What’s Next? – Difference Makers

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.

Well, let's get to work together today, everybody.

We are in week four, the final part of a four-part series.

And I love the series.

The series is called What's Next?

And in this series, we're talking about the pathway that God wants every follower of Jesus to follow.

And here's what happens.

When you follow this pathway, two things happen.

Number one, you get closer to Jesus.

And then number two, you get to live out your unique, God-given design and purpose, and it changes the world.

That's what it's about.

And I love this.

In the book of Psalm, chapter 16, David says, You placed me on the path of life.

Psalms 16 · chapter mention

Listen to me, God's way is always the best way.

And when we follow him on this path, it changes everything.

In fact, from the book of Exodus, the second book in the Bible, all the way through to the end, God makes it clear what his path for all of us believers is.

I want to show it to you from the book of Ephesians.

Paul writes this, and in Ephesians 1, he writes a prayer.

Now, this might be interesting to you, maybe not, but like the Bible tells us to pray, but there's not a lot of prayers in the Bible.

And here's one.

Paul says, I keep asking that the God, our Lord, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you can do the first thing, which is to know him better.

God wants you to know him.

The second thing he says is, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, which is weird because, you know, anamorphically, your heart doesn't have eyes, but your heart does see.

And what it means is every experience you have, every friendship, every relationship, every job, every opportunity you have gets filtered through the experience of your heart.

What happens to a lot of us is we allow our hurts and our hangups in our past to cause us to not trust.

And God wants you to have freedom in your heart.

Number three, in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, there is a hope that you and I can live with, and it is to discover your unique, God-given purpose.

Hardwired into the tapestry of who you are are giftings and talents, and God wants you to know them.

And what's crazy is statistically, 87% of Christians never discover what it is, so of course they'll be frustrated.

Here's the point of knowing it it's that you may experience the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.

Essentially, God wants to take you and set you in a spiritual family, a church family of believers, where we put our talents and our giftings and our resources together, and collectively we work together to change the world and make an indelible difference that's felt for eternity.

Now, as a church, we've taken these four ideas and we've literally built our whole church around them.

And this is working.

We're seeing people's lives change and people are getting closer to God.

And I want to show you the four things, but this is in our language, okay?

Our hope for you, number one, is we want you to know God.

And know doesn't mean just to intellectually know about him.

We want you to know him the way a friend knows a friend, close, intimately, like you know him.

In the book of 1 Timothy, Paul is writing and he says, Some of these people have missed the most important thing in life.

He's gonna tell us what it is.

They don't know God.

He said, May God's mercy be upon you.

And I want you to understand this.

The single most important thing you can do in your whole life is not earning money.

I love earning money.

It's not having fun, though there's nothing wrong with having fun.

The most important thing is to really actively know God, not to settle for religion, but to develop a deep, meaningful relationship with God.

He wants us to know him.

The second step in the spiritual journey, the way we say it, is we want you to find freedom.

Freedom from what?

From your past, from your yesterdays, from your hurts and your hangups and your mistakes and all of those things that tend to haunt you.

God wants your heart to be free.

Jesus said it like this: He said, If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

The funny thing is a lot of us, we find ways to cope.

We cope with therapy or pills or alcohol or distraction or social media or whatever.

And I'm for the things that you need.

I'm not against that stuff, but I want to be clear.

Jesus came to set our hearts free once and for all, and this is what I want for you.

The third step in the spiritual journey is that God wants you to discover your unique, God-given purpose.

I said it a moment ago, 87% of Christians don't know what it is.

Let me show it to you in scripture.

Paul writes in a letter to a church in a city called Galatia.

He says, make a careful exploration of who you are.

Like pay attention to how God wired you and the work you have been given, because God has an assignment for all of us.

And then, I love this line: sink yourself into that.

Like, like go all in.

When you discover why God made you, live your life from that purpose.

Now, again, most Christians don't know this.

We have literally built our church around helping Christians discover this.

In fact, I'm gonna ask you if you haven't done this, give me two Sundays.

