Imposter Syndrome – Your First Love

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason and Liz Burns in Access Church in Lakeland and Bartow, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.eu.

Really glad you are with us.

It's going to be a great day as we wrap up a seven-part summer message series that I've loved.

And I want to just say a special thank you.

I've heard from so many people who this series has been impactful to.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for those encouraging words.

I love it when we do the summer series.

We dig into a book of the Bible.

This summer we've been in a series called Imposter Syndrome.

And if you've missed it, I would like to just very quickly give you an overview of where we've been, because for the last six weeks, we've been in the book of Ephesians.

Every summer we pick a book and we dive deep.

Ephesians is a letter that Paul wrote to a church in a city called Ephesus.

It would be on the coast of modern-day Turkey.

And he writes this letter to this church, the church that he had started.

It was a flourishing church in a flourishing city.

It was the kind of city that people would be proud to be from.

Kind of like here in America.

You'd be proud to be from New York or Los Angeles or Dallas or anywhere but Philadelphia.

You know what I'm saying?

Like it's that kind of city.

Everybody loved it.

Everybody was proud of it.

They were known for their accomplishments.

They had built this temple called the Temple to Artemis or the Temple to Diana, which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

They built an amphitheater that seated 25,000 people.

They built a shopping area that was the size of over two football fields that people came from around the world to shop at.

It was a good place to be from.

And to these people, Paul writes a letter, and the first three chapters of the book, he says, stop being an imposter.

Stop living a fake kind of life and live out of the right identity God has for you.

The second three chapters of the book, he says, Now, now that God has fixed your identity and you know that you have been made new in Christ, now it should affect the way that you live.

Like the world around you should be able to tell that Jesus has saved you and changed you.

So that's what he talks about.

So today, because this is a seven-week series, we had one extra week.

The book of Ephesians is six chapters, but but today it's the seventh week.

So I've got a little like bonus content.

This is like the director's cut.

And I'm gonna be honest with you up front, I made this decision before I had studied it for myself.

I'm kind of regretting that decision right now.

Today, we are gonna be in the book of Revelation, chapter two.

Have you ever read the book of Revelation, anybody?

If you haven't, buckle in, it's about to get weird up in here, okay?

How does that sound, alright?

And I want you to know up front, um, I woke up this morning and chose violence.

Like I'm coming for somebody today, so like put your big boy pants on and let's get after it.

To get us started today, um, this week I was with my boys and I was talking to my kids, my two boys, about some stuff that they go through with online and social media and the weird pressure of social media, and I said to them, I said, I am so glad that I was born when I was born, the late 1900s.

You know what I'm saying?

I'm so glad I was born then, because I had all the years of like being out playing with my friends, and the only rule was just get home sometime before the sun sets.

Anybody have this?

And and I didn't have the pressure of social media and comparing my life to other people's highlight reels, and some of the stuff my kids deal with, I'm so glad I don't have to deal with that as a kid.

But also as an adult, like I got to the age of a young adult as technology was starting to get fun and cool.

And so we were talking about the differences in my childhood and my kids' childhood, and I said, this is crazy, but what I think is even crazier than my childhood is what my grandfather went through.

Now, my grandfather, he passed away a few years ago, but he was born a hundred years ago in 1925.

So he was born into a family that didn't have air conditioning for a long time.

I am so thankful I wasn't born then.

Uh he he got to live through the greatest technological advances imaginable.

And what was so fun to me is towards the end of his life, when he was in his 80s probably, he got into computers and when he got his first iPad, he was blown away.

And it was so fun calling them on FaceTime and talking to them.

And they they did the grandpa thing and the grandma thing, you know, they wouldn't hold the phone here in front of them, they held it down here, so you saw like their chin and their nostrils, and that's all that you saw.

But I I vividly remember my grandpa saying this about his technology.

He would look at it in complete confusion and he would say these words.

He says, I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

Like the idea that he could sit in his living room and talk on a screen and see my face a thousand miles away.

He would say, I can't believe it.

This isn't real.

It just completely blew his mind what he was seeing and what he was experiencing.

I don't know if you've ever had a moment like that with technology, but if you have, I want you to try to hold on to that feeling for just a moment.

Because that's what John, who wrote the book of Revelation, that's what John experiences.

Now I want you to know this.

This is what's happening.

