Hope Church LV Sermons
The Life of a Jesus Follower :: It's all about relationships
every four years the world turns its attention to a series of competitive events on a global scale called the Olympic Games. We're less than 100 days right now, about 95 days from the next set of Olympic Games that'll be held in London, England in just a few months. At the Olympic Games every year, or every four years when they come around, there are always some amazing stories. One of my favorite parts of the Olympic Games are the stories of the athletes and because it's not the typical athletes that we see on Sports Center every night or read about in Sports Illustrated every week. A lot of these are just hometown heroes that have given their lives to one particular passion and the Olympic Games is their moment in the Sun to at the pinnacle of their specific talent compete against the best in the world. In 2004 it was a particularly historic Olympic Games because those Olympics were held in the birthplace of the Olympics Athens, Greece. In 2004 like all the Olympics gave us a lot of unique and interesting stories but one story in particular came out of the 2004 Olympic Games that I've never forgotten and it's the story of a man named Matt Emmons. I don't know if you heard the story of Matt Emmons or not from the 2004 Olympic Games but Matt Emmons story is one that stuck out in my mind. Matt Emmons represented the United States of America in the three position 50 meter rifle event and Matt Emmons had so dominated the competition that by the time it came for him to take his last shot all he had to do to win the gold medal was just hit the target anyway. I mean he didn't have to even hit a bullseye he didn't he didn't have to get even close just anywhere on the target and Matt Emmons walks away with a gold medal. One sports writer said it this way Rick Riley he said it'd be like telling Picasso all he has to do is hit the canvas. Matt Emmons aimed fired his gun and stepped back to look at the monitor to see his score to revel in that moment of having won the gold medal at the Olympic Games only to look up at the scoreboard and see a zero for his shot. He looked at the judge and said there must be some kind of glitch something must be wrong and as they zoomed the camera in there was no bullet hole in the target that was dedicated to Matt Emmons but there were two bullet holes in the target next to his. In that moment Matt Emmons had accidentally aimed at the wrong target and he not only lost the gold medal he lost every metal contention possibility and finished in fourth place in those Olympic Games. Now Matt if you are here in our service this morning I'm sorry for making you relive that tragic moment in your life but there's a great lesson for all of us in the story of Matt Emmons and it is we better be sure that we are aiming at the right target. I want to ask you two questions as I begin this morning. Here's the first one. Do you desire to faithfully follow Jesus? If you're here this morning and you would say pastor it's my desire to faithfully follow Jesus which you just raise your hand up and just hold it up keep it up for just a minute. I desire to faithfully follow Jesus don't put it down yet just hold it up. All right that's what I thought you can put them down almost every hand that's kind of what we should expect right? I mean we're not at a casino or a bar we are at church so I mean the assumption is that most people who are here this morning have a desire to faithfully follow Jesus. Now by raising your hand let me tell you what you just said. Here is the target of my life. I desire to faithfully follow Jesus. Now if that's the target then we better be able to answer the second question I want to ask you this morning and that is what does a faithful follower of Jesus look like? I mean we all just gave the testimony the target of my life what I'm aiming at what I want to hit with my life is to faithfully follow Jesus then it's pretty important that we know what that target is. When you came in you were given one of these it's a listening guide I'm gonna ask you to grab it and take it out. We're gonna give you one of these every weekend for the next seven weekends as we walk through this series together that that I believe to be one of the most important series that we do in the life of our church. This is just a place for you to take notes to follow along we've got some of the scripture we're gonna use this morning on here some places for you to write some notes and fill in some blanks and at the very top here I begin with those two questions and what I want to do this morning is give you a little bit of a pop quiz all right now the good news is you don't have to turn it in all right and we're not gonna grade it but I want you to take about 30 seconds and try to answer those two questions the first one you've raised your hand you said yes that one's easy but the second one I want you to take about 30 seconds and begin to define or describe what a faithful follower of Jesus looks like and I'm not gonna give you about 30 seconds because I got too much to say this morning all right so you got 30 seconds go we should have the jeopardy music or something playing right now right all right that's all the time I'm gonna give you I know you hadn't finished but I hope you've begun to think down that track because in church culture in America and I pick on us because I know us best it's probably true outside of America but I know specifically inside the context of our own country we tend to answer that question in one of two ways the first and most popular way we answer that question is by what a person does and if we answer the question by by the theory of what a person does then then the way we