I'm not asking for a year, I'm not asking you to join something for a long term.

Give me two Sundays.

On the first and second Sunday of every month, we do an event called Next Steps class.

Class one's about our church.

How can you join our church and know what we believe?

But class two is about discovering your purpose and giftings and talents because only when you discover what those are can you actually do the final step in the process, which is fun, which is step number four.

I want you to make a difference.

Like I want you to live a life that literally changes the world.

The kind of life that leaves a rippling effect that's felt for generations to come.

If you um, if you follow me on social media, you know that uh one of the things I post about, I only post about a few things.

Like I only post about my family, I post about uh our church, and when the cowboys are good, I post about the cowboys.

So I really only post about two things, okay?

Um when I post about my family, one of the things I post about that so many people comment on is I love to take my little daughter on dates, and I take her to nice places because someday when one of your crusty boys is trying to talk her up, I want the bar to be so stinking high that she doesn't settle for your nasty boys.

Did he just say that?

Yes, nasty, N-N-S-T.

Why?

Okay, so when we go out, one of the things we like to do is we go places that have mozzarella sticks.

And I think if you've never experienced God, get a mozzarella stick.

That's how you'll know he loves you.

And I post these pictures of them where she stretches them really far.

If you don't follow me, I am Jason Burns.

Follow me for all the mozzarella pictures, best time of your life.

Anyways, so when we go on dates, I like to make just conversation.

And so a couple weeks ago, we were on a little date, and I asked this question.

I said, Ella, what was the best day of your life?

And without missing a beat, she said, I know exactly what it was.

Last summer, I traveled to Seattle to preach at a great church up in Seattle, and I took Ella with me because in Seattle, just south of Seattle, there's a zoo that has polar bears.

And Ella loves polar bears and panda bears.

And so we saw the polar bears and she thought her whole world was the best thing ever.

But then I kind of lied to her and I told her, instead of going straight back home, we're gonna go to Atlanta because I have something I need to do in Atlanta.

Secret was in Atlanta, there's another zoo that had panda bears.

And so she got to meet panda bears.

As much as one can meet a panda bear with a wall of glass between you, but she met the panda.

But this wasn't the reason it was the best day ever.

The reason it was the best day ever was the reason I went to Atlanta was not for pandas, that was a bonus.

The reason we went is Ella's favorite music artist, a guy named Forrest Frank, was having a tour stop in Atlanta, the closest he was gonna get.

So we bought tickets, I flew to Atlanta, and my wife and one of our sons, and then some of our friends, they all car pulled up and met us, and we surprised Ella, and she screamed so loud.

It was like at that pitch where bugs fall out of the air dead, you know what I mean?

Garage doors started going up.

And so she she was so excited, and we took her to the concert.

I don't have a good picture of Ella at the concert because she like literally bounced the whole time.

All my pictures are blurry.

It was just such a fun experience.

And that to her was the best day of her life until last night when I took her to see Forrest Frank in Tampa and bought VIP tickets with a meet and greet.

And on the way home, on the way home, she said, Dad.

That was the best day of my life.

This crusty boy, just kidding, okay.

What's the deal with mustaches?

Are they back?

Okay, we'll talk about that later.

Um and so we go.

And she she loved it.

Best night.

It was so fun.

Okay, let me ask you a question, ready?

For you, what was the best day of your life?

I want you to think about this.

Like, what was the best day?

And maybe for you it was a vacation or a trip or the day a child was born or whatever.

Like, what was the best day of your life?

I want you to think about that.

And I want to ask this question today.

How amazing would it be if every single day when your feet hit the floor, you thought today could be the best day of my life?

And it's not because of earning money or going on a trip or doing something fun, though I like all of those things.

What if it could be the best day of your life because you did something with your life that made such an indelible difference that people for generations might talk about the difference you made?

Jesus talked about it like this in John chapter 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

Jesus said, This, you discovering and living out your unique design, is to my father's glory.

