Amen. Amen. What an incredible story. What a testimony of God's grace. And man, we just can't wait to see a bunch more stories like that over the next five years at Mercy Hill.
I know this. I know that as we're in this chosen series, some of you guys are thinking, man, I know this church is crazy. And they're probably, I know they said they weren't going to do it, but they probably got them little kids lined up out there for us to take. And we're not doing that. I've told y'all we're not going to do that.
We're going to do that at the end of the series, okay? But we're not going to do it this weekend. But I do just want to say, hey, man, we want all of our church to put their yes on the table and say, God, is this adoption, foster care, rope holding? Is this something that you would have us do? And we're going to be diving right back into our chosen series today.
Before I do that, though, I've got to say this: hey, how appreciative are we across all of our campuses of our incredible worship teams? Are we just so grateful for them? And man, I know I personally am. There is not a team at our church that puts in more time and energy into what they have a chance to do than these incredible worship teams. I mean, they are just week in and week out, put it on the line so that we can have an incredible experience and meet with our God.
And it's just an incredible thing. And I want you to know they are releasing new music. And actually, the song that we just sang, okay, what else can I say? This song right here is releasing this very weekend, all right?
So if you're at the Thursday night service, it's going to be Friday. But if you come on the weekend, it will have just had a chance to release. And I just want to tell you, man, I think it's incredible for us to get behind what God is doing in our incredible worship teams. All right. You know, my pastor J.D.
Greer used to say it like this. He used to say, man, songs are basically sermons that we sing over ourselves.
Songs are scriptures that we Sing over ourselves. What the church sings is what it believes. All right. And songs anchor our soul in a way that other things just won't. You know how I know that?
I'll tell you, the first mission trip I ever took my little kids on, we had a chance to go to one of our partners in Kentucky, and we had a chance to go into a nursing home. And many of the people there really could not even form a lot. They couldn't talk very much. We blessed out the guitars, started playing Amazing Grace. How many of them do you think could sing it?
There's something about music that anchors into us, and God has created us to be that way. And so, we want to really get behind this. Psalm 98:1 tells us to sing a new song, and God is worthy of that.
So, hey, get behind it, stream it, do all the things to it, whatever that means.
Okay, so you guys will know how to take it from there. All right, Colossians chapter four is where we're going to be today, and we're going to be talking about open doors. I cannot have a better segue into this sermon than David and Tara's story. Imagine sitting with your own family at a restaurant and having a waiter be like, Hey, we're breaking the checkup here, or how does that really work? Because, listen, the gospel, in many ways in our life, especially adoption, it raises questions among the outside world that don't quite understand our culture.
And I'm speaking in us language, guys. I know many of you here today are not quite part of the fold. You're trying to figure it out, but here's what you're going to learn: when you get all the way in, there is a culture of the new family that you belong to. And it's different than anything else in the world. And as we live out our identity as believers, we become oddities in some ways.
We become question raisers in a lot of ways to the outside world that is around us. And that's what we're going to dive into today.
Now, I'm going to shock you when I tell you a little fact about myself, okay? 2002 high school, Ridgeview High School in Clay County, Florida, and I won the Mr. Ridgeview pageant, if you can believe that.
Okay, I know. Everyone is just shocked. It was one of these deals that I'm very certain they no longer let high schools do, okay, because it was highly politically incorrect. Everything about it was. All the football players are now in the beauty pageant, and all the, it was just the whole, every stereotype you can think of from Sweet Valley High or Save by the Bell, that's what it was, all right?
And I, I, uh, it was so funny. The way I got myself into the finale was I rewrote all of these songs that were popular at the time: Shameless by Garth Brooks.
Okay, I Can Be Your Hero by Enrique Iglesias.
Okay, I mean, I'm going way back here. And I rewrote all these songs to mercilessly make fun of all the other competitors. All right. And so I got myself into the final, and there it is. And they asked me, they do these random questions, and they asked me this question.
They said: if you could be one office supply product, what would you be and why? I don't know what your answer to that would be. Standing there in front of hundreds of people, and I have no idea where, but I looked right at the guy and I said, Well, I'd be a highlighter. He said, Why? I said, Because I'm the highlight of this show.
Boom, one. All right. I mean, it was over. It was over at that point.
