The Way God Works

Transcript

Miracle On Ice And Underdogs

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, good morning. It's good to be with you. My name is Mac. I'm one of the pastors on our team. Also, want to welcome all of you who are joining us from home. Thanks so much for tuning in. Welcome, welcome. Our community time question this morning was what's the best sport? And you know the right answer, don't you?

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Hockey.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

That's right. I mean, this is not a subjective question. There's an obvious and objective right answer, and that is hockey. I can think of at least 739 reasons why. And the single best moment in all-time hockey history is also objective. Clearly, the 1980 men's Olympic victory over the Soviet Union. Yeah. What's known as the miracle on ice. It's called that because the broadcaster Al Michaels during the final seconds of that game was like doing the countdown and then shouted, Do you believe in miracles? I actually went on the interwebs and found a clip of those final seconds. So we're gonna take a look just so you can feel the momentum of this moment. Jonathan, this is your good. You know? It doesn't get any better than that. This moment, this game, was not just considered an upset. They did what was considered impossible. Okay? And the reason why is because the Russians were considered unbeatable. I mean, they weren't just good, they were dominant. Um, so get this from 1964 to 1980, they won four straight Olympic gold medals. So four consecutive, like every time they're showing up, they're winning. And then in between the Olympics, um, they're winning all the international world championships. They're just dominant, nobody can beat them. Now, one of the things that you need to know is they found a little loophole that they were exploiting. So, in my opinion, they were kind of cheating. But here's the loophole is that at this point, Olympic rules were that professionals couldn't compete, only amateurs could. And the Soviet Unions had found a little loophole by calling all of their players soldiers. Okay? So that meant that their team could train year-round together. They were comprised of fully grown, like mature men, had decades, like a decade of experience of chemistry as a team, and this was like their sole reason for existing was to be good at hockey. They had world-class skill and lots of chemistry as a team. Now you compare that with the United States, and it couldn't be more different. Okay, so the the United States was truly their team was comprised of amateurs. The best players were college hockey players. They were truly amateurs. Um, many were barely out of their teenage years. They also had little experience playing together. They're sort of uh put together uh with not much time to prepare. They weren't training year-round together. And many of them had actually never played uh at the international level. So you can see just the difference. You have a group of world-class, fully grown, mature men who had been playing together for a decade compared to a bunch of college players just out of their teenage years. What's more is that just before this game, um before the Olympics, they played an exhibition game against each other. And the Soviets crushed the United States 10-3. Like it wasn't even close. So if you're a betting person going into this game, like you would not be putting, nobody had their money on the US team. They weren't even considered uh medal contenders. Nobody thought that they would do very well. Add to that the fact that this is at the peak of all the Cold War tensions between the United States and Russia, and this feels for many people more than just a game, right? This is this is like democracy versus communism, uh, freedom versus authoritarianism. Like there's a lot, it feels like there's a lot at stake here. Now the game wasn't one-sided at all in terms of like the US just crushing the Soviet. It was actually the exact opposite. Most of the game, and you even saw it in those closing, that closing clip, most of the game was spent in the US end. Uh the Soviets just pummeled the United States, and they got a few lucky breaks, but most of it was just like hanging on for the game, and they had an amazing goalie. Just saying. So that's how they pulled it off. It is an incredibly inspiring moment. And if you've never watched the movie The Miracle on Ice, I encourage you to watch it. I love that movie. This story still inspires us. Moments like this uh capture our attention. We love this plot. We love the underdog, we love the unexpected win. This is why there's five Rocky movies and then all of those creed movies afterwards. This is why the karate kid gets remade every decade. This is the Lord of the Rings. You've got like the weight of the world uh wrapped around uh some hobbit's necks. Like this is this is what we love. And we love a good David and Goliath. We love when the weak beat the strong. And it turns out we don't just love this, God loves us too. This isn't just a story we love, it's a story God loves, and in fact, this is God's story. This is how God's kingdom moves forward, and I hope to show you this today.