answer that question is with a list of things that you're supposed to do to be a good Christian and then obviously that list of things you're not supposed to do right to be a good Christian and if we're answering the question that way then then we measure our faithfulness with this question am I doing all the right things what does it look like to follow Jesus well you go to church every week you read your Bible every day you pray every day you give some of your income 10% to the Lord's work you try to share the gospel with other people you try to be a good husband and father or wife or mother you try to be a good employer or employee and then oh yeah there's this whole list of things you're not supposed to do and depending on where you grow up in America guess what I found out the list of things you're not supposed to do changes I grew up in Alabama y'all do some stuff out here that they say we weren't supposed to do back in Alabama it's a moving target but in the typical church culture what we do is we define faithfully following Jesus by simply a few external traits or characteristics and we say oh that person man they faithfully follow Jesus well how do you know well they're here every time the doors are open oh that person's a faithful follower of Jesus how do you know they serve in 32 different ministries inside the church and they've signed up for five more that person's a faithful follower of Jesus how do you know they're always wanting to go visit somebody and share the gospel they they've got to be a faithful follower of Jesus well that person's a follower of Jesus how do you know man they don't do this and they don't do this and man they don't even do this and that's kind of on the mantle there they don't even do that there's another way we define it and our culture in America not only do we sometimes and most of the time define it by what a person does but sometimes we define it by what a person knows if you grew up in a culture that defines faithfully following Jesus by what a person knows then here's the way we define it you go to a series of classes and upon completion of those classes you're able to answer all the questions and you have all the right information and you can recite the creeds and you can recite the dogmas and you can say everything just like it's supposed to be said and when you've reached a point where you can now understand and explain and articulate all the things that everybody else in the group can explain and articulate oh you're a faithful follower of Jesus if we measure faithfulness this way we we do it by asking the the question can they answer all the right questions do they have all the right information do they say it just like we say it you know the problem with this right both of these fall grossly short of the life of Jesus Christ in the New Testament and Paul warned us Paul warned us in the book of 2 Corinthians chapter I think it's chapter 11 Paul warns us that we be careful not to be led astray and here's what he said don't be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Jesus you see the natural tendency of our flesh is towards the system towards performance towards trying to dot the eyes and cross the teeth and what we've done in our culture is we've so complicated like the Pharisees of old we've added all these rules and all this religion and all of these do's and don'ts and rights and wrongs and dogmas and creeds and all the statements that we're supposed to be able to say and articulate we've added all of this on top of the simplicity and purity of devotion to Jesus as a pastoral team we understand that our primary responsibility as your pastors in serving you our primary role in serving you is to lead you to faithfully follow Jesus that's the essence of what disciple making is all about to lead people that's why at hope our mission is to connect people to live the life of a Jesus follower and so when we began our church about our second or third years of pastoral team we went on a study journey together for about a year because when you start a church there are some advantages and some disadvantages now one of the disadvantages to starting a church is you can't blame the former pastor for all the problems right if it's broke you broke it but one of the advantages is there's no tradition there's no culture there's no this is the way we've always done it before you just get to take the New Testament the Word of God the Bible open it up say Lord what's it supposed to look like and so we took an entire year and we examined the life of Jesus Christ in the gospels just as pastors for a year we just studied the life of Jesus in the New Testament in the gospels in specific and after a year of study we came away with a discovery the life of Jesus in the gospels revolved around three relationships and I want to illustrate it by you imagining with me this morning that I have three file folders or file drawers right here on the stage all right three file drawers now I'm not saying do this literally but you could take Matthew Mark Luke and John in a pair of scissors and you could cut every story out in the gospels and you can drop every story into one of three file drawers let me give them to you number one Jesus and his relationship to the Father as you read the gospels Jesus lived his life out of the overflow of intimacy with the Father everything that he did he did out of the overflow of intimacy with God now I understand Jesus was 100 percent God but he was also 100 percent man and in his humanity he chose to live independence on the Father and he said it this way in John he said when you hear my words he said it's not my words it's the Father's words in me he said when you see my works it's not my works it's the Father's