Now, I'm not gonna ask you that question, but I am gonna ask you a, just as silly of a question, but it actually has a point, all right? If you could be one punctuation mark. What would you be?
Now, there's 14 punctuation marks generally that are recognized, okay? And of the 14, I don't know which one you would be. Maybe you would say, hey, I'm type A, I'd be an exclamation point. You know, maybe you would say, dude, I feel like I'm kind of out of the way, I'm always like in the shadows. Maybe you'd be a parentheses.
Maybe you have a very awkward personality. You would be an ellipsis. Dot, dot, dot. That's what everybody's thinking, whenever you're, you know, that. Maybe that's maybe that's what comes to your mind.
I don't know. Here's what I want to tell you. Every Christian should know the answer to this question. Your life is a big giant question mark. to the world.
All right, that when the world looks in, there is a bit of a curiosity that they see when they're looking at you. And the reason is because they can't quite put you in a box and the way that you behave and the things that you value Man, the way that we parent, the way that we spend money. The way that we talk about things, the convictions that we have, the world looks in if they're not part of this culture and it is a question mark in their mind. And my point today is just like what David and Tara were saying in this video, my point today is: to the extent that we get to live lives that raise questions for the watching world around us. That is pretty much to the extent that we will be able to give them the answer, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
You could say it like this, Christians' lives should raise questions in the minds of unbelievers. That is a major piece of the mission puzzle.
Sometimes we're like, man, I have the answer for the world and I want to share it. The answer is Jesus. The answer is Jesus. And that is true. But you don't get to share the answer because the life that we're living sometimes.
is not begging the question. Of why are you so different? What is different about your life? And I would just say this: if we want the world to hear the gospel, then we have a chance to live lives that will prompt questions in them. And the Bible connects this to something that we should be praying for called an open door.
An open door for the gospel happens when somebody is raising questions because they're looking at a life that is just alien to them. And they lean into it. There's something there that they desire, and God can use that in incredible ways. Here's what I want to do: I want to start in Colossians 4:2. We're just going to walk through this passage, guys.
This is a rich, deep passage. There's a lot of meat on the bone, as they say, okay? And so we're going to have to try to wrestle with this a little bit and kind of pull it apart so we can get all the way to it. But what I want you to see is, man, every one of us have things in our life right now. And I know me before anybody else.
Okay. I'm the one standing up here. I wrestle with this before I stand up here. Every single one of us probably has areas of our life, if you're a believer, that you're like, yes, that part of my life definitely raises questions to the world. And there's other parts of our life that we're like, man, if we're honest, that part of my life don't look no different than the world.
That part of my life doesn't look no different than neighbors, don't look no different than anybody else that doesn't claim to follow Jesus. And so, those are things that we're gonna need to ask the Spirit to convict us of and maybe raise some things up that we might repent of and walk out of here with a renewed gospel determination to see our sanctification grow in those areas. And of course, we're in the chosen series. And so, by the time we get to the end of the message, I definitely want to circle this back around and just say, guys, when a church in Greensboro, North Carolina, All of a sudden, out of nowhere, sets a goal to see 1,000 chosen kids in the next five years. If we got after that and actually saw God do that, what kind of questions do you think that would raise in the community?
Right? What kind of open doors would that be? Why do they do that? Why do they act like that? Why do they spend money like that?
Why do they sign up? Why do these empty nesters that have all of their retirement to look forward to go back into the foster care system? Or why do they start holding the rope, right? It's gonna raise questions.
So let's just talk about this personally, and then we'll, at the very end, we'll connect it more to the broader theme of this idea of chosen. All right, here we go. Colossians 4:2. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us.
That God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison.
Now, the first thing that I think we've got to wrestle with in Colossians 4 is the role of prayer in the mission. And here's what Paul understands very clearly, and I pray that we'll understand it. Even at Mercy Hill, you may have felt, you know, over the last year, there's just been some little shifts that have happened. Like, man, every series we're having a corporate prayer time in our services. We didn't used to do that.
We've had nights like our cryout night in the fall that are really based around prayer. I've been challenged in this area. This is not a natural strong suit for me. There are things that pastors naturally are good at in their wiring, and there's things that they got to keep their hand on the wheel all the time. Prayer is one of them for me.
