Imposter Syndrome – Design & Destiny

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.tv.

Let's get after it today.

Today we are in part four of a series on the book of Ephesians.

The series is called Imposter Syndrome.

And I want some of you to really once and for all settle in your heart who you are in Christ so that you stop living a life of a fake or an imposter.

Every summer we pick a book of the Bible and we go deep into it.

This summer, for seven weeks, we are going into the book of Ephesians and we're looking at this letter that Paul writes from prison in Rome to a church in modern day Ephesus.

Ephesus would be on the west coast of Turkey if it was still a city today.

It was this city that really had a lot of remnants of like what we are as Americans.

These were people who were proud of their country, loved where they were from, loved their city, they were successful in what they did.

They built one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and people were proud to be from Ephesus.

And from prison, Paul writes this interesting letter.

And all of Paul's letters, they they have the same rhythm to them.

In fact, let me show it to you like this.

All of Paul's letters start with doctrine, it's kind of the things that we learn about God, and then application is how it applies to us.

So in the book of Ephesians, Paul starts with you have a new identity in Christ, and then it goes to now this is how you live it.

And so Ephesians chapter 4, verse 1, he literally starts with this word, therefore.

Ephesians 4:1

Chapter 4 is where we get into the practical stuff, and he starts with this word, therefore, and I want to say this when you read your Bible, anytime you see the word therefore, you should ask, what's it therefore?

Like, what's it there for?

It's because Paul is about to make a hard turn from talking about theology to talking about how this applies to your life.

I'll give you another example from scripture of how Paul does this.

In the book of Romans, chapters 1 through 11 are theology.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

Chapter 12, he says, Therefore, in light of God's mercy, I challenge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

It goes from theory to practice, it goes from practical theology to practical application.

He teaches us how to use it.

So here's what's happening in Ephesians, chapters one through three.

You have a new identity in Christ.

Jesus has made you new.

Therefore, here's what we're gonna do with it, okay?

Therefore, he goes on, I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life.

Say this word, worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God.

Now he's saying, if God has changed you, if he's given you a new identity which is in Christ, now you need to start acting like it.

Now you need to live like it.

And he uses this word.

He says, I want you to live worthy of your calling.

Worthy means to weigh as much.

This doesn't make a lot of sense, but I need you to think of like an old school scale, one like this picture here.

And on one side, I need you to remember what Paul says in Ephesians chapter one, that we are wealthy in Christ, that we are seated in the heavenly places, we are heirs to the the we are heirs in God's family, which means all of the blessings and all the riches of the king belong to us, his children.

And in light of that, the scale seems tipped this way.

Paul says, I want you to live a life worthy, which means may your actions equal out or be equal to the giftings that you've been given by God.

Now, to kind of to kind of get into that, um, do you ever have any things that are like really little in the grand scope of everything happening, but they just really irritate you?

Can anybody have this in their life?

Like I have some stuff and it's not that big of a deal.

I'll be honest about it, it's not that big of a deal, but it drives me crazy.

Um, slow drivers on I-4 in the left lane drive me crazy.

Honestly, all drivers on I-4 drive me crazy, but especially the slow ones in the left lane drive me crazy, okay?

Oh, here's another one.

Um, people who back into parking spaces.

Anybody else just like, what are you trying to get away from?

What do you need?

Why are you trying to get out so fast?

I think it's a mental issue, but it is what it is, okay?

Whatever.

Uh, people who pour the milk into the bowl before they pour the cereal.

What is wrong with you, right?

They don't make any sense at all.

Cat owners, so we'll just skip that one.

Um, like all kinds of issues, okay.

All right, I'm about to let you into my personal world for a moment.

Can I tell you something that just irritates me?

And I know people are well-meaning, I know they mean the best, but this drives me crazy.

It's the way people use the word Christian.

Yeah.

And um it drives me crazy.

Now, Christian is a noun that was intended to define a follower of Jesus.

Someone who has said, Jesus, you've changed my life, you've saved me, you've forgiven me, I'm all in and following you.