John, who wrote the book of John, first, second, and third John, they had like a creative issue here in this moment coming up with these names.

But John, who wrote these books, towards the end of his life, he gets exiled or sent to a prisoner colony on a little island called Patmos.

Patmos is about 60 miles west of Turkey, modern-day Turkey.

And there he has this moment.

It's the kind of moment that my grandfather would have had when he would have said, I wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it with my own eyes.

And he wrote this down, and we have it in our Bibles at the end, called Revelation.

And if you understand this, it helps to make a lot of sense.

Now, this is the revelation that God gave to John, but it's really interesting.

And the truth is, many people we avoid it, we're scared of the book of Revelation.

Try to imagine being John 2,000 years ago.

At least some of the stuff that the book of Revelation begins to prophesy with prophetic kind of abstract language, we can at least see it because the world has advanced so much.

Try to imagine 2,000 years ago, no electricity, no computers, no social media, not even books, nothing.

John sees this picture.

Now, the word in Greek that we would use to translate to the word revelation is an interesting word.

It's the word apocalypsis.

And this Greek word is an important word because it's the word from which we get the word apocalypse.

And that's what people often think of when they think of the book of Revelation, the apocalypse.

Now, before I show you the definition, I want you to think what do you think apocalypse means?

Like apocalypsis.

What do you think this means?

For us, apocalypse means like zombies and destruction and chaos, and right that's what it means.

That's not really what apocalypsis or apocalypse means.

It means to disclose or reveal.

And this is what the book of Revelation is.

You don't have to be scared of it.

You should actually embrace it because God wants to give you a picture of what is happening and what has happened and what is to come.

Now, the book of Revelation, to give you some language for it, is a book that I would call predictive prophecy.

In fact, scholars say that about a quarter of your whole Bible is predictive prophecy.

Now, prophecy can mean a couple different things in the Bible.

A prophecy can mean a person who has the supernatural ability to decipher right from wrong, good from bad, light from darkness.

There are some people, my wife is this way.

It's like black and white.

She knows exactly what is truth, there's no gray.

It's a prophetic gift.

Okay.

There's another type of prophecy in the Bible, and it is when God shows someone a picture or a vision of what is to come.

This is the reason there's verses in the Bible that talk about vision that say things like, where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint.

You need a picture of what is to come because when you live with the end in mind, you live a more intentional kind of life.

This is what the book of Revelation is, okay?

So today, to get us to Revelation chapter 2, where uh Jesus himself writes a letter to the church in Ephesus, the same one that Paul wrote to.

Revelation 2 · chapter mention

To get us to that, I'd like to start in Revelation chapter one and give you just a brief picture of what's going to happen in the book of Revelation so you understand as much as we possibly can in one 30-minute message, okay?

Revelation chapter one, here's how it happens.

This is John writing from Jesus.

It says the revelation from Jesus Christ.

And I want you to see this.

This is important.

John experiences the glorified Jesus.

I'm gonna pause here for just a moment.

What does it mean?

Well, when Jesus came to earth as a little baby born on the day we celebrate Christmas, scripture says that he stripped himself of all of heaven's riches and stepped into humanity.

Well, John, now here we are, some 60 years after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

John has this experience on this island of Patmos, and he sees the glorified Jesus in all of his splendor, all of his strength, all of his majesty, and everything else now pales in comparison to that.

And Jesus is going to give him a letter.

Actually, he's gonna give him seven letters to give to seven churches.

It says the revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place.

Like there's a reason for this.

Like he's like, I promise you everything I I can't explain it to you, I just saw it, and I'm gonna write it down the best I can.

That is the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.

He goes on and says, Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take heart to what is written in it, because the time is near.

A few verses down, verse 9, John says, I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus.

I was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.

Then I want you to see this next part.

It says on the Lord's Day.

I was in the spirit and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, and this is what it said.

Write on a scroll what you see, and send it to the seven churches.

I'm gonna explain this in a moment, but the seven churches are to Ephesus, that's the one we've been talking about.

Smyrna, Pergamum, Phaetra, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.

Write it to these seven churches.

Now, to give you context for what's happening, because this is a this is a real thing that happened in real time almost 2,000 years ago.

Here is what's happening.

In modern day Turkey, there were these seven um influential churches.

Now, were these the seven most influential churches in the world?

Certainly not, because Jerusalem had a wildly influential church.