Okay, so we're trying to kind of lean more and more into this as a church. This is what Paul knows that we need to understand. Y'all, prayer goes before the mission. You can say it like this: prayer opens the door for the word to go forward. You know, this is why we want to bathe our Easter services in prayer.
You know, our Easter weekend is branded prove it this year. Man, we want our community to understand: okay, if you kind of think the claims about Christ and his resurrection, Are nothing, well, why don't you come and let us have a shot at proving it to you? We wanna bathe that in prayer. We're gonna do campus prayer noontime on Wednesdays, all the different campuses leading all the way up. There'll be fasting sessions, there'll be times.
Why? Because there's a part of this that we know that we cannot do.
Now, I wanna make sure you understand what I'm saying. All of the mission is in God's hands, okay? But God gives us an opportunity to join Him in the mission. But before we have that opportunity to really speak the word or invite someone to church or whatever it is, we've got to ask him to open the doors in people's lives and in their hearts, circumstantially, yes, but also just in people's hearts and minds that they would want to lean in. that they would see our lives and actually have questions and want to lean into those open doors.
Sometimes you guys have heard probably preachers say this. I know some of you are brand new, you haven't, but if you've been raised in church, I was raised in church my whole life. I've heard preachers say a lot, and I've said it before. You've heard this: prayer is not preparation for the battle, it is the battle. You've probably heard that before.
And I would, hey, in some ways, I think that's true. In other ways, Prayer is definitely preparation for the battle.
Okay, because in prayer, what Paul is saying is, pray for us that doors would open that we might be able to walk through them. There is more to do than just prayer. Not less, but there is more. And we ask God to open doors in front of us that we might be able to engage with our friends, our neighbors, man, people on the college campus that our awesome students are in dorm rooms with, people on your kids' ball team. We want our kids to learn how to pray for their friends in school, all that kind of stuff.
Invite them to come in. That happens on the back. Of God opening doors because we have asked Him in prayer. You know, one of our missionaries that a missionary that was part of our church had been serving in South Asia for a long time. And I remember talking to him one time, and he said, Man, we saw X amount of unreached, unengaged people groups come off the map, meaning there was nobody sharing the gospel there.
And then by the time we left, there were. And he said, I can tell you every single time that we saw a UUPG come off the map, there were churches that had partnered with us for that particular people in prayer. God opens doors.
Now we get a chance to walk through them. Look what it says: God may open to us a door for the word.
Now, I gotta make sure you understand. It's a door not just to be a nice person. It's a door not just to do social justice. It's a door not just to go and dig wells for people who don't have water. It's a door for the word.
to declare the mystery of Christ. Colossians 1.27 tells us what that mystery is. It's Christ in you. It certainly is a mystery. How we have the opportunity for Christ to be in us and us be in Christ.
But it happens when we admit our sin, believe in what Christ has done, confess Him as the Lord of our life. He's talking about the simple, plain gospel message. on account of which I am in prison. That I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak.
Now, think about that for a second. Paul is asking for prayer that he would be able to speak the gospel clearly. If the Apostle Paul in everything that he did needs prayer on his behalf, that he would be able to speak the gospel clearly and not fall victim to trying to make it clever or cute. Not try to make something more palatable than it actually is. Not try to water it down or dilute it or domesticate it.
Instead, to speak it plainly, the gospel declared. Proclamation, you might think this is about preaching. It's actually not about preaching. The word that is used here about proclaiming the gospel throughout this passage, it is a very generic word that can be used to any type of formal communication. Speaking the gospel at your workplace.
Man, some of our awesome students at Mercy Hill starting movements on their campus where they're starting Bible studies at their high schools. It's the idea of speaking the gospel clearly.
Now, I don't know if you've heard the gospel clearly. I want to proclaim it as clearly as I can as well. Because this is what the Bible says, that this is where the power is of life change. Man, it is not in all of the other things that it is not in the fluff, it is not in the cuteness of trying to warm people to our movement. It is.
The powerful gospel, it is the words. Of life for us. And they're this. Jesus Christ lived a life we didn't live because we needed him to do that. You and I, in our sin, deserve death and hell, both physically and spiritually.
God set up the world, it's his world. Here is the rule, follow me. We don't follow him, we die. We don't follow him. Adam and Eve didn't follow him.
You and I don't follow him.