works in me he said I did not come to do my will but the will of him who sent me he lived in complete and total dependence on his relationship with the Father and as you read the gospels you see it he would slip away into the wilderness to spend time with the Father he would go up into the garden to spend time with the Father over and over again we see stories of Jesus and his relationship to the Father but there was a second relationship Jesus and his relationship to his disciples Jesus had this relationship with these followers those that had believed in the gospel a relationship of discipling and pouring into them and encouraging them and teaching them and fellowshipping with them stories like the story when Jesus is sleeping in the boat and the disciples are all upset because the storm comes and the boats being tossed to and fro and they think life as they know it is coming to an end and they run to Jesus and wake him up and Jesus speaks to the wind and he calms the storm and he teaches them about faith and what it is to trust God in the midst of your circumstances stories like the feeding of the five thousand where if you read that story very very specifically Jesus didn't feed the five thousand his disciples did he took the bread and the fish and he put it in their hands and he taught them this great truth about dependence on God and God's provision and how they could be a part of God's activity he was teaching and pouring into his disciples but then there was a third relationship in Jesus' life Jesus and his relationship to the unbelieving world people that didn't know God at all Nicodemus in John chapter three very religious but he didn't know God John chapter three that great verse John 3 16 is a verse that we learn in the context of Jesus having a relationship with a man that doesn't know God at all then in John chapter four we get a whole different story Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the whale not religious at all matter fact Jesus confronted her because she'd had five husbands and was now living with the sixth man that wasn't even her husband totally different scenario than Nicodemus but Jesus building a relationship to share Christ we read stories of Jesus and Zacchaeus the wicked tax collector that was stealing money from people Jesus and Matthew the tax collector that had the party where all his friends came and heard the gospel over and over again Jesus had relationships with people that know God at all so you do it sometime don't literally do it with scissors but just think through it every story in the gospel falls into one of those three files Jesus sent his relationship to the father Jesus and his relationship with his disciples Jesus and his relationship with people that didn't know God at all now if that's the life of Jesus Christ if you and I have given our lives to Jesus where does Jesus now live he lives in us right and the Christian life is not you and I trying to do some good things and not do some bad things and listen the Christian life is not even you and I simply trying to mimic the life of Jesus no the Christian life is literally the life of Jesus Christ being fleshed out in my life now if when he was on the earth this is what his life looks like what do you think it's going to look like now being lived out through us it's going to look the same major Ian Thomas said it this way the Christian life is nothing less than the life which he lived then lived now by him in you so let me give you the foundation statement for this whole series that we're going to unpack together for the next six weekends the life of a Jesus follower is all about relationships I want you to read that out loud off the screen with me you're ready here we go one two three the life of a Jesus follower is all about relationships here's what we mean by that these three relationships establish a paradigm that you and I should be able to lay down over our lives and examine to see if we're faithfully following Jesus these three relationships overlap to define the target of what it looks like to be a Jesus follower so for the next six weekends we're going to take two weekends on each relationship and we're going to unpack it and look at that as a church family to examine our hearts and our lives and we're going to begin this morning I'm going to just quickly introduce the three relationships to you and we're going to be done so here's the first one following Jesus is about a relationship with God following Jesus is about a relationship with God now I want you to look this way the blank there's really it's just God all right that's short write it down look this way listen if you miss this one you miss it all if you miss this you miss everything it doesn't matter how many times you come to church it doesn't matter how many times you get baptized it doesn't matter how many days you read your if you miss this you miss it all everything else centers in and is built upon this basic premise that following Jesus is about a relationship with God I want to show it to you in the Bible John chapter 17 in verse 3 I want to put it up on the screen John chapter 17 in verse 3 and I want you to read it out loud with me you ready here we go one two three this is eternal life stop right there that ought to perk our ears up Jesus is about to give us a definition here and he's not just defining some little trivial thing he's about to define for us the big deal right I mean John 3 16 for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life right I mean that's that's the whole inch a lot of that that's that's the big deal and Jesus is about to unpack for us in one simple statement all that eternal life encompasses let's read it here we go one two three this is eternal life that