All In – A Tale of Two Bowls

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

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Let's get after it today.

It's already been an incredible day, but I believe God has something for us.

We are in part four of a series called All In.

And in this series, we're wrestling with one question that's so important.

The question is, what would happen if I gave God one year?

One year of all in.

Chips to the middle of the table.

God, whatever you ask me to do, I'll do it.

I'll cross the line of demarcation.

I don't care.

God, you get all of my heart, everything I have, it's all yours.

Week one, we said this.

We said, we are people who are marked by the presence of God, that we have encountered God, and as a result of encountering him, we trust him, we believe him, we trust that he is not just the promise keep giver, but he's the promise keeper.

Beyond that, we believe that we are carriers of God's presence.

So everywhere we go, God is with us, and it should impact every part of our lives.

Week two and three, I said, now that we understand that as foundational, that we're marked by God's presence, now let's turn our hearts to the things that God asks of us, and this is so important.

Week two, I said the hardest thing I think for many Christians to grapple with is the issue of trusting God with their money.

It's because our money feels like our money.

So we talked about what does it mean to fully trust God and to put him first in our finances.

Week three, which was last week, we said that there is something so powerful about trusting God in the area of our relationships.

And I challenged some of you last week to make the decision to go all in in the area of being intentional relationally.

We have access groups that are starting in a couple weeks.

So many people last week made a decision to say, listen, I know this is challenging and hard, but I'm gonna open my life up.

I'm gonna trust God, and I'm gonna see if I can help some people get a little closer to God by opening my heart, my life, my home to lead an access group.

Super proud of you for that.

Today, I just want to I just want to be honest.

I want to show you my hand up front.

My hope today is that every single person who's here leaves today, getting out of the cheap seats, out of the nosebleeds, getting off the bench, and getting into the game in terms of serving other people.

In fact, let me say this up front: church will come alive for you when you understand that it's not about you, but it's about serving other people.

This week I was uh I was researching for something else, and I came across a really interesting statistic.

In the year 2023, experts say that from birth to age 18, it cost parents$288,094 to raise a child.

Okay, think about this.

Parents for just a moment.

It costs over a quarter of a million dollars to raise your kid.

And I've got three kids.

That means for me to raise three kids, it cost me$864,282.

My third child is my daughter Ella, and she's a little bougie like her mom, so you can round that up to a cool meal for me.

That's a lot of money, right?

I want you to think about this.

Those numbers are big numbers, right?

I want you to think, how messed up would it be if you saw those numbers and you thought to yourself, is it really worth it?

Like, is it really, like, does it pay off enough?

Like more than a quarter of a million dollars, and what do you get back from your kids?

A hand-drawn card in crayon with misspelled words?

A necklace with dried pasta on it, and they give it to you like it's the best thing ever?

A picture they drew of you, and you're like, oh, a giraffe, and they're like, no, daddy, that's you.

Like that.

Is it worth it?

Well, if you make it about money, it may never be worth it.

But but that's not how family works.

Family is not about what you get, family's about what you bring.

Family's not about what you receive.

Family's about what you can give and how you can serve.

And can I teach you a little secret about family?

It's in the giving and in the serving that the love has a way of sneaking up on you.

You you have that first child, and the truth is children are amazing and they're a blessing from God.

But when you have babies, like all they do is eat and sleep and cry, and you change a million diapers, and there's no response.

They look at you like you don't even exist, right?

But then, like, six months in, they see you and they get excited, and their eyes light up, and they don't have teeth yet, so they have this big gummy smile and drool just everywhere.

And they say, Mama or dad-da, and it's like the love snuck all up on you.

It's like they're five years old and they're playing soccer, and they have no idea what even the sport is.

They're just out there walking around like yawning.

And the ball's right beside them, but they look at you and they give you a thumbs up, and you're like, oh, it's worth it all, right?

Think about marriage for a moment, right?

Marriage, if you're not careful, can drift into this area of like all you do is serve, and all you do is chores and dishes and laundry and cleaning and yard work, and it can feel like that, but every once in a while you're you're just somewhere.