And we use a lot of like funny words that don't make sense.

We say things like, Would you invite Jesus into your heart?

That doesn't make any sense to me.

A Christian is someone who says, Jesus, you're in charge.

You call the shots, I follow you.

Whatever you say, my answer is yes, I'm all in and following you.

That's what a Christian is.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, society has co-opted the word Christian, and instead of using it as a noun to define who we are, they use it as an adjective to describe a behavior we should live from.

And this doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Like Christian movies.

When you use Christian as an adjective for a movie, that drives me crazy because I think what people think is if we can make a Christian movie, Christians will go see it and the movie will make money.

But in my opinion, usually when we put the adjective Christian in front of movies, what we're saying is this is gonna be a B grade or a C grade movie, but it'll still make money because Christians support Christian stuff.

And I'm of the opinion that if it's Christian, it should be setting the standard, not behind the standard.

Okay, so it drives me crazy.

Here's another one, the Christian music.

I've never fully understood the term Christian music because I don't think music is inherently Christian or not.

Music is a gift created by God, intended to bring God glory and worship.

Now, is there ungodly music?

Absolutely.

But the world I grew up in, there was Christian music and there was secular music.

To me, there's just there's just music, and you shouldn't feed on stuff that doesn't do anything other than glorify God.

But like, stop using Christian as an adjective.

So just for fun this week, I looked up other uses for the word Christian as an adjective, and some of them are crazy to me.

Do you know what MMA fighting is?

It's like the UFC fighting.

Did you know there's Christian MMA fighting?

And the only difference is in between rounds, you pray for your opponent.

Did you know there's Christian escape rooms?

I don't know what escaping from demons.

I don't I don't know what that means, right?

There's Christian food.

What makes a food Christian?

It makes no sense to me at all.

There's all kinds of Christian things, and in my opinion, we've missed the point altogether.

There shouldn't be Christian things.

What there should be is followers of Jesus who identify as Christians, that the world around them sees them and they say, I don't know what it is about them, but something has changed them, transformed them, and made them a different person from the inside out.

That's how it should be.

Okay.

So when you understand that, then you understand Ephesians chapter 4, verse 2.

Ephesians 4:2

Paul is going to tell you what it looks like to be a Christian, and it's not an adjective.

This is a lifestyle.

This is who you are in Christ.

He says this in verse 2, Ephesians 4, 2.

He says, always be humble and gentle.

We'll define these words in a minute.

Be patient with each other, making allowances for each other's faults because of your love.

He goes on, make every effort to keep yourselves united in the spirit, building yourselves together with peace.

So Paul's going to use a bunch of words to say, if you're a follower of Jesus, and if Jesus has changed your life and given you a whole new identity, the world around you should take note of it because there's something demonstrably different about you and about your life.

So let me define some of these words.

He says that Christians should be marked by humility.

Other translations translate the word humility into the word lowliness.

Now, this is interesting to me because this was written to a Greek audience, and he writes this, and this attribute would have been seen as a negative.

The Greeks were proud people, and he says to them, walk into every room not full of yourself, but full of humility.

May there be something different about you.

Humility says that, like at the end of the day, I have an opinion, but my opinion always comes second to someone else.

Humility, it's thinking less about yourself.

He says, This should be what a Christian's life looks like.

Thinking less about yourself means you're thinking about others.

The next thing he says about Christians is we should be marked by gentleness.

Other translations translate this as meekness.

Um, the Greek word here, pause, literally it means power, but it means power under control.

So what he's saying is you shouldn't be powerless, you should walk in power, but under whose control?

Not your own, but it's under God's control.

So, God, whatever you say, I will step in with confidence and do because you're the one calling the shots.

Another definition that Paul would use to describe us is that we should be people marked by patience or long suffering.

Now, what's interesting is this one's a big deal because if you go back to the Bible, the book of like Exodus and Deuteronomy, God uses a few words to describe his character and his nature, and this is one of them that he is slow to anger.

The word here, patience and long suffering, in the original language, it was kind of two words put together to make a word.