they may know stop right there the word no here is a very important word in the Greek language because it doesn't simply mean to know about something there are people that you and I know about political figures sports heroes people from history we know about them but we may or may not know them personally this word no here is a word that implies direct personal fellowship it's a relationship term it implies intimacy let's read it one two three this is eternal life that they may know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have seen do you hear what Jesus said here it is here's what following me is all about it's a relationship now on your listening guide we've identified this verse as the memory verse for the week and you're saying what in the world is he talking about yeah every week during this seven weeks we're going to give you a verse description that we want you to try to memorize not so you can just recite it but we want you to memorize it so you can meditate so you can take it in at work and at school and on the ball field in the car you can be thinking on the truths of these verse verses and allowing them to sink down deep into your heart this is eternal life Jesus said here it is Christianity is not a religion it's a relationship now there is some forms of quote Christianity that are nothing more than a religion but real biblical New Testament Christianity is not a religion it's a relationship you see a religion is when man creates a system to somehow earn a right standing before God religion says and you can call the religion whatever you want to call it all kind of Vance Avenue says isms that ought to be wasms you you can call it whatever you want to call it but all religion you boil it down and it's the same thing you do this this this this this you don't do this this this this this this and you hope for the best in the end right that's what religion says religion says do your best try your hardest work as much as you can work dot every I cross every t except every creed and then when you stand before God you just pray that you did enough to measure up and God let you in Christianity says just the opposite Christianity slaps you in the face right out of the gate and says hey there's nothing you can do it doesn't matter how many times you come to church it doesn't matter how many days you read your Bible it doesn't matter how much money you give there's nothing I can do to change the fact that I've sinned against God and because of my sin I'm separated from God but Christianity says God did for me what I could not do left to myself Jesus came took all of my sin on himself died on a cross rose again from the dead and now by his grace Jesus offers me freely that which I could never earn an intimate love relationship with God that's the essence of Christianity and listen everything in my life just like the life of Jesus everything in my life is now to be lived out of the overflow of intimate fellowship with God Henry Blackaby said it this way a love relationship with God is more important than any other single factor in your life I travel and speak at conferences and at churches across the country last week I was traveling I was flying to the state of Alabama to speak at a conference there and inevitably you know when you get on an airplane if you're sitting by somebody you don't know conversation begins and it usually starts with so where you from well that happened this week it happens all the time God says so where you from Las Vegas now you got their attention already when you say Las Vegas right and the question that always inevitably follows that question is so what do you do there in Las Vegas and it's like they can't wait for the Jews I mean they're just they're expecting me to say oh well I'm a prostitute or I'm a mafia member or I'm you know they're expecting me to say something like that and they're just like they can't wait to hear what and so my response is always the same you'll never guess in a million years what I do in Las Vegas and I just wait I say go ahead guess I haven't had anybody yet guess what I do in Las Vegas and after they've somewhat exhausted themselves with guessing I let them in on the secret say well I I pastor a church and they're like in Las Vegas I say yeah I got a lot of job security where I live but what I do for a living well then the next question that always follows is so what religion are you and I say oh I'm not religious at all you see now I got them and they open the door is their fault right they started this conversation they say you're not how can you be a pastor not be religious I tell them I don't believe in religion at all matter of fact I believe religion sends more people to hell than anything else you see religion is the enemy's counterfeit it's a cheap counterfeit for what God's really invited us into the enemy would love for us to fill churches and do some do's and don't some don'ts and hope for the best in the end because he knows God offers us something greater than that listen God didn't offer you a system he offered you a Savior he's invited us into a love relationship with himself let me illustrate it this way what what is marriage is marriage two people buying a house together is marriage two people sitting down and eating meals around a table together is marriage simply having children with somebody else is is marriage opening a joint bank account together is marriage planning your retirement together no none of those things are marriage right marriage is a love relationship between a man and a woman a husband and a wife and all those other activities only make sense in the context of the relationship right and to be totally honest with you those other things without the relationship not only