You're at a party full of people, and you see your spouse across the room, and it's like all the rest of the people just kind of fade into nothingness, and you see them, and it's like your heart is flooded with love all over again, and you're reminded that it's worth all the serving because the love has this way of sneaking up on you.

That's what family does, and that's what family's about.

It's interesting to me that one of the great analogies that the authors of Scripture use for the church is that we're the family of God.

So there is an expectation that what we need to do is focus on what we give and what we bring, not what's in it for us.

But here's the fun thing love has this way of sneaking up on us.

If we're gonna talk about what we give, let me show you what Paul says.

In the book of 1 Corinthians, chapter 12, Paul says this, 12 verse 1.

1 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

He says, Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters.

He says, I don't want you to be uninformed.

Other translations say ignorance.

Like I don't want you to be ignorant about this.

And here's what you need to understand.

There are some things that if we're not careful, we'll float through this life ignorant about.

And I don't want, as your pastor, for you to live one more day not knowing that God has gifts for you.

But the gifts that he has for you aren't for you, they're for others.

He goes on in verse 4 to say this there are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them.

There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord, there are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in every one, it is the same God at work.

Essentially, what Paul says is that God has hardwired into you giftings and talents and abilities, and it would be a travesty for you to go through this life and to not know what they are and to not use them in a way that makes a difference.

So, can I tell you my goal?

This is my finish line as a pastor.

This is how I'll know that I'm succeeding in your life.

It's when you discover your giftings and talents and you use them to serve someone in a way that makes an eternal difference.

Like, like my goal as a pastor is when you go to bed at night, you say, Oh, that's how you live a life that matters.

That's how you make a mark on society, that's how you change the world.

That's my goal for you.

So, as a church, the way we do this is we serve other people.

We take the focus off of us and we put it on others.

In fact, I could say it like this: we are a serving church.

This is the heart of our church.

It's never been about us, it's always been about others.

I was proud yesterday, 30-something people showed up in North Lakeland to serve at the Dream Center.

And we do this stuff all the time.

All the time.

Why?

Because it's who we are.

We are a serving church.

When I was in my doctoral studies, I read a book called Die Empty.

And in this book, the author tells this story about a conference he attended where the speaker asked a question that was confounding.

The question was this: he said, What is the most expensive property in the world?

I want you to think about this.

What do you think it is?

You might think Manhattan, downtown Manhattan, so expensive there.

You might think a landlocked place like Hawaii, where years ago it cost more than a million dollars an acre in the rural areas.

It's not that.

You might think major tech cities like Seoul, Korea or Tokyo, but again, not that.

You might think Lakeland circa 2021 when the prices just shot through the roof.

Also, not that, right?

The most expensive property in the world has nothing to do with the value of land.

The most expensive property in the world is every gravesite and cemetery you passed on the way in.

And the reason is buried six feet below the ground are dreams that never came to fruition, songs that were never written or sung, books that were never penned, dreams that never came true, moments of courage that were never stepped into, lots of life and dreams died with people.

And as your pastor, listen to me.

I don't want you to die full of dreams.

I want you to die empty.

I want you to have discovered your giftings and talents, and I want you to use them in a way that God created and intended you for.

So if your message notes, I want you to pull those out because I'm gonna blow through five different things you need to understand about serving.

And then at the end, the finish line today is I'm gonna challenge every person in this room to serve.

Get off the bench and get in the game.

Number one, now you need to know this, God created you to serve.

It was always God's idea that you wouldn't make this life all about you.

You see, when you get nearsighted and make life all about you, your world gets really small.

But when you serve other people, you'll never run out of purpose for your life.

If all churches for you is coming so that you can come and get your spiritual tank filled and you can come get your needs met, you are missing the heart of church.

It's not about you.

God created you to serve.

Paul says it like this.

It's one of my favorite verses in the Bible, Ephesians 2.10.

He says, For we are God's masterpiece.