The first part means it takes a long time to do something, and the second word means to boil or to boil over or to get heated up.

And he's like, if you're going to be a Christian, there's gonna be lots of people in the world who upset you, tick you off, they they frustrate you.

Come on, anybody agree with that?

Anyone have someone that ticks them off, frustrates them?

Oh, don't wave that hand.

I see it.

Okay, like it's a big deal.

We do, and you should be slow to boil over, you should be slow to anger, have patience and long-suffering for people.

And then he says about us, and this move from individuals to plural to us, that Christians should be united.

That the world around us should see that we are celebrating what draws us together, which is the love of God.

In 2020, when the whole world fell apart, the whole world got divided.

I preached the message around the idea that a divided world needs a united church.

And that was true in 2020 when all of us were fighting over every single issue imaginable.

It was true when people were sitting in church services weeks before worshiping God together, and days later, when the world fell apart, they were turning on each other and turning into keyboard warriors and fighting each other over the dumbest things.

A broken, uh, broken world needs a unified church.

A world that's falling apart needs a church that stands united with each other.

And this is always going to be true because it is one of the beacons of light to the world around us.

And then Paul says that.

He said, This is what a Christian looks like, but I want you to understand something.

If that's where you stop, you miss out on all that God has for you.

Ephesians 4, verse 7, he goes on and he says this, and I love this.

Ephesians 4:7

He said, But to each one of us, grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.

Pause here for just a moment.

He says that Jesus himself hands out, he's the one who chooses who gets what, but he hands out a grace.

And this word grace is interesting.

It's not like, you know, you say grace before a meal.

It's not like the amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

It's not that.

This word grace in Greek is this word, charis.

Charis means a divine enablement.

It means a gift given by God to you to be used not for you, but to be used to change the world around you.

Now we would translate this at our church into this simple phrase, spiritual gifts.

I want you to understand this.

God hardwired into every believer through his Holy Spirit giftings that are to be used.

They're things that you can't do on your own, you can't do it in your own strength, but because of God's supernatural ability inside of you, you're able to do something that makes an eternal difference.

Let me teach it to you like this.

Spiritual gifts are not natural talents.

They're not the abilities that you're born with.

Instead, spiritual gifts are spiritual.

Next slide for me, there's spiritual capabilities in order to accomplish spiritual work.

That God hardwired into us some talents and some abilities.

So I could say it like this: you're talented.

You've got some stuff you can do in your own ability and your own strength.

You are born with talents, but when you're born again, you're born again with spiritual gifts.

That God puts inside of you the giftings and talents that He wants to use through you to make a difference in the world around you.

Now, what's crazy to me as a pastor is statistically, only 13% of Americans, according to the latest survey I can find, only 13% of Americans know what their spiritual gifts are.

This is the reason this is a big deal to us as a church.

In fact, I would argue that the reason that many churches around the country have probably plateaued and stopped growing is because their believers are content coming to church and punching the God card and going home, but they're not living out a fulfilled life by discovering and using the gifts that God has given them.

This is the reason as a church that we do something every single month on the first and second Sunday of the month called our next steps class, because we want you to discover your gifts so you can develop them and use them to literally change the world around you.

Now, let me let me teach it to you from the Bible, and we're just gonna go from Paul's words in Ephesians chapter four.

Here's the theology of it.

Ephesians 4, verse 11.

Ephesians 4:11

Now, these are the the gifts, the charis, it's kind of the root of charisma, the special ability from God that Christ gave to the church.

And he's gonna go on to name five offices of church leadership that are called the five-fold ministry gifts.

It's the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, and the teachers.

Now, I want you to see this because a lot of people will read this and think, well, I'm none of those, so how's God going to use me?

Let me show you how he's going to use you.

God gives us pastors and teachers and prophets and evangelists and apostles and all these things.

And the next verse says, their responsibility is to what?

You might think to do the ministry, to teach us about God, to that you might think it's to do the ministry, the work of the Lord, and I'm gonna come and support my church and support my pastor.

