Back to Church Sunday 2026: "Find Your Place"

We are very thankful that you're here with us this morning.

If you don't know or if you're a guest, my name is Jeffrey, and it's my honor

and privilege to be the lead pastor here at Generations Church.

We launched over three years ago, almost four years ago, and God has been doing

some great things, and we're excited that you're along for the journey.

God's got incredible plans for each one of us and each one of you as we submit to Him.

This morning is National Back to Church Day all across the country,

and it's a special day, and it's really designed to help people connect with

their faith, with their community,

with the local church, and most of all, with Jesus.

And so we're glad that you chose to be with us this morning.

For some of you, it might be your first time.

Maybe you're uncertain about what church is supposed to look like.

Maybe you grew up with a different faith or a different background.

We just want you to know that you are welcome here and we are glad that you're here.

And our goal is not to pressure anyone or to judge anyone or to make anyone feel uncomfortable.

We simply today want to welcome you and point you to Jesus and create a place

where you can feel seen and.

To know that God's got a plan for your life. We want you to feel at home.

We really do believe that church is family. It's who we do life with.

How many of you remember that feeling when you were maybe in,

I don't know, elementary school, maybe for some of us, middle school or high

school, we all kind of went through those awkward stages. I know some of you

are still working to get through those awkward stages and hey, that's okay.

God's created all of us to be unique and different. But how many of you remember

that feeling when you'd walk into the lunchroom and, and you're carrying your

tray and like, you're just scanning the room and you're like,

all right, where can I go?

Who can I sit with? That's not going to make fun of my shoes.

They're not going to make fun of me. Where can I go?

And you just have this, like, there's this anxiety that comes up because we're

all looking for a place for safety. We're all looking for a place to belong, to have community.

And you look around until someone would wave you over or push the chair out

and you're like, oh, that's for me.

You know, that feeling, that desire within us doesn't go away just because we,

graduate from middle school or graduate from high school or college.

People literally spend their entire lives looking for a place where they can belong.

We look for acceptance in our friend groups. We look for acceptance in the churches

we visit or try to attend.

We look for acceptance through our relationships, our achievements,

our careers, maybe a sports or athletic team that you're on.

I will not go into anything about the Iowa Hawkeyes today. And I have been so

good. I'm an avid Hawkeye fan and you're welcome. I did not bring up the fact

that we beat Iowa state last week.

I won't do it. That would be just plain rude. I'm not even going to say that

we, you know, crushed you and I yesterday, 55, nothing, because again,

I don't want to step on anyone's.

Teams, but don't we all, we have like community and we have this, yeah, I'm a Vikings fan.

I'm a Hawkeye fan. I'm a, I'm sorry.

There are a few Packer fans here today, but we're all looking for this,

this place where we can belong, where we're fully accepted, but where we're

also fully known for who we are.

That's why the words of Jesus in Matthew 11 are so powerful.

He's addressing the crowds of people around him, and Jesus offers a word that

would have put their hearts at ease.

He was speaking to this deep need within them to find their place,

and this is what he said, and if you have your Bibles, you can follow along,

Matthew 11, 28 through 30.

He said, come to me. It's this invitation.

Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Some of you, you might be in that place right now where you're walking through

some things in life and you're struggling, maybe financially,

maybe with children, maybe with, I don't know what it is, a relationship.

And you feel weary and you feel burdened and we try to fix it on our own, don't we?

But nothing meets that need. And Jesus says, if you're weary and burdened, I will give you rest.

That's where rest is found. It's found in Jesus.

Verse 29, he said, take up my yoke and learn from me because I am lowly and humble in heart.

And you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

And Jesus here was speaking to people who were probably exhausted.

They were not just physically tired, but they were emotionally and especially spiritually worn out.

Can you relate this morning?

It's one of those perfect days for a nice Sunday afternoon nap, rainy, cool.

Man, I just want to go take a nap and get rest.

Are you tired? Are you worn down? Have you been running hard?

See, the religious leaders of that day had turned following God into a heavy burden.