But these were all in what we would call Asia Minor, and he writes a letter to the seven churches, and they go in this order, from Ephesus to Smyrna to Pergamos to Theatra.

They literally go in this order and they make a circle.

Now, here's what he does: he sees this vision, this revelation from God.

He writes everything down, puts it together in a complete form, and he sends the letter to each of the churches.

And each church gets a letter that is to them, but they can also read the letters of all the other churches.

Now, this is important for you to understand.

Each one of the letters comes with some celebration, like you're doing some stuff good, and some correction for the stuff that they do bad, except for the one in Laodicea, which is all correction.

Now, why does this matter?

I want you to see this.

Scholars have figured out something that John or none of the early church fathers could have figured out, but it's that the letter to each of the seven churches corresponds with a time in church history.

It's prophetic.

So look at this list, okay?

The first letter that he wrote was to the church in Ephesus.

It was called the Apostolic Church.

These are the people that were with Jesus, saw Jesus, these were the apostles.

They were the ones who led the church.

That was from 30 to the year 100 AD.

From 100 to 313, the church was persecuted.

It ran and went into hiding.

And then in 313, the emperor became a follower of Jesus, and he took the message of Jesus and kind of took it and kind of governmentized it and made it like into the state church.

That's what it was called.

Then around the year 590, the Pope came to prominence, and the church was run by the papal church.

And there's some good in this, but the problem with this was the Catholic Church took the Bible, and only the priest, the religious, educated elite, knew the words of God.

And so the people, the people that were in the church congregations, relied on the Pope and their priests and pastors to interpret it for them.

The problem is, is if you have a person with any other agenda other than God's word, they can take the message of the Bible and they can put into it, they can inject into it whatever they want to manipulate people for their own good.

And this was happening until the year 1517 when this guy, Martin Luther, got a hold of the Bible, read it for himself, and he was like, guys, none of that stuff is in there.

And he started this revolution that was called the Reformation.

Then from 1517 to 1730 was the Reformed Church.

And then around 1730, a couple things begin to happen.

The rise of the printing press combined with the ease of travel getting easier, all of a sudden the message of Jesus began to spread through the world like wildfire.

And that gets us to the year 1900 to modern day, and it's what we would call the apostate church.

Chances are you haven't used the word apostate recently, but apostate means to abandon something you once believed in, held true, and loved.

And I want you to see something.

Would you do me a favor, Kristen?

Would you go back one slide?

I want you to see the map one more time.

It starts in Ephesus and it goes around, and to each of the churches, and to each of the letters, what happens is he says, You're doing some stuff good, but here's some correction.

Work on this and fix this.

All of them except for this one.

This one in Laodicea would be the season of the apostate church, the modern day church.

And here's what is happening.

John says, through Jesus, that you've abandoned your first love.

You've gone away, you've walked away from everything you believed and held true.

And if this was not a stinging admonition to the church of today, I don't know what is.

So I'm gonna come a little strong with what Jesus himself said to the church in Ephesus because I believe it rings true for us.

Now later on in chapter one of Revelation, here's what John says the point of even the book of Revelation is.

Jesus said, I am the living one.

I was dead and am, and now look, I am alive forever and ever, and I hold the keys of death and hades.

He says, Write therefore what you have seen, what is now, and what will take place later.

So I want you to want you to write all this stuff down because it's true for here and now, it's true for the world, and it's true for you forever and ever and ever.

Another way to say it is what is in the book of Revelation is local, like it's for those seven local churches.

It had a global implication for the church, the big sea church, but it also has personal application to our lives.

Are you with me on this?

So, what we're going to do since we've been in the book of Ephesus, is I want to go to the book of Ephesus.

I want to read seven straight verses.

I'm just going to read them straight through, and then I'm going to go back and explain it because the truth is they don't actually make a ton of sense if you just read it and don't understand it.

Revelation chapter 2, here's seven straight verses of content.

Revelation 2 · chapter mention

He says, to the angel of the church in Ephesus, write, these are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands.

He says, I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance.

I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false.

He says, You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name and have not grown weary.

Yet I hold this against you.

And nobody wants to hear that from Jesus.

He says, You have forsaken the love you had at first.

Here's what I want you to do.

Consider how far you have fallen.

Repent and do the things you did at first.

If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

He says, But but you have this in your favor.

You hate the practices of the Nicoletians, which I also hate.

Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

He says, To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life which is in the paradise of God.

Alright.

Anybody get all of that?

Everybody understand it?

Are we good?

All right.

I'm gonna do my best in the next few minutes we have together to unpack it for you, because when you understand what was happening and how it applies to us, I think this could be a game changer for you.

Okay?

Let's go back to verse 1, chapter 2.

Here's what he says He says, to the angel of the church in Ephesus.

Now, this word angel in Greek is a fun word.

It's the word angelos, which could be translated like angel, like an angel of God.

Most likely, what scholars agree on is that this word literally means like pastor or church leader of the church.

So he says, To the pastor or the church leader of the church in Ephesus, here's what I want you to do.

Write, these are the words from him who holds the seven stars, or this word stars here would also be the same word for this, which is the seven church leaders from the seven unique churches.

And this is important for you to understand, the church leaders in Ephesus were like the best of the best.

When you read through the Bible and you see some names like Apollos, these were people who were kind of B players in terms of the Bible.

We don't know a lot about them, but what we know is they were big deals in the church, and they all pastored in Ephesus.

So it says that he holds the seven church leaders in his right hand.

Now, in the Bible, the right hand was seen as the hand of authority, the hand of power.

And what he's saying is, Jesus himself is saying, I hold those leaders in my hand.

What does it mean?

It means I appointed them.

When I choose to, I can choose to elevate them, but also if I choose, I can demote them and dismiss them.

Okay, so let me come after you for a second and say this to you.

We live in a Google review, Facebook review kind of world where if someone doesn't like something that's said or feels like they were personally attacked by something said on the stage of a church, they feel like it's their responsibility and their right to go on and leave a one-star negative review.

Okay, when you find yourself tempted to talk negatively about a pastor, and let's not make this personal, but about some other pastor because of something they did or something that they said, I need you to take a step back and realize you don't have to do that because they will have a day when they stand before the throne of God and give an account for the life and the ministry and the way they handled the sacred text of God.

So what I'm not saying is I'm not saying don't use judgment and sound judgment in picking a church, but what I am saying is I'm saying it's important the place you choose that you go in and support the local leadership.

Several years ago, I stood right here on this stage and I did a funeral for a really, really good man in our church who died in his sleep.

And I, you know, you prepare some thoughts, but I'm kind of a spontaneous speaker.

I enjoy getting up in no notes and just kind of ripping it and seeing how it goes.

And I'm talking about this man.

And all of a sudden it hit me that uh he used to every time I saw him, he would come to me and he would say, Pastor Jason, my wife and I pray for you every day.

And I don't have, I don't know of a lot of people in my life that do that for me.

And so I'm standing right here.

I had a pulpit.

I'm standing here behind a pulpit, and I said that, and I lost my composure.

Because there is something so powerful about a person who says, Jesus appointed them, he holds them in his hands, and my responsibility is to come along and to support that person.

Then he goes on and he says this.

These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands.

Now, the golden lampstands refer to the churches of the seven churches there in Asia Minor.

And what I want you to see is this Jesus himself said, I walk around through them.

I see it all.

I see the church, I see the heart of the church.

I see the people in the church who make the church.

I see their heart for others, I see the way they love, I see the way they serve, I see the way that they give.

I see all of it.

And I want you to see this.

In each of the seven letters, Jesus gives what I would call commendation.

All but the last one.

He gives commendation.

This is praise for what the people do.

So here's here's Jesus giving the praise to the church in Ephesus.

He says, as I've walked around through the churches, as I've seen all that the churches do, he says, I know your deeds.

Okay, look at me, church fam.

No good work is not seen by God.

And you might do stuff that feels behind the scenes.

You might serve with kids in a way where it's like nobody sees it, nobody celebrates you, nobody praises you.

You might work in a spot behind the scenes and it feels like you get no recognition for it.

If you get no recognition from man, you need to read this.

You get recognition and applause from Jesus Himself.

I know your deeds.

He says, your hard work and your perseverance, like the stuff you're doing for me matters, Jesus says.

He says, I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, and you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false.

Pause here for just a moment.

If you just read this at face value, what it sounds like is that Jesus wants us to not tolerate wicked people.

And that's not really what he means.

Um what he means is you don't tolerate wickedness being celebrated in the church.

You don't tolerate people coming to church and like playing the God card and then going out and living like hell the other six days of the week.

