Gateway Church's Podcast
Our Absolute Need for One Another
A Gateway Sermon
Turn in your Bible to Hebrews chapter 10 verses 24 and 25. I'm going to speak today about our absolute need for one another. And in Hebrews chapter 10 verses 24 and 25, something Paul says, he said something as powerfully as he could possibly say it. And he said something to an early church, a young church that was just growing. And Paul was speaking here and he says, and Hebrews chapter 10 will come up on either in your Bible or on the PowerPoint. And let us consider how we may spur. And I want you to look at that word spur. We're going to come back to it. Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching. You see, the early church was convinced that Jesus was coming back absolutely soon. They felt that they not only saw Jesus crucified and they saw him again after he was crucified, but they believed that Jesus was coming back in their lifetime. And so Paul will say, and even the more as you see the times of the end times approaching, begin to meet together and make sure that you are connected with one another. Well, here we are 2,000 years later, and the signs of Christ's return are imminent in our history and in our every day on the news. We see all the signs of Christ's return. And if Paul's words were true for the church then, they are absolutely true today. Let us consider how we may spur words furry. You know what it means? That if you are a cowboy, you know that those things you put on the boots are more than just ornaments. That they are actually meant to go to encourage to irritate and provoke. Well, this is a word there to irritate and provoke. Here is what Paul was saying, irritate and provoke one another toward love and good deeds. That sounds like a little bit of a paradox, doesn't it? That sounds like a marriage, you know, sometimes. Irritate and provoke one another to take the trash out and to do good deeds. But that's the way it happens sometimes. And he was saying in the church, in the body, to irritate and provoke in the strongest terms possible. Make sure that you encourage one another toward love and good deeds. Now, as you were growing up, there were three places that God was trying to help you learn about relationship. One was in your family growing up with your mom and your dad and your brothers and sisters, your aunts and uncles. Those family reunions, by the way, were God ordained. They were places that you were supposed to go and learn how to get along with a cousin that you did not like. All these things in your family growing up, you were supposed to be learning and catching the idea of relationship. And then the second place is our marriage, where God brings you together as man and woman. And in that relationship, God begins to teach you how to die to yourself and live for someone else. And we begin to learn a whole different level about relationship. And in the third place that God wants us to learn is in the church. God put you in the body for a reason. God put you in this place to learn about relationships. Now, let's think about this for just a few minutes. In America, the three greatest attacks that we find in America today are against the family, against marriages, and against the church. Can I tell you why those attacks have happened like that against those three areas? Because the Satan knows something that we don't know. He understands that if the church ever catches hold of this idea that they can become a powerful living organism when they become a family, that his days and his effectiveness will be limited. However, that's why he attacks relationships. You see, there's a supernatural attack against relationships because coming together once a week in a conference setting is not the fullness of God's power and purposes for the church. This is not the living organism that God created. You see, we become a living powerful organism when we become a family. When we become a circle of family, when we begin to connect and intimately come together as people that love each other and care for each other and serve one another, that's when we become the powerful living organism that God designed us to be. Now, today in America, because of these attacks against the family and the marriage in the church, today in America, only 14% of born-again Christians are in any kind of serious accountability relationship. Only one out of seven of us are in any type, including our marriage, or in any type of relationship where we're really held accountable for our actions. There's no one that's asked us the tough questions. No one asks us how we're doing in the tough areas of our life. There's no one that will look us in the eye with love and concern, with genuine love and concern, only one out of seven born-again Christians in America are in any kind of relationship where they're held accountable. In fact, in most American churches today, if more than 20% of your church is in some type of small group ministry, you are a tremendous success. However, across the world in South America and in South Africa, across Africa, in parts of Europe right now, the rate is like 70 to 90% of people that are in the church are involved in some type of accountability relationship, either in life groups, small groups, Sunday schools, some type of small group hybrid type ministry. 