Corinth Divisions And The Cross

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Our passage for today is 1 Corinthians 1, uh 26 through 31, and I want to remind you of the context, okay? Because remember that Paul, he is still confronting these divisions that exist within the Corinthian community. You'll remember that people were rallying around their favorite human leader, Paul, Apollos, and so on, and they formed little subgroups around their favorite leader that now are competing against one another for power and influence within the community. And Paul has been confronting this since right after the introduction, and he's done two things so far. Number one is he's talked about allegiance. He's saying, hey, this is an allegiance problem. You should be giving your exclusive allegiance and loyalty to Jesus, not to human leaders. And if all of you did that, then you'd be centered and unified around Jesus, not divided around these human leaders. And then secondly, he's talked about cruciformity or the way of the cross. That God is cruciformed, God is cross-shaped love, and in fact, the cross isn't devoid of power and wisdom, and in fact, reveals how God's power and wisdom operate. And so he's basically said, if you truly understood the cross, you wouldn't be relating with rivalry, you'd be relating with cruciformity. So he's done two things so far, and now Paul is going to add a third argument to counter these divisions. And here's what he says in verse 26. He says, Brothers and sisters, um, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many of you were influential, not many of you were of noble birth, but God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world, the despised things, and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ, who has become for us the wisdom from God, that is our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.

God Chooses Foolish Weak Lowly

SPEAKER_00 8:50

Okay. So remember, Paul has just gotten done talking about the way of the cross. He's still confronting these divisions at Corinth. He's naming that God's power and God's wisdom are revealed through Calvary. Even though the cross appears foolish and weak, it in fact reveals the power and the wisdom of God. And then in our passage, Paul is basically pointing out, and not many of you are all that impressive either, by the way. Not many of you were all that impressive when I found you. In fact, he lists three things. He says, not many of you were wise, influential, or of noble birth. So wise has the idea of being educated. Um, not many of you were educated. Um, not many of you were influential. You didn't have social and political clout. And not many of you were of noble birth. In other words, you don't have the right pedigree. You weren't born into the ruling class, you were born into the lower class. And so here's Paul's logic as he's saying, look, none of you have important letters next to your name. None of you are important. And yet this is good news because God has always done God's best work through the lowliest of people. You following this? And Paul makes the point that God intentionally chooses to operate this way. Three times he uses the word, the phrase God chose. He says, God chose the foolish things, God chose the weak things, God chose the lowly things. So God intentionally chooses the people we'd least expect to accomplish God's purposes in the world. There's a powerful and unexpected reversal in the way that God works. And Paul is saying, you, Corinthians, are those people. You're the foolish, you're the weak, you're the lowly that God wants to use. It's sort of a backhanded compliment. You know what I mean? This is like a chocolate-covered turd. Okay, he's giving them a complicated compliment, but it's kind of like, you know, caked with some other stuff, okay? Now, I you guys know the message Bible, yeah, Eugene Peterson. So I came up with my own message translation for you to get at what Paul is saying here, okay? Here's Mac's message translation. Not many of you were impressive when I met you. In fact, you were kind of a bunch of losers. But that's good news. Why? Because God has always used losers just like you to accomplish his work in the world. Now remember, don't forget this, since you're a bunch of losers, there's no room for boasting. You can only boast in God, because remember, you're a bunch of losers. You guys following the logic here? This is what Paul is saying.