So we needed a savior that our works could never dig us out of a hole that they dug us into in the first place. Y'all, we needed a savior, and that's what Jesus came to do. He lived a life we didn't live, sinless. He died a death that we deserved brutally. You know, one of the things that we've got to keep saying to a culture that wants to turn its eyes away from any kind of sin, don't you realize we're in a culture that says every single thing about you needs to be affirmed?
I mean, everything about you needs to be affirmed. And instead, what we have at the center of our belief system is a cross with the Son of God on it. Bleeding. And that shows us what our sin deserved, as horrible, as brutal, as ugly as it is. That's what our sin deserved.
He lived the life we didn't live, went to the cross to die the death that we deserved, and in his resurrection, he offers us the newness of life. We live in a culture, man, affirm everything. No, no, no. What the gospel is, is that sin is heinous. It took the death of the Son of God to overcome it, but because of his incredible love for you, that's exactly what he did.
He went to the cross for you, and now in his resurrection, you have the opportunity right now. Admit, believe, confess, to join him in the newness of life. You know what's crazy? We look around our countries, our country, and what you see is different movements of churches. I'm thinking mostly of mainline denomination churches right now.
Not all of them, of course, but by and large, you see a whole lot of them. What have they done over the last 40 years? Sanitize the gospel, water down the gospel, domesticate the gospel, dilute the gospel. And what has happened? Their movements die.
What we try to say is, well, we've got to dumb this down so that people will want it. And when you dumb it down, they realize there's no power in that. What what would I need that for, right? I've told you the story of a friend of mine here. He said, Well, man, you know, our church up the road, I know the church.
He said, Man, our church up the road, you know, they, you know, we've got it, we've got a sort of the cultural issues and, you know, blood and cross. We've kind of had to, you know, that's the way that you reach the young people nowadays. I said, brother, I know that church. How many do you got? It's like zero.
The church is dying. It's so funny. Churches are dying because of the answer that they've put forward about how they think they're going to grow. It makes absolutely no sense. What we need to do is pray the same prayer that Paul had in our life and in our church and hold ourselves to it.
We want to say it plainly, we want to be clear.
Now that's what Paul does here in verse 3. He says, May God open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ. That's where the power of God. of life change happens, right?
Now, what we see also here is that Paul says in verse three that he says, man, we want to have an open door to us that we can declare this word. But he says this, on account of which, because he preached the gospel, he is in prison.
Now I want you to think about this with me for just a moment. Paul is sitting in jail and he prays for an open door. Not for him to walk out of. He's not praying for an open door for him to leave his situation. He's praying for an open door that the gospel would go forth.
in his situation. That is deeply profound in my opinion. Because I know for me, man, I'm the type of person that if I was sitting in jail, I'd be praying for an open door and some keys, you know? I mean, I'd be praying, I understand, you know what I mean? Like, I get that.
I would be consumed with my own self and situation. And Paul's not doing that. Paul's prayer isn't to be set free, but for other people to be set free from sin and death. The open door isn't for him. They open doors so that the gospel would get out.
Now, I want to make sure you understand what I'm saying and not saying, all right? I don't think it's wrong to pray that our situations would improve. Man, we have people right now in different parts of the world. You from this church have sent ones that are living with bombs in the skies right now. I don't think it's wrong for us to pray for their safety.
I don't think it's wrong in any way for us to pray that their situation would improve. I just think it needs to have a little bit of this Pauline theology put into it where we realize: hey, yes, we want safety. Yes, we want people to maybe even be able to get out of different situations or whatever. But at the same time, God used how we react to those situations as a way that opens doors for the gospel because, after all, that is our mission. That is what we're after.
You know, you can say it like this: what if we saw every setback in life is a setup of what God's about to do? What if we saw every time And I know, man, this is hard for me. I'm right there with you, but. I think about our awesome students. It's like our high school students.
What if not making the team? Like, I know you wanted to make it, but what if not making the team? There's another prayer, and the prayer is like, God, can you use the way I react to this so that my friends can see this is not my God? Same thing with our awesome college students. It's like, hey, you didn't get into the grad school you wanted to.
That's hard, but your friends are gonna see that your life is not over You're not devastated. You're sad. You're not devastated because you have a solid rock that you have built your life upon. We have people right now in our church, I mean, left and right. that are coming out with different diagnosis and things that are very, very hard.