God gets the glory when you make a difference with your life, that you what?

Bear much fruit.

God gets the glory when your life is making a difference, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

So the way you'll know you're a student or a follower of Jesus is your life is fruitful.

It's making a difference.

Three verses down, Jesus said, I've told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

I love this because one of the ways you'll know that your life is actually making a difference is when your heart and your soul and your life are characterized by joy.

What is joy?

Joy is different than happiness.

Happiness is circumstantial, but circumstances change like the direction of the wind or the weather.

Joy is internal and it's unshakable.

It's founded in God's love for you.

That no matter your circumstances, your heart can be characterized by joy.

So here's what I want you to understand.

According to Jesus, my ultimate purpose is to make a difference for eternity.

Like, like the main thing, lots of good things in this life, but the main thing is making a difference for eternity.

And let me say this as clearly as I can.

I'm a businessman.

I I love, I have a business outside of our church.

I love it.

I love being hustled.

I love I love making money.

I love helping people, I love all of those things.

But listen to me, this is so important.

You will never again settle for making a dollar once you discover what it means to make a difference.

God wants you to make a difference.

Jesus was talking one day in John chapter 17.

John 17 · chapter mention

This is like right before the Garden of Gethsemane and the whole process of him getting arrested and in the process of the crucifixion.

John chapter 17, Jesus is praying for his followers, his disciples.

John 17 · chapter mention

He said, In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world, I give them a mission in the world.

Like I'm about to leave, but I'm gonna leave them with something to do that matters.

Okay, if I could summarize what is the mission that Jesus has for us, it's really easy.

Are you ready?

The mission of Jesus for his followers is heaven and people.

It's really easy.

He wants you to care about eternity and care about the people who are gonna spend eternity in one place or another.

Well, when do we get to stop?

When heaven gets full and hell gets plundered.

Why?

Because heaven and hell are realities.

You need to start thinking like nothing wrong with earning money, nothing wrong with having fun.

Please listen to me.

Take that vacation, buy that house, go away.

I love all of those things, but this is the stuff that's gonna live on and matter for eternity.

So, according to Jesus, this is the stuff we better care about.

So here's the problem Um a lot of us we just we lose focus of this.

I heard a story recently about some Greyhound racing dogs.

Now, I I grew up in South Florida, and in South Florida, there's a lot of people who like to bet on a game called High Lie and Greyhound dog racing.

I've never been to one, but here's the little bit that I know about Greyhound racing.

Um, unlike horse racing, where you have a jockey who's sitting on the horse driving it forward, you can't sit a person on a Greyhound dog.

So what they do to get the dogs to race fast is they on the inside rail of the inside track, there's a mechanical bunny rabbit, and literally the rabbit just runs out ahead of the dogs.

The dogs pin their ears back and run as fast as they can after it.

Well, I was looking for this story online and I found a video on YouTube.

If you want to search for this, this is fun.

One time the dogs caught the rabbit.

My wife said, send me that link.

You know, she wanted to see it.

She's like, I'm rooting for the dogs, okay?

Um, but I heard about another one that was funny.

There was a race in Florida years ago where the rabbit took off ahead of the contestants, but there was some sort of mechanical failure, and literally the whole arm that carries the rabbit exploded.

And these dogs are running as fast as they can.

The rabbit explodes and they didn't know what to do.

The story says some of the dogs laid down and fell asleep.

Some of the dogs took off running through the fence and literally hurt themselves and broke their ribs, and others just sat still and looked around, got confused, and started barking at everybody.

And I had this thought.

If you live a life that's not chasing after something, what will you do?

You you will lay down and sleep your whole life away, you will hurt yourself trying to find it, you'll bark at people who figured it out.

You need something to chase after.

You need a mission that's bigger than you, bigger than money, bigger than success, bigger than social media fame.

You need a mission for your life.

Look what Paul says.

This is the book of Acts, chapter 20.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

Paul didn't write the book of Acts, Luke did, but Paul is talking here.

He says, I don't care about my own life.