The Broken Picker Draft Analogy

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You can think of this like you could think of it a little bit like this. Okay, here's Paul's point. Every spring in the month of April, there is the NFL draft. Okay? And it lasts for three days, and all the all the teams are sort of scrambling and maneuvering and trading to try to select the best upcoming players to sort of fill the gaps on their team, plug up holes, and improve their chances of going further into the playoffs the following year and perhaps win the Super Bowl. Now, here's what's interesting is um when the draft is happening and then afterwards, all the sports analysts go nuts. And the major media outlets like NFL.com and ESPN, they actually give a numerical rating to each player, like one through ten. And then they not only rank or give a rating to each player, but then they'll also rate the team on how well they did in shoring up their weaknesses and making their selections, and that's a letter grade. A, B, C, so on. And by the way, the Packers this year, the analysts gave them somewhere between an A minus and a B minus, okay? So could have been better, could have been a lot worse. Um, Scripture says to guard your heart, and so I take that very seriously. I go in with no expectations because they've crushed my heart so many times in January. So that's where I'm sitting at going into this next year. The point is, is this is that Paul seems to be saying that God has a broken picker. Okay? So so God appears to select all the wrong people. When we look at the players that God selects, he's not choosing eight, nines, and tens, more like ones, twos, and threes. And if we were to give a sort of like letter grade to God's ability to select the right players for his team, he's not getting an A minus to B minus, he's getting like an F. Um, on the appearance of things, God appears to really not know what He's doing. He appears to have a broken picker, and yet surprisingly, through these awful selections, God still accomplishes all of his purposes in the world. You guys follow it? Like he picks losers and then wins with those losers. That's the point. And this is actually a very significant theme in