70 to 90% in America that we're the most fragmented culture in the world. We're fragmented. We're very isolated. But that's not the way the first church was created. Now, let's turn to Acts chapter 2. I want you to look at this scripture because Jesus came and he invested his life. In fact, the words that you have in red in your Bible, you know, Jesus, those are the words of Jesus. You know, most of those words are recorded around campfires, walking along a lonely road, one with the group of three or four guys in a house at night, eating dinner with one another. Most of the words in red that are recorded in scripture were written in a small group setting where Jesus was looking into the eyes and the hearts of a few people and imparting truth to them because Jesus was investing himself in a group of people because one day he was going to leave and he was going to plant a church that would take over the world who would begin with a group of eleven who would spread to a group of 120 and would a mushroom to a group of 3,000 in a matter of a couple of hours. That's what happened. And Peter, when he was filled with a holy spirit, stepped out on the ledge and began to preach to the Passover crowd, to the Pentecost crowd that was there. And what happened? 3,000 people decided that they had to give their lives to Christ. And here they are, this group of 120 people who have, they don't have any facilities, they don't have any equipment, they don't have any equipment, they have no sound equipment, they have nothing, they don't have a budget, they don't have anything and they've got 3,000 people to take care of. And what do we do? And so something happened in their hearts. I'm going to read it to you in Acts chapter 2 verses 42, read along with me. Here's what they did. They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the simple courts. 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 the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. Now listen, you don't want people were born again all the time in the early church. I believe and I want you to understand this today, your ability to win souls will depend on the relationships that you're willing to invest in. The reason that as Christians we are not winning people to Christ is because we are not investing ourselves in lost people. I tell people all the time I won souls all the time. When I used to work in television I led about half of my staff to the Lord in about a two-year period. I led people to the Lord all the time because I was around lost people. Now that I'm the pastor I'm around mostly born again people. When I was around lost people I began to invest myself. I can't tell you hundreds of people I led to the Lord when I was working in the world because I was around lost people. That's where you are. You're around lost people and the moment you begin to invest in people, the moment you begin to care about your neighbor and begin to ask about people's needs and desires and hurts, the moment you begin to give yourself away to people you will immediately become a soul winner because the early church saw people won to the Lord every day because they were absolutely committed to the relationships with other people. And here's what they were committed to. The first century church was devoted to four things. Number one they were devoted to the apostle teaching. These are the apostles now. The first the early apostles were men who actually walked with Jesus and heard the words of Jesus. Here's what this means for you today. You have to be devoted to sound doctrine. This is why you come on Sunday morning or Saturday night or whenever you come, you come to a corporate service and what you're going to hear out of this pulpit will be sound doctrine because how many of you know we live in a confusing world? How many of you know that once you leave here that you can hear many, many things that are told is true that are spoken as truth but they're really not true? It's a confusing world that we live in. We hear mixed messages all day long. But listen when you come to hear, you're going to hear sound doctrine that's going to carry you through in a confusing world. The second thing is they were devoted to the fellowship. They were devoted to a partnership with one another. Participation with one another. They were devoted to sharing and communicating with other people. The third thing is they were devoted to breaking a bread. I'm so glad this is included in here because I really like to eat. And I'm telling you this is supernatural thing to eat with people. And I'm taking reservations. I'm available after the service. So just get with me. And I'm telling you, listen, do you understand that if you are not eating together and meeting together and having people over to your house and sharing food with one another and sitting across the table and learning about one another that you're missing out on a supernatural event? It's not just for the one out of ten of us that have the gift of hospitality. It is for all of us. We are supposed to be inviting people into our homes, going to people's homes, taking people out to restaurants, being with people all the time. The first church that they had to be together at all times. And then the fourth thing, and this is not an order of importance, but the fourth thing that they were devoted to was prayer. They understood that they had to pray. It was the source of their power. And if they did not pray, God could not invest themselves in them. But if they would pray, God would give them everything He had promised. You see, this is, here's basically what they were committed to. They were committed to coming together in the temple courts, and here's sound doctrine, sound teaching, and they were committed to a life group. You understand, well, the pastor rate is the life group pastor, and this is just a paid commercial for life groups. Yes, it is. Alright, let's just get that out of the way. We believe this is not just a program of our church. This is not just 10% of our church that's supposed to be in life groups. One of the foundational stones of our church. You will hear it from every staff member. You