Ready For Whatever Comes

Shoes are made and designed to take us somewhere.

To protect us, to give us the ability to go where we need to go.

And like Charlie told us, we wear a different pair of shoes depending on what we're trying to accomplish.

They have different purposes.

They protect our feet and they help us to go places we wouldn't ordinarily be able to go.

We all probably have different tastes in shoes and things that we like and things that we don't like.

I'm pretty boring.

I know a 12 is going to fit.

I'm going to order it.

So I'm going to wear my 12 Clarks.

I think this is the fourth pair, almost the exact same boots that I've had.

And when these wear out, I will buy another set of these because I wear them every day.

If I'm going to buy 10 of shoes, I'm going to wear new balance because they fit.

I'm going to order a 12.

I'm going to go to the website I buy them from.

I'm going to go find the clearance section and find the original highest price.

That is now the lowest price.

And that's the shoe that I'm going to buy.

And I know that it fits.

Every now and then I might try a different brand if I catch something that's on sale, but it doesn't fit quite right.

Sometimes shoes we get them and it takes us a while to break them in so they are comfortable so that they fit, so that we don't even know that we're wearing them.

Having the right pair of shoes on makes all the difference.

And if you're wearing the wrong shoes, it can cause us problems.

It can get us hurt along the way.

I do also have a classic uh dad stereotype new balance shoes that sometimes I mow the grass in.

They were once my nice pair of shoes, and then they got a hole through them going through the airport probably five years ago.

And then slowly they evolved and they became my trashy work shoes.

Anybody else do that with their shoes?

They were once nice, and now they are no longer nice, and but I don't feel like putting on my boots to mow the grass.

I will put those on.

So now they have stains and they're basically slicks on the bottom, and they've got grass stains all over them.

They're not display shoes, they're not shoes I'm gonna wear anywhere else other than working in the yard.

You can tell that they have been worked in and used.

I remember when I first got a brand new set of work boots uh 10 or 15 years ago, and no, that wasn't my first pair of work boots.

I'd had a pair before that, right?

So I remember getting a pair of work boots and I needed a new one, so I bought them, and then I was going to a work day at church, and my boots were pristine.

And I'm thinking in my head, it's like the preacher can't show up with perfectly intact work boots.

They're gonna go, this guy's never done a real day's work in his life.

So I didn't scuff them up before I got there.

Um, but I thought about it.

But I thought about it.

You know, shoes help us, and what Paul talks about study today as we're back into the spiritual warfare series, talking about what God has given us, what he has designed and provided so that we can stand against the enemy who is actively pursuing us, who is trying to change our lives, who is trying to infiltrate our families and tear them apart because he hates us and he hates the plans of God.

And he will do whatever he can by whatever means necessary to tear us down.

Ephesians chapter 6, verse 15 is our focus today.

Ephesians 6:15

But since we took kind of a week out of the series last week, Cam Huxford from Compassion Christian Church in Savannah, Georgia came and spoke.

If you missed it, Cam gave us a fantastic message.

So here's where I'll plug our audio podcast.

Wherever you get your podcasts and listen to them, you can find Postroad Christian Church, look for our logo.

If you want to watch the video, you can find that on YouTube as well.

But that's a great place to stay connected with what we are studying on Sunday mornings.

But today, back into Ephesians chapter 6, I'm gonna read verses 14 and 15, even though we spent two whole weeks covering verse 14.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

I want to make sure that we remind ourselves about what we're talking about today.

God's word reads this way in Ephesians chapter 6.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

It says, Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.

The gospel, the good news to all the world of peace, of calm, of understanding.

For the last month we've been going through this series looking at how God has equipped us and armed us and warned us and gotten us ready for the things that we are going to face in this life.

The difficulty that the enemy throws at us, and now Paul gets to our feet, and our feet help us to move because the gospel prepares us to go.

The gospel of Jesus prepares us to go.

The great commission that we often reference at the end of Matthew chapter 28 says, as you are going, go therefore and make disciples of all nations.

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

And how do we do that?

By teaching them to observe everything that Jesus has commanded and baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

And Jesus reminds us, and I will be with you always to the very end of the age.

The good news, the gospel message of Jesus prepares us to go.

There's this readiness that Paul tells us for the gospel of peace that gets us moving.

And Paul's not just describing peaceful shoes, he's talking about that readiness that comes, that expectation that we are going to be prepared for the work, that God wants us to join him on his co-mission, go with him on what he is doing, ready to stand, ready to move, ready to go wherever God sends us, whenever that time is right.