don't make sense they'd be kind of weird I mean think about it you don't just walk up to somebody at the mall and say hey let's open a joint bank account together when you leave today you're not just going to randomly select the house at least i hope not you're not going to randomly select some house in a neighborhood and walk in the front door sit down at the table grab a fork say what's for lunch you see the activities only have meaning and significance in the context of the love relationship think about it this way what is christianity what reading your bible praying going to church giving some money sharing your faith doing the good things not doing the bad things no christianities a love relationship with god and the activities only have meaning and significance in the context of the relationship that's why this morning all over america there are millions of people and you may be one of them sitting here today you've walked in these doors thinking that somehow by sitting in that seat you are earning favor with god that you're cleaning up from this past week's activities and you're getting a do over today to try to show god you love him and you want to live for him and there are people filling churches all over our country and all over our city today and they're sitting there and here's what they're thinking what in the world am i doing here why do i come week after week why do i give my mind why why do i read this book i don't understand anything it says you see the activities only have significance and value in the context of the love relationship i don't have to read my bible because that's what i have to do to make sure god's happy with me i get to read my bible to spend time with the author of the book who wrote it so that i can grow to know him more and he can change me from the inside out now with every one of these relationships we're going to give you a key word that goes with one of these three icons behind me to help us remember this circle or this relationship the first word i want to give you with this relationship is the word abide our relationship with god can be summed up in the word abide you know what we have so complicated Jesus summarized with one illustration out of a garden we've made this thing of following Jesus so complex and so difficult Jesus walked out in the garden picked up a branch and summarized the whole thing let me show it to you john 15 verse 5 he said i am the vine now who's the i there jesus said i love jesus i am the vine you are the what who's the vine who's the branches us he who abides in me and i in him he bears much fruit for apart from me you can do nothing simplicity simplicity he summed up the whole thing of following jesus with one little word about let me ask you a question what good is the branch without the vine no good at all right i mean you break the branch off of the vine the branch is useless by itself the branch can't do anything by itself you know what the only thing the branch is good for holding onto the vine and only in holding onto the vine does the branch produce fruit what is fruit is fruit the branch out there working real hard to get something done no let me tell you what fruit is fruit is simply the life of the vine being pressed out through the branch who's the vine jesus who's the branch fruit living the life of christ is simply his very life being pressed out through us as we do one thing hang on to the by as we abide in him moment by moment day by day so here's the first question are you abiding is christianity what you do on sunday or is christianity the very center is your love relationship with god the center of everything else in your life listen to me your identity is not in what you do your identities and who you are in christ jesus there's freedom in that if you get it hey your identity is not in your job or your career you know why you get so upset and so so frustrated when you lose your job because your identity is in your job listen you're not your identity is not in your job your identity is in the person of jesus christ your job is just a platform he's given you to manifest his life to others that's all it is and if he chooses to change the the resource from which you get your provision the source which is him then that's his business and not yours to worry about we just abide in him that's all we got to focus on that's it are you abiding in him the second relationship following jesus is all about a relationship with one another with one another genesis records for us the creation of the world and genesis one the bible says god made light and said it was good god made the sun and the moon the stars and said it was good god made the birds and the fish and said it was good god made the plants and the animals and the land and said it was good then god made man listen what he said and the lord god formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being then in chapter two verse 18 it says then the lord god said it is one of the next two words not good was that me well it wasn't that there was some imperfection in the humanity that he created what he's saying here is it's not good for man to be what alone you see god created us for a love relationship with himself but it was never his design for that relationship to be lived out in isolation from other people god made us to live out our relationship with him in fellowship with other people i've heard people say well my relationship with god's personal is between me and him and there's a degree of truth in that it is a personal relationship but but that personal relationship was never intended to remain private it's a relationship that he's given us to be lived out in the context of community why is church important well i got to come to church