We Are Access – Roof Crashers

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

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Hey, let's get to work.

We got some work to do today.

Let's pray, then let's get after this new series called We Are Access.

Let's pray.

So, Lord, thank you for your presence in this place.

And God, I really do believe that you are here with us and you have a word for us today.

So, God, as I speak, I ask you to do the miracle that you always do, which is to silence my voice, so that your voice can resound powerfully in all of our souls.

And God, by the power of your Holy Spirit and on the authority of your word, we just we ask you to change us.

May we leave forever different because we've encountered you.

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

Amen.

Amen.

My wife and I have three incredible kids, Joey, Gavin, and Ella.

And when my oldest son, Joey, was a little guy, I started getting him into sports, and he's turned into a 14-year-old monster.

The kid's almost back squatting as much as me.

He's strong.

He's got a cannon of an arm for football.

But when he was little, I just had him playing all kinds of sports.

You know, I put him in soccer and basketball.

And what's funny at like five years old is they are not interested in sports.

Like they'll be playing.

They're literally walking around going, ugh, just yawning everywhere.

And I put Joey at five and six years old in this league called the Encouraging Sports League.

Encouraging sports.

And the whole idea of encouraging sports league was about having fun and teaching the kids the game.

And so they said, because it's the encouraging sports league, we're not gonna like really criticize them and we're not gonna keep score.

And I always thought that was so dumb because you know who keeps score?

All the kids who are playing.

That's who keeps score, right?

And I'm I'm just concerned, this is my own personal soapbox that I'll stand on and then step off of.

I'm concerned that we're raising a generation of losers because we don't keep score, and every kid gets a trophy.

That's not how life works, right?

Is what it is.

I'm gonna step up off of that soapbox for a moment.

So, anyways, we're in the encouraging sports league.

Joey's about this tall.

They lowered the rims to like six and a half or seven feet.

And I told Joey, look, if you ever get the ball anywhere near the rim, just throw it up and pray for a miracle.

Just yell, yell Kobe, and throw it up and we'll see what happens, right?

So Joey's like five.

I I promised myself when my kids got into sports I wouldn't become that dad.

You know, you know that dad, right?

You're not that dad, but I promised I would not become that dad, the one who's like yelling at refs and who's like, oh, and I became that dad.

I have been almost kicked out of multiple sporting events for my kids, but you know what?

The refs will never remember me, but my kids will know I always had their back.

And so I'll go after a ref.

There was one game when Joey was five, and he he made his first basket, and Liz and I lost our ever-loving minds.

I have it on video.

It's like one of my highlights of my whole life celebrating him.

And then there was this game that he just, if there was highlights, there also have to be lowlights.

Do you know what I'm saying?

And there was this game where Joey was on defense, and he was literally like right in front of me when this happened.

And the other team had the ball, and their player had the ball, and he was kind of dribbling backwards into Joey.

And I don't I don't know what possessed Joey.

It was basketball.

It was basketball.

And Joey wraps this kid up, lifts him up off of his feet, and slams him into the ground.

And as a dad, I am conflicted in this moment.

On one hand, I think that is awesome.

That is so cool.

What a cool moment, right?

But on the other hand, I'm like, whose kid is that?

What is the who's I was like, quit acting like your mother, you know, like you do what you gotta do.

But there was no hiding the fact that this was my son.

My family always shows up in force.

And so here's my family celebrating Joey and his fantastic body slam.

This is how we roll.

There's no hiding from it.

So Joey does it, and the game ends, and we get in the car and the door shuts, and Joey just goes, Oh, that was awesome.

I said, What was awesome?

He said, body slamming that kid, and I was like, Joe, okay, cool.

It was awesome.

But, you know, this was basketball, not UFC.

It's basketball.

Like you can't tackle the kids.

It was awesome, but you kind of missed the point.

All right.

Can I tell you one of my fears as a pastor?

One of my fears as a pastor is that someday I'll stand before God in heaven and have to give an account for my life and for my family, but before our church as well.

And I I never want to stand before God and to hear God say something like this.

Your church was awesome.

It was.

The music was incredible.

The Access Kids was the greatest, Access Youth so much fun.

I never want to hear God say your groups were really great, and your hospitality was first class, and it was awesome, but you kind of missed the point.