It's important for us because the Christian life wasn't made to be lived sitting still.

Now there are times that we do need to rest regularly and sit still and hear what God has to say, to rejuvenate our bodies, our minds, and our souls by reflecting in time away from all the busy things we do for Jesus and just reflecting on what we can do hearing from him, praying and talking to God and looking around at his creation, enjoying all that he has done.

But Jesus, from the very beginning, went after and he called his disciples, and he said, Come and follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

He calls us to action.

We're to go as we're living and to make disciples, because the gospel that we have is a gospel of movement.

It is a gospel of action.

And the gospel has reached us, and once it has reached us, it wants to reach others through us.

The gospel prepares us to go.

The gospel is not designed to prepare us to become complacent or to get comfortable or to get stuck in our routines and go, well, this is just, I've kind of had the Christian the Christian system figured out, and I just kind of hit play and I run on autopilot, and these are the things that I'm supposed to do.

We're not to reach the point where we go, yeah, I know the answers, I know what I'm supposed to do, I know what I'm supposed to say, I know what I'm not supposed to say, I kind of have this faith thing figured out.

Of immense importance here in this verse, Paul talks about this gospel of peace, and this sounds almost a little strange since we're talking in a passage about warfare and turmoil and attacks and enemies and evil schemes that are all around us.

Paul talks about armor and the battle and the enemy and standing against the enemy, and then suddenly he starts talking about peace.

The much referenced in this world, this desire, this prayer, this longing, this urging for peace.

It's no accident that Paul talks about this right here.

The gospel is the good news of Jesus that he has made possible to fix what was broken between you and between God, between me, between us and between our Creator.

Paul's already said earlier in his letter to the Ephesians that Jesus Himself is our peace, and through the cross of Jesus, he brings us nearer to God.

So the message that we as Christians carry into a world that is filled with conflict is not one of fear.

It is not one of trepidation, it is not one of being afraid, it is not one of anger, it is not one of hostility.

The gospel is a gospel of peace.

In a world where we are constantly bombarded by disruption, by evil, by noise and by distraction.

Something that can offer peace is something that deep down in our hearts we long for and we recognize we need, and we are not able to accomplish that by ourselves.

It matters for us because we can talk about spiritual warfare.

It sounds like in a way that we're looking to pick a fight with other people, but Paul has already reminded us in verse 12 of chapter 6 that we do not wrestle against other people.

We do not wrestle against flesh and blood.

People are not the enemy.

What the gospel does is it prepares us to go towards people, not away from people, not retreating from people, not hiding from people.

We're to go towards them with the good news, we're to go towards them with peace, we're to go towards them with the full truth of Jesus and who he is.

That's the mission that we are given to go with peace.

Shoes help give us better balance, they help us stand better.

A soldier without proper footwear is vulnerable.

And I think I didn't serve, I could check with Charlie or my brother Luke, who served in the military, or so many of you otherwise, if you wore the wrong shoes, to the wrong thing, you would get in an abundantly obnoxious amount of trouble, right?

Let's not even get on socks, right?

You wear the wrong socks, you get chewed out too.

You want to choose the right footwear.

You want to wear what you can have balance, which you can feel underneath your feet, so that you can stand up.

And what that's what the gospel does for us.

This message of peace, it gives us solid footing.

When we don't have proper footwear, we become vulnerable.

And that's why sometimes in certain applications you want some boots, and at other times you are required to have steel-toed boots so that when something drops on your toes, those little bones don't break.

Because if your footing is bad, everything else becomes harder.

If you slip and you fall, you're likely to injure another part of your body.

You can have armor, a shield, a weapon, but if your feet are slipping or if your feet are stuck, you're going to be in a world of trouble.

And where this good news, this gospel message of Jesus gives us peace.

It gives us the proper footing that we need to stand when we need to stand and to go run and to take action when Jesus has called us to do that.

It reminds us of who we are and what Jesus has done.

It reminds us about God doesn't depend on how well we have performed this week.

It all depends on Jesus and the work that He has done.

That gives us stability.

Because when life gets chaotic, the gospel steadies us.

When guilt shows up, the gospel reminds us that the grace that comes from God is real.

When shame starts talking, the gospel reminds us that it's Jesus who paid the price, not just for my sin, but our sin and everything that we have done.

When fear says that everything depends on us, the gospel reminds us that salvation in the battle belongs to the Lord.