will hear it from every elder. You will hear it from every leader in our church. We believe in the power and anointing of being in relationships with one another. I just so happen to be the spokesperson for that, but I'm not the only one that carries that burden. Our whole church carries that burden. It is our desire that every single person be in some type of small group ministry in our church, including life groups. Can I tell you today that I believe there are a couple of things that keep us from being intimate with one another? And here's the first one. There's a social trend today of isolationism and disengagement. I want to throw a couple of big words out at you. Those are my two big words that throw out at you. Let me tell you what that means. Sociologists say today that Americans are participating less in social activity. They're reading less newspapers, attending less political meetings, signing fewer petitions, writing fewer letters to the editor, attending fewer club meetings, entertaining less friends at their homes, attending fewer church services, and giving less blood. This is what happened in America. There is a social trend. In fact, today in America it is now normal to be lonely. It's normal to be alone in America. It is normal. Look, how many of you have a house? Here's what I do at my house. I can drive up to my house in my car and I have a button inside my car that I can hit and my garage door will open. I know this is going to blow your mind. And my garage door will open without me getting out. I can drive into my garage. I can hit that same button. It will close. As soon as the door closes, I can get out of my car and I can enter my house inside my garage and I can never ask if I don't want to, I never have to make contact with the outside world. I don't have to. In fact, I can go upstairs on my computer and I can get into chat rooms with people and just have all kinds of interactions. And when I get tired of talking I can click the quick button and I can go to bed. They don't have to see my face. I don't have to become vulnerable. I don't have to give myself away. I don't have to say anything that I don't want to say. I can live in a totally protected environment if I wanted to do that. That's the culture that we live in. That's why it makes us hard. See, we've made it easy on ourselves to be isolated and we've made it difficult on ourselves to be vulnerable. This is what's happened. It all started. If you want to really get into sociology, which I'm not, but let me tell you how it all started. At the end of World War II, America began to isolate themselves from the rest of the world, basically. Remember, for those of you that live in that generation, I've read these stories and I'm not that old. So I didn't live through this. My parents did. Do you remember the drills where you used to have to pull down the shades? You know, the bomb drills, all those things. We used to pull down the dark shades, turn off all the lights during that time, during the early '60s, late '50s, during the Cold War when it started. I used to think it was funny. For example, remember those drills? Maybe you were in school then and they would have these nuclear bomb drills where all the children would have to get under their desk and grab their knees? Let me ask you a question. Would that really help if a nuclear bomb, can't your school, would you be under your desk holding your knees, help you survive? Here's what they would find. They would find a whole bunch of little skeletons holding their knees. But that's why we would get under the desk and hide. We would shut our doors at night. We became terrified. We began to think that everyone, our neighbors were communist threats. McCarthyism swept across America and from that time on until today, there's been a social trend of staying inside your closed-knit group and not investing yourself outside your core. That's what it is. In fact, rising crime, divorce, racism, busy schedules, all of these are reasons to avoid outside relationships. The good news is, people that were born before 1945, the generation that are now 55 plus, they are the ones that are much more likely to be civically engaged in my generation. My generation is this. Do you know what my motto is? It's all about me. That's what it was when I was growing up. That's what I had to overcome. When I became a Christian, that's what the first thing the Lord attacked was my selfish nature. Because see, everything my entire focus was that I owned the world and everyone else paid rent. That it was about my happiness, my fulfillment, my career, my marriage, everything was about me. And if anyone got some residual effects from that, got some kind of residual benefits from that, that was good for them. But I had to make sure that I had self-fulfillment. And that's the culture that I grew up in, and that's the culture that most of you grew up in. You see, listen today, we've made it easy on ourselves to be isolated. And then there's a second reason why that we don't become intimate, and that is we have a fear of becoming vulnerable. And John 8, verse 12, this is the Apostle John writing, "This is what he said. When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." And that's good news in it. Do you remember when Jesus came into your life? Do you remember how the scales fell from your eyes, and you began to see things that you had never seen before? How everything began to make perfect sense to you? How you began to walk out of the darkness, the misery that you had lived in? In fact, the word darkness, you know what the word darkness means? Misery. It means misery. That's how the Greek word for darkness, it means that there is an ignorance of divine things that causes