I'm gonna come back to that word in a moment.

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

You need to understand, God had a plan for your life.

God has something he wants you to do with your life that matters.

But people are funny.

They disqualify themselves.

They're like, well, that's cool for you because you know, like you're a pastor and you're good at talking in front of people, or I'm not musical, or I'm not good with kids, or and we come up with all of our excuses, but can I show you the single great rebuttal to that argument?

You are God's masterpiece.

Other translations say you are his workmanship or his craftsmanship, you are the pinnacle of his creation.

The word for masterpiece in Greek is this interesting word, poema.

We would loosely translate it to poem or poetry, but there is a divine designation given to it because it comes from God.

You are God's poetry.

You are a part of the story that God is pinning through the earth, and none of it is on accident, none of it is happenstance or coincidence.

You are God's masterpiece.

So don't you disqualify what God has qualified.

Don't you stop serving because you feel like you don't measure up in some way.

Now, if you like, if you heard me say like you don't feel like you measure up, and you're like, Yeah, but that's me.

Let me show you another interesting verse.

The book of 1 Peter, Peter says this.

He says, But you, and he's talking to his audience, but this is for us as well, you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God's instruments to do his work.

I want you to leave this here for just a moment.

I think a lot of us in our minds, we think that there's different kinds of people.

There's like the pastors and the ministers, and then there's us.

If you've ever felt that before, I need you to understand that this is not new to this generation.

In the ancient world, the Bible was written, and there was all this confusion over who was the pastor, who was a priest, who was a minister.

In fact, the leaders of state, the people who led the government, the emperors, like Caesar Augustus, one of his official titles was Pontifax Maximus.

It literally means the most high priest.

So there were, you know, government leaders who also carried religious titles, but most people understood that there was like a group of people that were the priest or the pastors, and it felt like there was them, and then there was the regular people.

There was the priest, and the priest had special permission or access to get to God.

They could go into rooms that normal people couldn't, they could talk to God in ways that normal people couldn't, they could make sacrifices that normal people couldn't.

So it felt like there were two tiers.

But here's what Peter wants us to understand.

He says, You are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the work, the high calling of the priestly work.

What does this mean?

It means that because of what Jesus did, there are no tears anymore, but we are all ministers.

Some people are like, Well, what do you mean?

I don't get this.

Okay, listen.

According to the Bible, my job as a pastor isn't even to pastor.

It doesn't make a lot of sense, but my job according to scripture is to train and equip you to be pastors so that in every one of your relationships, in every part of your job, in every part of your family, you are bringing the presence of God everywhere you go.

Does this make sense?

So we get rid of this.

Now, I love this as a church because so many people have gotten a hold of this.

I read this interesting story some years ago about a woman named Indra Nui.

Indra was an Indian American-born little girl, born to a family with a mom who didn't believe in the social stereotypes.

She didn't believe that Indian women should be withheld for some reason or held back to lower standards.

So she instilled in her two daughters this ability to lead and to dream and to step into moments of destiny.

Well, when Indra got a little older, she was promoted over and over again and she received the highest promotion ever.

She was promoted to CEO of the Pepsi Co.

Company.

Here's a picture of her in that season.

And Indra had this amazing job, amazing promotion.

She smashed through several glass ceilings to get there.

And she was rightfully so excited that she came home, she bounced into her garage, stepped into the kitchen where her mom was in there working on something, and she said, Mom, oh, you're not gonna believe this, mom, you're gonna believe this.

Mom said, Babe, wait, hang on, hang on.

We're out of milk, go get milk.

Okay, but I'll get milk one second.

But let me tell you, listen, the greatest thing happened, I gotta tell you about this.

And the mom said, We're out of milk.

Did you hear me?

And she goes, I did, but I just give me 30 seconds.

The mom said, We are out of milk.

Go get milk.

So she stormed off in a huff.

She goes to the grocery store, gets the milk, comes back, and slams the gallon of milk down in front of her mom and says, Guess who just bought this gallon of milk?

