One Heart, One Mind, One Mission // Phil 1:27-30

It's good to be back.

Like I said earlier, we were gone for a few weeks because we had a baby.

And here's the thing they don't tell you about when you have your third child.

It's that couple of days that you get to spend in the hospital when you have that third child officially qualifies as a vacation because you have someone who takes care of the baby for you for the most part.

Christine's mom was home with the kids.

And so it was just Christine and I relaxing in this fluorescent hospital room, only taking care of one child who is very easy to get to stop crying.

You just feed him.

It's fantastic.

But what happens when you get home from that is that you step into chaos.

Because I have two older children, Michael and Leighton.

And Michael had to come to terms with the difficult reality that he is now the middle child.

That he does not get mom whenever he wants mom.

And that was a steep learning curve for him.

There were multiple times where he would just die on whatever hill imaginable.

We're like, hey, buddy, let's please not stick your finger in the power outlet.

And he'd go, no, I want to.

We're like, buddy, you can't throw a fit.

You'll electrocute yourself and you'll die.

Just say yes, sir.

No.

Just say yes, sir.

No.

And then Leighton decides to mother Michael.

And so now I'm playing referee between them two.

And then as soon as I get that sorted out, I finally sit down thinking I'm relaxing.

And then Michael is just standing in the corner in a quarter squat making eye contact with me.

And I say, Michael, what are you doing, buddy?

He goes, nothing.

I say, Michael, are you pooping yourself right now?

He goes, no.

Said Michael, yes.

And so then I have to go and get him and then drag him to the bathroom and then get him out of his.

I'd throw the underwear away.

That's not worth the time.

It's one dollar.

Not scraping that out.

And then get him bathed.

And by the time I get to the end of the day, it is easy to sit back and say, uh, I think my children are actively trying to beat me down.

Like I think they have conspired together and said we're going to make dad lose his sanity.

And I was at the end of my rope.

And obviously things have gotten good and you adjust, and I love our kids and I love our family, so I'm not speaking bad about it.

But why do I tell you that story tonight?

Well, because many of you may be in a very different set of circumstances, but you came in here tonight feeling similar.

That you are at the end of your rope.

Life has beaten you down, school, sports, life in general.

Maybe you have spent a lot of time on the news or social media lately, and you hear about how AI is going to kill us all and we're running out of water and El Nino and wars and all this sort of stuff, and you're just stressed and you're anxious.

And then it's not just the normal stuff, it's the stuff with a spiritual side, the comparison, the lust, the anxiety, the pride, the hurts, habits, and hangups that you just can't seem to get rid of.

There's a truth that we've all realized at this point, probably, and that's that the world that we live in is broken.

And there are times where it feels like it's too much to handle.

And good news, the Bible has a lot to say about that.

And that's where we pick up in Philippians, because it's been a few weeks.

Last time we gathered together and talked through Philippians, so two weeks ago, we covered Philippians 1, 12 through 26.

And we saw that the way that you see your life is going to shape the way that you live your life, specifically when it comes to hardships and struggles.

Because Paul was sitting in prison, but he didn't view his circumstances through comfort or success or control or the way we measure our lives.

He viewed everything through the lens of Jesus.

And so even when he was suffering and going through incredibly difficult things, most of stuff that we would complain about and feel pity on ourselves for, Paul could look at what God was doing in the middle of it and saw that, hey, Jesus, the gospel is advancing, and that perspective gave him purpose.

And so the purpose, the point was simple that when Jesus becomes the lens that you see your life, uh, he also becomes the purpose that you live your life for.

So this week we're in Philippians 1, 27 through 30.

And Paul is still writing this Philippian church about different struggles and hardships they're facing.

This is just later in kind of a similar section, but in this passage, the focus shifts from how they should view their hardships and their struggles to how they should move within them.

And what we're gonna see is through him or what we're gonna see through his instruction to them is how we should move in a world that seems determined to grind us down.

So let's read Philippians 1, verse 27.

Philippians 1:27

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ.

And we're gonna stop there.

If you don't mind bowing your head and praying with me for a moment.