I welcome your support, but that's not what it's about, everybody.

He says this, he says the res their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and to build up the church, the body of Christ.

Okay, pause here for just a moment.

I think the reason a lot of churches plateau is because the people assume that it is the work of the pastor to do the work of the ministry.

The reason churches grow and change regions for the glory of God is when believers make this decision to discover their gifts, to be empowered and equipped by their pastors to go out and actually do the ministry.

So Paul goes on and he says this.

He says that this will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's Son that we will be mature in the Lord.

It's almost like Paul is saying that there's different levels of our faith, that maybe we start as immature, but there is a way to become mature in our faith.

And I love this so much because it's possible to be a Christian for a hundred years and to stay immature and never grow.

It's also possible to be a new follower of Jesus, but to become mature quickly because you've gone down God's pathway.

It says we'll be made mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.

And then to contrast it, he says, then we will no longer be immature like children.

We won't be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching.

We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies whenever they sound like the truth.

Instead, we will speak the truth in love, grow in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church.

He makes the whole body fit perfectly together.

One last verse.

He says this.

He says, as each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

Here's what Paul says.

Paul says that as followers of Jesus, we are to be equipped by our pastors, our teachers, our leaders to do the work of the ministry.

Therefore, you need to understand that you are, in essence, a minister of the gospel message of Jesus to the world around you.

Let me show it to you like this.

Write this down.

God has called every believer to be a minister in the world around them.

Now, in the Old Testament, this idea would have been foreign.

In the Old Testament, there was this group of people called the Levites, they came from the tribe of Levi, and they were the priests.

They were the holy ones, they were the consecrated set apart ones, and they were the pastors, the priests to the people around them.

So what it would look like is God would speak to them and they would speak to the people, and the people would speak to the priests, and the priests would speak to God on behalf of the people.

And this went on for a long time until about the year 1500, when a guy named Martin Luther, like, you know, read his Bible and said, This is not what the Bible says.

Jesus comes and he gets rid of all of this stuff.

What's interesting is that happened in the year around the year 1500.

Here we are 500 years later, and we still use words like this clergy and laity.

Now what's interesting is neither of these words are in the Bible.

We made these words up.

Clergy comes from the root of the word clerk, which means someone who reads and understands.

And laity is kind of the opposite, one who needs understanding.

And so what we've done is we've divided Christians into the called, the chosen, and the unchosen, to the educated biblically into the uneducated biblically, and we miss it.

And we wouldn't use this word.

We wouldn't say this.

But here's what we would say: there are pastors and congregations.

There's people who are called to the ministry and people who are just like, we we need someone to explain it to us, but we don't actually do anything.

We show up to church, we punch our God card, and we are good with God.

And in my opinion, this idea misses it all together.

It's the reason you will often hear me say, fact-check me on this.

Read your Bible, do this, do your own research.

I'm gonna bring the message of Jesus to you, but may the conversation not stop here, may it start here.

May you go home and dig through this.

This is why you need to be in an access group, because you need people to deal with this issues with.

There's no separation anymore.

We are all ministers of the message of Jesus.

In the book of 1 Peter, he takes it a step farther and he says this.

He says, But you are the ones, you, plural, all of us, are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of what priestly work, of ministry.

Chosen to be a holy people, God's instruments to do his work and to speak out for him, to tell others of the night and day difference he has made for you from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.

Essentially, what Paul wants you to know is your responsibility is to tell others what God has done in you.

And again, if there's this part of you that you're like, but bro, look, I don't have the education, I didn't do it, like I don't understand all the stuff, I don't get it.

Let me show you God's word over you from the book of Ephesians, one of my favorite verses in the Bible.

Paul says, For we are God's masterpiece.

Greek word is the word poema.

It literally means the highest, the pinnacle of God's creation.

That this word, poema, is the word from which we get the word poem.

And so this line has the idea of a divine-inspired, the highest level of God's artisanship, the highest level of God's poetry.

That's you and that's me.

We are God's masterpiece.

He created us anew in Christ Jesus so that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

Now I love this so much because here's what it says, and this is really easy to skip over.