The new CEO of PepsiCo.

And it was like the mom was unimpressed.

The mom said, Listen, sweetheart, when you walk through that door, you are first a woman, a wife, a mother, a daughter.

When you walk into this house, she said, You leave your crown in the garage.

What did Jesus do for the world?

Left his crown in the figurative garage of heaven for us.

What does he ask us to do?

To do the same.

Are you ready for this?

This is what I love about our church because we have earned PhDs and doctors.

We have heart surgeons and medical doctors of different kinds.

We have lawyers, we have we have principals and teachers.

We have people who have attained the highest crowns of society.

And what do they do?

They leave their crown.

Check this out.

They leave their titles.

We are the people who serve on our team, they wear name tags.

I've never seen a person write doctor and last name.

They write their name.

Because when we come to serve God, we leave our crowns in the garage.

Number one is God created us to serve.

Number two, you need to get this.

God gifted us to serve.

This is important because a lot of us feel like, okay, well, you're the gifted one or you're the talented one, but that's not me.

No, no.

God gifted you.

He hardwired into the tapestry of who you are, giftings and talents, that the book of 1 Corinthians, chapter 12, calls spiritual gifts.

1 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

And I want you to understand this.

Spiritual gifts are gifts given by God to be used to serve other people.

The truth is you can use them anywhere and everywhere.

They'll affect your marriage and your family and your kids and your work.

But they were given to you by God supernaturally to be used to further his kingdom, to do what he cares about, which happens to be reaching other people.

Now, your spiritual gift, according to 1 Corinthians 12 and a couple other places in Scripture, are supernatural gifts from God.

It's gifts like discernment and wisdom, leadership, prophecy, interpretation, healing, miracles, faith.

There's a long list of spiritual gifts that God gives people.

And here's the interesting thing that the gifts that God gives you, they'll be so natural to you.

It'll be the same thing someone else will struggle with for so long trying to get up to the level that is natural to you.

God gave you those, but I want you to listen to me.

They are not for you.

If you think they're about you and making your name great or famous, you've missed the point altogether.

Now, according to the latest research, 87% of Christians have no idea what their spiritual gifts are.

This is a travesty.

God has given you giftings and talents, and you can't use them if you don't know what they are.

So let me tell you how we try to help people.

We do an event every single month on the first and second Sunday of the month called our next steps class.

The next steps class is literally two steps.

We talk about it all the time.

Let me tell you one more time.

The first step, which is next Sunday during the 10:30 service, is all about taking a next step with our church.

It's the heart, vision, and values of our church.

This is how you'll know if this is home, if this should be your church.

But the second step is about you.

Why do we do this?

Because God created you to serve and he equipped you to serve, and to do those things, you have to know the spiritual gifts that he's given you.

So this class walks you through a couple tests, asks a bunch of questions, and then we want you to find the gifting so that you can use it.

I don't want our church to be 87% full of people who have no idea why God created them and gifted them the way he did, but I want you to discover them so you can use them.

Now, this is a commercial, but let me tell you why.

I want you to register at access.tv slash info because I don't want you to live one more day.

I don't want you to go to bed one more night knowing why, not knowing why God made you and not knowing how to make a difference with your life.

Your church is here to help you take that next step with Jesus through your next steps class.

Number, number three, you need to get this.

God changes you when you serve.

Now, this is so important because I do think a lot of us think that when we do something, it's about changing other people.

Every time we take a mission trip, I gather the team and I say, everybody, look at me.

When we go, you're gonna think you're making a difference and you're changing lives.

And the truth is you are.

But can I tell you the single person who will be changed and impacted the most on the trip?

It's you.

I've been on missions trips all over the world, and every single time it's the exact same story, I'm the one who leaves changed.

God changes us.

What happens when we put other people first?

It roots out of our heart greed and materialism that have this way of trying to stranglehold our hearts.

It changes us, and God uses our serving to change us.

Here's what Paul says in the book of Philippians.

He says, Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.

Rather, in humility, here's what you do: value others above yourself, not looking to your own interest, but each of you to the interest of who?