misery. Now look, the same guy wrote 1 John, chapter 2, verse 11. The Apostle John wrote both books. Now look at 1 John, chapter 2, verse 11. He says, "But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness." Now let's just stop there for a second. Do you know the reason some of us and most of us are miserable today? Because we have broken relationships that we have not made any effort to fix. Now this is not my theology. This is the Lord Jesus himself. This is authority of written scripture that says, "If you have broken relationships and you've made no effort to go fix broken relationships, there's a promise and a curse of darkness that's coming to you." And you know what that darkness is? It's misery. It's miserable to be in darkness. You can watch all the movies you want and they can glorify the dark side of the world and they can show all the power of darkness. Let me tell you what the end result is. It's misery. Yes, there is a display of power in darkness. But it's a false display and the end result is always misery. And can I tell you what motivates me every day to make sure that relationships in my life are repaired and in order and healthy? Because I don't want to be miserable. I have walked in darkness before. Now let me ask you a question. Is it possible for born-again people to walk in darkness? Absolutely it is. According to John chapter 8, he says, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness." But the same guy wrote again, he says, "But whoever hates his brothers in the darkness, he does not know where he's going because the darkness has blinded him." These are born-again people that have chosen not to amend, not to make good in their relationships. Look, many times we grew up in divorced homes and then we become divorced people ourselves. Are we getting mad at an employer and walk out? Are we getting mad at a brother and sister and won't call them for 12 years? And we begin to live with just a pattern of broken relationships after broken relationships and we make no effort to go back and make any amends for that because it's all their fault. You see, I can't find anywhere in Scripture. No where in Scripture will you find that you're off the hook if it wasn't your fault. In fact, in Matthew it says that if you're at the altar bringing your gift to the altar, in other words, if you're in a church service and you're trying to worship the Lord and have a breakthrough in your spiritual life, and there you remember that you have a broken relationship or something against your brother, you are to leave your gift at the altar and go there, right then, go right then as soon as possible and go make that relationship good, then your prayers will be heard in heaven. Do you believe that that's true or not? You see, I'm here today to challenge you and you're thinking because either I'm going to tell you this here now or I'm going to tell you when you come to my office for counseling. So let's just say both of us are true. If you come to my office and you've got a whole series of broken relationships in your life and you're wondering why I'm living in misery and I'm living in darkness and I cannot get the breakthroughs in my life, I'm going to tell you. If you, when the moment you become obedient to the Word is the moment the curse will be broken and the Lord Himself will come and the light will shine once again in your life. But if you're not willing to make any of this right, I can promise you one thing, darkness, does that mean you're going to go to hell over it? No, I don't know about that. I believe that if salvation is forever, I believe that, but I'm going to tell you something. It's much better to walk in the light while you're on the earth than it is to walk in darkness. It's a much better life. You know what? It's much better sleep at night too. I cannot tell you the last night that I lost sleep over worrying about anything about a relationship. I don't lose sleep. You know why? Because I make sure that my relationships are in order. I love confrontation. I love healthy biblical confrontation. It is the healthiest thing that I've ever learned in my life. It has helped me sleep good at night. The blessings of the Lord have come to me. And I have more friends than I've ever had in my life. The moment I learned how to healthy, biblical, beblically confront people is the moment God begins to bless relationships. You know why? Because the Bible says do not let the sun go down on your wrath. He says do not give the devil an opportunity. Don't give the devil a foothold. Don't even give him an opportunity to come into your life. So therefore go and make amends with your friends. Go make amends with your family. Make sure things are right with your husband and your wife. You see, what we must understand as believers today is that Satan has legal authority to live in the darkness of your life. You see, Jesus told Satan, "See, Satan doesn't live in hell." You know that. Satan is not making his home in hell this morning. Satan lives in darkness. The only place that Satan can abide is areas of darkness. The only place. That's where he has legal authority. You know that demons are law abiding citizens. Believe it or not, demons are law abiding citizens. They only live where there's darkness. And the moment the light comes, they leave. They have to, and they know it. It's real easy. Once the light is shined into your life, Satan and all of his demons and all of his hordes of demons have to leave. And they know that. And so if you are allowing darkness to penetrate you and to stay there, they have legal authority. And you can pray and you can go to worship services and you can do all those things. They'll come right along with you. Because they have legal