And we're gonna pray for healing, and we're gonna announce, like, you know, anoint, like the Bible tells us to. And we're gonna ask God to do some incredible things and heal people in our church, and at the same time, Man, don't we want our prayer also to be, God, use the way that we suffer as a testimony into the community that is all around us? I know I'm convicted by this. I've told you guys, I've alluded to this. The day is April 16th, all right?
April 16th, our youngest daughter, our little chosen girl, all right, is going to be, is going to have a surgery to fuse her spine, C1 and C2. Very tough. I mean, she weighs 30-something pounds. And man, we've been praying against this for five years, and it's just, man, this is where we are. And the prayers, and I was convicted by this passage.
My prayer has been almost exclusively, heal her. If we're going to have the surgery, allow it to go well. Allow us to get home soon. Allow the recovery to go well. She doesn't understand what's about to happen.
We can't talk to her about this. She doesn't, you know, there's a lot of fear. Those have been where my prayers are. They're going to continue to be so. And what I also need to say is, God.
Can you heal somebody else spiritually as you're healing faith and physically? Can you use this story? for your glory. As something that is a testimony and an open door for others. And that's where I think we can get into this idea of everything is about mission.
Paul always has his mind on the outsider. And look what he says here. And this will start to kind of connect for us a little bit, all right? Verse 5. Walk in wisdom towards outsiders, making the best use of the time.
Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. All right. I want to try very hard to connect something here, okay? All the way back from the intro to now. You remember the intro?
What did I say? Hey, what punctuation mark would you be? All right. And every one of us at some point needs to say, hey, man, as a believer, I hope I'm a big question mark for the world. That they look in and they're like, man, it's hard for me to figure out, but I'm interested.
I'm intrigued by the life that you live. And I want to know different things about the life that you live.
Well, here's what Paul is kind of saying. All right, in verse 6, he says three things. Walk in wisdom, walk with urgency, because the time is short, and walk with seasoned speech. Why? So that we can give the answer that we need to each person.
Now, this is very simple, okay? You don't give an answer. Unless someone's asked you a question. Does that make sense? Like, we don't just walk around spitting out answers.
That's not what it's called. That'd be just called whatever, facts, or you're spitting out whatever. If I'm spitting out an answer, it's because it's in response to a question.
Now, here's where I think all of this connects. Man, we are praying that God would open doors, and some of that is circumstantial.
Some of that is just what He does when He dawns light in someone's heart and gives them curiosity, and there's things that are in the unseen realm that we will never understand.
Okay? I got it. But there's also a part of open doors and question raising that seems like it has something very closely tied with how we live our life. You can say it like this, sometimes open doors. are questions that our lives raise.
When people are looking in from the outside, we become an open door. Because we're living a life that is intriguing in some way and people want to lean in. You can say it like this, if you want to put it another way. Open doors. come through wisdom, urgency, and seasoned speech.
Now, I think that I to be honest, to be clear, I think that open doors come from a lot more than that, too.
Okay, I think that, man, when we live the Christian life, there's always things like that that are raising questions for people around us. But in this passage, he mentions wisdom. He mentions urgency and he mentions seasoned speech.
So let me talk about all three of those quickly, all right? Number one: be wise if you want to be a question raiser. All right, wisdom. When this passage says here in verse 6, and it says, in verse 5, it says, walk in wisdom. Literally, what it's saying is, if you actually translate it, it's in wisdom be walking.
In wisdom be walking. All right, it's kind of an example of what we talked about even over the last couple of weeks. There is something intriguing about a life that is living according to God's wisdom. His divine wisdom is powerful. You say, What are you talking about?
I'm really just talking about, man, when we read the book of Proverbs. We read the other passages, the book of Job, Song of Solomon. S some parts of the book of James. I mean, these are not technically speaking classified as wisdom literature.
Some of them are. But when you're looking at God's wisdom in these texts and we live according to that for the world outside, that's alien a little bit to them.
Okay, the way that we handle money, for example. A proper understanding of complementarianism. Which is the way that we think about family and marriage, and how a husband leads his family sacrificially like Christ leads the church. And a wife follows that submission joyfully, with submission joyfully, because he is pouring out for her and that dance that they have. The world looks in at that and they're like, that doesn't square with what I've been taught in modernity, you know, about the way that things are supposed to work, the way that we parent.