Of others.

Why?

Listen to me, because it's not about you.

Your relationship with God is not about you.

You know what phrase is found nowhere in the Bible?

Personal relationship with God.

It's not.

Because your relationship with God was meant to be expressed in the way that you love and serve other people.

Number four, God uses you when you serve.

You get to be a vessel used by God.

And here's what I love.

We started today in Romans, I'm sorry, in 1 Corinthians chapter 12.

1 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

Paul uses a few verses later this analogy that is so powerful.

He says that we are the body of Christ.

I want you to think for a moment about your physical body.

You have 78 different organs, 206 bones, 650 unique muscles.

Doctors of anatomy have named roughly 7,500 parts of the human body.

And here's what you need to understand.

If this analogy is true, that all of us make up a different part of the body, every part of the body matters.

And you might look at your physical body and think, well, there's some parts that don't matter as much as others.

Imagine that unimportant part shutting down and imagine what it would do to your body.

When I was in high school, I'm gonna be honest, I was an idiot.

And um I was running through my house one night, it was dark, no lights on, and someone had moved a chair and I didn't know it was there, and I clipped it with my toe and my pinky toe.

I don't know if I broke it or not, because my family, we didn't have a lot of extra money, and so we, our doctor was named Faith.

Like we believed that God would heal you, and so my toe, my little pinky toe, swelled up to like the size of a grape and it got real black and blue.

And um, we were like, ah, rub some dirt on it, you'll be fine, right?

And if you were to look at my body and think about like how insignificant the pinky toe seems compared to everything else, you might think, well, no big deal, you'll be fine.

For weeks I struggled to walk.

For weeks, every time I took a step, it hurt really bad and shot pain through my body when one seemingly insignificant small part of my body was messed up, it messed up the whole rest of my body.

Let me say this to you.

If we are the body of Christ and you are a part of the body, if you are not functioning at your full capacity, it affects the whole body.

Let me offer you one other thought.

It is connection to the body that gives your part its function.

I said this last week in third service.

Let me say it here in second service.

If a child were to have a tragic accident and to have its hand severed off, as a little kid, if you were to take that hand and put it in a Shoebox and stick it in the back of a closet for a year.

If the child had the remaining arm uh healed up through some sort of surgery or plastic surgeries, over time, eventually the rest of the body would continue to grow.

But if you were to wait one year and look at the kid, the kid would have grown.

But if you came back and made the dumb decision to open that shoebox and look at the hand, the hand will have never grown.

In fact, it'll be withered and decaying and disgusting because it is connection to the body that gives each part its function.

I think a lot of us we don't understand this, and so we think, I'm just gonna do my thing for God.

No, no.

It is the connection to the body that gives you your purpose and your ability and your function.

So what if we all made this decision to realize that every person that's a part of the body of Christ is important, everybody has something to do that matters, and we all have to do it together.

It's connection that makes the difference.

Number five, and this one's fun.

God rewards us when we serve.

And I want you to understand that this isn't even the point.

Like we don't do stuff to get the blessing of God, but you can't stop God from doing what he does because he's a good father and because he wants to reward us.

Look what Scripture says in the book of Galatians.

Paul says this, Galatians 6, let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will we will reap a harvest or the blessing of God if we do not give up.

Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good.

Do good to all people, like serve everybody, especially to those who belong in the family of believers.

Why does this matter?

It's because God is our rewarder and he comes through when we make the decision to leverage our lives for other people.

Now, can I tell you the truth for a moment?

Sometimes I don't want God to be my rewarder.

I want people to see.

I'm not asking you to like self-identify or raise your hand, but don't you want some recognition when you do something good?

Don't you want this?

Um, I'm gonna admit something.

I might be the least handy person in this whole room.

When I try to fix stuff, it gets worse.

It gets more expensive.

One time I tried to fix a$200 part in my car, it cost me$1,000 and about three ounces of blood.

You know what I mean?

Like, I don't fix things.