How free would you live if that was your truth?

He says, the most important thing is that I complete my mission, the work that the Lord Jesus gave me.

And here's the work, you ready?

To tell people the good news about God's grace.

Ready?

People in heaven, people in eternity.

This is what matters.

One of my favorite things that Jesus did is before he left, he gathered his followers and he gave them a final assignment.

I was reading this super early this morning and I had this thought.

After Jesus rose again from the dead, which we celebrate at Easter, Resurrection Sunday, it was about 40 days before Jesus went back to heaven.

If you think about it, we're about a month removed from Easter.

So imagine this.

Like we celebrated Easter, a month, a month plus 10 days go by, and Jesus gathers his disciples and his followers, and he says, Guys, look at me.

I'm leaving you, but I'm not leaving you alone.

God, the Holy Spirit, will come and live inside of you.

Remember, we said this a few weeks ago, God is one God in three parts.

God the Father, he is God for us.

Jesus is God the Son, who is God with us, and the Holy Spirit is God in us.

He lives in us to accomplish the will and purpose and plans of God.

He says, the Holy Spirit will come and live inside of you.

And then he says this, and he says, You will be my witnesses.

I want you to tuck this word away.

You'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Jesus says, there is a mission for all of us to live out.

And I want to talk to you about what this means.

Now, this is not in your message notes, but I want you to see this.

Let's talk about us as individuals, then we'll come back and we'll talk about us as a church.

Okay?

Us as individuals, Jesus says, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem.

Well, Jerusalem was their city.

It's those closest to me.

As a follower of Jesus, one of the great missions of your life is that the people in your life know that you are a follower of Jesus and you leverage everything you've got.

Your time, your talent, your money, your resources, your pride, and you invite them to experience that which has changed your life.

It's a big deal.

Alright, I'm gonna step on your toes for just a moment and then I'll step right back off of them, okay?

I want you to hear this.

It's funny to me how many Christians regularly come to church, lift their hands to God and say, Oh God, I surrender control of my life to you.

You ready?

And they don't even know their neighbor's name.

How can you change the world when you can't even like share your life with the people literally right next door?

First is Jerusalem.

The second thing is we have responsibility to be witnesses in Judea and Samaria.

These were the regions around Jerusalem, and those were those who were close to me, but they're different than me.

I'll never forget some time ago, my wife and I on a Friday morning, which is Friday mornings are they're my off day because I work Sundays, and Friday mornings are special.

Liz and I, we we go on a breakfast date usually somewhere, and on this particular day, we chose the culinary dining experience that is Bob Evans.

And um we went, and uh, you don't know us, but like we are extravagant tippers.

Like over the top, all the time we do this.

But on this particular day, we sit down and we got this waitress that just wanted to spill on us.

I don't know if you've ever had this before.

And she's telling us about her story, how life is going, and it's not good.

She said she was literally living in the little short stay motel right beside, you know, the difference between a motel and a hotel.

She was in a motel, literally right beside Bob Evans.

And she said she's a single mom, her kids were literally living in there, and she didn't know how she was going to make it.

Well, Liz and I caught eyes across the table and I was like, whew, Bob Evans is about to be really expensive today.

And we wanted to leave a tip that was not a big tip, we wanted to leave an extravagant tip.

And this was the kind of tip that you couldn't leave on a credit card receipt because it would have flagged fraud.

And so we went to the bank and came back with an envelope full of cash.

And I didn't, because it was a girl, I didn't want to be the one to give it.

So Liz took this envelope of cash up to this lady, check this out, who was nothing like us.

And she put it in her hand and she connected the dots between the money, which is temporary, and the God who loves her, which is eternal.

And I wish I had some huge story like, and she's here today, let's bring her out.

I don't know where she is, I don't know her story, but I know we planted a seed.

And what I know is that if you'll care about the people around you who are really nothing like you, listen to me, who don't think like you, who don't love like you, who don't vote like you, who who don't they don't live their life like you.

That's being on mission with Jesus.