I never want to hear God say you did a great job and people loved it, and everybody celebrated how good of a speaker you were, how excellent ministry was done at your church, but you missed the point.

I never I never want to hear God say those words.

And so every once in a while there comes these moments, these series where we have to remind ourselves why we exist.

And so this whole series is centered around why does our church exist and why does it matter?

And let me tell you why this matters.

When we lose our why, we lose our way.

And I don't want us to drift towards becoming just another church that just kind of misses the point.

I don't want us to become a church that just drifts into becoming a country club just to keep Christians happy and just to keep filling your calendars with fun events, just so you don't have to actually have a relationship with anybody who doesn't believe the same as you.

And here's the point: you need to understand this that there is a gravitational pull towards making church all about church people.

Let me say this.

I love church people.

Check this out.

I am church people, I love church people, I really do.

But a lot of churches unintentionally just drift towards making church all about church people and we forget what we're called to do.

Now, is this a good thing?

Sure, it is a good thing to have all kinds of good events to help Christians grow and help Christians become more like Jesus.

I'm all about that.

But hear this good things can replace the great things that God has for us.

And what is the great thing that God has for us?

Well, I really believe it's about being on mission with Jesus.

What did Jesus say?

He said, the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.

So if we're gonna be a church that matters, if we're gonna be a church that makes a difference, if we're gonna be a church that generations from now people are following Jesus because of what we do today, then we have to stay on mission.

Some years ago, I flew across the country to San Diego and I spent a few days with some pastors.

And this one pastor, we were gonna ride together, and so I jumped in his car, it was awesome.

It was a Camaro convertible, and we were driving along the Pacific Coast just talking about church and life, and we were talking about church, and he had this really weird definition of church.

Like, what do you think about when you think of church?

What is the definition of church?

For a lot of people, church is family, and this is a good analogy for church, right?

We love each other, we care about each other, hopefully we protect each other, we look over each other's faults, we have each other's backs.

There's so many good analogies that you can build when you think of church as family, but I don't know that this is the perfect analogy.

And he used another one, and this one was weird.

And he was talking about his church staff and all of their volunteers, and he called his church a pro sports team.

And I said, What does that mean?

And he goes, It means we do everything first class with excellence, and just like you would treat a professional athlete, I don't care what you did for me in previous seasons, if you're not cutting it now, we will cut you.

He's like, I fire people immediately when they stop performing.

And I was like, oh dang, okay, cool.

Like that's that's not it.

But which one is it?

If if you've got both ends of a of a continuum, and on one end you've got family where we just overlook the flaws, and on the other end, a pro sports team where we don't overlook any flaws at all, which one is it?

And I would like to submit to you, it's really neither, and it's kind of both.

I really believe the church is family, but it's family on mission.

It's family on mission, and what is the mission?

The mission is that we care about what Jesus cared about.

Jesus came to seek and save the lost.

And so, if this is important, if the message of Jesus is for everyone, the church should be for everyone.

Come on, church should be for everybody.

So every time I preach something like this, I usually I usually get kind of a mean email from a Christian.

And it's someone who's like, Well, I thought church was about me, it is about you.

And let me say this, and I'm gonna emphasize one word.

This is so important for you to hear.

I'm gonna emphasize one word.

Here it is.

The church does not exist only for the sake of the people who are inside, but for those who are not inside yet.

And this is important, and this ticks some Christians off who want church to be all about them, but the church does not exist only for those who are insiders.

Let me say this to you.

I love you and I hope you grow.

In fact, I work really hard on these messages.

We work hard to have great groups, we work hard for opportunities for you to serve.

I want you to grow closer to Jesus.

In fact, my promise to you is that if you spend one year all in, you will grow to become more and more like Jesus after just one year of going all in with him.

But I need you to get this.

Part of maturity is rooting selfishness out of your life.

What does that mean?

Well, when you have babies, babies are born selfish, aren't they?

What are their first words?

Mama, dada, and then what?

Mine.

It's all about them.

It's all about making them happy.

And you would assume that as a baby matures a little bit, the selfishness begins to work its way out of them.

Okay.

Spiritually, in the same way, I believe that when we're spiritually newborns, we're selfish.

It's all about me and growing and growing and growing.