We are called to be obedient in what He is called for us to do and to trust God with the outcome.

That is why our good footing matters so much, and we need it because if we're going to move, we need to know where we stand and on whom we stand.

But Paul doesn't stop there because the shoes aren't just for balance so that we can stand up and stand right and stand firm and have truth and have righteousness, but so that we can be ready to take action because Jesus is calling us to take action.

The faith that you and I share in Jesus, it's not a spectator sport.

It's not designed for us to show up and to watch somebody and go, I've done what I'm supposed to do.

What we are called to do is to get out of our seats and into the field wherever that is, serving people for Jesus.

These shoes prepare us to move, to take action, to jump out.

Oftentimes when we come around to graduation season, we see the graduates and they visit their old schools and they show pictures of when there were young kids.

Sometimes the pictures from kindergarten until when they graduated and they'll hold their favorite blanket or they'll carry out their favorite book.

Oftentimes we'll see that Dr.

Seuss book pop up again.

I think you know the book I'm talking about.

Oh, the places you will go.

Oh, the places that you will go in your life.

This creative look about what lies ahead and what we're to do.

And thinking about what can be created in our life.

When kids start something new, it starts stepping into the future, it carries a sense of possibility.

There's places that are ahead of you, and you don't even know what's going to unfold in your life.

But what Paul is doing here, he gives us something such more important than a graduation message.

He says it is that gospel itself that gets us ready to go.

And I wonder if we take that same lens and if we think through the lens of the great philosopher, Dr.

Seuss, we go, I wonder what places that God wants us to go with his message for his purposes.

Not just, oh, the places you will go, but a better question for us to ask as believers that the Bible begs of us and that Jesus asks us all the time is this where is the gospel, the good news of Jesus, where is it sending you?

Not where is it sending somebody else?

Allow God to take care of that.

We are too busy.

Oftentimes, we become too busy worrying about what other people ought to do, and we ignore the things that we know we should do.

Where's the gospel calling and sending you?

Each one of us has a responsibility and an opportunity to serve alongside with Jesus in what He is doing.

That can sound huge, but it doesn't have to be as scary as we make it out to be at times.

Sometimes going where the gospel is sending us means crossing the ocean.

Sometimes it means crossing the room.

Sometimes it means starting a conversation.

Sometimes it means apologizing for something that you don't feel like you should have to apologize for.

Sometimes it means inviting someone.

Sometimes it means serving where you normally would not.

Sometimes it means not avoiding that person because you don't want to have to forgive or act kind as Jesus has called for us to do.

And other times it means showing up because you know somebody needs you.

The gospel, the good news of Jesus, prepares us to go.

And we need to get ready.

We have to prepare.

We don't have to, but we should prepare before that moment arrives.

So often in our lives we find ourselves scrambling when a surprise happens and we weren't ready.

But too often what happens is that we know something was happening and we weren't prepared.

And then we start scrambling, and that's not on anybody else but us.

The same is true for this mission of Jesus.

We are called to be ready, in season and out of season, always ready to give a defense for the things that we believe.

We don't need to wait until that spiritual conversation suddenly appears, and then you should decide, you know what, I should probably understand in terms that I can repeat what I really believe about Jesus and how that has made a difference in my life.

So the best time for us to prepare is yesterday.

But the better time than that, if we're not ready to do that yet, is today, because we can't do anything about the past and we certainly can't control the future.

But what is going on with us today, to get ready, to prepare, to know the gospel now, to understand how Jesus has changed your life now, to understand what he has called for you to do and for the church to do now.

So when that moment comes, we become ready.

So that when somebody asks you why, you still have hope, even in the midst of despair and turmoil.

And somebody knows, when you know someone else is struggling, or when somebody else opens a door to a conversation, we go, God, I will do that if you just give me a sign, and then he gives us this enormous sign, and we go, God, I want another sign and a bigger sign and something more abundantly clear when we avoid doing the thing that God puts right in front of us that we've been asking him to show us all along the way.

Something as simple as going, Hey, hey, can I pray with you?

It can be an enormous step towards fostering conversations together and talking about things that matter and less about the things that moth and rust will destroy.

Less about the things that don't matter that we can't take with us.

And perhaps God will put you in a place where you realize, hey, this isn't random.

I am here for a reason, and God has given me influence in this person's life, or God has given this other voice, this person who loves and follows Jesus, influence in my life to say the things that I need to be sharpened by other believers.

Our question becomes, are we ready?

Will we be ready?

