“Experiencing God’s best.”
Passage: Acts 19-20; 1 Corinthians 16
Speaker: Aaron Patton
Bridgewater Tunkhannock’s Podcast
Your Story: Week 4
this is unfortunately it's only my second time here in tympanic i'm sad that i haven't been able to be here more but i'm very excited to be here with you guys today there's a couple of things that you need to know about me though as we get into this number one um unlike your campus pastor i am not a brown span okay yes thank you yes we can clap for that that's yeah yeah that's worth clapping for here's the deal um i always know when the browns win there are two times a year that that kurt shows up wearing something browns and that means that was one of their two wins for that year so uh and you could tell him i said that you know i don't know why but that seems to be the only reason only time he cheers for them so uh i i yeah i lived in kansas city for about 20 years so uh we've had a lot to cheer about here lately all right sorry i'll stop okay that was it hey so over the last several weeks each of our pastors have been traveling around uh to the different campuses and we've been sharing parts of our story um i i've listened to all of the different pastors and their stories and one thing has kind of stood out to me um most of the pastors are telling a little bit about how god has moved and worked in in their past and brought them to a time where they personally put their faith in jesus i'm going to share with you something a little bit different today i'm going to share with you something from my story that is a little more recent is that okay with you sure you're all right with that okay good here here's the here's the good news okay as i share my story i'm convinced because i've been seeing it week after week but i'm i'm convinced of something that my story and your story have an intersection that there's something in my story that is consistent with something that you've either experienced in the past or you're experiencing right now or you will experience in the future and so i hope that as we step through this you'll be able to see that intersection with me okay so let me tell you a little bit about myself i'm going to reveal something big kind of about myself are you ready here here's what it is i don't like to be uncomfortable can anybody identify with that i got i really do not like being uncomfortable we do something weird where i live we live on on some land outside of a vestal and um we heat our home with the wood burning stove anybody else do that you know i love it so i was trained as an arborist cut trees my entire life i love cutting wood so i love also burning wood but there's something crazy that happens when it gets really really cold you stoke the the wood burning stove at night you you you mess with the baffles to get it so that it will burn all night and keep things fairly warm in the house and there'll be colds in the morning and then you go to bed and what happens overnight eventually you know the fire i mean it'll still stay warm but eventually some of the heat goes away and it gets what gets cold and here's the thing i don't like to be cold it's uncomfortable so guess what i do i'm always every morning i'm the first one up in our house it's just the way it is unless it's my daughter she's 10 you know sometimes she'll be up but the first thing i do i get up and i get out of bed and what you just guess with me what do you think the first thing i go do is get coffee yep yeah you nailed it nice it's good i get coffee and then i go to the wood stove and as long as i planned well the night before i have wood in the house we take some wood and we put it back in the wood stove and we start to get it going and because i'm also incredibly impatient you know what i do next i grab a blanket and a hairdryer and i sit there and i warn myself yes i'm a weirdo i know i turn on the hairdryer and i sit there and i warm myself up i grab my bible and that's when i spend time with jesus just me jesus and my hairdryer i'm a weirdo do with that whatever you please people have sent me some funny things already so now that you know a little bit about me here's what i think we have in common most of us when it comes to our lives we just we just don't like being uncomfortable and here's why every time i get uncomfortable every time i kind of remove the bubble wrap so to speak from my life something happens in my mind i wonder if you've ever had this there's this thing that starts turning it's like a hamster wheel that just goes and goes and goes it's called fear you ever have that you know you get uncomfortable and you start to wonder what if what if i've experienced all kinds of what ifs you know what if he never changes what if the bills don't get paid right what if i can't retire what if the economy the economy what if it never changes and i just don't have the ability to retire what if they reject me what if they don't like me and all of a sudden they they think i'm a failure and they're just they're they're done with me what if this doesn't go well and i lose my job what if what if something tells me that you and i are a lot more alike than we might have previously thought because i get uncomfortable and then the fears start to roll and i don't like to be uncomfortable how about you about three and a half years ago my wife and i we we lived in kansas city i served in kansas city as a lead pastor of a church for about 20 years we saw god bless and do incredible things we had three children in those 20 years we lived in the same house for those 20 years bought our house paid for our house everything looked good and and we were comfortable our kids had never lived any place else our kids had never gone to any other school no one even moved out of our little cul-de-sac i mean things were good god was working and blessing