to be a good christian i got to come to church to get that checked off on my box in heaven so when i stand above the lord he can give me my attendance awards for being a church right no did you listen to the whole first point we don't come to church because we have let me tell you what church is church is the platform that god in his sovereignty established to be a place of connection and community so that brothers and sisters in christ can come together and enjoy fellowship with one another and you and i are made for relationship with god and designed to live that relationship out in fellowship with other people i don't have to come to church i get to come to church to enjoy fellowship because i have a relationship with god guess what i now have a relationship with you you're my brothers and sisters in christ and we were designed to live that out in fellowship with each other it's exactly what happened in the book of acts we won't take time to read it but in the book of acts all these people begin to give their lives to christ and the bible says they begin to live out their relationship with god in fellowship with others it says they would first of all gather in a large group said they would gather in the temple courts and the apostles would teach the word and they would take the word of god and they would worship there in the temple courts in these large group gatherings why do we gather here every weekend we gather here to teach the word of god so that the word of god can sink down into our hearts and so that we can fulfill our biblical responsibility of coming together in corporate worship and exalting and praising the name of jesus christ together we come to be filled and to be fed the word of god but in the new testament they not only gathered in the temple courts the bible says they also continued to gather house to house they would meet in smaller group gatherings together it's the same thing jesus did there were times when jesus was teaching large groups of people and there were times when jesus would pull aside just those twelve and he would take the truth that was given in a large group and in the small group jesus would make application and he would take those truths it was easy for them to hear it in the large group but in the small group they had to look jesus in the eyes and answer questions about what he'd been teaching and sometimes he put them on the spot and they answered wrong and he would correct him and he would teach them at hope why do we do a weekend worship service and then encourage people to get in small groups is that just a program in our church no we believe it's literally living out the life of jesus it's the model that he established for us to have a large group gathers what we teach and we worship and smaller groups where we look in each other's eyes and we do life together and we take the truth and we apply it and we encourage and we serve one another we meet needs and we pray for each other and we hold each other accountable the word that i want to give you that's the key word for this principle is the word connect our relationship with one another is a relationship described in this word connect we're to connect with others if your christianity is simply you living out your faith and all you do is come through a service maybe once a week and you're living in isolation from fellowship with others i have two biblical words for you not good it's not good the writer of ecclesiastes says woe to the one who when he falls there's not another to lift him up he says two are better than one for they have a good return for their labor jesus described it this way in the gospel of john i i think it's interesting jesus takes the first 11 verses of john 15 and he gives us this illustration of the vine and the branches and then in verse 12 he begins to give us some examples of what it looks like when we're abiding in him verse 12 i think the placement of this verse is very important to understanding its meaning verse 12 says this is my commandment that you love one another now if he'd stop right there it's already a heavy statement but what he closed it with makes it real heavy just as i have loved you he says the first defining mark that you and i are abiding in him and living out of the overflow of intimacy with god is we have a fellowship love relationship with our brothers and sisters in christ and here this come into a sunday morning service and giving somebody a casual greeting and a hello how you're doing is not living out this principle just as i have loved you you got to be involved in the lives of others to live this out now hear me i'm not saying get involved in our program of small groups here's what i'm saying the life of jesus is a love relationship with the father that spills into fellowship with other disciples and if i'm going to be a faithful follower of christ guess what my life's going to look like exactly that and if i'm not living that out if i'm laying that paradigm down on my life and something's missing i'm aiming at the wrong target you may be telling yourself oh i'm a faithful follower of jesus but if you're not living these things out you got the bible you got to deal with third relationship following jesus is about a relationship with the world jesus not only had a love relationship with the father that spilled into intimacy with his disciples but it overflowed into relationships with people that didn't know god at all here's how he said it in john in john's gospel the 17th chapter the 18th verse as you he's talking about the father as you father sent me into the world i also have sent them into the world and can i let you in on a secret you are them hear what jesus just said the father sent me into the world on mission now i