God didn't make you and think, what can I do with that person?

They're weird and quirky.

How can I use them?

God didn't do that.

God knew what the world would need and he made you for it.

This is the reason that you can live a life that's filled.

You can fill your calendar with all kinds of stuff, but until you're living out your purpose, you'll never feel fulfilled.

That you you need to understand God made you on purpose and for a purpose, and when you discover it, everything changes for you.

So here's the second thing I need you to understand is that every gift God has given is unique and important.

Every gift God has given, it's unique.

Like those quirks that make you weird to people, it's not an accident.

Those things in your life that you feel like disqualify you are actually the qualifiers God is looking for.

Like the only ability God is looking for, listen to me, somebody, is availability.

He's just looking for you to say yes, and he wants to use your unique quirks and your talents because they're important to somebody else.

When you stop living for yourself and start living for other people, that's when living really starts.

Then he goes on and he says, This I want you to see this, that the gifts that God has given me, they also show me who I am.

The reason you need to know what your spiritual gifts are is it really points to why you were created in the first place.

We live in this world that is so confused about everything.

We're confused about gender and sexuality and orientation, and you the list goes on and on and on and on and on that there's a term for it.

It's the term dysphoria.

Dysphoria is when we believe the lie that the way we were created is actually wrong.

And so, what culture has done is culture has co-opted this and said, Well, if my mind doesn't match my body, I'll change my body to match my mind.

And I want you to hear me on this.

If you're like, oh, Axis got political, this is not a political issue, this is a spiritual issue, because you were created in the image of God, and here's what God God's word says.

Instead of changing your body to match your mind, Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2, he says, be no longer conformed to the ways of this world, but be transformed.

Romans 12:1

How?

By the renewing of your mind.

So you change your mind to the things of God and allow your body to catch up with what your mind is when your mind is made right.

I'm going to show it to you in scripture.

The book of Romans, this is again Paul writing, and Paul says this.

He says, For by the grace given me, I say to every one of you, do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourselves with sober judgment in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.

He goes on, he says, This for just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ, there's your new identity, we, though many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

He says this, he says, we have different gifts.

According to the grace given to each of us, if your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith.

If it is serving, then serve.

If it is teaching, then teach.

If it is to encourage, then give encouragement.

Come on, build somebody up.

As my kids say, glaze them.

Do that.

If it is giving, then give generously, like live open-handedly.

If it is to lead, do it diligently.

If it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

God gave us all different gifts and all different talents, and the church comes alive when people understand that God made them unique and on purpose.

And when they discover that purpose and they pair with other parts of the body, the body functions the way it was intended to function.

So Paul says this.

He uses these words.

He says, I want you to not think highly of yourself.

The word highly means to have an improper view.

This is how the world often thinks.

That's an improper view.

He says, but instead I want you to think with a sober mind.

Sober is the opposite, it means having the right mind or the mind of God.

And he goes on to say the next verse, all of this happens by faith, and faith is just allowing the one who created you to give you the right view in the first place.

Okay.

So if we were to take those verses and we were to paraphrase it using these definitions, it would read like this.

So this is not a translation of the Bible, it's just a paraphrase to help us get our minds around it.

He would say, Do not have a wrong view of who you are.

Instead, be set free and put your right mind by allowing the one who created you to show you who you are and what you were created to do.

The only way to live a fulfilled life is by allowing the one who created you to name you, call you, and to define you, and then to live according to what he wired you to do with your spiritual gifts.

This is what it is.

Now, as your pastor, I never want to give you a headful of knowledge without giving you handles for how to live this out.

Statistically, only 13% of Americans know what their spiritual gifts are.

I think that's terrible.

I don't want a single person to come to our church for more than two months without discovering their gifts and talents.

So if you have your message notes, I want you to write these three action steps down.

I want everyone in our church to do this.

Number one is I want you to discover your spiritual gift.

Again, most people have no idea what their spiritual gift is.

And can I say this to you?

This is the reason we do the event every single month called our next steps class.