But a few weeks ago, my daughter Ella got this bright idea.

Do you know what Orbees are?

These little water beads.

She thought, well, they're water beads.

I should pour them down the sink because that's where water goes.

She's like, Dad, my sink is backing up.

I said, why?

She goes, Well, I poured Orbees down it, but that's no big deal because it's water, and I'm like, stop it.

And so um, I have friends who are plumbers, but I don't know what happened, but I got inspired that I can fix this.

And so I watched a YouTube video and I said that Polk County phrase, let's get her done, baby, and I took the whole sink apart at the bottom, poured all those Orbees out.

Somehow, by the divine intervention, miraculous touch of God, I put it all back together.

And it's been two weeks and it still works.

It's been two weeks, thank you.

It's all him, it's not about me, it's all him.

Give God praise.

I've been riding this high for two weeks.

Every chance I get to talk about it, I talk about it.

I called my buddy who's the plumber, and I told him, and he goes, We're willing to pay$22 an hour.

I said,$22 an hour, I'm coming for your job.

I'm gonna be the owner of this thing.

Right?

Anybody old enough to remember 1990s WWF wrestling?

Anyone remember Randy Savage?

After I fixed it, this is what I look like in my house.

Why?

Because I want to be celebrated and I want to be known.

Don't you take this off the screen.

I I want to be celebrated and I want to be known, but you need to understand this.

We don't serve for the praise of man.

We serve for the praise of God, for the affirmation of God.

Let me get you, let me show it to you one more time.

God created you to serve, he gifted you to serve, he changes you when you serve, he uses you when you serve, and he rewards your serving.

I want to end with an interesting moment in Jesus' life.

At the very end of Jesus' life, there are two stories that use the same illustrative prop a bowl or a basin.

Jesus has been arrested, falsely accused of something he didn't do wrong, and he's standing before Pontius Pilate, the most powerful man in the region, and the people are screaming to crucify Jesus.

And Pilate's like, what are you talking about?

Why him?

He's done nothing wrong, but the people wouldn't change their mind.

The book of Matthew says it like this, Matthew 27.

When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead of an uproar, instead an uproar was starting, he took water and he washed his hands in front of the crowd.

He says, I am innocent of this man's blood, it is your responsibility.

So Pilate uses a bowl and he uses it to symbolize himself washing his hands of his responsibility.

Less than 24 hours earlier, Jesus is at what we call the Last Supper.

You need to understand in Jesus' day that meals, when they'd come to the table, if you notice in Scripture, often it'll say that they reclined at the table.

Tables were usually only a few inches off the ground, and people would literally lay back and lean on the table.

But if you think about a lot of people like this, what that would mean is your feet, which have been dirty from all the dust and dirt around, would be in the face or all up in the personal space of someone else.

So it was customary before meals that someone would wash feet.

So here you have Jesus, Son of God, Savior of the world, knowing that he is hours away from facing crucifixion for the sins of the world.

Leaned back at a table, knowing some of these people around the table would turn on him, and one would full-on betray him.

John chapter 13 says this.

John 13 · chapter mention

And after that, he poured water into a basin or a bowl, and he began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

Both stories involve a bowl, both stories involve washing, and both stories give us a question that we have to come to grips with.

It's you can either wash your hands of the responsibility of serving, or you can pick up the responsibility.

I think for a lot of us, what we've done when it's come to church and when it's come to serving is we come to church and we turn church service into serve us.

Make me happy, and we wash our hands of the responsibility when followers of Jesus know that our responsibility is to actually pick up the responsibility and to do the serving.

So here is our take-home responsibility and homework today.

Inside of your worship guide, you should have gotten a blue card that says we are a serving church.

I'm gonna ask you to pull that out for just a moment.

And here's how we're gonna end today.

For those of you who are tuning in online, we have this at access.tv slash serve.

You can find this.

If you are not serving, I'm gonna challenge you today to make the decision to discover your gifts and to use them to serve someone else.

And let me explain it this way.