Like, if you're gonna have an authentic relationship with Jesus, we we speak the truth in love.

We love and so we speak.

Let me tell you what this doesn't mean.

This doesn't mean that you have permission to judge the wickedness in the world around you.

That's Jesus' job, not yours.

And I've always thought it's kind of funny how Christians can be the most judgmental kind of people to the world around us.

Has being judged ever caused you to like have a heart change?

Has someone's judgment or criticism ever led you to like love them back?

No.

I expect the world around us to act wicked because the world around us is wicked.

We don't expect it.

He calls the church a lamp stand.

What does a lamp do?

It gives light to a small area.

It's not a lighthouse, it's not a spotlight.

It's literally a lamp for a small area.

So he says, you don't allow wickedness in your church.

That's not what this is about.

You deal with the stuff that's happening and you make sure that you're in places where the leadership, the apostles or the church leadership, are accountable and they're holding the word of God with honor and authority.

He goes on the next verse and he says this because you have persevered and have endured hardships for my name and have not grown weary.

This is important.

And I talked about the wickedness thing a moment ago.

Paul, who wrote the book of Ephesians, also wrote the book of 1 Corinthians.

And in 1 Corinthians 5, he says, What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?

He says, Are you not to judge those inside?

God will judge those outside.

So let's be known as people who love.

You can love without affirming.

You can love without affirming sin.

You can be kind and gracious because it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance.

Be a person known for your love, the way you care, the way you serve people who are different than you, think different than you, love different than you, act different than you.

Like you can love them without judging their behavior.

But within the church, when you see or when you have a relationship with someone and you love them and you're in accountability with them and they mess up, you have the right to say, look, this is not God's best.

So he starts with commending them, and then he's gonna shift to confrontation.

This is where it gets a little spicy.

Jesus himself says these words, and you don't want to hear these words about you from Jesus.

He says, Yet I hold this against you.

Six words that are power-packed.

He said, You have forsaken the love you had at first.

How do people who are new in love act?

So in love, so amazed.

So every summer I take my boys on a trip.

It's just me and the boys.

I call it Man Cation.

This week, last Sunday, I preached, and then I got on a plane with my boys, and we flew up to Montana and we went to this beautiful place called Glacier National Park.

If you ever get the chance to go, it is absolutely beautiful.

We had the best time.

I took this picture of a goat.

That's how close I was to the goat.

I took it, it's beautiful.

And we were all over the place, everybody.

The mountains are magnificent, the lakes are beautiful and crystal clear.

There was still ice on the ground.

We had the most amazing time.

And the way we went through the park was we drove up north and then east through the park.

We did it once, and then we turned around and we drove back through the park.

And what was amazing was when we first got into the park, every time we turned the corner, my voice would go, Oh, oh, wow.

Wow! Dad! You see that?

I was like, Yes, boys, it's amazing, so beautiful.

It showcases the handiwork, the artisanship of our great God.

We got through the park.

And then on the way back, we would be driving by places, and I was like, guys, see that?

And they're like, Yeah, we saw that.

We drove past this lake and it had a river and a waterfall behind it, and I was like, guys, look at that.

And my boys are like, I've seen better.

I've seen better.

Like, you've never seen better.

We live in Florida.

The only mountains we have are landfills.

Like, what are you talking about?

You haven't seen better.

But it's amazing when something becomes common, it gets forgotten.

Okay?

My favorite Christians are brand new Christians because they're just so in love with God.

Like, like they're happy to be known.

My favorite Christians are those who have just been baptized.

I see people around town wearing their baptism t-shirts to say made new.

I love that so much.

I love it so much.

New Christians, they share their love for it like all the time, to the point of it being kind of annoying.

So I go to a CrossFit gym.

I say I go, I haven't been in a month because I've been traveling, but like I go to a CrossFit and I love it.

I love it.

I love the people, I love, I love everybody, I love the workouts, I love all of it.

Okay.

But when I first started, I fell head over heels in love with this CrossFit to the point where like people at the office will be like, hey Jason, you ever been to CrossFit?

Because that's all I talk about.

Like I talk about all the time.

It's like, how do you know someone goes to CrossFit?

Don't worry, they'll tell you, like, I loved it, like I loved it, loved it.

And over time, I still love it.

I just don't find myself talking about it like I used to.

