All In – Why Relationships Matter

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

For more information, visit Access.tv.

We are in part three of a series that I've enjoyed.

I'm stepping all up on your toes because the series is called All In.

And in this series, we're asking one question every week.

Here's the question: what would happen if I gave God one year?

One year of all in, one year of chips to the middle of the table, one year of there's a line of demarcation that I'm stepping in and saying, God, for a year you get all of me.

My whole heart, my whole life, you get all of it.

Week one, I started with this message that says that we are people who are marked by the presence of God.

And I want to say this to you.

If you don't have an encounter with God, if you don't have a relationship with God, all the other things that He asks of us will feel like rules.

But hear me on this rules without a relationship ultimately leads to rebellion.

My hope and my heart for all of us as a church is that we are so marked by the presence of God that we carry him with us everywhere we go.

And beyond that, that we begin as a result of the relationship to follow the rules out of delight and out of joy and out of honor.

That was week one.

Last week I said I want to talk to you about the single thing that I think most believers struggle with the most when it comes to actually going all in with God.

And it's in the area of trusting God with our finances.

And it's so funny because for so many of us, we'd say things like, God, I love you, I love you, I love you.

But when it comes to obeying him with our money, we're like, ah, except for that part.

Just leave me out of that.

Can I tell you, I'm so proud of you?

I heard from so many people this week who said, Jason, it doesn't make sense.

The mental math doesn't work for me, but I'm all in and I'm going to trust God for one year in this area, and I'm going to trust that he will come through on his word.

Got those emails.

Also got a few angry emails, so that was cool.

I appreciate that.

Um, but there's just some people, like it's that one area, it's touching a nerve.

And so today, I have one more message for us that's it's really for you.

It's the kind of message that if you'll get this, your relationship with God will come alive, your dreams will come alive, and church will come alive for you in a way that you can't even begin to get your mind around.

Some 16 years ago, my wife and I started access in our living room.

It was really a college Bible study with just a handful of our friends, and we grew from there and we moved out of there into a room in what was then called the Lakeland Center.

Now it's called the RP funding center.

And we grew to maybe 50 or 60 people there.

And then we moved from there to the YMCA that's on Cleveland Heights.

Now, if you've ever driven by, they've got a big building in front, but behind it, there's a small building.

So we started in the small building and we grew out of it and we moved to the next big building, and the rest is history.

But I'll never forget, in the very early days of our church, this is probably 14 years ago or so, we were meeting in the back building of the YMCA, and we we had maybe 50 people, maybe 60 people who came occasionally.

On a normal night, we might have 30 or 40 people, maybe.

And there was this season where like every person who came, like we went after them, we just we pursued them because we just needed people to help us continue to grow.

Well, there was this one guy who showed up, and um, if I could just be real with you for a moment, dude was weird.

Um, anybody know someone who's just weird, like you got that person in your life, they're just weird.

And if you don't know that person, you might be that person.

I don't know, but like we had this weird guy, and he was just he was just weird.

He was always just around, like he would be talking, turn around, he'd just be there, you know.

And um, there was one time, it was the Sunday before Valentine's Day.

My dude showed up with 20 individually wrapped roses to give one to every single girl who came through the doors.

I'm like, bruh, this is not the bachelor.

What are you doing?

You know, stop it.

It was just weird.

I'll never forget, this guy taught me a lesson that to this day it still has it's marked me.

He he came to me one night and he goes, Jason, look, this has been great, but this is gonna be my last night at Access.

I'm gonna move on and find something else.

And I was like, Oh, why?

Why, why, why, why are you leaving?

And he said these words.

He said, The church, it's just too big.

I was like, The church?

He goes, Yeah, the church is just getting too big.

I'm like, bro, there's like 30 people.

You could shoot a cannon through this room and miss everybody.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, what do you mean this church is too big?

And I realized something in what he said.

What he said is true.

A church of 50 can feel too big if you don't know anybody.

A church of 50,000 can feel intimately small if you have a group of people that you know and love.

It's not the size of the church that matters, it's the the closeness of the relationships that define whether or not you will feel seen, known, and loved in a church.

The church felt too big for him.

I learned in that moment that there's a lot of things that matter in church, but one of the things that matters most is we were designed by God.

We were created for relationships.

And here's what he taught me in that moment.