Scripture’s Pattern Of Reversal

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the Bible. It's not a minor one, it's like emphasized over and over and over again. So I'm gonna give you an overview of God's losers. Okay? So we'll start with uh not all of them, this is just kind of like a sampling, but start with Abraham and Sarah. Okay, so think about this. This is an older couple who can't have kids. When God makes the promise to Abraham that he is going to start his uh nation from him, he is 75 years old. 75 years old, can't have kids. And then God waits 25 more years just to kind of make the point this covenant is gonna be fulfilled through divine power, not human ingenuity. Because, you know, Abraham tried that and it didn't go very well, right? So this is how God starts. He picks an elderly person who can't have kids to start a nation. Then throughout Genesis, you have this theme of the younger becoming more important than the older. So it's Jacob, not Esau, and Joseph uh uh uh is chosen rather than the older brothers, right? And then you think about Joseph, and it's like his older brothers, out of jealousy, fake his death, sell him into slavery. So he's enslaved in Egypt, and then what happens? God uses this slave to gradually climb the ranks, then he hits kind of a detour and has to spend time in jail, but then he climbs back up, right? And then God uses Joseph to save his brothers from famine. So God leverages rejection for salvation. What people intended for harm, God uses for good. You start the book of Exodus, and you have the nation of Israel in slavery. Who are the key players in this moment? It's people you would least expect. It's Jewish midwives. Because Pharaoh, the most powerful person in the world, is threatened by how fast the um the Israelites are growing. He's concerned about this, so he basically commands genocide. He says to the Jewish midwives, you need to kill all the males who are born. And these women with incredible courage basically engage in quiet civic disobedience. They subvert these orders and they begin preserving lives. And God uses their courage and their disobedience to bring about Moses, to save Moses' life. Speaking of Moses, he was far from a powerhouse. When God calls him and selects him to be part of rescuing Israel from slavery, he was also very old in age. He's a geezer at this point. And he's not in his prime, and he's a reluctant leader with a speech impediment. Like he can't even, he knows he can't talk very well. This is who God selects. He's freaking old. But God uses him to confront Pharaoh and then lead the people of Israel out of Egypt. Speaking of Israel, have you ever thought about this? That the nation God selects to be his very own people are a group of slaves. Have you ever thought about that? This is the group that God says, I want to be in relationship with me. This is the group I want to represent me in the world, a group of former slaves. And over and over God reminds them, I'm not choosing you because of how great or numerous or powerful you are. It's actually the exact opposite. It's because through you I want to show the world who I am. Throughout Scripture, Israel is like a tiny nation surrounded by superpowers, located on perhaps the most strategic plot of land you could imagine in the world. This is Israel. They're incredibly vulnerable. And you just keep going, and this theme continues. Um after Israel gets into the promised land, there's this chunk of uh called judges, where these different judges rise up. And this is a major theme in judges. You look at Gideon, for example. He's not from an important family or an important tribe. Um, he's from one of the smallest tribes, and he's fearful and scared and cowardly. And then when God selects him, he takes his army from 32,000 to 300 just to show, hey, I'm gonna win through divine strength, not human strength. After the judges, you have this uh period of renewal, and it starts with another woman named Hannah who can't have kids. And she starts praying. God answers her prayer and gives her a son named Samuel. And once again, you see a powerful reversal. Because Samuel, when he's just a kid, he's able to hear God's voice, but the priest who's been representing God for a long time, can't hear God's voice at all. You see how this is going? And then it just continues. Um the the then you have like the monarchy is established, Saul messes up, so David rejects Saul, or God rejects uh uh Saul as king and then selects a new king and tells Samuel, go to Bethlehem, to the house of Jesse. One of his sons is going to be king. What does Jesse do? He parades all of his sons before Samuel except for David. He doesn't even consider David worth presenting. And yet, what does God say? He doesn't look at human appearance but the heart, and he selects David to be the next king. This is all over the place in the Old Testament. Esther was an orphan Jewish exile in a former for uh foreign empire who ends up being positioned vulnerably inside imperial power, and through her courage, God once again saves the Israelites from a genocidal plot. This continues. In fact, this is how the New Testament starts. I've named this a lot during the Christmas story, but there's all these reversals. Who does God select to give birth to the Messiah? But Mary, a young, poor, and socially unimportant person from a no-name town, Nazareth, right? And she's the one who receives this call. And when Jesus is born, he's born in Bethlehem and placed in a manger, not in a palace, in an important place. You are the first people to hear the news of his birth, but lowly shepherds. There's all these reversals. You look at Jesus' lineage, and Matthew goes out of his way to say, hey, by the way, there's four women in this lineage, all who have incredible faith, but their reputation is sort of distorted because of the story around them. That's Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. Like surprising reversals. And then Jesus just continues this reversal throughout his life and ministry. Who does Jesus select to be his disciples? Not people with social influence or political clout. He chooses ordinary people with disreputable reputations, like Matthew, the tax collector. Four of his disciples are fishermen Andrew and Peter, James and John. And throughout the gospels, they're presented not as awesome or smart, but quite frankly, dull and doubtful and confused and stupid and cowardly. They don't get it. And yet God entrusts them to lead this kingdom movement. It doesn't stop there. You guys, uh, Paul is an incredible mind, right? We read his writings, we're like, wow, Paul's Paul's pretty impressive. But many scholars think that Paul was disabled. And they debate what that disability was. Some believe he had a speech impediment. In fact, in uh 1 Corinthians, he'll talk about how he's unable to speech, speak eloquently. Other people think he was near blind because at certain points he uh closes his letters by writing and he kind of self-deprecating talks about how big his letters are. I read one scholar who did his uh doctoral dissertation on how um Paul may have suffered from dwarfism based on certain clues in the New Testament. I don't know if that's true, but but the point is that many people do not think Paul was like a powerhouse. They think he had um significant limitations, and yet God used him to plant all of these churches that we now read about in the New Testament. This theme continues, as I've named before, uh, for the first 300 years of the early church. When the church spread most rapidly, they didn't have clout or political power. They had zero influence and were a persecuted minority. And they were actually comprised mostly of women and former slaves. And yet they learned how to love one another and the people around them, and this is how the church began. The accumulative effect of all these examples points to this arresting reality. And this is our bottom line for today.

Bottom Line God Works Through Weakness

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There's one thing you walk away with, just let it be this that God works through weakness. The way God consistently works throughout the story of Scripture is through weakness, not strength. God shows off his divine power through social weakness. God accomplishes his greatest work through the most unlikely and lowly people. God gives his strength to those who appear weak to reveal his strength. God appears to have a broken picker. It's like God could choose whoever God wants to be part of his work. If we go back to the draft analogy, God has every first-round draft pick in his pocket. He could pick and select whoever he wants, and yet he picks the lowliest of people, those on the margins, those who don't have social status, or the right pedigree to point to. He picks the people we wouldn't to be part of his work and to accomplish his purposes in the world. And he does this to show off his strength and his wisdom. So here's a question for us. You guys following this theme so far? All right. Because I don't know how to be much more clear. I mean, this is this is the best I can do, okay? But here's the question: if this is the way God works, think about this for a moment. If this is the way God works, what are we called to be like as a church community? If this is who God uses, what does that mean about us? And if this is the way that God prioritizes God's energy, then where should we be putting our energy and our focus? I want to give you some signs and indicators that the church is on the right track. All right, so here are four implications for us, based on the story of Scripture, what we see in the life and teachings of Jesus in the early church, that we're actually kind of working the way that God works in the world. Four implications. Here's the first implication.