And they added rule after rule

after rule. And they put expectation upon expectation upon expectation.

And they made people feel like they constantly had to prove themselves to God.

So being religious was really exhausting. And people began to feel trapped in

their shame and in their fear and in pressure, because no matter how hard they

tried, they continually fell short.

And it's no different today in our lives.

That's why people have given up on the church or given up on faith,

because I can just never be good enough. I can do, do, do, do,

do, and I still feel empty inside.

But when you come to Christ, it's already been done for you. Hallelujah.

There's just a few things I want you to know this morning. The first one is

that Jesus invites us to a place of rest.

To a place of rest.

We spend our lives carrying burdens that we were never meant to carry.

You know, students, youth, young people, a huge pressure they feel to succeed,

to maybe to live up to expectations.

They scroll through social media and they see the perfect lifestyle and the

beautiful skin and the perfect lashes and the lush lips and the latest styles and the coolest shoes.

And man, if I just get that, maybe I'll be accepted.

Maybe I'll be enough and I'll stop feeling the way that I feel.

Maybe as adults, as financial or success, maybe you're trying to accomplish some things.

Even churches, we can sometimes heap on burdens to be perfect or at least to seem that way.

And everywhere we turn, the message is the same. It's always do more, be better, try harder.

I love what the fourth century theologian and philosopher Augustine once wrote.

He said, our hearts are restless until they find rest in you, referring to God.

Is your heart restless this morning? that maybe we need to look in the mirror

and see if we're finding our rest in ourselves or our hobbies or our families.

And those are all great things, but ultimately peace and rest comes from the Lord.

And that's exactly what Jesus is addressing in Matthew 11. He's inviting people,

out of the striving into relationships.

And so this morning, I want to invite you out of the striving,

out of the working, out of the heaviness that we feel.

And into the relationship that Jesus offers. You see, real Christianity is not

about checking religious boxes to impress God.

How many of you grew up in churches that it was like, I had to wear my suit

and my tie every Sunday morning.

Sunday night, I could maybe loosen the tie, lose the jacket.

Wednesday, I still had to wear my Dockers or whatever.

And there's incredible churches around. And we all have different preferences.

We all have different ways that we worship.

But at the heart of it, it's never doing.

James says we do because of the love that comes from Christ.

Like once we've come to Christ, then man, we work not to earn anything.

I'm not working. We didn't do a community meal Wednesday night because we're

trying to earn salvation or we want to look good in God's eyes.

You're already loved and cherished in God's eyes.

But he wants to use you to love other people, to open up gospel conversations with other people.

That's why we serve so much at Generations Church.

We want to be about serving because it opens doors for gospel conversations,

for the Holy Spirit to swoop in and open eyes.

Christianity is about walking closely with Jesus every single day.

It's a relationship.

And that's why when I was studying this, man, in Matthew 11,

when we read this passage, it should be a breath of fresh air.

It's like, wow, I don't have to strive.

I can relax. I can give my burdens over to the Lord.

I have a good friend who actually just was sending me pictures this morning,

and he's a good friend of our church, too. He's helped us out in immense ways.

A lot of you know who he is. If I were to mention his name, he's sending me

pictures. He's in Alaska today.

He's going backpacking because George Wythe apparently wasn't good enough.

But experienced hikers will tell you how you carry the weight in the backpack matters just as much,

as the weight itself because if the straps are adjusted wrong or the load shifts

a little bit it starts cutting into your shoulders it it becomes more exhausting you spend more energy,

it slows you down,

but if you have someone point out to you that this is how you're supposed to pack your pack.

This is how you get the weight redistributed evenly.

Suddenly life and that hike becomes much more bearable for you.

And that's what Jesus is doing for his listeners here. He's showing them how

to shift the weight of their lives so that it no longer crushes them.

The key here, it's a single word that Jesus speaks about, and he says, my yoke.

And most of us don't use the word yoke. It's definitely a Christian word or a farming word.

I don't even know that most farmers would use that today. But the people listening

to Jesus immediately understood the picture that he was painting.