Number three, he says, I want you to be my witnesses to the ends of the earth.

What does this mean?

It means I'm gonna reach those who are far from me.

Well, how do you do this?

Well, it's two ways.

You can go and you can give.

You can go.

I challenge you at some point over the next couple of years, go on a mission trip.

You will be a part of changing people's lives, but the life that ultimately gets changed the most is yours.

That's a big deal.

But I want you to hear this.

Every time you give, your money reaches farther than you and I will ever be able to reach on our own.

This is the reason I think it's important that God sets you in a spiritual family, because unless you are a billionaire, the chances that you by yourself financially can change the world.

I'll be honest, it's slim.

But when you start to understand that I'd rather be a small part of something big than a big part of something insignificant, then you start to realize that we collectively can literally change the world.

This is the reason the legacy offering to me is such a big deal, and it's the reason Liz and I give the first check every time, and it's always the biggest check we can possibly give because we see it changing the world.

Let's talk about us as church.

If we're gonna be the kind of people who change the world, who literally make such a difference that we wake up every morning saying, that's how you live a life, we gotta do three things.

Write these down.

Number one, we gotta make a difference in my world.

This is the reason that I think our church matters so much.

This is the reason, if I could just be honest with you, that for 18 years of our church, I've had people shoot arrows at me in the back because we don't do church the way they think we should do church.

But the reason we do church the way we do church is because of Sundays like today, where 80 people are getting baptized.

What does this mean?

Let me tell you what this means.

You bring someone who's never been to church or who is far from God and pay attention to how you feel about every single thing in the church service.

You know what you won't care about?

You'll stop caring about your preferences and your the songs you like or the volume or whatever.

The things that Christians like get all up in arms over, you won't care about any of that.

I can tell you what you will care about is that the people who came in with you were loved, that their kids, that the kids' workers got down on their level and loved them and talked to them, the kids felt seen, known, and loved.

You will care that the message makes a lot of sense.

I challenge myself every message.

How can I take a big, complex, deep biblical truth and put the cookies on the bottom shelf so everybody can understand it?

How can I open the table and say, even if you don't understand or believe, you're welcome to belong before you believe, and you're welcome to sit at the table.

Let me make it understandable for you.

People are like, that's not deep.

It was clear and understandable, not even necessarily just for you, but for the people in your life that you're going to bring.

Okay, so Jesus says it like this in the book of Mark.

Go home to your family and friends.

Tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.

Remember the verse we read where Jesus was talking earlier, Acts 1 8?

He said, You will be my witnesses.

What is a witness?

It's someone who just shares their experience.

You're not the prosecutor, you're not the defense, you're not the judge or the jury.

You can just share how Jesus has changed you.

Your life.

That's what makes a difference.

I tell you the problem a lot of Christians have is somewhere along the way we settled for trying to make a point instead of trying to make a difference.

What does make a point?

Get on my social media as a keyboard warrior, and I'm gonna post this about what I believe about whatever topic, and we scream into the wind and nobody's listening.

Has anyone's social media post ever rocked your world?

No hands?

But I bet you if I said who are the most five most influential people in your life, you can name them off right now.

Because relationships matter.

So don't you dare, as a church, settle for making a point when God called you to make a difference.

Number two, we are called to make a difference beyond my world.

What does this mean?

It means that we need to care about the people who aren't here yet.

And yeah, our services they get full, and yeah, we have to fight for parking and blah blah.

We're gonna stay on mission and we're gonna care about people who maybe don't think like us or vote like us because people matter to God.

What matters to God?

Heaven and people, and that's what we're gonna be about.

In the book of 1 Corinthians, Paul says this.

He said, Whatever a person is like, I try to find common ground with him so that he will let me tell him about Christ and let Christ serve him.

This is the reason as a church that we've always been committed to serving our city.

This is the reason Serve Day matters so much.

This last month at Serve Day, we got to serve single moms and widows with car care.

Something they couldn't necessarily afford on their own.