That's what readiness means, not pressure, not panic, not forcing conversations, but eagerly anticipating the work that we get to join Jesus with.

An awareness, not just that God might use you to share Jesus with people, but God wants to use you.

He wants for you to join us.

He wants for us to partner with him in the work that he is doing.

So we need to become get comfortable with movement and taking action and owning our faith and making it our own so that we can give the answers that we need, not perfect answers, but the answers that we have learned from a lifetime of following Jesus and studying his word and knowing what it says.

Man, we know there's nothing like a good, comfortable pair of boots or shoes once they're broken in just right, and even when you get those new ones and you're like, they're not quite right, but you give them a few days or a week and they'll be okay.

Once we settle into what Jesus has called for us to do, once we're ready to go, to jump, to run, to take action, or to kneel and to pray.

God wants for us to be ready in what He is calling us to do.

We don't want our shoes, we don't want this message of Jesus to look perfect and like we haven't used it, like it hasn't gone places with us, like it hasn't carried us through the storms.

Yes, at times it's appropriate for us to share what God and how he has moved in other people's lives, but the most powerful way that you can share Jesus with people is talk about what God has done for you in your life and what you have experienced.

There's a tension for us because we like to be comfortable.

We like to be comfortable.

We like things our way.

We like a church when it fits, we like routines, we like people we know, we like songs we know, we like sitting in the same place, we know what is familiar, but the gospel doesn't call us just to sit comfortably.

The gospel of Jesus calls us to go.

It demands and it requires action of us, and that is going to make us uncomfortable.

Maybe it's going across a room or going across the street or having that conversation that you desperately want to annoy or going to serve or going to forgive or going to help or going to tell Jesus, someone, what Jesus has done in your life, or going when you would much rather stay.

It doesn't mean always going to another country to tell people about Jesus, but it might.

More often than not, it's going to cause you to go into those relationships that already exist and have an eternity-focused conversation with someone about Jesus and why that makes a difference.

We need to be ready when Jesus tells us to go and to take action.

The gospel prepares us to go.

It prepares us to go, to take Jesus' saving message into the entire world.

That's why the Bible says this in Romans 10, 15.

It says, How beautiful are the feet of those that preach the good news.

We all have this opportunity to share the good news of Jesus with everybody that we come across.

How beautiful are the feet of the people that bring the message of Jesus to them.

I love that verse in light of Ephesians 6.

Beautiful feet.

Not because the shoes are expensive, not because they're clean, not because they look good, but because of what they carry.

It's because they carry the good news.

That is a good news for us, and that's the very definition of beautiful.

As a church staff and a couple of the elders, we went to a conference this week, and the theme of the Spire Conference, which is up on the north side of Indianapolis, was this it was the bold and beautiful.

One preacher got up on stage and he said, I'm glad you named this the bald and the beautiful.

But the bold and the beautiful, talking about the boldness of our faith and how we're supposed to live and the beauty that exists in it, that God, even while we were aliens and sinners and actively fighting against God, He sent Jesus for us, not after we got it cleaned up, but even in the midst of our mess, in the midst of our Everything, that we had gotten everything wrong.

These feet that go, that carry the gospel, that tell people about Jesus is what Paul is describing.

It is this gospel of peace that doesn't make us passive.

Peace in Scripture isn't just the absence of conflict.

Biblical peace is wholeness, restoration, reconciliation, and things made right.

This is the type of peace that heals us in our brokenness.

It's the type of peace that is brought to us by taking action and by going and by serving.

The gospel isn't just something that we believe.

It shouldn't just become a theory.

But the gospel of Jesus calls us to bring peace to people by going.

Yes, certainly God will bring people into our path and opportunities to share Jesus with them, but He wants for us to actively seek out those places, those times where we can bring the good news that we are broken, but we can be fixed, and there is hope for everyone.

The gospel is something that we carry with us.

And if we carry it, we have to go somewhere.

Our feet are going to move.

So I wonder what going with the gospel look like for you?

How is Jesus calling you to serve and to let other people know about him?

Not do more, not be busier, not sign up for everything.

It is not a gospel of guilt, it is a gospel of go, it is a gospel of serving.

It just asks, God, where are you calling me to move?

God, what do you want me to do?

How can I change somebody's eternity?

Both the eternity and life here in this world every day.

Where is God telling you to move, to take action?

Who is that person you need to have that conversation with?

Who is that person that you need to invite, that you have been nagging and you have been afraid to invite them to come to church with you?