But what happens is as God begins to mature, your heart, selfishness has to take a back seat.

Selfishness is all about me, but selflessness is realizing that there is a world full of people outside of the walls of this room who, if they were to die today, would spend eternity separated from God in a literal place called hell.

Okay, so we gotta care about it.

So to understand this, I want to go to two different places in scripture today.

I want to talk about what our role is as a church.

Hey, in the book of Acts, chapter one, Jesus has risen from the dead and he's about to leave, but he tells his disciples, I'm leaving, but I'm not leaving you alone.

I'm sending the Holy Spirit to be with you, to empower you, to do the mission that God has for you.

And then Jesus leaves.

They're filled with the Holy Spirit, it's this miracle.

And then in Acts chapter 2, immediately after this moment with the Holy Spirit, this new church is born.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

And here we are 2,000 years later, celebrating, gathering together, and doing these things.

But Acts chapter 2, verse 46 and 47 says this.

Acts 2:46

Every day they, these new Christians, this new church, this new family of believers, they continue to meet together in the temple courts.

They broke bread in their homes and ate together.

Quick time out for a moment.

Can we give a shout out to God encouraging us to eat bread, somebody?

Can we talk about that?

In a whirl full of keto, have you a red lobster cheddar bay biscuit in Jesus' name?

Okay, that's it.

Some of you are like, I just felt God's presence.

I never felt that before in my whole life.

That's cool.

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

And then I want you to notice something.

And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

When the church is on mission, it stops caring just about the bread.

It stops caring just about themselves, and it starts caring about the world that's around them.

What tends to happen when a church gets on fire and on mission is that the world can't help but notice it.

Okay, so what is our role in this?

Alright, this is hard, and I'm gonna upset some people, I get it, but what is our role in this?

I want to take you to this fascinating story.

The book of Mark, chapter two.

I'm gonna take you to the story.

It says this, Mark chapter two, we'll go with verse one.

A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home.

Now we're gonna stop here for just a moment.

I want to tell you what's happening.

Jesus was in this little city, it's a little beach city on the north side of the Sea of Galilee called Capernaum.

I got to go there a few years ago.

Here's a picture from Capernaum.

Um, you need to understand this.

Like this, this probably wasn't there when Jesus was around, and they didn't speak English.

Everything's commercialized.

But we were there in Capernaum in this beautiful city, and it's literally a little beach city on the north side of the Sea of Galilee.

Here's a picture just from that city.

Look how beautiful it is.

It's just it's absolutely stunning, this little place.

And we know from history that Capernaum wasn't a huge city.

Most scholars believe maybe some 1,500 to 2,000 people would have called it home.

It was a very familial area.

What that means is families live in community together.

So if you were a mother and father and you started having kids, you'd build a home and it was a small, rectangular, maybe a one-story home.

And the hope was that you could build it in a way where you could build onto it so that as your kids got older and got married and had kids, that they could eventually kind of join you in this little community together.

And I want you to notice something about the story.

Go back to the verse, it says that Jesus is there, and people heard that he had come home.

Pause here for again, just for a moment.

What's interesting is a lot of people think that Jesus never had a home to himself.

And they they take some verses out of context.

One of the verses is Jesus says the Son of Man doesn't even have a place to lay his own head.

And they think that means Jesus didn't have a house.

But we really believe here that Jesus was at his actual house.

This was his place, this was his home.

Can we be honest for a moment?

There's no place like home, isn't there?

You ever go on a trip for more than a few days, and you just think to yourself, I can't wait to be home.

Like your home has a certain smell to it.

You ever notice that?

You don't notice it until you're gone for a week or more.

But then you come home and you're like, because it smells like it smells like home.

You ever have a stressful day at work and it's so stressful, and your stomach's in knots, and your head is hurting, it's your head's pounding, and you just can't wait to just get home and take your work clothes off and put on something comfortable, and you just you sit in your chair and you just because it's home, right?

And when you travel, even if you stay at a five-star resort, like there's nothing like your own bed, right?

And you you love your bed and you love your pillow.

And let's get honest for a moment.

Come on.

You ever travel for more than a week, than a week, and you get home?

There is nothing like your own bathroom.

Can I hear a good amen from somebody, right?

And it's your bathroom, it's your place of comfort.