and and i will never forget that one night i was laying in bed stirring the kids had been asleep for a while my wife was laying there and she's a light sleeper and i was tossing and turning and she finally said erin what's up and i said babe i don't i don't know i don't know but i think god is about to do something and i don't know what it is for this next six months we were we were a little uncomfortable because we loved our church and we loved what god had done and we we had our best friends in the world and our families lived very close i mean we had everything we thought we needed and then god started to make it clear there was a guy who had poured into my life for for those 20 years many of you know him his name is howard bixby he reached out to me and he said hey i don't know why but i i just have this feeling that god is getting ready to move you and i said oh great thanks doc maybe god could tell me too you know and pretty quickly we started meeting with the leadership here at bridge water over the next several months god made it very very clear that he was asking us to do something uncomfortable he was asking us to move of all places now think about this i grew up in Nebraska i was i i study i was taught i went school in Nebraska where the end stands for knowledge okay that's that's where i was from i then lived in that's not funny what you know come on i i lived in in Kansas i had been in the midwest my entire life and all of a sudden god was saying erin it's time for you to move of all places to new york you got you guys know what i mean by that right okay like when we became convinced of it we went back home we started talking to our friends we started talking to our families we started talking to the the leaders in our church people that we had led to christen raised up over the last 20 years and we started sharing what we believed god was asking us to do and we knew that it was uncomfortable we told him we believed that god was asking us to be uncomfortable and do you know what they said to us they said erin you're crazy and by the time i got ready to start moving i was like yeah you're right they said do you know what the weather is like there your wife doesn't like snow she doesn't okay it's it's the s word that if we say it we get in trouble okay that's the way it is at my house do you know what the politics are like there do you know what the taxes are like there and they don't even do mineral rights in new york i mean and by the time we were done meeting with people i started to think i was crazy but it was then that god led me to a passage of scripture and he began working on my story and working on my heart and he taught me a lesson and he's continuing to teach me it today as we get ready to launch this new multi-site church in new york another thing that i'm uncomfortable with he taught me this lesson i want to share it with you it goes like this god's best blessings are found when you follow him into uncomfortable seasons boy i wish that weren't true i wish i could tell you that everything in front of you is going to be smooth sailing and easy and you know what you can wrap yourself up and bubble wrap and you can make it that way but you know what you can't get when you do that you can't get god's best blessings now this isn't my idea i didn't come up with this it's not original to me it actually shows up in the scripture it shows up in a passage in the book of acts where god was using a man named paul in incredible ways paul previously had persecuted followers of jesus and then god sent the resurrected jesus to meet him face to face and it changed paul's life and he told him hey i want you to go out and start telling people about me so paul started obeying in acts chapter 19 we read this incredible verse a verse that has inspired me for years because it's something that i would love to be a part of it it describes this setting where paul is obeying and and like incredible life changes happening acts chapter 19 in verse 10 says this look at what it says it says this went on for two years what what went on paul paul was telling people in in a city called ephesus all about jesus so he's been doing it for a while this went on for two years so that all the jews and greeks how many all of them every single person in this particular area all the jews and greeks who lived in the province of asia heard the word of the lord now whether you're a church person or not let me just tell you something about me i've i've dedicated my life to tell as many people as possible about jesus and you can disagree with me about whether jesus is who he claims to be but but that's what i've given my life to and i would love to be a part of something like this because this area every single person who lived in the province of asia heard the word of the lord this is all of modern day turkey this is hundreds of thousands if not millions of people who hear about jesus that would be amazing and if all you read in acts chapter 19 was this verse you would think wow like paul obeyed and god just blessed and i think that too i think if i obey it should be smooth sailing if i obey my life should get easier if i obey i shouldn't go through difficulty or pain if i obey there shouldn't be any problems because god owes me can't we be honest now you might not say that but we think it and we live like it if all you read was verse 10 you would miss out a real lesson see if you go back to verse one you start to see the full story in verse one here's what we read paul traveled through the interior regions until he reached deficits on the coast where he found several believers paul had left a place called anti-ak in syria god had told him you're to go out and to tell a lot of people about me so he did he traveled up through syria which is north of israel he traveled to the interior