rights to be there. But the moment you begin to get rid of broken relationships and to shine the light into your heart. Look, every morning, wake up and pray this prayer. Lord, I give you permission today to shine the light of your Holy Spirit into my heart. And Lord, I pray that you would look at every corner, every crevice of my heart. And if there's any area of darkness, Lord, I give you permission right now by the power of your Holy Spirit to shine your light into me. I don't want darkness. I don't want misery. You see, the issues that you hide from God and from other people will become the strongholds of the enemy. Satan will feast on areas that you keep hidden. You see, and this is why you must have people in your life that you can share the darkness of your heart with. Now, honestly, the first step is to share it with the Lord. But you know how you kept accountable? Other people. You see, listen, man, I'm talking to you, by the way. And I know most men in this room right now have shut me out because I'm talking about relationship. We don't get it. We don't understand it. We don't want it. Look, when men go to a men's retreat, we don't sit around a campfire singing Kumbaya and talk about our feelings. That's what we don't. Here's what happens at a men's retreat. You know, how are you doing? Well, I'm going through a hard time. Get over it. You'll come back with a couple of bruises on your arm if you're not doing well. I mean, they're kind of plus going, "Ah, get over it." Honestly, that's our first response. That's not how most men are. But that's our tendency. That's what we want. We don't want to be open. We don't want to be real. We don't want to even talk about our feelings. That's the sign of weakness to us. And it's a miserable existence. If most men were honest, they don't want to live that way. They just don't know another way to live. Their dad didn't show them how to -- you know, most of our dads didn't know how to share their feelings with us. We didn't know how to -- our dads didn't cry in front of us. Our dads were working hard all the time. They came home and read the paper and went to bed. They didn't have feeling time with us. They didn't sit around and share their emotional outbursts with us unless it was just anger. That's the only emotions I saw is that a lot of times it was anger. That had a wonderful dad. But it's hard sometimes, guys. Like, you know, that 50 percent, according to George Barna, his research, 50 percent of born again Christian men don't even have anyone they can call a best friend, including their wife. Half of all Christian men cannot honestly say they have a best friend as they can tell anything. Now, here's the key that they can tell anything to. My wife is my best friend. And I can tell her absolutely anything. And she loves me unconditionally. Even when I'm at my weakest and most sinful. I know that's hard for you to believe that I can be really sinful sometimes. And I need to tell my wife she holds me accountable for my behavior. And then I have men in my life. You know, Jeff and Robert and Marcus and Preston Thomas, all these guys own staff. It's more than we're more than just coworkers. We're friends and brothers here. And these are people. Many of them are going to their office and they come into my office and we share what's on our heart and what the weaknesses are. And I can become vulnerable to them. See, you've got to get over your fear of becoming vulnerable or you'll never have any significant relationships in your life. Men, listen to me. Your wife should not have to drag you to a life group, kicking and screaming like a little baby. And then when you get there, you sit in the corner when they start taking prayer requests. You start pounding because you don't want to become real and vulnerable because you don't want to share your problems with anyone else. That happens. Look, men, it is a proven fact that if a man will lead the way in his household that 90% of the time the rest of his family will serve Christ. If the woman leads the way, you know what the percentage is, 30%. It's higher actually if a child leads the way. But when men lead the way, 90% of the time the rest of the family will do whatever he does. Isn't that amazing? Guys, I'm talking to you today about being vulnerable. I'm talking to ladies. Sometimes ladies, you've made intervals in your own heart. I'm not going to ever be that close again. The last time I was that close with anyone, they betrayed me and hurt me and they rejected me. I'm never going to do that again. Why does God, what is God saying? Here's a couple of things today that I believe the Lord's. If you're not motivated in the area of relationships, you see, it was about seven years ago. When I was in my late 20s, I was really struggling. I mean, I was being beat up by the enemy. I've been in the ministry. I've done all these things. But I was missing something and I did not understand what it was. And then I met a man named Garbin McCarrel, who discipled me into this area of relationships. He began to talk to me every time I would get together with him. He began to tell me about the power of being in relationships with people. And something began to happen to me. Number one, the strongholds of the enemy began to be broken in me. And secondly, I've never experienced more of God's favor and more of God's mourning. The more that I invest in people, the more God gives back to me. You know that your love for people is a reflection of your love for Jesus. And it cannot be separated. You cannot say you love Jesus and don't love people. Your passion for Jesus is equal to your passion for other people. You believe that or not, but that's the word that says that. If you don't have passion for