If there's a hair on the ground, you're like, yeah, it's my hair.

It's it doesn't matter, right?

It's yours.

You just love your bathroom.

So Jesus comes to this place that's his home, and he's there, and you would think it's a reprieve, it's a place to rest.

But but word had spread about Jesus through the countryside.

Because of all the miracles he had done, because of the way he taught about God, everyone was talking about Jesus and all he was doing.

And so it says this they, being the crowds of people, gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left.

So Jesus, no, everybody's like crowding into his house, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them.

So everybody's crowding and they want to see what Jesus is gonna do.

And then the whole story gets interesting.

It's like it all of a sudden it's all gas, no breaks, hard right turn.

It tells us that there's this man.

It says this, next verse, some men came bringing to him a paralyzed man.

Remember that.

And it says that it's some men.

It's not like his family, not his brothers and sisters, not his mom and dad.

Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them.

And since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they had this idea.

They made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat that he was lying on.

Now just pause here for a moment.

Jesus is in his house, his home.

All these people come crowding in, so it's not a reprieve, it's actually him working in this moment.

And in the homes that they would build in those ancient days, there was often stairs on the side of the house so you could get to the top to fix the thatch roof, but also so it could be a place where you might sit and rest or sit back, lay back, and read, or something.

And so there are these friends, and and they're all from Capernaum, but I'd like to submit to you that I believe one of them was from Plant City because he said, Hey, y'all, watch this.

I got an idea.

And they bring this man paralyzed to the top of the roof.

Whose roof?

Jesus' roof, and they tear a hole in the roof, and they start lowering him down in front of Jesus.

So imagine you're Jesus, right?

You're finally home, finally in your house, and all of a sudden you start feeling dust hit your eye, your head, you look up and it's in your eyes, and you think, What?

I'm gonna have to fix that.

What is wrong with you?

And a man gets lowered down in front of Jesus, and it says this next verse.

When Jesus saw their faith, the friends who lowered him down, he said something to the paralyzed man.

Now, if you're the paralyzed man, what do you want to hear from Jesus?

I would want to hear you're healed.

It's a miracle.

Go have fun, enjoy your life, enjoy running and walking.

That's what I would want to hear.

But Jesus says something so counterintuitive.

Jesus responds, son, your sins are forgiven.

What?

Your sins are forgiven.

Now, some teachers of the law were sitting there thinking to themselves, side note, never think something negative about Jesus with Jesus because he's Jesus.

So they think to themselves, why does this fellow talk like that?

He's blaspheming.

Who can forgive sins but God alone?

And immediately remember, Jesus is Jesus.

And so Jesus knew in his spirit that this is what they were thinking in their heart.

And so he said to them, Why are you thinking these things?

Which is easier to say to this paralyzed man, your sins are forgiven, or to say, Get up, take your mat and walk.

He says, But I want you to know that the Son of Man has the authority on earth to forgive sins.

So he said to the man, I tell you, get up, take your mat, and go home.

He got up, took his mat, and walked out in full view of them all.

And this amazed everyone.

Like, no joke, this amazed everyone.

And they praised God, saying, We have never seen anything like this.

Fascinating story of how Jesus heals a man.

But I want to look at this because I really believe that there is a pattern to the way that Jesus tends to operate.

And a lot of us get stuck on step number three and we miss the fourth step.

And I think that is so important to all of us.

So the series is called We Are Access.

Let me tell you what this man experienced and what all of us can experience as we encounter Jesus.

You need to understand that he experienced, but also we are access, and we are renamed.

We're renamed.

You say, what does that mean?

Well, in Jesus' day, a person that was born with any sort of physical handicap, any sort of disability at all, especially when they were born as a child with this, they were often seen as discardable, trash, a mistake.

In Jesus' day to be born with any sort of physical impairment, often the parents would have the baby killed there on the spot.

They would take them to the outskirts of the city and they would leave them outside of the city.

They may hope to themselves maybe someone that's more compassionate or has more resources will come and take this baby and raise it.

Or if the baby just dies, or if an animal gets the baby, then that's nature taking its course.

Aristotle, who lived a few hundred years before Jesus, said it like this.

He said, Let there be a law that no deformed child shall be raised.

Now think about what that does to your soul, if that's you.