Everybody needs to be needed and known.

I want you to take this thought and I want you to tuck it away because we'll come back to it later.

But what he taught me is that every single person who darkens the doors of this church, they need to be needed.

They need to be known.

In fact, this was always God's idea.

God's intention was that all of us would be close to someone, that we'd have deep, profound relationships with each other.

The very first Sunday night that we had a service that became what became access.

I'll never forget what I taught because I said if this is our first real service, then we need to model ourselves after something.

We don't need to copy other churches.

Let's model ourselves after the very first church.

The book of Acts chapter two, Jesus has died, risen again from the dead, and he's gone back to heaven, and then the Holy Spirit falls, Acts chapter two, and right after that, there's this moment where the church is birthed.

We sing about it in some of the songs we sing.

The church explodes on the scene.

It says this in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

It says they, these new believers, this group of Christians, devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.

And I want you to see this.

All the believers were together.

It's a relationship, and they had everything in common.

They sold the property and possessions and gave to everyone who had need, so there was generosity.

Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.

So there was this element of they came together to worship Jesus.

And then it says this they broke bread in their homes.

I'm gonna pause here for just a moment.

And can we give a shout out to God for not caring about keto?

Come on, God wants you to have some bread, everybody.

And uh, some of you felt that deeper than you felt the announcement for the North Lakeland location.

Like, God wants you to have a cheddar bay biscuit in Jesus' name.

You know, they they broke bread in their homes.

And I want you to see this.

As the church continued to expand, they got together in homes.

Let me pause here and ask the question why does it matter that we gather in homes?

Why does it matter?

Like I love Rose.

I love church, I love everybody looking at me, I love talking to everybody.

I think I'm halfway decent at it.

I love it.

I love this part of church, but there's an element where we need to get into homes.

Why do homes matter so much?

Let me explain it to you like this.

Number one, there are some people who will never, ever, ever step foot in a church building.

They have some church hurt or some apprehension, but they'll go to a home.

I met a lady after the last service who told me, she said, My testimony is I had walked through the darkest season of my life, and I was invited to a group by a person that just had become a friend at work.

I never knew that that group would lead to relationships.

Those relationships led me to church.

I don't know everybody here.

I only know like six or eight people, but I feel so connected and so loved here because of my group.

Homes matter so much.

Beyond that, I'll give you a spiritual reason.

Jesus said, You are the light of the world, a city on a hill.

I believe that as we go out of this room, as we gather to scatter and we scatter across the city, what happens is we take the light of Jesus into our neighborhoods, into our workplaces, into those Panera breads or those Chick-fil-As where your groups meet.

We have to get out of here and we have to go there.

It's not about how many people we can get into this building, it's how many people can we connect around the city.

So they broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.

And here's the result it says, and the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

I love this.

As the people got together and worshiped God in large groups, as they got out of the rows and they got into smaller groups together in homes, as they served their city and served others, and as they gave with everything they had, the Lord shows up and people were added as followers of Jesus every single day.

This is the goal.

This is the hope.

And it starts with us understanding something that you were created for relationship.

So let me say this to you.

At Access, we have groups, and the hope of groups is that you pre you find profound, deep relationships.

It's not an add-on to church.

It's not like we have church and then that's enough for us, and we're just we're just good if we do something else and this is like a bonus.

No, no.

It is everything we do.

In fact, the hope is that we were created for authentic, honest, and life-changing relationships.

It's not an add-on to what we do.

Groups are literally the backbone of our church.

It's what strengthens us, it's what gives us our stability.

Groups matter so much to us.

So here's one of the realizations I've had as a pastor, and we'll be honest, I'll just I'll just be honest with you about this.

Groups matter so much, and as much as I love preaching, you don't remember every sermon you ever hear.

As much as you might love the worship, and our worship team's incredible, as much as you may love the worship, there's something so much more that we need.

As much as I hope that you love Access Kids if you have children or Access Youth, if you have students, and all those things matter.

The truth is there's something that matters so much more.

It's when we get out of our rows and get out of our seats and we begin to share our life in a place where we move from just learning information to we move to application where we can apply what we've learned to our lives.

The truth is, most people live like a man that Solomon talks about.

The book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon, the wisest man to ever live, said, There was a man all lone.

Lonely.

