one day a week where you you remember that you owe it to God to actually enjoy your life.

You owe it to Him, to actually enjoy the life He's given you for at least a day a week.

And it's different than a cultural day off.

Like every we all have days off, but a day, a Sabbath day has a different quality to it because there's there's a there's a worshipful nature to it.

It's where we stop our work, we respond, then we delight in him.

We actually we actually have fun and enjoy the lives he's given.

And then in that, there's worship inside of it.

And I'm not saying you need to rush out and all of a sudden just rearrange your calendar.

We need to learn about it.

I'm just saying be open to it as you leave this place, as you hear more about a practice like keeping the Sabbath, which Jesus did.

All of the disciples did, this was just part of their way of life, which is why you don't see it taught a lot, because why would they teach on things they were already doing?

This was just what they did.

They would go to the temple several times a day.

They would Sabbath each week.

He got in trouble on the Sabbath because, you know, for a lot of different reasons.

But he even said, you know, Sabbath, man was not made for uh Sabbath, Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Basically meaning Sabbath is a gift to us.

Why would we not receive one of God's best gifts to actually learn what it means to be a human being and not just a human doing?

Come on.

So my encouragement today is to be open to rhythms of Sabbath, rhythms of prayer, rhythms of being in a word in the word, similar to the way you have rhythms of going to the gym and rhythms of going to the grocery store and rhythms of checking your phone.

We've habituated everything else but the things that actually bring life.

And what if as a community we talked like and we just as a community, we built a rule of life together, a way of life, where we actually are checking in with each other and saying, hey, how is this part of your life going?

Are you tending to the presence of God?

And listen, as I mentioned all three of these things, I just want to say, there's no one size fits all.

What this looks like for you might be different than what it looks like for somebody else.

And so even starting with the Sabbath practice, it's like you might not be able to get to a full day yet.

You you'd be good just to get two hours, two hours of Sabbath, of a time set aside as sacred, holy unto the Lord.

And that's great.

Start where you are.

And as you practice, as you practice, just start small, you practice, you'll find that capacity is growing in your life.

And you're becoming a different kind of person.

And while people are getting more and more anxious, you're becoming more and more at peace.

Yeah.

I'm not saying that you'll never be anxious.

Let's just be, I mean, I'm not saying it's all pie and screw.

I'm not, I'm not saying that you never have a bad day.

I'm just saying when you build a home that you can return to, it's a way of life that Jesus has made possible for all those who call on his name.

Maybe you're here today and and you and you feel, you came in today, you feel pulled in a lot of directions.

You feel that in your core.

You can't, it's hard to reconcile your conversations with your spouse, your conversations with your employers or your coworkers, contracts that you're waiting to get signed, things that are left unresolved, and you got to get to this and that, and then we got this health thing that we're dealing with over here.

Come on, let's be honest.

Like a lot of us feel that.

And you came into this room feeling that I just believe, I believe that God's invitation for us, even for you today, as we call on his name, as we receive his love, he reintegrates us as one person before him.

You don't have to be so torn.

I've given you one life, and you can love me with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

It all belongs together.

Let's just do this together.

Let's close our eyes.

And if you were in that place, oh gosh.

I need a way out of this anxiety.

This is this is your time.

This is your moment.

It starts with Jesus.

It starts with remembering he's with you, he's right next to you.

Maybe that's a new thought to you.

So just wherever you are, just say his name, Jesus.

Jesus.

And I want you to picture his face.

I invite you to picture the face of Jesus.

There's a writer named Anthony DeMello, and he has this beautiful line, this invitation, just behold God beholding you and smiling.

Take a moment to behold God, to be holding you and smiling.

Behold the face of you.

The words only one thing is necessary.

Choose the good of worship.

Come into my rest.

So today, Jesus, we behold you, we love you, and we thank you.

There's no greater joy or gift than to be where you are.

We're just going to take some time and sing this song.

And I just invite you just to continue keeping your gaze on Jesus and letting him fill you to overflowing again with his love.

Alright, everybody, let's go ahead and stand up.

Ministry team will release you to the sides.

So we've got a prayer team queuing up on the sides if anyone wants to get some prayer afterwards.

Um, you know, as listening to this message, uh, it wasn't planned for me to come up here today, um, but I just asked Luke if I could, because as I was listening, um, you know, a couple weeks ago when we started this series, I I jumped up before Luke came up and I asked you guys, and some of you maybe weren't here, so I'm filling you all in, but I just asked that we all just particularly tune in to this series and that we make an additional effort to really lock in and receive um what's happening in this series.

And it just really impresses again on me in this message that um we're being asked as a community by God to unite and do some things here that are that are gonna have some big effects in this community.

So I don't know if you caught it at the end because Luke, he's diplomatic and he's gentle and he gives you permission and invitation, but there was a call to action at the end of that message.

And you might have missed it because it was painted as an imagination of imagine if we as a community committed to a rule of life.

What if on this first point of practicing the presence, abiding in the presence of Jesus, what if we all actually committed to scripture, prayer, and Sabbath?

And I don't want you to miss that is a call to action, that is an invitation for us all in this room and pass the word to those who aren't, and just think about is God asking us to level up here?

I think he is.

So I'm gonna bless you uh with a verse from Psalm 37, and it starts with an instruction.

It says, commit your way to the Lord.

That's the ask today.

Commit your way to the Lord and commit it in the way that he's leading you.

But we're proposing abiding in the presence of Jesus as the first part.

Scripture, prayer, and sabbath.

Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass.

And here's the next verse, and I'm gonna just leave you with this blessing.

He shall bring forth, and God, may you bring forth for us today your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noonday.

So I bless you as you leave.

Go forth with righteousness in the light, and the Lord's gonna bring it to pass.

Thank you.