other people, I can promise you, your passion for Christ is a facade. You must have, you must be willing to invest yourself in other people and give yourself the way to other people. Or your love for Jesus is just words. Now here's the second thing. Here's a couple of things that I want to give you. The first reason why God requires us to have relationships is number one, relationships require the death of our selfish nature. Now, Philippians 2 verses 3 through 4, it says, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit." You know the Greek word for nothing there, I looked at it up and it was about a three hour study on the word nothing. You know what it means in Greek? Nothing. There was a waste of three hours. Basically the word means nothing. It says, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others." When you turn on the radio, you turn on any secular radio station you want, listen to all the songs you want to hear. And you know what the subject of all the songs there? You know what they are? Love. Every song is about love. You know why? Because love is our greatest need. It's what we want. We want to be loved. We want to give love away. But then here's the greatest sin that we commit is selfishness. So that's a paradox, isn't it? We want love, but we want selfishness. And so you can't have both. You understand, you see how tricky and how smart and how strategic the enemy is. You cannot have love and you cannot give love away because we have a selfish nature by design. We're born with a sinful selfish nature. And until you die to that, you cannot receive love and you cannot give love. Yet it's our greatest need in our culture today. You see, in our culture, we have produced these multiple generations of people who see the church simply as a commodity that they can consume. And not as a place where they should invest themselves. I'm going to give you something that maybe you've never thought of. God is not a socialist. God is an investor. For example, every one of us have spiritual gifts, right? Do we all have the same gifts? Nope, we all have it in proportion to our what? Our faith. And to what God, by his own authority and own purposes, he's given all of the spiritual gifts. Why did he give those things to you? He's an investor. God is investing gifts into you and what does he want back? The same thing you want back when you invest in a stock, you want a positive return. That's been harder, hadn't it? It's been a little more difficult, but that's what God wants from us. You see, in God's eyes, it's always, it's always, always, always a good market for him. He's always looking for a positive return. In the time, you see, this is what he wants from us. Not only did he invest himself in us, he wants us now to invest in other people. And the second reason that God wants us to have relationships is that relationships make us more powerful and productive. You know, that God always blesses a team approach to ministry. You know, when I'm around the right people, other people make me smarter. Other people make me more courageous. Other people make me more alert. Other people hold me accountable to live a whole of your life than I would if I were by myself. I mean, how many of you guys and ladies, how many of you that are married hate it when your husband or wife is out of town? It's to me, it's a greater spiritual battle when I'm by myself than when I'm with other people. And then I write, am I the only one that's being vulnerable in here today? Absolutely. I want, I like my wife to be home. I don't like to go two, three days at my house by myself. I don't like to be alone at any time. You know why? I mean, there are times I like to be alone, but not for three or four days. You know why? Because I like being held accountable. I want someone by me. I know the weaknesses of my own flesh. And I love someone looking over my shoulder and making sure that I am doing the right thing. I need that. I desire that. And your success, the success that you desire in your kingdom and your family will ultimately be decided by the relationships that you've developed. Now, I want you to think about this scripture in Deuteronomy 32.30. You've all heard this scripture that one can put 1,000 in the flight and that two can put 10,000 in the flight. Well, if you do the exponential math on that, that means three can put 100,000 in the flight. And four probably could put a million in the flight and five probably could put 10 million in the flight. So you can go from 1,000 to 10 million just with four other people. Isn't that amazing? Now, I don't, I know that stretch in that scripture a little bit. I know that I'm taking a little liberal approach to that scripture. But here's what God's saying to us that when God is in your midst, he, he blesses you when you're with other people. When you've connected with other people, when you've decided that you're going to do ministry with other people, when you're investing and giving yourselves away, God comes at that point and gives you greater ability than you would ever have by yourself. Now, look at this scripture in 1 Samuel chapter 14. And this is one of the best stories. It's one of the most overlooked stories in the Old Testament. But Jonathan is a young, a young warrior, he has a warrior heart and the Philistines are camping out on both sides of a cliff. And all the Israelites are down in the valley, hiding in caves like small children. They're terrified of the Philistines. They have no courage. And Jonathan says, you know what? I'm tired of this. I would rather go out there and die like a soldier than to sit here like a small child on the back of a cave and have them come run the sphere for me. I'm going to go out there. I'm going