i'm sending you here's what i'm saying evangelism sharing christ with others and missions you know we tend to think that is we tend to think that's like the navy seals of the church right that that's reserved for the marine core of the church i mean you got to be a real super kind of christian to do that stuff here's what i'm saying to you that's not a program for the elite that's just the life of jesus if that's not a part of my life that's not a program i had not attained to yet that's an area of the target that i'm missing are you aiming at the wrong thing you see jesus came into this world on mission from god to reconcile the world to god man was separated from god because of sin and jesus came to bring reconciliation and just so you know i'm not reading too much into what he said in john listen to the way paul said it in second krinthians chapter five look at it on the screen now all these things are from god who reconciled us to himself through christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation namely that god was in christ reconciling the world to himself not counting their trespasses against them now this is what he says next and he has committed to us the word of reconciliation therefore we are what ambassadors for christ now listen what he says next as though god we're making his appeal through us he doesn't say we will be ambassadors he doesn't even say do you want to be you see missions and evangelism local and globe that that's not what we have to sign people up for it's not a program you can opt into or out of it's simply a part of the life of christ being manifest in your life here's what i'm saying if i've got a sharing the gospel or emissions deficiency in my life that's a love relationship with jesus problem in my life that's not just a program i hadn't learned yet it's an intimacy with god issue because when i'm living out of intimacy with the father the very life of christ begins to be manifest in my life and let me tell you what it looks like intimacy with god fellowship with disciples and love and compassion and taking the gospel to people that don't know him at all that is my identity here here's the the word the key word for this particular one it's the word share share we're to share in god's mission allen hirsch is a friend that i've gotten to know a little bit and he writes some very intriguing and and perplexing things about the church he really makes you think and allen hirsch said this mission is who god is therefore mission defines us we're to share in the mission don't miss this the bible teaches us in revelation that one day around the throne of jesus there will be this gathering called the kingdom of god we're going to talk about that in week seven of this series there'll be this gathering called the kingdom of god and the bible says that it's going to be people from every tribe every tongue every people and every nation all gathered around the throne of the lord jesus christ worshiping him praising him exalting him and it's going to be it's kind of the kickoff for eternity in heaven this grand celebration here's what i'm saying to you today our lives are to be lived on mission and light of that moment i'm not living to have a great career i'm not living to have a comfortable retirement i'm living for the moment around the throne of jesus when every tribe every tongue every people and every nation will worship and exalt and praise the name of god and as a faithful follower of jesus not an elite christian just a faithful follower of jesus that's what it looks like now i want to close with one last verse all three of these relationships are interdependent and john chapter 13 listen to what jesus says a new commandment i give to you that you love one another connect even as i have loved you abide you also love one another by this all men will know share that you're my disciples you hear what he's saying there it's out of our overflow of love relationship with him that god gives us the kind of love that we can have for each other and then those two relationships become the greatest platform we have to authenticate the gospel to this world two weeks ago we had a lady visit our church for the first time from out of state she and her husband had watched a series online that i had been a part of for another church out of california and they were here just visiting and after the service she came running over to me with big tears in her eyes and here's what she said she said i always wanted to be in a church like this i said what do you mean she said red and yellow black and white they are precious in his sight and here's what she was saying she walked into a fellowship and she understood that the ground is level at the foot of the cross you see we're all in the same family and it's our relationship with god that transcends our racial background our socio-economic background our educational background all of those things become a wash in light of the grace of Jesus Christ and Jesus now gives us a love for each other and you know what a church like this is it's a testimony to the world that Jesus can do what politics and politicians can't do Jesus can change lives and create unity and community through the power of the gospel that can only be seen in light of what he's done you see it's our love relationship with him that gives us our love for each other that gives us the platform of credibility to speak with authority in a culture and say Jesus can change lives abide connect share am i abiding in him daily am i connecting with others in fellowship am i sharing in the mission locally and globally listening listen that's the paradigm that's the life of Jesus lay that down on your life and let the holy spirit of god speak to you [BLANK_AUDIO]