Move Toward The Margins

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If God really works through weakness, then that means that we, as his people, were to minister on the margins. Okay? So you could think of this first point as the who. Who are we supposed to be moving toward as a church? And of course, God moves towards all people, yes? Like Jesus died for all. Every single person is created in God's image, fearfully and wonderfully made. So yes, God loves and moves towards everyone. And yet, the clear through line throughout the scriptures is that God intentionally moves towards the forgotten and the overlooked so that no one is forgotten or overlooked. And so if that's how God works, then we as God's people ought to work the same way. The people that God focuses on should be the ones that we focus on. If God moves towards the forgotten and the overlooked to make sure no one is forgotten or overlooked, then that means we, his people, should do the same. It means we need to intentionally engage those that Jesus engaged. We need to intentionally engage the lonely, those without community or deep friendships, the socially awkward. It means we need to intentionally engage the poor, those who are experiencing financial hardship, a food scarcity, or a housing crisis. We need to intentionally engage those who are struggling with addiction, whether that's alcohol or other substances. We need to intentionally engage the exploited and the abused, those who have been trafficked and mistreated. We need to intentionally engage those who are struggling with mental health challenges, whether that's depression or anxiety or other challenges in that regard. We need to intentionally engage single parents, moms and dads who are trying to raise kids while maintaining a full-time job. We need to intentionally engage immigrants and refugees, people who have come here to escape unsafe conditions in their home country or come here for a new start. We need to intentionally engage foster kids, those who didn't have a safe home growing up. We need to intentionally engage women who are in an unwanted pregnancy or a crisis pregnancy. We need to intentionally engage the disabled, those who have disabilities. We need to intentionally engage the elderly, those who are no longer able to live independently. You guys get the point? These are the folks that Jesus moves towards, those on the margins, and so should we. What's more, friends, is that this is where God does God's best work. You look throughout scripture and throughout church history, and this is the great reversal, every significant kingdom movement that I can think of didn't start at the center of cultural power with the most important people, but instead started on the margins among the least important people. And yet it's with this group of people that God brings about renewal and restoration and revival. God uses ordinary people, weak people, overlooked people to do his best work. And the reason why is because God works through weakness, not strength. He works through the humble, not the proud. Yeah? Okay, so uh implication one is who we move toward, we're to be moving towards the margins.