Jesus says to this church, like, you've you've done something wrong, you have forsaken your first love.

What does it mean?

It means you've replaced intimacy with activity.

You've considered it as like you think that loving God means you just do a lot of stuff, but you've lost the love for Him along the way.

So, like, I'm gonna talk about those people in Ephesus, and maybe this applies to you, maybe it doesn't, but here's a few thoughts.

It's that they knew how to spot false teachers but forgot how to sit at Jesus' feet.

That they were quick to serve but slow to worship, they they loved ministry but lost their love for Jesus.

And let me say this to you it's easy to do stuff and to lose the relationship along the way.

Like you can serve without loving, but you cannot love without serving.

You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.

Somewhere along the line, some of us we've made the decision that we're gonna do the Christian activities, but we do it divorced from the love and the intimacy with God.

This isn't what it was called to be.

So Jesus gives this church commendation, he gives them some praise, he gives them a challenge.

The second thing is he gives them some correction, and then the third thing he gives them is he gives them a challenge.

And this is a challenge for them, but remember it's it's local, it's global, and it's personal.

So this is the personal part.

If you feel like this is you, and maybe you feel like you've just kind of drifted away, if you feel like you've lost your first love, here's what he says.

He says, consider how far you have fallen.

Here's what I want you to do: repent and do the things you did at first.

Come back to that in a moment.

He says, if you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

Remember, a lampstand was a church.

And Jesus says this.

He says, I'd rather not have a church in a place than to have a church that just goes through the motions, place, church, but has no intimacy with me.

It's a big deal.

So, what does Jesus tell us to do?

Here's what he says: write these things down.

He says, I want you to remember the passion you once had.

I want you to remember it.

One of the things that makes me sad, I used to do a lot of premarital counseling.

And the first thing we do in premarital counseling is we talk about your family.

Tell me about your parents.

Are they still married?

Do they still love each other?

And what was shocking to me is how many people would say to me, Ah, my parents are divorced, or how many people would say, Yeah, my parents are still married, but like they're just roommates.

May that never be true of me and Liz.

Like, may we die passionately in love.

I hope I'm still walking by her, taking out my dentures and kissing her in the kitchen, dipping her back.

I hope, you know what I'm saying?

Like, I hope I still do all those things when I'm in my 90s or early hundreds.

I hope that's true for me.

Remember the passion you once had.

Why?

Because it leads you to the second thing, which is to return to those early days of love.

What was it like when you were new in your faith?

Like you shared contagiously.

Why?

Because what happened to you was too good to be kept as a secret.

I want you to remember the passion that you once had.

And I want you to go after it with everything you have, again, not going through the motions, but going after intimacy with God.

He ends the section with this last set of verses.

He says, But here's some good news.

You have this in your favor.

You hate the practices of the Nicoletians, which I also hate.

Now, Nicoletians are only mentioned two times in the Bible, and we don't really know exactly what they are, but scholars believe that they were this group of people that took like the beliefs of following Jesus and mixed it with the pagan beliefs of the world around them.

These were people who believed that if you just believe that Jesus is the Son of God, you can do anything you want on the side and the rules don't really apply to you.

Like, this is who they were.

They were people who took their own personal beliefs and the message of Jesus and the stuff they wanted to do, put it in a spiritual cocktail shaker, shaked it up, and made their own religious values.

And he says, this isn't the way to live.

Like salvation following Jesus is surrender.

Your way is the way I follow.

I don't get to go with my own ways.

Don't be like them.

Then he says, Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

He says, To the one who is victorious.

This means to the one, to the people, to the church, the group, and to you as an individual who have managed to get to this point without losing your way.

To the ones who overcame the spiritual drift that everybody seems to experience at some point or another.

So essentially, what Jesus says is the life with God that you've always wanted.

All of God's best comes from intentionality, not from just letting yourself drift.

Like it's not enough for you to be a Christian and just check enough boxes to get into heaven.

It's not enough for you to just do enough to get through, but not have intimacy with God.

Let me tell you what this looks like.

What it looks like is doing whatever it takes to rekindle that intimacy that you once had.

I want to challenge you to do a spiritual audit.

In fact, today, this week, I want to challenge you to say to God, God, where are the places in my life where I've settled for activity instead of intimacy?

Another way to say it is where are the places in my life where I just punched the God card?