Give us real knowledge of what we read.

Show us not only how to understand it, but how to live it, so that we might live in spirit and in truth through Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.

All right, so in the NIV, that word only is actually translated, whatever happens.

And so Paul says, Hey, whatever happens, live a life worthy of the gospel.

Whether I'm set free, whether I die, whether things get easier or harder, you need one focus, and that's live your life in a way that's worthy of the gospel.

Well, what what does that mean?

Living worthy of the gospel doesn't mean trying to live well enough to earn grace, to try and impress God, to try and keep up appearances so that the Lord will love you.

We're not talking about earning here, because that would actually contradict the gospel.

The gospel is that Jesus died for us while we were sinners, while we were enemies.

We had nothing to offer him.

He died out of love.

And so living worthy of the gospel is not trying to earn God's love, rather, it's living a life that's been changed by God's love.

Living in a way that reflects the grace and the forgiveness that you've received by God.

To live in a way that reflects that what the gospel says is true.

And so we all have to ask ourselves the question at some point in life: do my actions line up with what I say I believe?

If I believe, or if you believe that your sin was serious enough that Jesus had to die for it, why do you keep holding on to it?

Or if you believe that God loved you enough to give himself for you when you were running the opposite direction, why would you only give him a small corner of your life?

Or if you believe that Jesus defeated sin and death, why would you believe that you can never change?

And I ask those questions, uh, I'll be I have struggled with all of them.

I'm not trying to shame you or guilt you.

That's not the point here.

It's not try harder so God will love you.

It's actually an invitation to step into the life that Jesus has made possible for you.

One of my favorite authors puts it this way: God's grace does not only mean that we are forgiven, it also means that no matter where we are today, we are free to live differently tomorrow.

It's not just that we're forgiven, but it means that we don't have to be tomorrow who we are today, no matter where you find yourself.

That's grace.

You can change because of what Jesus has done for you.

And that's Paul's point.

If you have been transformed by the gospel, we sing it in our songs.

I have been washed from the inside out.

I no longer walk or talk the way that I used to.

That's the picture of the gospel.

That if you've been changed, uh start living like it.

And so let me acknowledge that kind of life is hard.

Change is difficult.

It takes time.

The expectation is not that you would just snap your fingers and be absolutely perfect.

Addiction, habits, mental health, those things don't just go away in no time.

Normally, sometimes there's miracles, but for the most of us it's going to be a process.

And making that harder is the fact that we live in a world that celebrates sin and throws temptation our way every single moment of the day.

And while the Philippians didn't have to deal with social media algorithms, they actually lived in probably a harder situation in some ways, because following Jesus could cost them not just friendships, but opportunities, money, even get them in trouble with the with the government.

Like Paul is sitting in prison for preaching the gospel right now.

And that's why Paul says what he does in the rest of verse 27 to 28.

So let's hop back in.

I'm going to reread the first part of 27.

He says, Whatever happens, let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents.

This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation and that from God.

And so in these verses, he's giving them a practical piece of advice.

He is telling them who they are to be in the face of those difficulties.

He's saying, Hey, all right, I'm calling you to live a life worthy of the gospel, but how?

And what he does is he kind of gives them three commands and then one thing that's a result of doing those three things.

And here's the thing I want you to hear this through the lens of.

These are not individual commands.

He's not writing to one guy.

He's not writing to Jacob saying, Hey, Jacob, you do this, this, this.

He's saying, Hey, you community, you FBC youth, be these kinds of people.

And so as we read, we're talking about us.

As a student ministry, this is who we should strive to be.

The first thing he says is to stand firm in one spirit, united from the inside out.

That idea of spirit could be that we all hold the Holy Spirit.

It could also be the idea of how we would understand like being united in one heart.

And it makes sense because God has made us in a way that what we love tends to bring us together.

And we see this play out in our lives all the time.

We do this with music.

I like a specific kind of country music.

And so if I find out you like country music and I ask you, hey, what artist do you listen to?

And you tell me Dan and Shane and uh Dan and Shea and Kane Brown, uh, I'm not gonna trust you anymore.