Loneliness is the great endemic of our culture.

I would argue that it's worse than whatever pandemic we just walked through.

There was a man who was alone.

He had neither son nor brother.

There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth.

So he worked his brains out and he thought to himself, For whom am I toiling?

And why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?

What has this all even been for?

And then Solomon takes the teaching and he flips it into application and he says, Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor.

Essentially what Solomon says is two people working together, partner together, can accomplish more than two individuals can.

There is a principle of multiplication that happens when two people partner up.

He says, Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor.

If either of them falls down, and spoiler alert, you will fall down.

One can help the other one up.

You need someone to help you up when you fall.

Then he says, But pity.

Anybody remember Mr.

T?

Every time I read this, I'm like, but I pity the fool who falls and has no one to help them up.

He says, also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone?

Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.

A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

Here's what he's asking who has your back?

Are you floating through this life all by yourself?

You were never created for this.

As you go back to the beginning of the world, God creates the world, and as he creates, he says it's good, it's good, it's good, it's good, it's good.

But at one point there's this screeching halt, and God says it's not good.

But the first place he says it's not good is when he says it's not good for man to be alone.

We were created for relationships.

If there was ever a time that this has come true, we've seen it, it's when 2020 rolled around.

2020, we were all doing our thing, living our life.

2020 was called the year of vision, like 2020 vision, and all of us thought we were gonna change the world and do this, and then the world came to a screeching halt.

Remember this?

And all of a sudden we were more isolated than ever.

And isolation did something terrible to us.

I said it a moment ago.

I I believe it was the worst part of the pandemic was the isolation.

I really do.

The CDC came out with a report that said at the end of 2020, studies showed that one out of every four adults under the age of 30 contemplated suicide.

One out of every 10 of the rest of us considered it.

Why?

Because we're hurting.

In Japan, in the month of October alone, just in October alone, more people died of suicide than the whole year of people who died from COVID-19.

What does this reveal?

It reveals that we are all soul sick.

Social scientists say that we are living in the most isolated generation in the history of the world.

For generations, people have lived in tribes, we've lived in groups, but now there has been this lie that society has bought into, which is you just do you.

You just live your truth.

It's all about you and your dreams and your desires.

No, no, no.

We were created for community.

We were never never created to live in this soul-sick, isolated kind of way.

This is the reason that our groups matter so much.

Allow me to talk to you just for a moment about groups.

Let me kind of give you a little window into what they are.

We're intentional about trying to create as many groups as we can for as many different types of people as we can.

We realize that you have different interests and things that appeal to you.

So we want to have a group for everything.

In fact, we could boil it down to these six different types of groups.

The first is we have season of life groups.

These are different stages of life.

This might be parenting or marriage or pre-marriage.

This might be single or single again.

This might be men's groups or women's groups or couples' groups or like all different types of groups for the season of life you're in.

The second level is the support groups.

These are things like grief share when you're walking through a difficult time, or divorce care for people who are walking through the loss of a marriage.

We have financial groups.

Financial groups are for people that need some help from an older person who's maybe like walked through some financial seasons and they've set themselves up well if you want that.

Then there's activity groups.

These are fun.

These are when we gather around something we love.

So we've had running groups and basketball groups and rugby groups and golf groups and all different types of groups.

You've had game groups, like you name it, we've had groups for those.

But I want to draw attention to these last two.

I love all the types of group we have, but my prayer is that this next upcoming group season, we can have more of these last two, and here's the reason.

We are a discipling church.

What is discipleship?

Disciple, a disciple is a fully devoted follower of Jesus.

It's a lifelong student.

How do you become a disciple?

By learning about and learning to be with God.

So I want us to have more prayer groups and more Bible studies where we dig into the Word of God.

Here's a practical way that we can do this.

This season, we're gonna actually give some support to help start a lot of these message application groups.

You see, here's what I understand about preaching.

It doesn't matter how wonderful and incredible the message is, if you leave here and you don't apply it to your life, all we've done is wasted your time.

So one of the things that I know that is true about preaching that matters so much is as much as I love preaching, you need to understand this.

I know that it doesn't change everything, and here's why I know this.

Because you probably couldn't name for me my last 10 sermons.

Truth is, I can't name my last 10 sermons.

But if I said to you, name for me 10 people who've impacted your life, you'd fire them off right away.