It's not just to give you one more thing to do, it's not just to get you to join the church.

You will come alive in your faith when you understand that your talents paired with your spiritual gift, together to serve other people, changes the whole world and it changes your world.

This is what we want from you.

It won't for you.

If you're joining us online, you can go to access.tv slash info and find the information there.

If you're in one of our rooms, you can literally take your phone and tap the dark blue dot in the chair in front of you.

Register for the next one because we want you to discover your spiritual gift.

Here's why.

Three chapters earlier, Ephesians chapter one, Paul says this.

Where is it?

It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we're living for.

Let me just pause here and say this.

It's not in your work, it's not in your success, it's not in your failures, it's not in your divorce, it's not in your relationships, it's not in your finances, it's not in your security.

The only place you can truly find out who you are and what you were made for is in Christ.

This is what we were created for.

He says, long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us.

He had designs on us for glorious living.

So God had a plan for you the whole time.

Part of the overall purpose, he is working out in everything and everyone.

And we want you to discover that.

Like, what is that design?

But why?

Because your design reveals your destiny.

How God made you shows you what you should do with your life.

So many Christians are like, what is the will of God for my life?

Discover how God created you, and when you discover that and pair it with your talents and your spiritual gifts, you'll be off to the races.

Your design reveals your destiny.

David says it like this in Psalm 139.

He says, For you created my inmost being.

You knit me together in my mother's womb.

He says, I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Your works are wonderful.

I know that full well.

David says, God, when you put me together in my mother's womb, you crafted inside of me not just like bones and body parts and organs.

You literally put inside of me a divine purpose, and I'm fearfully and wonderfully made.

There's something unique about me.

And I wonder how many of us, our life, if we could look at our lives, we don't feel the fearfully and wonderfully made part.

We feel frustrated, we feel we feel tapped out, we feel like we just can't really get past the season.

What if you walked into your job tomorrow with a new sense of purpose?

Because you were fearfully and wonderfully made.

And when you discover that and deploy it, it changes everything for you.

You gotta discover it.

Before you can live out your spiritual gifts and live out your calling, you gotta discover your spiritual gift.

And number two, you've got to develop your spiritual gift.

Let me say it to you like this you probably won't be good on it on day one.

And this frustrates people.

But to me, it's no different than if you've never played basketball, joining a basketball team, if you've never shot a basketball and your first experience is joining a team.

It's probably not going to go well for you at first.

But if you stick with it and if you practice and you train and you exercise and do all the stuff, you can get good at it.

The same is true in developing your spiritual gifts.

Book of 1 Corinthians, Paul writes to a church in Corinth, and he says, now here is what I'm trying to say.

All of you together are the one body of Christ.

And each one of you is separate and a necessary part of it.

Paul uses this beautiful illustration that we are a part of the body of Christ.

Jesus is the head, he's the one calling the shots.

But all of us, we make up different parts.

When I was a kid, uh there was a soap, I don't even know if it still exists, but it was called Lever 2000.

Anybody remember this?

And they claim that you have 2,000 body parts.

I don't know if that's true.

I don't know if that's marketing, but let's say it's true.

There's 2,000 unique parts of you that make you you.

And there's parts of you that maybe seem rather insignificant.

Um my kids like to ask these dumb questions in the car.

They'll be like, Dad, would you eat this for a million dollars?

Would you never eat bread again for a million dollars?

Would you and they ask these questions.

So the other day I said to my kids, I was like, okay, let's play a game.

If there was a wheel that you could spin and each one represented one of your toes, would you spin it?

And whichever toe it lands on, you lose that toe.

No pain, but you just lose the toe, but you get a million dollars.

My son Gavin was like, yes, absolutely, I would do it.

He's like, it could be the pinky toe.

And I'm like, okay, cool.

But your pinky toe doesn't seem like a very big deal in the scheme of everything else happening in your body until it's broken or you lose it, right?

The same is true in the body.

We are made up of many different parts, and each one is vital.

Okay, let me say this to you.