That Greek word Jesus uses for yoke is the word zugos.

And it's a word that talks about joining together. It's taking on a yoke.

It's submitting yourself to one another.

And so as he talks about taking the yoke of Christ upon him,

it's submitting your life to his life, partnering together with him.

So Jesus, number one, is inviting us to rest. Number two, Jesus shares the load.

Doesn't that sound amazing? Doesn't that sound incredible that you and I,

we don't have to carry the weight of this life alone? That Jesus will actually

bear the weight of everything you're going through?

And he will ease your burden?

I mean, that's incredible. That Jesus wants to be your burden bearer and that

he's going to take that weight upon himself.

And what's beautiful about a yoke is that the oxen were never meant to each

one pull it alone. The stronger one helped carry the weight.

And when Jesus is invited into his yoke, or we're invited into his yoke,

he's reminding us that we were never meant to do life without him.

And so when Jesus says, take my yoke upon you, he's saying, I'm not.

He's definitely not saying, add more weight to your life or take more on.

He's saying, stop carrying this by yourself.

Stop doing life alone. Stop doing it by yourself. Let me help you in every area

of your life. And that always begins with submission to him.

That's why I tell my kids all the time, I text it at least once or twice a week

to Mason, who's in college in Minnesota. to seek first the kingdom of God.

Seek first the kingdom of God. Seek first the kingdom of God.

The way we find our place in the kingdom of God is by staying close to Jesus.

But how many times in life do we try to get ahead of him in our plans? A lot of times.

Maybe you're in the waiting room this morning and you're waiting for God to move.

Don't be discouraged. Don't get ahead of him.

That weight will be taken upon Christ as you walk with him, not when you try

to sprint ahead of him and what he has for you.

The Apostle Paul affirmed Jesus's invitation in Galatians 5, 25.

And he was writing to the church in Galatians. He said, if we live by the spirit,

let us also keep in step with the spirit. I circle that. Keep in step with the Spirit.

Then he says, let us not become conceited, competing against one another or envying one another.

You see, when you keep in step with the Spirit, your attitude will change.

When you're walking side by side with Jesus, your relationships begin to change.

Your language begins to change. Your decisions begin to change.

The way you view finances begins to change your time, the way you handle your time begins to change.

Everything changes when we begin to yield every aspect of our lives to Christ.

We become slower to anger dads, moms.

Welcome back, Hannah. I was almost a previous ex-youth leader,

director, and kids director has been away.

And, of course, her husband, Brandon. Do you want to stand up and show us all? Jen's like, yes!

And give us her full name, Bella with Jewel.

That's so awesome. Congratulations, you guys. I'm so ADD. I'm just like, oh, there she is.

No, it actually doesn't. We're good. We're good.

Silence.

Come slower to anger. We're quicker to love. We're quicker to forgive.

We're quicker to offer grace to one another. We're quicker to serve other people, to love other people.

You begin to become secure now in who God says you are instead of what social

media or culture says you should be.

And Paul says, keep in step. That means this is ongoing. It's ongoing.

Following Jesus isn't a one-time emotional moment on a Sunday or for me at camp

every single summer when I'd go to camp on the last night around the bonfire,

I'd get that prick of emotion.

I'd be like, Oh, Jesus, I'm sorry for being disrespectful to my teachers.

I'm sorry for hitting my sister and pulling their hair and not obeying.

But nothing ever changed. It was just an emotion.

And following Jesus, it's a daily surrender.

It's life, baby. This is your life. I once was dead, and now I'm alive.

And I walk with him.

In unity with him going forward. It's a daily choice to surrender.

It's daily taking on Jesus's yoke so that he can carry your load.

I'll be honest. There've been some seasons in my life where I was carrying things.

And I think we all do this from time to time. We carry things that Jesus never

asked me to carry as a young lead pastor. Well, not young, young in being a new lead pastor.

There are things that I often carry as dads.

There's going to be times where we carry things that we shouldn't carry as spouses.