Because relationships matter.

Because we understand this, we want to work with you to help you understand how to apply the messages to your life.

So here's what we're gonna do.

If you're willing to lead one of these groups every Sunday night or Monday, we'll send you five or six questions based on the topic of the message.

It's not a quiz to see how much you remember, it's questions to start conversations about how this applies to your life.

You see, here's what we understand.

Real life change happens in the context of relationships.

It just does.

Name for me my last 10 sermons, you can't do it.

Name for me 10 people that have impacted your life, you could rattle it off in 10 seconds.

Because real life change happens in the application that's found in relationships.

Science is catching up to this.

If you study psychology or psychiatry, what's fascinating is they have no problem prescribing medicine.

In fact, let me just get ahead of this and say this.

If you are sick in some sort of like mental state, like depression, anxiety, I have no problem with the doctor prescribing you medicine.

For whatever reason, churches have ascribed a stigma to different SSRIs and different anxiety medications.

It's so weird to me that we do that.

Like if you have a headache, you take Tylenol.

If you have cancer, you get chemo or radiation.

If you've got a mental illness, like I'm all for the medicine.

But here's what psychology and psychiatry has come to learn.

It's that medicine alone isn't fixing the depression and the anxiety that society's feeling.

So they've come up with a new therapy.

It's called social prescribing.

And what this is, is psychiatrists are literally asking people to get out of their loneliness and no matter how depressed or anxious they feel, force themselves into a group.

I heard a story about a woman who was so depressed, and she was so anxious that when she was given this social prescription to go into a group, she literally threw up the first time she walked in because she was so afraid of people judging her.

She walks in and literally the group, they introduced themselves and they started doing a project together.

Because everybody needs to be known and everybody needs to be needed.

It's like science is catching up to what God knew the whole time.

We need each other.

Paul says it like this in Romans chapter 12.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

In fact, I'm not just gonna read it alone.

Will everybody read it out loud with me?

Let's read this together.

Romans chapter 12, verse 5, he says, Since we are all one body in Christ, we belong to each other.

Romans 12:5

And each of us needs all the others.

We need each other.

We belong to each other.

Can I give you an example that I've wanted to use all day, but I've run out of time?

Paul uses the language of a body.

Here's one of the things that I think is so interesting.

This is gross and forgive me in advance.

If you were to take a child who had a tragic accident and lost his hand, and you were to take that child and you were to get the surgery required to help the where the hand was to kind of heal up, and if you were to take the hand that's been severed and put it in a shoebox and set it in a closet for a year, here's what would happen.

Eventually the body would continue to grow.

But if you were brave enough to open that box and look at that hand a year later, it would be disgusting, shriveled, and withered.

Why?

Because it's not just the fact that we're a body, it's the connection to the body that actually causes there to be growth.

You were created to be a part of the body of Christ, to be connected to one another.

And when you disconnect yourself from it, you limit the ability you have of actually growing.

There's this interesting psychological study.

It's called the Johari window.

The Johari window is beautiful.

It's four different quadrants that make up every single person's life.

If you have your message notes, pull them out because I want to show you how God's word intersects with this.

The first quadrant is called the arena.

This is the part of me that I know and that you know.

Here's the truth about this.

If you were to meet a person for the very first time, there's stuff you know about them right away.

You know how tall they are, you know how much they weigh, you know what their body frame looks like, you can tell their eye color, their hair color, you can tell if they're married, if they're not.

You can you can learn lots of things about a person really fast at a very quick surface level.

But can I tell you the truth?

All of us work really, really hard to protect our image.

So we exhaust ourselves.

We we make our social media into a highlight reel of all of our best moments because we want people to think that we are better than we actually are.

Fake is exhausting.

Let me explain it to you like this.

Um, don't raise your hand, but have you ever had this experience?

Have you ever been in a fight with your loved ones on the way to church?

I didn't say answer this.

I just said, have you ever um you ever had that moment and your kids are so annoying, you want to like pick up someone else's kids after church and forget yours here?

Come on, somebody, you ever had this happen?

You're fighting with your spouse on the way to church, and you shut the door to your car and you walk in, you're like, Well, praise Jesus, everybody.

So glad to be here, right?

We do this.

It's so funny.

Why is that?

Because we want people to think something of us that we are not.