This is the reason when you haven't discovered your gifts and used them, the body feels incomplete.

Let me get real strong for a moment.

The reason I believe many churches are impotent and struggle with effectiveness is because they've got a room full of people, but none of the parts are living up to their potential.

For a body to actually work, we have to be working and working in concert with each other.

We were created to be the body of Christ working together.

Okay, let me get even stronger for a second.

Got some juice today.

This is the reason when you're not serving, when you're not giving, when you're not using your life in a way to bless other people, what happens is you cause the church to be ineffective.

And I want to pastor a church of people who've said, Look, I know that God made me on purpose and for a purpose.

I'm gonna discover my giftings, I'm gonna develop my giftings, then I'm gonna use my giftings, and when I use them, I'm gonna use them in a way that furthers the mission of the church, which is not about our church, it's the mission of Jesus that he has always had.

You got to discover it and develop it so that number three, you can use your gifting.

The book of first Peter, again, Peter says it like this He says, God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts.

That means two things.

It means God loves a variety, so don't you care, uh don't you dare compare your giftings to someone else's giftings.

We're a variety, we're different.

He says, use them well.

Why?

Not to pad your bank account or to grow in success.

Use your giftings to serve one another.

I said this earlier and I'll say it one more time.

If you think your life is all about you, you've missed your life altogether.

You can have a full life and miss a fulfilled life.

There are people whose lives are full, they're constantly traveling the world, they have every success that money can buy, and they go to bed every night feeling unfulfilled.

It is possible though for you to live a life that is fulfilled, a life on purpose and for a purpose.

End with this.

At the end of the day, you can only live that life when you go to the one who made you in the first place.

So here's my challenge to you.

Discover your giftings.

Whether you do it here at Access in our Next Steps class or some, like find your spiritual gifts.

Don't you dare go another month of your life without discovering why God made you.

And then when you discover it, develop it, work it.

It's not gonna be natural at first, but work that muscle to grow that muscle and then use it.

And don't use it for you.

You will feel fulfilled when your life is not about you and your focus isn't on you, but when your focus is on others.

I give you a quick side note.

It's kind of hard to struggle with anxiety when you're not focusing on you.

It's all about others.

The message of Jesus is it's not about you.

If Jesus came to give his life for the world, then what would it look like if you discovered your giftings so you could give your life to make a difference in the world?

Would you bow your head and close your eyes at all of our locations right now?

We pray for you.

So, God, give us the courage to push back against a culture that's self-centered and self-seeking.

May we be the kind of church who discovers our unique design and purpose.

God, I pray for our church that just lives on mission, where each single person realizes why you created us.

We weren't created just to show up to church and punch our God card and go home.

We were created to be unified together.

A divided world needs a united church.

We were created to be united together as one body, each person living up to the potential that you hardwired into us.

So, God, would you give us the courage to pursue our spiritual gifts?

And God, I pray that our church will be the kind of church that thousands and thousands of people discover their giftings and talents and discover their spiritual gifts and pair them to not make their lives better, but to serve the world around them.

God, I thank you for that.

Your head still bowed and eyes still closed.

If you came today and you don't know if you're right with God, it's hard to discover your purpose in Him when you don't even know Him.

Maybe you came today and you feel far from God, or maybe you've just never settled your relationship with Him and decided to be a real Christian who follows Him.

If this is you and you say, Jason, I need to start or restart a relationship with God, no matter where you are right now.

Would you raise your hand if this is you?

Thanks.

Thank you.

If this is you, no matter where you're joining us, it just takes one moment of humility to surrender your life to Jesus.

Would you say these words with me?

Say, Jesus, today I give you my life.

Would you be my Lord and my Savior?

You being Lord means you call the shots and I'll follow you.

You being savior means you came into this world and gave your life in my place.

Because you died for me, you have the power to forgive me.

So, Jesus, today I receive your gift of salvation and forgiveness.

And from this day forward I choose to follow you.

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

And it's in your name I pray, Jesus.

Amen.

Church fam, let's celebrate.

We just had people make that decision.