to go to that cliff and I'm going to stay. If I'm going to look up at that cliff and if the Philistines tell me to come up that cliff, then I believe God's with me. And a young armor bear probably didn't know any better said, I'll go with you. So they come out of the cliff and something happened when the two of them begin to walk toward the enemy. Both of them did. Let's read the story. It says, Jonathan said, verse 6, Jonathan said to a young armor bear, come, let's go over to the outpost of those uncircumcised fellows. Perhaps the Lord will act on our behalf and nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few. Verse 7, do all that you have in mind. You see, you need people in your life, like it says in Hebrews, to spur one another on toward love and good deeds. You need people in your life who will tell you if it's a lousy idea or a wonderful idea. Don't you? I mean, how many of you have ideas to do things in ministry? How many of you have these ideas that are just sitting in your heart right now that you have not shared with anyone or you have not found your armor bear to go with you? See, the reason many of us are lying dormant in our ministry today is you've not found someone who believes in you. You've not found other people who have your heart and vision who will go with you and do great exploits. See, I believe that Jonathan and the armor bear have been sitting in that cave, but they were afraid to share their hearts with one another. They were afraid to share their vision with one another. I believe they would have stayed in that cave and been destroyed by people that was not blessed by God. Instead, they begin to share with each other. You know, why don't we just go out here? I've seen God do this before. He doesn't need a great army. He just needs someone to believe in him. Do you believe that? Yeah, I believe that. Let's go out the cave and let's go find out. See, you found someone who would yoke with him, who would stand with him, who would, "I'll go with you." And so they looked up to the fullest thing and said, "We're coming up there." And the village thinks, "Well, come on up here." He saw Jonathan and he saw a young teenage boy. They said, "And by the way, there's a lot of them." And they said, "Well, come on up." So they climb up the cliff. By the way, if you're a military strategist, this is not a good idea. Decline the cliff when you're, by the way, they know you're coming, no element of surprise. And they see that your forces are two. You know, there's no trick here. There's only two of them. And they're coming up here on a rope and they're going to get on top of the cliff and they're going to try to take us out. You know, if I'm a military strategist, I think my chances are pretty good if I'm on top of the cliff. I've got them out number 10 to 1. And I see them coming. And they're going to be exhausted from climbing the cliff. They're going to have them. I think they said, "I want those shoes that guy has." I think they're already divvying up everything. And so Jonathan and the young armor bear come to the top of the cliff. And the Bible says they've killed 20 full of steams in the space of a half-acre. Basically, that's your backyard. You go into your backyard today and look out there and you put 20 well-armed, well-trained soldiers who have been trained from their boyhood to kill people. You put them in your backyard and you go across the street and get your neighbor who mows your yard. You go in there in the backyard. You're a young armor bear. And you go back there and depend on God to kill all 20 of them in your backyard. And you're not going anywhere. They're trapped. It's you and them. That's what happened. That's a powerful story in it. They killed all 20 of them. Jonathan and a young armor bear. Do you know why they killed all 20 of them? Number one, they believe that God was on their side. And number two, they did it together. Let me tell you something. The reason that we're not being effective in ministry is we're not finding people who will do it with us. I need someone who will just say, Brady, I believe that. You know, that's when I've become courageous. You don't believe this. Think about, for example, how the wrong crowd could influence you when you were younger or maybe not. Do you remember, you would never jump off that bridge if three of your friends hadn't jumped off in front of you and we're yelling up, right? Come on, come on! I mean, it's dark. You can't see the water. You don't have deep in it. You jump off the bridge. Why did you do that? That was a stupid thing to do, your dad said. He was right. It was stupid to jump off that bridge. Why did you do that? Because they did. And they told me, they showed me the way. I was going to call me a chicken. So I jumped off the bridge. I mean, the wrong crowd could influence you to do abundantly stupid things, but the right crowd could influence you to do tremendously powerful things. This is what God's trying to say to you today. It's time to yoke with other people. Now look at Ecclesiastes, chapter 4, verse 12. I'm going to close with the Scripture. So as though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves, and a chord of three stands is not easily broken. See, by yourself, you're an easy target by yourself. All it takes is two or three other people. You know, that's why Jesus said where two or more are gathered together. There I am in the midst of them. Does that mean that God's not with you by yourself? No, because all throughout Scripture, he talks about walking beside you besides still waters, about carrying you and standing by just you and him. That's not what it means. But Jesus was saying is when you'll yoke with other people, I'll come in a greater way.