It is so funny to me.

Every time I do a series at church on marriage, I have the worst month of marriage in my whole life ever.

I love my wife.

I adore my wife.

We have a beautiful marriage, but I'm getting up here and I'm saying things about marriage, and you can do what we do.

We do this, we love each other.

And I'm like, maybe, I don't even know.

Right?

Why?

It's because the truth is there is this part of us that we put on for everyone else to see.

It's not really who we are.

Jesus himself addressed this.

He was talking about these religious leaders, the Pharisees.

Matthew 23, he says, everything they do is done for people to see.

They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long.

Phylacteries is a fun word.

Try to use this one at work tomorrow.

A phylactery is a small leather box that these religious leaders would make.

It's small, and they would they would use a strap and they would strap it to their forehead, and inside the phylactery box was some of the writings of the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament.

So Jesus is saying, you're like putting on for people to see, it's all fake.

Even this phylactery was not what it was intended to be.

It's not about can you have the word of God with you?

It's can it be deeply rooted in your heart?

This is what it is.

And then Jesus goes to these people, he goes, Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites, you are like whitewashed tombs.

Look at this example.

He said, They look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside they're full of bones of the dead and everything unclean.

He says, Those of you who put on and fake, it's exhausting you, and you are literally nothing more than like a painted, pretty tomb, dead on the inside.

I want you to be honest with yourself for a moment.

How many times have you walked into work and someone said to you, How are you?

And you're like, Good, things are good, and you're dying on the inside.

You're like the kind of person Jesus talks about.

Second area of our life in the Jahari window is the mask.

I want you to think of this like a facade, like a Halloween mask, the kind of mask you'd use to hide.

Who you are.

The mask is the part that I know, but you don't know.

Essentially, what he's saying is that everybody has a secret.

Everybody knows things about themselves that no one else knows.

And here's the truth: we work really hard to hide these, don't we?

What are we saying?

We think that if you knew who I really was, if you knew my habits or my addictions, if you knew that thing I did on my spring break, if you knew my thought life, you couldn't possibly love me.

And here's the thing: not everybody needs to know all of your secrets.

Do you have that friend who shares too much on social media?

Like they put all their emotions out there.

Not everybody needs to know your secrets, but can I tell you something?

Somebody does.

Why does somebody need to know your secrets?

Here's why.

I'll always stay as sick as my secrets.

If someone doesn't know, what will happen is you will find yourself constantly falling back into that pattern or to that addiction or to those habits.

You'll finally, you'll always find yourself falling back into those cycles of sin over and over and over again.

This is why Paul says in 2 Corinthians, and I love Eugene Peterson's translation, he says, we refuse to wear masks and play games.

We don't maneuver and manipulate behind the scenes and we don't twist God's word to suit ourselves.

Rather, we keep everything we do and say out in the open, the whole truth on display, so that those who want to can see and judge for themselves in the presence of God.

Essentially, Paul is saying, we have to keep it 100, we have to keep it real, we have to be who we actually are.

So many of us, we buy into this lie that if people really knew the real us, they wouldn't possibly love us.

Can I tell you the most healing thing?

It's when you gather the courage in the context of a relationship to share something, and someone hears you and they love you more than your issues.

C.S.

Lewis said it like this.

He said, Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, What?

You two?

I thought I was the only one.

For years when I did counseling a lot at our church, it was so interesting.

People would come to me and they would tell me what there's their big secret, their big dark sin that they needed to confess, and they'd like, here it is.

And I would watch person after person, literally, their countenance would go.

And I said the same two things to hundreds of people over the years.

I said, Thank you for trusting me.

But number one, I need you to know you are not the only one who's walking through this.

Number two is a question.

Who knows?

Who have you shared this with?

Almost every single person said, I can't tell anyone.

I can't have them think of me like that.

I can't have them know me like that.

So what we do is we get into this bad cycle.

We confess to God.

First John says that when we confess to God, He's faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.

But the book of James teaches us something else.

James chapter five says, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other that you might be healed.

So we confess to God and he forgives us, but we're not healed.

We keep falling back into the cycles.

He says, confess.

The word confess literally means like con means with, and fess is like to fess up or to speak.

So it is to with your words, use your words to say what you've done to each other.

I told you earlier, not everybody needs to know all of your business, but somebody does.