Also in Jesus' day, the belief was that if you had some sort of physical handicap like that, it was because you sinned.

Or because your parents or their parents sinned.

And so think of the mental toll it would take on this man.

Think about all of these things, and I want you to remember something else from the story.

It says, some men brought this man to Jesus, four carried him on his mat.

Who does it say carried him?

Not his family, but his friends.

So he's rejected by his family, and his whole identity is in his condition.

If you were to tell a story about him, he'd be like, you know, my friend Kevin, yeah, he's the paralyzed one.

It's like, you would lead with his inability.

That's who he was.

For his whole life, probably, he was known not by what he could do or what he had done, but what had been done to him.

We get our identity from all kinds of places, don't we?

We get our identity from our jobs, from our income.

We we get our identity from our performance, from our best moments, or from our worst moments.

We get our identity based on what is spoken over us, we get our identity in our marital status, we get it in our relationship status.

Our identity is shaped and formed in so many ways, and for this man, his identity comes from the worst possible place.

He's paralyzed.

So his friends have this courageous moment where they lower him through the roof to Jesus.

And do you remember the first word Jesus says to him?

Son.

Think about how that would feel to a man with the condition that defined him.

He calls him son.

It is familial, family language.

In a moment, in a word, he starts the healing process by renaming and re-identifying him.

Beyond that, if you're if you're a biblical person, I love this.

In the ancient Greek language, the word that Jesus uses for this word son is only used one time in the four gospels, only used one time by Jesus, this word son.

In literary devices, that is called a hipax legamina.

Legamina.

That's what it's called, right?

What is that hax lagamana?

Literally, what it is is in a writing, in some sort of literary piece, when a word is only used one time, it's called the hapax legamina.

Why would authors do this?

It's for emphasis.

It's so you would know how big of a deal this word was.

And Jesus calls him son, and instantly something changes in him.

Instantly he gets a whole new name and a whole new identity.

And I believe that he does the same thing for us.

Let me say this to you, and I've said this so many times.

My wife and I have three kids.

We chose their names.

And maybe you came up to me.

Imagine you came up to me and said, you know, Jason, your kids are great, but the name Gavin, how dumb is that?

Have you thought of Chad?

Okay.

I would think of punching you.

Why would I think of punching you?

Because only the ones who create get to name.

And for so many of us, we bought into the names that we've been called by people, by relatives, by friends, and we we bought into the lie that we are the names and the labels we've been called.

And I just want to say to you, only your creator gets to label you.

And when God sees you, how does he see you?

Son.

Daughter.

So Jesus starts the healing process for this man, but he doesn't start with his physical issues, he starts with his identity issues.

We are accessed and we are renamed, but but also we are accessed, and something else happens.

We are also forgiven.

So I love what Jesus says to him.

He starts with son, but before he heals him, he says, Son, your sins are forgiven.

Now I love that he does this because this is confounding to all the religious leaders, isn't it?

It's confounding to them because who does he think he is?

That's easy.

In fact, I could get up today, and to all of you say I could say, hey, I love you.

Your sins are forgiven.

And how would you know?

You wouldn't know.

There's no way to know, right?

There's no way to know until these religious elite think to themselves, who does this guy think he is?

Only God can forgive sin.

But the reason Jesus does this is he understands he needs a new identity and his sin has to be forgiven so that the process can continue.

He goes from identity to sin issues to eventually healing.

And then Jesus, he says something to prove to the religious elite that he is who he says he is and that he has the authority over sin itself.

He says three phrases to the man.

He says, So get up, take your mat, and go home.

And the man immediately feels power shoot through his legs.

He stands up and he's healed.

So you need to understand this is the process.

It starts with identity and then forgiveness, and then he experiences healing.

And I want you to know that we are access.

And also we are healed.

And he says to the man, here's what I want you to do.

I want you to get up.

I want you to take your mat and I want you to go home.

For this man, for his whole life, the mat was his whole life.

For the man, he lived on 18 square feet of pain.

18 square feet of frustration.

He watched as his friends grew up, played sports, got married, had children, and he laid on 18 square feet of a prison in his own soul.

Every single day laying on the mat, every single day relying on his friends to come and turn him over so he wouldn't get sores on his body.

For every day of his life, he laid on 18 square feet.