I don't, I don't, I don't trust your judgment.

I'm really suspicious of you overall, just as a human being.

Uh joking, kind of.

Uh, but you know, we're gonna be a little bit, you know, we don't love the same thing.

But if you tell me, uh, you know, Turnpike and Red Clay Strays, we're best friends now, right?

We just know each other and we're like blood brothers.

Or we do this with sports.

When I first moved here, uh Brandon Hines and I connected over our love for the Dallas Cowboys and the Texas Longhorns.

This was a real up and down weekend for us, right?

Saturday, great, Sunday, disaster.

Horrible, horrible, horrible.

But here's the point what you love has a way of shaping who you feel connected to.

And so Paul says that one of the marks of a church that's been shaped by the gospel of Jesus is that we're brought together by our shared love for Jesus.

And that doesn't mean that we all have the same personality or background or hobbies.

We we we might have very little in common on the surface.

In fact, that's the beauty of the church, is that it should be filled with all sorts of people because underneath all the surface-level things like race, wealth, where you grew up or what school you went to, we have something deeper in common.

We have the same Savior.

We've been shown the same grace.

We're following the same Jesus.

And when Jesus becomes the thing that we love more than anything in this universe, he gives us a unity that goes deeper than just being like each other.

And then the second thing he says is being of one spirit, so so one heart, and then he says with one mind.

And this means that we connect on what matters most, that we share convictions, we share a vision on what is most important in the world.

And that shared conviction, that shared belief brings us together.

Recently we went on a young adult mission trip to Guatemala at the end of uh the summer, beginning of August, and there were 10 of us.

And I don't think I can fully uh communicate to you how different of a group we are.

Like you could not have picked 10 more random people to throw on this mission trip and send to serve together.

Uh, you had a 27-year-old youth pastor with two kids, you had a civilian military IT guy who I don't really know if he's actually like he'd have to kill me if he told me what he did or not.

You had a Chick-fil-A manager who teaches Taekwondo, you had a hairdresser who works at Frost.

There was one guy I had never met and still couldn't tell you what he does for work, and we had Camden.

Love Camden, great guy, love that guy.

But even though we were all incredibly different, we shared the conviction that, hey, these people in this country are made in the image of God.

And they need to hear about Jesus and they are worth serving.

And so that whole week, even though we were wildly different, we were in lockstep, perfect unison.

And by the end of that trip, we were 10 of the closest, my friends, these were 10 of my closest friends.

Not because we were all alike and all believed the same things all the time, but we believed the most important things.

We had different skills and interests and ways of thinking, but our shared belief about what was most important brought us together.

And this should be true of us as a youth ministry.

We believe that Jesus is Lord.

We believe that his word is true, it is inerrant, it is authoritative, meaning that it is our instructions for living and our revelation of who the God of the universe is and who we are.

We believe that sin is serious, that grace is real, forgiveness matters, and that our lives are meant to be used for the kingdom of God and be pointing others to him.

And because of what God has done for us, you're welcome here, no matter where you came from, what you look like, where you go to school, or what kind of family you have, what type of clothes you wear, what car your parents drive.

None of that matters because we are brothers and sisters here because we love the same Jesus and we know that at the end of the day, he's the most important thing in the entire universe.

And all that other stuff can fade away and fall into place.

And then three, he says that we're striving together for the sake of the gospel.

So we have one heart, one mind, one mission, if you're taking notes.

This means that we're pointed at the same goal.

Though we may be different, we have one heart, we we have the same love, we have the same belief, and we're all moving in the same direction.

Think about the original Avengers movie, uh, not whatever junk they're putting out these days calling the Avengers.

Uh, and I was actually looking up this movie and I realized that some of you in this room were not born when the first Avengers came out, and that hurt my feelings.

So uh it was a little humbling.

But in this movie, if you've seen it, who's seen the original Avengers in here?

Everybody?

Okay, a good amount.

That's good.

Uh you have a giant green rage monster, uh, you have a demigod with uh blonde locks, looks great, right?

Thor.