How do we get to that point?

Well, we have to make the decision to trust somebody.

Here's my question: why don't we?

Why don't we trust people?

I'll give you a couple of reasons.

Number one is we tried it one time and they betrayed us.

We told them that thing that we had to gather the courage and force ourselves to say to them, and they told someone else.

Can I tell you, if you throw out relationships because you had a bad experience, it's no different than a pot of boiling water falling on you and burning you to third-degree burns on your leg and you saying, I'll never have water again ever.

It's like the instrument that was used to hurt you is actually the gift that's given to you to keep you alive.

Relationships are the same way.

You get hurt by someone, but it's funny because the instrument that was used to hurt you is the same tool God uses to heal you.

We need relationships.

The third area is what I call our blind spots.

And these are the stuff that I don't know, but you know.

Like you can see things in me that I can't see in myself.

This is what I kind of like to call the spinach in the teeth thing.

You ever had this before?

And you have spinach in your teeth, and don't you appreciate the friend who's like, hey bro, listen.

It's weird, but you got a little something in your teeth.

Don't you like that person?

And as much as it's embarrassing in the moment, what is way worse is getting home five hours later and realizing that five hours ago you had lunch and there's been spinach in your teeth all day.

Don't you appreciate the person who's willing to call you out on those things you can't see for yourself?

Solomon says it like this in Proverbs.

He says, faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend.

Yes, it hurts, but you know that because it hurts, it declares that they love you.

Do you have anyone in your life who can say things to you like, hey, buddy, I love you, but um, when you talk to your wife or about your wife like that, I just watch it destroy her soul.

Hey, listen, I know you were angry at the employees today, but when you lash out at them like that, your anger comes through in a way that is demoralizing to them.

Hey, I've noticed that like you've been drinking like way more often and way more than you should.

And it's not, it's not good for you.

I love you so much that I'm gonna tell you this.

Do you have people in your life like that?

In the book of Hebrews, the author says it like this He says, See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God, but encourage one another daily, as long as it is called today.

We'll talk about this in a moment, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.

This word today is capitalized and it's in quotations to draw emphasis to the word.

Essentially, what he's saying here is this is that you have to make sure that the thing that's that they're they can't see the blind spot in their life, if it's not dealt with, it could turn into a much bigger problem tomorrow.

So it must be dealt with today, right now, here in this moment.

Like have the courage to allow people in your life to speak to your blind spots.

Trust a friend and say, hey, listen, can you point out some stuff in me that maybe I don't see about myself?

We need that.

The fourth area, this is so powerful.

The fourth area is what's called the potential.

In the blind spot, there's stuff that I don't know, but you know.

But in our potential, I don't know, and you don't know.

Essentially, in relationships, there's some stuff that God wants to do through you that can only be accomplished in trusting Him and in trusting another person.

You see, here's what I believe.

All of us have potential that we can't even see for ourselves.

You pay attention to any business leader, and they say these big statements like, Show me your friends, and I'll show you your future.

Can I take it a step farther with scripture?

Show me your deep, profound, life-giving friends, and only God who can see your future will show you all that He has for you.

Solomon in Proverbs says it like this He says, As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.

Let me ask you a question.

Who is in your life like this that is sharpening everything in your life?

Who sees in you stuff you can't see, who calls out greatness in you, who believes that God has something powerful in store for you.

All of us need this.

So I'm gonna end today the way I started.

Remember the story about the weird dude with the roses?

Everybody needs to be needed and known.

If it's true that all of us need relationships, if relationships are the backbone of our existence, then we need people and we need to be needed and known.

Let me show you what this looks like at Access.

Number one, I want all of you to join a group.

Groups start in just a few weeks, and if you're gonna go all in with God, I need you to make the decision and say, God, I'm in.

But can I be honest with you for a moment?

35% of our church was in a group the last couple of semesters.

35%.

Shows me two things.

Number one, it shows me that we need more people to have a step of faith and to step in and say, God, I'll just trust.

I'll put myself out there.

But number two, it shows me that we don't actually have enough groups.

As our church is expanding, listen to me.

We will have over 2,000 people at our church sometime in the next three or four weeks in one Sunday.

At Easter, we had like 3,400 people here.

There are thousands of people in our city.

Can I tell you my dream?