regions of modern day turkey telling people about jesus all along the way he traveled west until he got to the west coast of turkey like our modern day california he traveled all the way to Ephesus which would be like la it was one of the largest cities in turkey it was like the port city and when he got there he found a few people who already had heard about jesus he started meeting with them and he did what he always did he was obeying yes but he found the jewish people in an area and he started meeting with them in their synagogues because they had a background with the old testament verse 8 tells us all about it here's what it says it says that he went to the synagogue and he preached boldly for the next three months arguing persuasively about the kingdom of god he was telling people how they could get into the kingdom of god he wasn't telling them hey you need to go to synagogue you need to do good things you need to be a good person you got to obey all the law no most of us think that we think if i'm a good person then i'm in good with god if i could obey all the rules i'd be in good with god no he told them something different he told them you can't be good enough there's only one who offered to do it for you his name is jesus now paul's obeying verse 10 tells us god was doing something incredible but verse 9 gives us the rest of the story verse 9 says this but some became stubborn if you ever know any stubborn people guys don't raise your hands just it's not not worth it okay sorry my wife's not here so i can't get in trouble okay all right but some became stubborn rejecting his message and publicly speaking against the way paul's obeying and people started defying him people started rejecting him people started persecuting speaking against the way now what is the way the way is what Christians were originally called in the first century and here's why jesus had made a very public statement that led people to call christians followers of the way in in john chapter 14 jesus told his disciples that he was going to go away and prepare a place for them and he said this where i'm going you know and the way to get there you know now thankfully there was a guy in the back who was probably educated in nebraska like me who raised his hand and said uh hey i don't know where you're going and i certainly don't know how to get there his name was thomas and jesus responded and he said this i am the way the truth and the life no one can come under the father except through me he's saying i'm going to the father and the one and only way you can get there is by trusting me so followers of jesus were called followers of the way now paul is obeying but guess what he had difficulty rejection discouragement you ever had those things now let me take you back to verse 10 this went on for two years what difficulty rejection discouragement but he kept obeying and as he was obeying all the jus and greeks who lived in the province of asia heard the word of the lord now here's the thing whenever i face difficulty i tend to think it's a sign that i'm doing something wrong ever felt that whenever i face difficulty i tend to think it's a sign that god is not happy with me but here's the reality difficulty is not a sign of god's disapproval it's something different entirely here's what it is difficulty is actually a doorway to opportunity god is opening a door god is doing something good three years ago we decided that we were going to move and things got difficult we brought some of our best friends into our home i'll never forget the night that we had our friends mic and gen people who people who had dedicated their lives to the mission that we had in kansas city to seeing changed lives we had them we went out to dinner we had them in our home we were sitting down at the end of the night and we told them that that god was calling us to new york and and i love these people and they are still our best friends they were just out here uh like two months ago and i'll never forget gen got up and walked out of our house you want to talk about pain now she's come around and she understands what god's doing now but man it hurt we had to pack up her house do you know how much junk you can accumulate in 20 years in a house zero out of ten i recommend moving across the country just that's free for y'all okay we had to take our kids out of the only school they'd ever known we had to sell the only home we'd ever owned we had to leave the neighbors that we loved we had to move on from the church that we had given our lives to but we did it because we thought god was up to something that's when the real difficulty began same thing in acts chapter 19 see in verse 23 if we thought it was difficult up to then look at what occurs verse 23 about that time serious trouble developed in Ephesus concerning the way what happened before wasn't the the real trouble here comes the real trouble let me let me tell you what happened it began with a man named Demetrius Demetrius was a silversmith he made his livelihood by selling shrines dedicated to the goddess Artemis he kept many craftsmen busy so what did Artemis do well he called all of them together verse 25 along with others employed in similar trades and he addressed them as follows he said gentlemen you know that our wealth comes from this business we make money because people traveled to Ephesus because there was this temple dedicated to Artemis that was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world it was that incredible today you can even go there I've been there you can see the remains of this temple dedicated to Artemis it is incredible people traveled from all over and they would sell things and that's how they made money well he was getting upset because he was losing money because God was changing lives here's what he said but as you have