Maybe there's someone that needs encouragement.

Maybe there's someone place that you need to serve.

Or where is that conversation you've been avoiding because you feel unprepared?

Perhaps you've been waiting for that dramatic sign from God when He keeps putting the opportunity in front of you and He's going, When are they gonna take a chance?

And do what I told them to do.

The gospel, it prepares us to go, it prepares us to move.

So know it, live it, carry it with you.

Be ready.

Because the opportunity may come when you least expect it, and you may not have the perfect thing to say.

Sometimes, very often, there's no perfect thing to say.

But what we can do is be real and authentic and genuine.

And when people ask you a question about your faith, and if you don't know the answer to that, you know what your best answer is?

Say, I don't know.

But I'd love to explore this with you and to come up with an answer for you that God has given us in his word.

That opportunity might come up when you least expect it.

And when we don't know the perfect thing to say, you might not feel like you can be bold.

You might not feel like you can be ready.

One of the really neat features about this Spire conference is they do this, a part of one of the sessions is called the seven for seven.

They bring seven people up on stage and they give them seven minutes with the countdown timer, and they say, give us the best seven minutes about Jesus that you have.

And when the timer goes off, it beeps, and you have to sit down and you have to be done.

This year's theme was the bold and the beautiful, and nobody else knows what everybody else is talking about, other than underneath that theme, they can talk about whatever they want to.

Three people of the seven talked about Acts 4.13.

The first one got up and did a fantastic job, and the next guy got up, Harrison Huxer, who's down at Mount Gilead, and he said, Man, I want to say what he just said about Acts 4.13.

And then at the end, another person talked about Acts 4.13 again, and then everybody laughed.

Acts 4, 13.

Let me read that for you.

In this early history of the church, we have this recorded by Luke, who wrote the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles is part two of the Gospel of Luke.

Luke, that's what the book of Acts is.

And it says, talking about the disciples, it says, but seeing the man who was healed and standing beside, that's the wrong verse.

13, not 14, numbers are hard.

Now, when they saw the boldness, Peter and John.

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, they perceived that they were uneducated common men, and they were astonished, and they recognized that they had been with Jesus.

These first disciples of Jesus were regular, ordinary, untrained men, untrained men and women that would come and that would follow Jesus, and then they recognized that there is nothing intrinsically special about them.

But the difference, what was the difference?

What does the text say?

They had boldness and they had boldness that didn't come from themselves.

They had beauty that didn't come from themselves.

They had boldness that comes only because they had recognized that they had been with Jesus.

They had been with Jesus.

And if you want to be bold in your faith, your boldness doesn't come from you, it doesn't come from anybody else, it only comes from Jesus.

If you want to be bold in your faith, you have the ability to do that.

God wants to give you the opportunity to use that muscle.

Friends, what if people say about us, look at those regular, ordinary, untrained followers of Jesus?

And what if they look at us and they're able to tell that we are different?

And the only possible explanation is they had been with Jesus.

What a great example.

What a great witness.

What a great opportunity.

The gospel is a gospel of go.

That good news is meant to travel.

Good news is meant to travel faster than bad news.

Why does bad news travel faster than good news?

What's wrong with us?

We're quick to share the gossip.

We're quick to share the teardown.

We're quick to share the things that make other people look bad and us look better.

But why don't we share the good faster than we do?

That's what God has called for us to do.

This good news is meant to travel.

It's not about us or what we do, but we are called to be bold and beautiful with what Jesus is called and put in us.

May it be said of Post-Rode Christian Church that we were different because we have spent time with Jesus.

And that is where our boldness comes from.

And that is the picture that the type of faith that Paul gives us that we are to have.

Spending time with Jesus, being bold, ready to move, ready to serve, ready to carry the peace, not because people deserve it, but because they need it.

And God wants to offer that to us.

The gospel prepares us to go.

Oh, the places we'll go with the gospel of Jesus.

Let's pray.

God, thank you for what you have done.

God, thank you for the movement that you have given us and that you have shown us the direction for our life.

And God, you often don't give us every exact answer and tell us take this turn and make this decision and go over here.

But God, you've given us the ultimate, your goal.

But that everyone can seek repentance and come after you.

And God, you have called for us as the church to join you on your mission, to seek and to save that which was lost, to carry with us the good news of the gospel message of Jesus into all the world.

God, may it be said about us that we were bold because we have spent time with Jesus.

Father, help us to continue to sharpen one another with the power of your spirit as we go from this place.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.