Because of your generosity, that day cost thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars to serve our city.

But what does it do?

It might open their eyes that there is a God who loves them, that there's a church who's not trying to get something from them, who wants something for them.

You have no idea the difference we can make when we all are in this together.

Point number three, if we're gonna change the world, we've got to make a difference in the whole world.

This is the reason I challenge you.

I never, ever, ever will ask you for money, ever.

Never will.

But I'll invite you to pray about your contribution because all of us together collectively can give in a way that it changes the world.

Here's some great news.

We've been running the three locations now for about eight months in total.

We've got all everything's covered.

We're good.

Everything given now can go out to literally change the world.

Let's all be on mission together.

Because of your generosity, we steward what you give, and it's gonna enable us to take the message of Jesus and to push it out to the four corners of the world.

One of the things that's on my heart over this next year or two is I would love for Axis Church to translate the Bible into a language somewhere in the world out of the thousands of languages that don't yet have a copy of the message of God, the word of God, the Bible in their own language.

Mark chapter 10.

Mark 10 · chapter mention

Jesus said to his followers, go everywhere.

Remember in middle school English?

The subject of the sentence would be an understood you.

Hey, you go everywhere.

Who?

You mean you go everywhere in the world and tell the good news, the message of Jesus to everyone.

It wasn't a suggestion, it was a command by Jesus.

A few chapters earlier in the book of Mark, Jesus said this.

That thing that's like tugging on your heart that you want to obey, but it's like it's hard to give up, usually that's pride or money, but it could be something else for you.

No one has ever given up anything.

Your pride, your money, your reputation, for love of me, and to tell others the good news who won't be given back a hundred times over.

If you're an investor, I want you to hear this.

This is a 10,000 times return on investment.

10,000.

So often we think in terms of investments and we think ROI, return on investment.

I've got lots of money invested in lots of different things, and I will only invest in something that's gonna give me a return.

I want the money to earn something more.

But as a Christian, there's something way more important than an ROI.

It's an E-ROI, an eternal return on your investments.

I want you to think about your life, your impact differently.

Why?

Because my goal isn't just for you to be successful, though I want that for you.

And my goal isn't for you to just be happy, though I want that for you.

And my goal for you as your pastor is not just for you to have a great vacation, go have it, or to have a great meal, please have it.

But my goal for you is to wake up every single day.

And when your feet hit the ground, you say, This is the kind of day that could change the world because I'm partnering with God to do something that matters for eternity.

Ultimate fulfillment comes when you're a part of a family and making a difference for eternity.

What would it look like, church?

Access church here in South Lakeland, North Lakeland, Bartow.

What would it look like if we just got on mission with Jesus?

We said, Jesus, whatever you're about, we're about.

We opened up our lives and our hearts and we said, Jesus, would you use this to change the world?

Would you bow your head and close your eyes all across this place?

So, God, give us courage to care about what you care about.

Would you break our heart for what breaks yours?

God, thank you for a church that for 18 years has stayed on mission.

What is the mission?

It's people in heaven.

Jesus, in a moment, I pray that other people might make a decision to join you in heaven by surrendering their life to follow you.

May we never ever get off mission.

And may we always care about the things that you care about.

Thank you for that, God.

Church family, with your head still bowed and eyes still closed, no matter where you're joining us today.

If you don't know if you're right with Jesus, but today you want to start or restart a relationship with him, I want to give you a moment right now.

I'm gonna ask you for three seconds of insane courage.

If you know that today you need to start or restart a relationship with Jesus, would you raise your hand right now?

Come on, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Wow.

Here's your moment.

No matter where you are, if this was you, would you pray this with me?

Say, Jesus, today I give you my life.

Would you save me?

Change me, make me new from the inside out.

Jesus, I believe that you're the Son of God.

I believe you gave your life for me.

Because of your sacrifice, my life can be made new.

So, Jesus, today, take my life, forgive my sins, and 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 we pray, Jesus.

Amen.

Come on, church fam, let's raise the roof and celebrate.