seen and heard this man Paul has persuaded many people the handmade gods aren't really gods at all and he's done this not only here in Ephesus but throughout the entire province he goes on he says of course I'm I'm not just talking about the loss of public respect for our business I'm also concerned for the temple of the great goddess Artemis I'm concerned that it will lose its influence and that Artemis this magnificent goddess worshipped throughout the province of Asia and all around the world will be robbed of great prestige he got everybody riled up if we thought there was persecution before just imagine what's about to come so what did they do they did what people do when they get riled up they get angry and they rioted I wish I could say we've never seen that but we have at this their angle boiled anger boiled over and they began shouting great is Artemis of the Ephesians great is Artemis of the Ephesians great is Artemis of the Ephesians and soon the whole city was thrown into confusion so much so that everybody rushed into the amphitheater they drug drug along Gaius and Aristarchus who were Paul's traveling companions from Macedonia and they were going to kill them Paul was on the outside and he wanted to rush in he wanted to make a defense he wanted to rescue them but his his other companions stopped him now here's the thing here's here's where my mind goes and I will not forget when I first came back to this passage when God had convinced us it was time to move and I needed to stand in front of our church and tell them this church that I love tell them God was asking us to do something uncomfortable I read this passage and I began to see wait a minute Paul's doing everything right Paul's obeying but what's he facing he's facing difficulty he's facing rejection he's facing discouragement he's facing strong opposition that's uncomfortable when the semi-trailer was packed it felt like it was like a month of goodbyes people at our house all the time we sent the semi-trailer down the road a couple days later we put everything else in our vehicles and we started driving and the further along I got more I realized man I am crazy when we got here we were greeted by some people in Vestal just an incredible group of people in Vestal who loved on us and encouraged us yes there was there was just an incredible sense of community that very quickly came upon us but but we were convinced that God had asked us to move there so that we would see lives changed by the way I had never had a boss before in my life and I moved here and now I have a boss that's fun you know I was uncomfortable and in a new spot without all of the things that it insulated me in those first six months like I said we believe God had brought us here to do something incredible but things were slow we saw a little bit of growth we did see six people trust Christ in those first six months and I praise God for that but but but I mean I'm telling you six months in I was like God what are you doing we moved into 2023 and God started to show me what he was doing little by little we started to see lives changed we saw 28 people trust Christ last year alone in our Vestal campus God moved in a way that was incredible that campus grew by 43% last year we went into 2024 and my old friend fear started going again okay God this has been amazing is it going to happen again and and and and I'll tell you I wish I could tell you that I I didn't insulate myself I wanted to insulate myself but but God has continued to put us in uncomfortable spots and and you know what has happened already this year we've seen 22 people trust Christ we've grown by over 33% this year here's the thing not pastors we we don't do math we weren't trained for that okay but I mean if you if you've been doing the math that's 56 people who have trusted Christ in the last 28 months here's the thing I'm convinced it would have happened whether we were here or not my theology teaches me that I just would have missed out on it and my question for you is if you insulate yourself what are you gonna miss out on God's best blessings are found when you follow him in uncomfortable seasons now Paul writes about this particular time this three-year period that he was in emphasis he writes about it two other times in the New Testament once in the book of first Corinthians the other time in second Corinthians the first time he writes because he was telling the church at Corinth and he was going to come visit them and he says this he says I'm not coming yet but in the meantime I'll be staying here at Ephesus until the festival of Pentecost there's a wide open door for a great work here though although many oppose me here's the point you will miss out on the wide open door if you insulate yourself so will I church if you're going to experience God's best you're going to have to get out of your comfort zone now I know I'm in some ways preaching to the choir here at Tunkannock because you know God has blessed and you've been uncomfortable for a while you've been having three services you've been sitting here you've been waiting you've been wondering about that building down the road you've been wondering you have been uncomfortable can I tell you that tells me God's doing something we just haven't fully seen it yet there's a wide open door and he's up to something the second time Paul writes about this three-year period is in second Corinthians in chapter one in verse eight here's what he says he says we think you ought to know dear brothers and sisters about the trouble we went through in the province of Asia we were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure and we thought we would never live through it now anybody ever felt crushed anybody ever felt overwhelmed yeah then he goes on and he says this in fact we expected to die verse nine we