Uh, you have a billionaire in a metal suit, a super soldier from the 1940s, a spy with a pistol, that's like her only superpower, uh, and some dude who's really good with a bow and arrow.

And that's the group.

And the whole point of the beginning of this movie is these people couldn't be any more different.

They argue and they bicker and they fight and all this sort of stuff.

They don't trust each other, but then New York is attacked and the world is in danger.

And all of these ragtag superheroes are able to band together with the same mission, and they're able to put their differences aside and function as a team united by the goal of fighting off an alien invasion and saving the world.

Now, our mission is clearly not to fend off aliens, but as Christians, we do have a mission.

Jesus gave it to us right before he ascended into heaven in Matthew 28.

It's recorded.

Matthew 28, verse 19.

Matthew 28:19

Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

And surely I'm with you always to the very end of the age.

So the reality, guys, is we we don't live in a superhero movie, but we do live in a world in desperate need of saving.

Not from aliens, but from the power of sin and darkness.

Our world is broken, people are hurting, sin separates us from the God who made us, and apart from Jesus, that separation leads to judgment.

But here's the message that we have Jesus has done what we could never do.

Through his death and resurrection, he made a way for sinners to be restored, forgiven, and brought back and receive eternal life.

But then Jesus turns to his disciples and he says, Now go tell people.

That is our mission.

God has given us the job of telling the world the news about the eternal life that's come through him.

And so we share the gospel, we point people to Jesus, we make disciples, help people learn what it means to follow him and trust him.

And that mission is big enough for us to lay aside all of our differences for the cause of the greater good.

And look, you and I may look different, we may act different, we may have different amounts in our bank account, uh, have different opinions, but but man, there is a world outside that's on fire.

Turn on your news, look around your school, look around the cafeteria.

Seriously, tomorrow, go and look around the cafeteria at lunch, not just the table you sit at, but the table that one kid sits at.

The corner.

The the person sitting alone in the hallway.

Like, guys, there is brokenness all around us, and we are the ones who God has called to do something about it.

Like there are people who uh in your schools, teams, maybe even homes, who are hurting and who don't know Jesus.

You have people who have rejected Jesus, and by rejecting Jesus, they are choosing to spend eternity apart from God in a real place called hell.

This is going on in the world that we live in.

And Jesus is the one that saves, but he has chosen us to send out that message of salvation, so let's go.

All that other stuff just fades away when you realize we have a calling that's so much more than just get some good grades at school, then make varsity and make some highlight plays, get into a good college one day.

We are the messengers of the message of eternal life, the hope and the healing that this entire world needs.

There are people in you, your life, that you might be the only way they would ever hear about Jesus in their life.

And that's a high calling.

And so to recap, the commands are that we have one heart, one mind, and one mission.

And the result is that we would not be frightened by opposition.

He says that all this unity means that we can have courage.

Remember, the original context of this message is that he's writing to a church that's it's a really difficult place to live for Jesus.

They could actually lose their jobs, be thrown into jail.

It could cost them.

And he's saying, hey, your foundation for being able to stand up against all of that is ultimately God, but not only God, the unity that God creates.

And we know this to be true because we are stronger when we're not standing alone.

Fear grows and expands in isolation, when we're by ourselves, when you feel like you're the only one who believes something, the only one who's trying to live differently, or the only one who's trying to speak up when something needs to be said.

When you're the only one doing that, it's really easy to start wondering like, hey, is this even worth it?

Does anybody care?

Is anybody listening?

But when you look to your left and your right and you see other people with that same heart and that same desire and that same mission moving in the same direction, you have courage.

Early on in ministry, there's this group of students at the church I was serving at, and they were all pretty close.

They came to church fairly regularly, uh, but their life outside of Wednesdays and Sundays looked very different, if you know what I mean.

When they hung out, they would drink and vape and party and all sorts of stuff that they knew didn't line up with what they were talking about on church days.

And over time, a few of the guys from that group came to me separately, and they all told me more or less the same thing.

Like, hey, I don't want to keep living like this.

Like, I know it's wrong, but I just don't know how to be the guy that stands up and says something and I'm afraid like what they would think.

And each one of them thought he was alone.