Become A Hospital For Hurting

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Second implication is that we are to be a hospital for the hurting. So if we move towards all people, especially those on the margins, the overlooked and the forgotten, the lonely, the poor, and so on, then guess who's going to comprise our community? We are going to be a community of people from the margins. Is this making sense? Which means we need to become a hospital for the hurting because that's who we're moving towards. Those who are hurting, those who are struggling, those who are having a hard time. In other words, we're not a country club for the influential and the successful, we're a hospital for the hurting. I heard a story of a pastor who took a new job at a prominent church, a well-known church, and he went through the interview process several rounds and ended up getting the job as their new lead pastor. And a couple weeks before he started, he decided to do an experiment. He attended the church disguised as a homeless person. So he went over a week without showering, so there'd be just enough stench to be off-putting. He didn't shave, he showed up with grubby clothes on that were totally unkept. And he walked in, he came a little bit early, and he just wanted to see how do people how will this church relate to someone who appears homeless? Shockingly, nobody greeted him. He stood in the foyer, nobody came up to talk to him. He was met with judgmental stares, odd looks, rather than welcoming arms. When he went into the sanctuary, he sat by himself, nobody engaged him. Afterwards, hung around the lobby a little bit, nobody talked to him. I imagine that was a pretty awkward moment for his first sermon when he revealed his experiment and held up a mirror as to how this community was engaging those that Jesus, not engaging those who Jesus clearly engaged. What kind of community are we? Now I want to believe that if someone ran that same experiment here, the results would be very different. I'm fairly confident they would be. But I do think that the American church is deeply broken. We've got our priorities messed up. We're preaching Christ crucified, but we project as a group the exact opposite. Right? So we preach weakness, but we market strength. We preach humility, but we platform charisma. We preach self-sacrifice, but we chase after success. My son Griffin loves worship music while he's eating. And so we watch these little YouTube videos of like the best worship. I don't know. But but yesterday I just looked at Josie and I'm like, this is hard for me to watch. I have to admit it. It's hard for me because the hustle from the stage is so strong. Like they're trying so hard to be cool. This one girl has like a baggy sweater on and then track pants. I'm like, I don't know where that's cool, but it's clearly trying to be cool. But like, why are we, why are we trying so hard? And are we trying hard in the right areas? You know what I mean? That's not it. We're not to be projecting strength and success onto the world in order to attract strength and success. We're a group of unimpressive people who are at work on the margins. So we're to minister on the margins, which means then we become a community comprised of people on the margins, a hospital for the hurting. The third implication is that we're to be known for loving rather

Love People Stop Judging

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than judging. Here's the deal, friends. If you're gonna move towards the margins, you can't be judgmental. You can't love people and judge people at the same time. Judging people is subtracting worth from others in order to give it to yourself. So you do the comparison game where you criticize them in a way that makes you feel superior. You're subtracting worth from the other person in order to make yourself feel more significant. Love is the exact opposite, it's about ascribing worth to others at cost to yourself. And here's what I've noticed: is those who have genuinely hit rock bottom in their lives and then encountered God's mercy and grace are easily the most merciful, loving people I've ever encountered. Why? Because when they encounter other people whose lives are a mess, they're not interested in judging those people because they consider themselves worse than those people. They're naturally able to move towards those people with great compassion and mercy and kindness because they know what it's like to be in that place. Our job is not to judge others, it's to love others. Period. And this is the one thing we're supposed to be known for. Paul will say later in this book, do everything in love. And yet the sad thing, and I've named it before, is that the church in America is not known for its love, but rather for the exact opposite, for being incredibly judgmental and hypocritical. And that is problematic to me. If we're gonna be a people that moves towards the margins, engages the overlooked and the forgotten, we need to put our gavels down and pick up our crosses. Yes? Okay,

Faithfulness Over Looking Successful

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great. Well final implication. We're to prioritize being faithful over appearing successful. Our focus should not be becoming successful, it should be simply being faithful to Jesus. Our focus as a church shouldn't be building our own reputation or furthering our brand. Friends, every week, it's not an exaggeration, every week I get an email from like some consultant or church help group that is saying, hey, if you hire us, I can make your church more awesome. You can grow your church in this way and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm not joking. This is what churches are are paying for is to make them appear successful, to further their brand. And yet it's not the way of Jesus. If if we were focused on our on the way of Jesus, we wouldn't be obsessed with how impressive we are or how uh um influential we are. We would simply be going, Jesus, what are you asking us to do? Let's be faithful to that. Now I want to end with some encouragement.