Like if you're serving others at church, just to say you did it, I mean, for my sake and yours, please quit.

We don't need that.

But when serving is connected to your love for God, we we can't get enough of it.

If you're giving and tithing through our church, but it's just this like ritualistic like I just do it because I have to, and every time you write the check or give online, anger wells up in you.

Stop, cut it out.

But when your giving is connected to your love for God, and you say to God, God, everything you gave me, it's yours, it is a joy to bring back to you this 10% or more.

Like, please, because it's it's for your good.

When coming to church and being a part of a church feels like just something else you have to do.

When you wake up on Sunday mornings and you're like, There's a million other places I'd rather please stay home.

Because Jesus Himself said, like, I would rather have a church full of people who love me and have intimacy than one who just goes to church through the motions.

He says, if I have that, I'll just remove it and I'll pretend it doesn't exist.

Crazy side note the seven churches, the nasia minor, where these are, are now all gone and replaced by Muslim mosques.

What does it mean?

It means we're not just gonna play church.

Alright.

Everybody got your big boy pants on?

Becoming to access is something you do to punch your God card.

There might be other churches in the city that would love to have you sit in their seats.

We're gonna be serious about this.

Like when it becomes a game to you, like when the game is like as long as we show up before the end of worship, we're good.

We'll get there 15 minutes late, not that big of a deal.

Like, worship is the point.

Get here early, honor the creator of the universe.

When when the game is, as soon as he starts to pray, Margaret, grab your person, we're out the doors.

Listen to me, cut it out.

Why?

Because people are meeting God in this moment, and you become a distraction to them.

When being a part of a church is just about you and getting your needs met.

I love you.

Cut it out.

When coming to church, you're asking the question, what's in it for me?

instead of what do I bring and what can I give and how can I serve?

Cut it out.

Look at me.

I'm not committed to trying to build a big church.

That's what's happening.

But I'm not committed to building a big church, but I am committed to building the kind of church that is a Jesus-honoring, passionate, full of Christians who are intimate, pursuing him with everything they've got.

I'm into building that kind of church, and here's what's happened.

Because we've stayed on mission as a church, we've grown.

As we've grown, more and more people are experiencing that.

But look at me, if you just want a church that's about you, I love you.

This might not be the one for you, but if you're committed to the Jesus way of living, the sacrificial, all about others, consumed with his mission and his purpose, when you see your time, your energy, your money, your resources as not yours but God's, and you bring it back to him because he loves you so much that it's the least you can do to love him and give and serve.

When that's your kind of church, you're going to love this place.

And may we never be the kind of church that settles for like travel ball for my kids or anything else being a priority, but may this be the kind of place that Jesus shows up to.

And when he walks among the seven lampstands, he says, Look, I gotta stay here for a while because this church is on mission with me.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes all across our churches and let's pray?

So, God, would you forgive us if we've ever settled for anything less than all that you've got for us?

God, may we have the courage to stare ourselves in the mirror and ask, is there anything in my life that doesn't honor you?

For those of us who have played church, we ask for your forgiveness.

May we never be a church that drifts.

May we be a church of intentionality.

Jesus, we love you.

Thank you for your words to the church in Ephesus.

May it ring true for us.

Forgive those of us who have forsaken, drifted away from our first love.

May we be so in love with you.

May we never stop being in awe of your goodness.

May we never stop celebrating when people put their faith in you.

May this church never be a golf clap on baptism sundae kind of church.

But may we be so consumed with what you care about that it echoes out through our cities and literally changes the world.

Jesus, help us stay on mission with you.

We love you, we thank you.

If you're here today at any of our locations and you would say, Jason, look, I don't know if I'm right with God.

Maybe that means you feel like you've drifted away, or maybe you've never even started following Jesus, but today you want to.

If this is you, would you just raise your hand?

Because I want to pray with you right now.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Wow.

If this is you, would you pray this with me?

Say, Jesus, I give you life.

Choose to follow you.

Would you save me and change me?

Make my life new.

May I never settle for the ways of this world, but may I be consumed with the stuff that you care about.

Jesus, I give you my life for the rest of my life.

Thank you that you died for me and rose again for me.

Because you did that, now you can save me.

So, Jesus, I receive your gift of salvation, and from this day forward I choose to follow you.

It's in your name I pray, Jesus.

Amen.

Come on, church everywhere.

Let's celebrate lots of life change.