And eventually I got a few of them together.

I was like, hey guys, I don't know if you realize this, but each of you have come and told me the same thing in the past few weeks.

You're not as alone as you think you are.

Like God's been working in your life.

You love him, you want to live differently, and you're just afraid to do it alone.

But but here's the thing, you you don't have to.

And it's crazy how they start to look around and recognize each other.

It's kind of like that Spider-Man meme where they're all pointing at each other and say, Oh, you too, you too, you too.

And all of a sudden their eyes light up and because they realize, hey, we can do this.

And sure enough, the next time that group got together, these guys spoke up and they said, Hey, we love hanging out with you guys, but but we're not gonna do uh the things we used to do.

Uh, we're we're not gonna drink, we're not gonna vape, we're not gonna keep going along with everything that happens here because we've been changed and we're gonna live that way.

And something changed.

It wasn't their can their convictions or it wasn't even their circumstances.

The thing that changed that gave them the ability to do that is they weren't, they realized they weren't alone.

And they might not be perfect, but they had courage to stand up.

And before long, they weren't just helping each other, but they were bringing other people to the light.

And they started to share the gospel, they started to invite their friends to church, and all of a sudden the powerful work of God started in this friend group because they banded together and said, we're all on the same page and we're gonna do this thing together.

And now there's there's people from that group who have served at churches, who are looking for ways to use their giftings to build the kingdom of God, all from one moment of deciding to stand together from courage that came from community.

And this is what we are all called to do.

We've all heard that we're called to be different, but I think a lot of times when we hear that, we think me standing by myself on my own, I'm a lone ranger, odd for God.

That's not the point here.

We're called to be a counter-cultural community.

And I know that's a big word, but all I'm saying there is that God has given us a community of people in this room, in these four walls, who can help each other follow Jesus, even when everybody at your school and in your family and on your football or volleyball team are moving in the opposite direction.

And so lean on this community.

And as a side note, that also means that you guys have to help make this place a community that can be leaned on.

And one of the things that bothers me more than anything is when people in this room, we tear each other down.

Bullying, slander, gossip.

Like I that's the one thing I won't let fry.

I can take y'all hanging on nine square breaking stuff.

I can take, you know, some ball getting kicked into a TV, whatever.

But when we start to tear each other down, one, because that doesn't represent Christ well, it doesn't represent his church well.

And guys, we have enough problems on the outside that we don't need to be tearing each other down on the inside.

And so if that's you, just hear me plainly, stop.

Don't tear each other down with your hands, with your words.

And here's the reality that's not 99% of you.

For most of us, we just don't know where to start.

We live in a world where we're online half the time.

Most of our communication with people comes through text, Snapchat, FaceTime, whatever.

Like, even FaceTime, it's like, well, I see you, but you're on a screen.

Like we just have lost the art of connecting.

As human beings, and we desperately want it, but we don't know how.

We're afraid we're gonna end up on somebody's story, or somebody's gonna screenshot our messages, or somebody's gonna make fun of us.

And if we're actually real around people, they're gonna reject us.

And that's the beauty of the church is that none of that stuff should happen here.

And so do life together, hang out together, make memories, have fun as people.

We we bond over shared experiences, uh, meals, and good conversations.

Like that's what builds relationships.

But keep Jesus at the center.

Remind one another of the truth, pray for one another, keeping each other accountable.

Uh, I've met with groups in my own and led groups where we meet and we answer three questions every week.

Have you fed your spirit?

Have you fed your flesh?

And how have you fed others?

How are you growing on your walk with the Lord?

What are you struggling with right now and need prayer for?

And who are you trying to share the gospel with?

Who are you praying for?

And those are just check-in questions.

And we talk and we pray for one another.

That's what we're talking about here.

And as you do that, you become the type of community that can face all the trials, temptations, and pressure that this world is going to try to throw at us.

Not by our own strength, but the Lord's.

Not on our own, but in community, and that's a beautiful thing.

And that's kind of what Paul gets at in verses 29 and 30.

He says, For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but to also suffer for him.

Since you were going through the same struggle I saw you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.