Encouragement From Real Local Work

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I really do, because as I was looking at my notes and then reflecting on our community, I realized, you know, we've actually been talking about this for several years. And we're doing this. We're actually doing this stuff, and I see this good work happening among us, and I'm really, really encouraged. So just think about this. I was thinking about just our kingdom communities, just the kingdom communities we have at this church and have supported over the last several years. And I think about, for instance, our um partnership with the O'Connemak Area School District. And over the years, we've donated so much money to support families in need during the holidays, mentoring students who don't have parental support at home, providing snacks for the people who can't afford them. That's great work, you guys. I think about our racial peacemaking community. Here's a group of people in the middle of a um a culture that is racially divided, where there's all this hostility, and they want to be part of building bridges and restoring unity and right relationship horizontally. And that's what led to our bridge builders partnership. And man, what incredible work that's happening through bridge builders. We had a group down there just yesterday, renovating houses and neighborhoods one uh block at a time. I think about our kingdom community devoted to poverty and homelessness, serving at bread and roses, right? Uh befriending the homeless in Milwaukee, um, serving humbly. I think about the care portal we talked about and how all this work that social workers are doing, they don't have the resources, and so they're helping churches step into those things and meet those needs. I think about celebrate recovery, which is currently on pause, but for several years, you guys, we hosted a space every week for people who are struggling with hurts, habits, and hangups to come and find wholeness. And we still have a group of people that meet every week to support each other, and we need a fresh uh group of leaders to take that on. But but what amazing work to go. We're part of helping people become free from addiction. I think about our human trafficking kingdom community, which is legitimately a hard uh area to figure out how to work in, because they don't just let anybody come up and help people who have been abused and exploited. But I think about this ongoing developing relationship with Zateo, and I'm excited about it. I think about our food pantry every week. You guys aren't here, but every week we have people who come in and need help with food. We've got an incredible team on our benevolence team. When people come in and need financial support, they meet with those people, interview them, get to know them, pray with them, and we figure out how we can help them financially or otherwise. I think about how we relate to those who are disabled and how we're slowly becoming a community, not just of inclusion, but belonging. I could keep going. I'm just naming, friends, I think we're, I think we're kind of heading in the right direction. And that's encouraging to me. I'm proud of us, and I love to do this work alongside of you. I think we're we're uh embodying the values of Jesus. And are we doing it perfectly? No. And do we have a long ways to go? Yes. But I'm just letting you know, as your pastor, I'm excited and I'm encouraged, and I'm grateful, and I love you all. I'm gonna close with some action steps.

Reflection Questions And Hospitality Practices

SPEAKER_00 39:45

Um, I give you questions to reflect on in prayer as you spend time with Jesus every week. So here are those reflection questions. Who are the overlooked people that I tend to avoid or ignore? One thing you could do this week if you're like, no, I just love everybody equally, is Google implicit bias test. I took one this week this week, and it will expose maybe some unknown um prejudices that you have, and you're not even aware of it. All right, might be worth um taking that so you know here's the people that I have a harder time moving towards. Where does judging people get in the way of me loving people? And then how is God inviting me to participate in his redemptive mission this week? Who is God asking me to move toward in my life? And then I have two practices, and both of them center on hospitality. One is when you're here at the church. All right? Practice being a hospitable presence when you're here on Sundays. Engage those you haven't met. Learn their names, get curious and ask about their stories. Sit with someone who might be sitting alone, invite them over to lunch after church or into your small group. I really hope that if someone comes here, they uh don't walk in and out without being engaged, but we as a community notice people and invite them into our lives, creating spaces of belonging. And then finally, is practice intentional hospitality in your neighborhood, right? Take this same idea out into the world. Get to know your neighbors, learn their names and stories, invite them over for a meal, offer a helping hand to those who are in need. This is, by the way, how the kingdom of God grows. It's not through spectacular preaching and impressive worship, it's through people like you and me doing the ordinary work of loving people well and inviting them into our space. Yes? All right. That's all I have for today. Um, if you want to stand, I'll close this in prayer.

Closing Prayer And Sending

SPEAKER_00 42:03

Father God, we thank you that we are counted amongst the least of these. That you do your best work through the lowly and the humble. God, we want to move towards the people you move towards, towards the forgotten and the overlooked, so that nobody is forgotten and overlooked. We want to be a people who's at work in the places you're at work. And we want to become the kind of people who know how to pick up our crosses rather than our gavels to follow you. So continue to transform us, continue to move among us, continue to revive us, and continue to work through us. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Go in peace.