My dream is that we reach a day where there's more people connected in our church through groups than actually attend on a Sunday morning.

That's my hope because relationships change everything.

Relationships are where we apply the truth to our lives.

So some of you need to join a group, but I need to go stronger and say some of you today is the day that you need to decide to lead a group.

Maybe you've been in a group for so long and you found this tight-knit group of friends and you love each other.

They're for each other.

You've been a group for so long, and you need to give to someone else what the act of courage from someone else gave to you.

Let me say this to you as your pastor.

I refuse to lead a church that's full of consumers.

But with all of my heart for the rest of my life, I'll give everything I have to lead a church full of people who are contributors.

I refuse to feed the consumer mentality, which is all about me, that changes a service into serve us.

But I will give my whole life and every ounce of energy I have to lead a group of people who say, God, I'm living open-handed with every part of my life, and that includes my influence.

So one of the things we say as a church is like, don't do life alone.

Don't live on an island.

You need connection.

Can I tell you this is true as well about leading a group?

Some people think things like, Well, you know, Jason, I want to lead a group, but I'm not qualified, or I don't have enough education, and they give me all the excuses.

I don't know where to meet.

There's always a place to meet.

And can I tell you the truth?

There is an answer to every one of your concerns.

And in the same way that we don't want you to do life alone, we won't let you lead a group alone.

We will train you and give you everything you need.

We will help you every step of the way.

We will help people find your group.

And beyond that, we will give you a coach that will help you every single week of your group.

What is a coach?

Coach is the opposite of a critic.

A critic sees the worst and pulls the worst out of you.

A coach sees the potential in you and helps you do everything you can to reach your potential.

You were not created to do life alone.

Some of you need to be the answer to the prayer that other people are praying.

Some of you have been praying a prayer, God, I feel so alone.

I feel so lonely.

Help me, help me, help me.

And I just want to speak on behalf of God to you today and say, so do it.

So do it.

So step out and have 60 seconds of courage.

Attend the meeting next Sunday.

We have a group leader's training.

Literally come back next Sunday at the 10:30 service.

Don't go to the 10:30 service.

We don't have room for you, but go to the group leader training and then come to the 12 o'clock service.

We'll give you everything you need to lead the group that God has called you to lead.

We'll resource you, we'll help you, we'll fill your group with people, we'll help you find a location.

People are like, well, Jason, I don't really have the right home.

No problem.

Do Panera, do Chick-fil-A.

People are like, well, that's weird.

What if people see us?

What if people see you?

Every group I've ever led at a Chick-fil-A, it's had multiple people stop by and ask, hey, what are you guys doing?

Oh, we're just doing what the Bible says.

We're learning what it means to be a follower of Jesus with each other.

I've had people, so many people have joined our church over the years because they got connected in a group first.

So here's my prayer and here's my final word of encouragement.

I need you to pull your phone out.

I need you to open this site, access.tv slash groups.

In a couple weeks, all the group listings will be there.

Hopefully 150 or 200 groups for you to choose from.

But I'm gonna ask you in a moment as I pray to ask God to give you 60 seconds of encourag uh 60 seconds of insane courage to trust Him.

If you go to access.tv slash groups, there's a form you can fill out just saying I'm interested in leading a group.

If you want, inside of your worship guide is a connection card.

You can check.

I want to lead a group and fill it out, drop it off on your way out.

Our team will get in touch with you this week.

We just want to help you and we've made it as easy as possible.

Some of you've prayed a prayer for so long, you've said, God, I'm lonely.

You get to be the answer to the prayer that you've been praying.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes with me?

We pray for you.

So, God, we ask you to give us the courage to do what so many of us need in the most isolated generation ever.

Give us the courage to be the kind of church that pushes back against the current of culture and who says, no, no, no, we're gonna fight for relationships.

God, some of us are exhausted because we've been pretending for so long.

God, my prayer is that we'll have the courage to take off the mask, let down the guard, stop being fake, and let somebody in.

God, I pray for healing to take place in our church because we've had the courage not just to confess to you for forgiveness, but to confess to others so that we can receive what James 5 16 says, which is healing.

And God, my prayer is that there will be a day soon when more people are connected around our great city than even come to our church because we understand so profoundly how much our relationships matter.

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

Amen, amen, amen.