In my own personal journey, I thought that if I worked harder,

if I met every need, if I answered every phone call, if I answered every text,

if I tried to fix every problem with God's help, then everyone would be happy.

And maybe I could do enough to fix everyone's problems.

And very quickly over a few years, the pressure became very exhausting.

And I remember reaching a point where I just felt spiritually drained.

I was so busy doing, doing this for Jesus, doing that for Jesus,

doing this for this person, doing that for this person.

I was so busy doing things that sometimes I would forget that I was supposed to be.

You ever been there? Like you're doing, doing, doing. And sometimes God's just like, Whoa.

And he pulls the reins back and he says, Hey.

Just be with me. Just sit with me. Just walk with me. Just talk with me.

Just worship me. Spend time with me.

See, my schedule was full, but my mind was crowded and my soul was tired.

And the crazy thing is that for most of us, your soul, you can be in a place

where you're completely exhausted.

And unless you tell somebody, unless you talk to them, unless you open up in

community with somebody, most people will never know what you're walking through.

I'm thankful for a transformation that happened in my own life this summer on

sabbatical, finally yielding it and giving over and say, it's yours.

Generation Church, it's yours. It's not mine.

It's yours. One of the most beautiful thing about Back to Church Sunday is that

we can open our doors and just say, hey, you're invited.

There's room at the table. God loves you.

Ephesians 2, 19 through 22.

So important.

We need to find our place as children, as sons and daughters, as citizens.

And Paul wrote, So then you are no longer foreigners and strangers,

but fellow citizens of the saints and members of God's household.

Membership class coming up on the 11th, by the way, of October.

Sign up. Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus

himself as the cornerstone.

In him, the whole building being put together grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

In him, you are also being built together for God's dwelling in the Spirit.

Paul's speaking to people who knew exactly what it felt like to be outsiders.

They knew rejection. They knew separation. They knew what it felt like to stand

on the outside and to look in.

And yet Paul's telling them that because of Jesus, they've been welcomed into

the kingdom. They've been welcomed into the family and that they don't have

to be strangers anymore.

They're not outsiders anymore. They're part of the family.

And that changes everything.

When you come to Christ, you are part of the beautiful family of God.

Number three, you have a place in the story that God is telling.

You have a place in the story. You have a place at Generations Church.

The church is supposed to feel like home, a place where broken people are welcomed,

a place where grace is greater than our shame, a place where people do not have

to pretend that everything is perfect.

I don't want to go to church with a bunch of fake people wearing masks.

How you doing, Lisa? Great. Life is perfect.

No, let's be real.

Life is hard, but God is good. And we've got family to do life with.

And if we didn't have each other, we didn't have the body of Christ,

man, I wouldn't want to do this thing called life. Right.

Body of Christ changes everything. Notice what Paul says. He says,

we're being built together.

That means that belonging is not just personal, it's communal.

But yet there is this thing out there that is pretty prominent.

Hey, I believe in God. I love God.

I don't like his church.

I don't want to be part of that. Just my faith is between, have you heard that?

Like my faith is just between me and God.

Well, that's true in one sense. You are going to stand alone before God one day.

But when you come to Christ, it's a communal family. There's responsibilities.

Jobs that God has given us to reach people and to serve people and to discover

this purpose that he's given us.

He's given us spiritual gifts, and we need to learn them and know them and develop

them so that we can use them for his glory.

You weren't gifted this great gift just to be at home.

No, you use it in the church and in the world for his kingdom and his glory.

And I think one of Satan's greatest lies is convincing people that they are completely alone.

And I would say even in the midst of crowds, you can be here,

you can be present, and you can still feel completely alone.

Alone in your struggle Alone in your doubts Alone in your pain But isolation,

is the place where discouragement grows,

If you find yourself discouraged in life Maybe it's time for us to look in the mirror and say Man.

Am I putting myself in a place with other men?

Men, men of character coming up this week, 9 o'clock I think we had 25,

24 guys last, last month.

Incredible. And out of that, our goal is that out of that men form community with each other.