And he's reframing what we should think about when it comes to going through hard stuff.

He says that it's been granted to suffer for Christ.

And that sounds strange, but let me be clear.

Uh, Paul's not saying that everything that happens to you is suffering for Jesus.

Like if you get dumped because you never talked to her and cheated on her, or if you fail the test because you stayed up playing Fortnite the whole night, like that's on you, bud.

Like that's that's on you, homie.

Can't, that's not for Jesus.

But Paul is specifically talking about what it costs to faithfully belong to Jesus.

He says that kind of suffering, when you follow me and people reject you for it, that can be seen as a privilege because to suffer for Jesus is in some way to be like Jesus.

Jesus suffered for us so that we can have life.

And so when following us, following him costs us something, we are trying to obey him and help others know him.

When that costs us something, we're walking in the pattern of Jesus.

We're like him.

We're never closer to who Jesus is than when we are willing to sacrifice ourselves for the good of others.

Think of it this way: my junior year of high school, I played football and I basically never played.

I rode the bench, I was the backup, mostly just stood on the sideline.

And honestly, it was pretty easy.

I didn't have a lot of hardship, practice wasn't very stressful, games weren't very nerve-wracking.

Saturday morning woke up, watched a bunch of film that I was not on, and then went home.

But senior year, I got to start and everything changed.

All of a sudden, practice was harder.

There was always some JV guy trying to go super hard to prove himself.

Uh, mistakes got noticed and yelled about.

Games had a lot of nerves because most of the time we weren't very good in the teams we were playing were, and I knew I was gonna end up on somebody's huddle, uh, and everybody from the school was in the stands, right?

So, and then Saturday morning felt like I got hit by a truck.

I was sore, I was hurting.

But here's the thing that soreness actually meant something.

The pain didn't feel good, but it was evidence that I was actually in the game, that I was actually contributing, that I was carrying responsibility, that I was a part of the team and a part of accomplishing what we were trying to accomplish.

And the struggle was not the privilege in the sense.

It was, but not because struggle is something to be glorified, but it was a privilege because being in the game was the privilege.

And that what that's what Paul is trying to say here.

He's not saying that we should chase pain, but he's saying that when following Jesus costs us something, it reminds us that, hey, I'm following him, though.

We're living for something bigger than ourselves and we're willing to take a hit, even if it means being faithful to him and helping others know him.

The pain is real, but so is the privilege of living like Jesus.

And so that's the goal to that, you know, maybe that for you that starts tonight in small groups.

We're gonna go and we're gonna have a conversation.

Maybe your first part is like, hey, I just want to be open with my community.

I want to lean on them with what I'm struggling with.

I want to actually give a prayer request that I haven't given the last three times I've been asked because I've been afraid of what people might think.

And tomorrow that means your school, you're gonna go back to the biggest mission field you will ever be on in your life.

Don't be wrong, trips are great.

Love to go to Mexico, love to go to wherever we'll get to go, but the biggest and most accessible and consistent one you're ever gonna be in in your life is where you're gonna go tomorrow, 8 a.m.

Next week that means see you at the poll, guys.

We're doing this whole thing so that you have an opportunity to invite your friends to hear the gospel of Jesus, and I'm praying that we'll see the miracle of salvation on a crazy scale next week.

Or maybe for you, that that's tonight.

Right?

Like maybe you just need to commit to place your faith in Jesus for the first time because the only ticket to entry to that kind of the type of community that I just talked about tonight, it's not earning, it's not a really squeaky clean resume.

In fact, it's acknowledgement that your resume is not squeaky clean.

All it is is I'm trusting in you, Jesus.

I'm placing my faith in you, grace through faith, and you're a part of the family.

You get to be a part of a community that stands together when following Jesus gets hard.

That has one heart because we love the same Jesus, that has one mind because we believe the same gospel, and that has one mission to bring hope and healing to a world that desperately needs it.

And when the pressure comes, when the world gets hard, when things get overwhelming, we don't run, we lock arms, we stand by side, we stand side by side, and we take the hit for the God who loves us and for the people who need to know about Him.