And this 18 square feet was the largest scratch and dent, as is sticker in the world.

This was his whole life.

And Jesus heals him.

Now imagine that this were you.

And your whole life has been confined to 18 square feet.

Let me ask you a question.

What would you do with the mat?

What would you do with it?

I mean, I know what I would do.

I'd be showing everybody, I'd be telling everybody.

It would be my go-to story at every party.

It would be the story I would lead with every single conversation.

I'd hang it in my house.

I'd show every person that comes through the doors.

When I had grandkids, they say, Grandpa, tell me a story about when you were a kid.

I'd be like, no, no, no, no.

Have I ever told you the story of the mats?

Like I used to live on the mats.

I was on the mat, but then Jesus came and he healed me.

I can tell you something.

A lot of Christians experience the healing, the freedom, but they never tell the story of their mat.

So what happens is they become selfish.

Unintentionally.

Self-focused, unintentionally.

What do you mean by that?

If Jesus has renamed you, if he's forgiven you and he's healed you, and you don't tell the story, you've missed the point altogether.

It's not about you and it's never been about you.

So there's there's one more step, and let me end with this.

We are access and we are renamed.

We are forgiven.

We are healed.

But also the point of it is that we are also roof crashers.

You say, what does that mean?

When you've been healed, when you've been renamed and forgiven by Jesus, you then get the opportunity to take those people in your life, your family, your friends, your co-workers, your neighbors, and you get to do whatever it takes so that they can also encounter and experience Jesus.

And a lot of Christians never get to this point.

A lot of Christians miss it all together.

They think it's all about me.

So as long as I'm good and I'm happy, and I'll find a church that just keeps me busy, that keeps me isolated from all of my non-Christian friends, listen to me.

We are access, and we will do anything short of sin to reach people for Jesus.

Someone gets angry.

In the early days of our church, I preached a message like this.

Had a guy take me to dinner and he had three pages of notes to put me on blast.

He was hands down our biggest giver in that season of our church.

He gave 10% himself of our whole church giving in that season.

Church should be for church people, church should be about me.

I'm like, I get it.

I get it.

But if you read the words of Jesus and you take him seriously, the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost, then we have to live on mission with Jesus.

Let me say this to you.

If you want a church that's all about you, fills your calendar with things to do, you're gonna hate this place.

But if you want a church where you're gonna be challenged to live on mission, where if you're a Christian, we want you to grow, we want you to get closer to Jesus.

But when you understand that that's not the full mark of maturity, then you're going to love this place.

We are access.

And Jesus has renamed us, and he forgives us, and he's healed us, but we don't keep that to ourselves.

So, what's the roof you need to crash?

And a lot of people are like, I'll do anything for you, Jesus.

And they don't even have the courage to walk across the office to talk to that coworker.

Jesus, I'll do anything for you.

I'll go to the four corners of the earth.

Hey, go across the street to your neighbor.

Tell the people in your life about the life-saving message of Jesus.

Show them the mat and watch what God does through a life fully surrendered.

Would you bow your head and would you close your eyes with me all across this room, right here and right now?

Hey, I started today by asking you to write down the names of some people in your life who you just know are far from God.

That you know that if they were to die right now would spend eternity separated from God.

If you don't have a person, I'm gonna ask God right now to just speak that person's name to you and to show them to you.

It's time for you to be a roof crasher.

It's time for you to stop keeping the message of Jesus and his life change in your life a secret.

So, God, we come today humbly, asking you for courage, asking you for wisdom, asking you to give us these moments of divine opportunity.

And because you've changed our life, because you've renamed us and forgiven us and healed us, may we never stop and just sit on our hands and celebrate the miracle and think it was always about us.

But may we constantly be the kinds of people who are willing to bring our friends, our family members, our loved ones, our neighbors, those in our life into relationship with you so that they can experience the same renaming and forgiveness and healing that we have as well.

God, for those of us who have become selfish in our Christianity, we ask you for forgiveness.

And God, as the pastor of this church, my prayer is that we would never become content just doing more stuff, just to fill up Christians' calendars with more things to do that isolate them from the world.

But may we always live on mission with you, Jesus.

May we realize there's some people who ripped a hole in the roof for us so that we could know you.

May we crash some roofs for the people in our lives as well.

We thank you for it.