For so long in our church, people have come to our church and said things like, Jason, it's amazing.

There's so many amazing people who serve.

Every pastor who comes through says, What an incredible church they serve so well.

And I agree, you are the most incredible at serving.

And for so long, if you just showed up on a Sunday, you might say, they don't have any needs, everything's taken care of.

And for the most part it has been, but it's because we have such incredible people who are serving.

But we announced last Sunday that we're gonna launch another location of our church.

And my hope is to send a few hundred people there who are carriers of the culture of our church on day one.

People who get it.

When people go, do you know what that's gonna do to us here in South Lakeland?

For the first time in a long time, there's gonna be lots of need and lots of opportunity.

So here's what I'm asking you to do.

I'm asking every person in this room to answer this question Have I made church about me?

And am I willing to turn it around, flip it upside down, and make it about serving other people?

On the back side of the card, there's several different areas of a church that you can serve.

Go to the next slide for me.

Access Kids is elementary all the way down to babies.

Access Youth is middle in high school.

The greeting team is those amazing people who welcome you when you come with a smile and a hug.

The hospitality team are the people who make this place an incredible place that feels like home once you're inside.

The building prep team turns this building into a place where worship happens.

Our production team are the heroes in the back that make every cue and light transition and sound and computers.

All of it work seamlessly so that you don't even notice.

Our outreach team is people who serve in our city and all around the world.

Our worship team are the talented musicians and singers who lead us into the presence of God.

And our next step team are those incredible people who continue to help our church take a next step with Jesus.

Here's what I'm gonna ask you to do.

If you're not currently serving, here's your homework.

Before you leave today, I'm gonna ask you to fill out this card and drop it off.

There will be people at the doors on your way out.

Why does this matter?

Because I want something for you.

In a culture that celebrates fame.

In a culture that's all about being TikTok famous or to get discovered, or it's all about me and getting my reel to explode.

In that culture of like fame and paparazzi, we need to reject fame because fame is self-seeking and self-serving.

And we need to choose to be people who go after what Jesus wants for us, which is not fame, but it's to be great.

Fame is self-seeking and self-serving, but greatness is about others.

Jesus said it himself like this: He said, Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.

Fame is all about getting yourself served, but greatness is about you making the decision to pick up the responsibility and serve someone else.

Martin Luther King Jr.

famously said, Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.

And let me say this to you, you are never more like Jesus than when you serve someone else.

The book of Luke, Jesus said, the Son of Man didn't come to be served, but to serve and to lay his life down as a ransom for many.

So how incredible would it be if all of us made this decision that we're leaving here today and we're number one, we're gonna discover our giftings and talents.

And number two, we're gonna use them to make a difference in the lives of others.

My prayer is that as a result of today, that we'll make this decision to say, God, I'm drawing a line in the sand.

I'm no longer settling for church being about me and making me happy, but instead I'm crossing the line and saying, God, I'm all in whatever you ask of me.

And here's my hope.

My hope is tonight, maybe for the first time in your whole life, as a result of making the decision, you go to bed and you say, God, I'm on this adventure with you.

And every night from here on out, I'm gonna use my giftings and talents for you.

And when I go to bed, I'm gonna say, That's how you do it, that's how you live a day.

Will you bow your head and close your eyes with me all across this room, everybody?

To pray a blessing over you.

So, God, we ask you to give us courage in a world that's all about me and my needs and getting my desires met.

Give us the courage to push up against the green.

And to say, God, it's not about us, but it's about you.

God, we want to be great the way you seek greatness.

It's not fame, it's not self-seeking or self-serving, but it's greatness which is existing to serve other people.

So, God, my prayer is that as a church, we'll make this decision to no longer be content coming to a church service and going home.

But that church will come alive for us because we understand that you desire us to be a part of the body of Christ, connected and serving to live out our full potential.

So, God, my prayer is that this whole wave of making a difference will start to overtake our church.

That we'll discover our giftings and talents and use them in a way that makes a difference for you.

We thank you for it, God, in Jesus' name.