And they have brothers that meet together. There's a group of four guys that

meets on Thursday nights at four. Now, I'm not going to tell you because you'll

go bomb their party, but it's an establishment, coffee establishment, of course.

And you don't have to be a coffee drinker to go, but they get together and they

do life together. And they say, Hey, I'm struggling with my marriage.

I'm sleeping on the couch, or I did this, or my wife's done this.

And we sharpen each other.

And you know that you're not alone and that there's other guys and other girls,

other women that go through similar things.

Discouragement will grow when you isolate yourself. Don't allow yourself to be isolated.

God has designed us for connection, and that's why serving matters.

When we step into biblical community, we're reminded that we're no longer strangers,

but we are sons and we are daughters of God.

And there is a beautiful, beautiful picture in scripture of what that looks like.

Came across an interesting story this week.

In 1914, there was an explorer named Ernest Shackleton, and he set out on what

was supposed to be one of the greatest expeditions in history,

crossing Antarctica on foot.

Doesn't that sound fun? but before they ever reached land their ship the Endurance

became trapped in ice for months,

they drifted helplessly until the pressure of the ice eventually crushed the

ship completely sinking it into and part of it was even below the frozen sea.

Suddenly, 28 men were stranded in

this, probably one of the harshest environments you could ever think of.

There was no rescue. There was no communication. There was no satellite phone

to pull out and call the base and say, come get us.

There was no rescue in sight.

Absolutely no certainty that they would even survive.

But what made Shackleton remarkable was this. He refused to let anyone believe

that they were forgotten.

History tells us that he constantly checked on his men one by one and would encourage them.

He'd eat with them.

He'd let them know that they haven't been forgotten.

That there's hope. That they can be rescued.

And every decision he made communicated the same message.

Hey we're going home and we're going to get there together.

After nearly two years stranded in ice and ocean, they somehow made it safely home.

Shackleton led every single man safely home.

And I think one of the deepest fears that people carry is the fear of being

stranded, whether it's emotionally or spiritually or relationally.

And we wonder, does anybody really see me for what I'm going through or for where I'm at?

Does anyone understand the load that I'm carrying right now in this moment?

The invitation of Matthew 11 in Jesus is so powerful.

As he looks at us as the weary, as the stranded.

Maybe today as the hopeless.

And he looks at us and he says, come to me. Come.

He doesn't say, get your stuff together.

I think a lot of people are like, oh, I can't go in that building.

Lightning is going to strike,

the earth is going to swallow me whole no you know why we have that sticker

back there that says judgment free zone because we want this to be a place where

sinners can enter broken,

and find salvation.

Not fixing ourselves. It's not doing more or carrying more. It's about finding

your place in God's great story.

I want you to bow your head and close your eyes, and I'm going to read this

one more time, Matthew 11, 28 through 30.

And I just want to offer this invitation to you.

As Jesus said this, come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened.

I will give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me because I'm lowly and

humble in heart, and you will find rest. It's a promise.

You may feel like there's nothing that can bring you what you need.

And so you're searching and you're seeking.

Scripture says when you seek with all your heart, you will find him.

God said, I will be found by you.

You will find rest for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Here today and your experience with Christ has been everything but rest because

you've misunderstood the gospel. You've been trying to be good enough.

You've been trying to be accepted. You've been trying to follow rules.

You've been trying to do enough that maybe one day you'll be accepted into heaven.

And today Jesus' invitation is for you to trust in the finished work of the cross.

He's done it for you. It's a free gift.

To trust that what we can never do, God did for us in sending Jesus,

his son, to pay our debts and to give us the free gift of salvation.

Right now, call out to him for salvation.

Maybe you're here and you've been a Christian for a while now and you find yourself weary.

You find yourself tired from the battle. Maybe it's not even a battle. Maybe you've just,

been going through a hard time. Maybe you're struggling. Maybe you're just lonely.

Maybe you've picked up your burdens and you're trying on your own power.

And you're realizing today that you are trying to carry this heavy load that

you were never meant to carry the invitation is the same come,

if you're weary and burdened he'll give you rest his yoke is easy and his burden is light.