expected to die if we can bring that up but as a result we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God who raises the debt do you know what happened to me and my wife I can honestly tell you that our most intense times in prayer together begging God have been in the last three years because he put us in a place where we had to rely on him and it's one of the best things he could have ever done to me I I'll tell you despite that dreaded s word that my wife hates you know the word snow okay despite that we have come to the place where we love where we're at we have come to the place where we love what God is doing but now we're in a season where he's asking us to be uncomfortable again and I think that's the intersection for your story I think he's gonna ask you to be uncomfortable a few years ago my daughter was experiencing fears she was just she would have some times where she would get afraid and so as a family we came together and we decided to memorize a passage of Scripture and I want to share it with you because this is one of the things that I believe that we need to learn when we're uncomfortable it's found in Psalm 56 it's verse three it says this but when I am afraid I will trust in you I just wonder where is God asking you to trust him right now because if our church we if our church is going to experience God's best then we are going to have to get out of our comfort zones we are going to have to let him take us and put us in someplace without the bubble wrap and say yep I'm yours a couple years ago a friend shared a quote with me and I got to share it with you because I think it's great it goes like this grass and weeds require the same soil to grow dirt wouldn't it be great if you just had like like there's this soil that only weeds grow in you just get rid of that you know but no grass and soil or grass grass and weeds grow in the same soil dirt in the same way in the same way fear and faith require the same soil to grow uncertainty without uncertainty fear can't grow but neither can faith so here's the thing the same unknowns of the future related to your marriage your job your health your family your finances even your church provide just as much an opportunity to grow your faith as to grow your fear what you grow in the long run depends on you so let me share with you three opportunities to apply this lesson number one you need to talk to the person that you're scared to is it uncomfortable yeah could it go poorly well yeah could it bring difficulty yes but you'll miss out if you don't number two you need to share with a trusted friend the struggle that you've been privately having here's the thing for me to share with someone the the struggles that I have whether it's in my heart or with a sin issue or whatever it might be it is scary because all of a sudden I start to think what will they think of me what will they say but I don't change when I don't talk I stay the same that's the intersection of my story and yours we're the same number three it's time for you to choose to take step to give generously and to serve faithfully Kevin talked about vision giving I guarantee you guarantee you that there are needs for you to serve and is it uncomfortable yes does it take your time yes financially would I rather hang on to money and spend it the way I want to I'll be honest yes but I would miss out if I did you know what I would have missed out on I would have missed out on Linda Linda grew up Catholic when she got married she married a man who was an atheist who told him we are never going to have anything to do with God or church her husband passed away a few years ago about a year ago her granddaughter her name is Brittany started attending our Halstead campus she came to know Christ as her leader and and forgive her and she decided to go public with her faith so she she reached out to her grandma and she said hey Linda I grandma Linda I want you to come and see my baptism Linda was in a terrible car accident right before that she was injured horrifically so she was unable to come but she she called her granddaughter and said hey can I can I watch online she said yeah so she started watching our bridge water online campus she connected with pastor Andrew and his wife amber through that and then started attending a small group through that God decided to do something uncomfortable with bridge water and to launch our north campuses out to start a new multi-site ministry so pastor Andrew is coming with us to help launch the north Andrew was at our vestal campus eight weeks ago he was reminded of Linda because she lives in endocot just right across the river from where our campus is he called her and said hey I'm going to be in vestal next week and I'm going to be launching with them in this new venture would you like to come in person for the very first time to a bridge water campus and Linda said yes she came and met her heard her story we had a great time a week later I got her connected with Rene and through Rene she ended up in our starting point our online starting point group and started going through the good news about Jesus three weeks ago Linda put her faith in Jesus Christ I sat with her last week when I was back in vestal and I just watched as the tears streamed down her face and you know what I thought I thought I would have missed out on Linda if I had stayed comfortable who's your Linda? Father thank you thank you for loving us so much that you lead us into uncomfortable seasons I don't know the places where you're leading these people but I do know that you have good plans and I know that you are trustworthy so God as you're leading them to be uncomfortable I pray that you would give them confidence in you and that you would teach them to rely on you instead of trusting themselves we pray in Jesus name amen [BLANK_AUDIO]