These are in wisdom, be walking. They're God's wisdom walking around in the world, and they can be very intriguing to people. Be wise. All right, the second thing is this, urgency for the mission. You know, when people see in us.
A willingness to be urgent for the mission.
Okay, a willingness to understand what he says here in verse five: making the best use of time for the mission. When people see in our church, listen, I'm telling you, in your workplace, whatever, it's like, man, I got two weeks of vacation this year, and I'm going to take one of them and I'm going to take off to go on a mission trip. What do you think people in the office think about that? Man, I know how many days you got. You don't have that many, but you're taking off three days this summer to go up there and chase kids around Mercy Hill for Kids Week?
You know, it's like, it's like, yeah. Urgency like that for the mission, it creates questions in people's mind. I've told you guys this story before, or this kind of illustration before, but I just want you to imagine with me, you're around the water cooler in a one-upper culture in your office, okay? And you're in the one-upper culture, and everybody's bragging about the vacation they're going to take that summer. And this guy is, he's going to, you know, wherever.
They're going to some island in the Caribbean, and they've rented the jet skis, and he's even bringing a nanny for the kids, so he ain't got to be bothered, and he's just talking about sitting out on the beach all day long, or whatever, okay? And he's just going on and on and on about it. And then they come to you and they're like, Well, hey, what did you do this summer on your vacation? You're like, Well, My oldest child is a junior in high school. And I wanted to make sure that they had this opportunity before they leave for college.
So me and him or me and her. Man, we went to the wilds of India. And we rode on trains with no air conditioning. And we got so sick you can't imagine it. But we met pastor after pastor in these little villages, and we encouraged them.
We got to share the gospel with people who had literally never heard it. At the water cooler, you're gonna have three or four people who whose eyes are about that big. You understand? because we're living for a different mission. than everyone else, and it raises questions.
The third thing is this, very simple, seasoned speech. Man, the way that we talk about things, Mercy Hill, I think that we do a good job of what I'm about to get into, but by and large, many times the church doesn't. We don't understand the idea of truth and grace.
Sometimes we don't understand the idea of speaking a word, as the proverbs say, at the proper time or seasoning it the right way. You know, the church has been, the church is high on truth, sometimes bad on EQ.
Okay, I let me give you an example of this. This was popular years and years ago when churches were trying to put forth a position on understanding the doctrine of marriage between a man and a woman, and they would say. Really dumb statements like this.
Well, God made Adam and Eve and not Adam and Steve. Maybe you've heard some of that before. And I'm here to tell you. The problem with that statement is not that it's untrue. The problem with that statement is that it seems like it's intended to wound.
The problem with that statement is that it seems like it's trying to jab at somebody who God has called you to try to be a witness to. You ain't never, you're not gonna find a church that's stronger on marriage between a man and a woman than Mercy Hill Church, okay? I understand that, man, that goes without saying. If you've been around us, you know that. At the same time, How can we say things that are true in a way that doesn't have the other side doing the opposite of asking questions?
When the other side hears us talk about these things and we say, hey man, we don't give on that at all because we feel like it's God's best and it's God's good. But trust me, I love you and there's a place for you to come in and learn. And then we're not scared of you because you're dealing with these things and you're trying to work it out. See, that raises questions.
Some simple slogan on YouTube or Facebook doesn't raise questions. In fact, it does the opposite. And when we do things like that and we use words like knives that are intended actually to wound and to stir up rather than to try to be attractive in terms of what God's truth is, you got the other side looking in and saying, man, I'm not asking y'all any questions because you seem to me like you pretty much are who I thought you were. And the thing is, we have the truth, but are we saying it in a seasoned way? We need to say it.
Are we saying it in a seasoned way? I'll go further than this on this right now. Listen. And I know you may want to email me about this when it's over, and my email is bobbyharrington at gmail.com.
Okay, so you can always email me, it's no problem. I'll get to it when I get to it, okay? You know, this is probably not going to shock anybody here, which is the reason that I'm willing to say it as straightforwardly as I'm going to say it, because there's no sense in veiling something. And if you disagree with what I'm about to say because it's a political statement, that's fine. We could get to heaven and I'm wrong, okay?
And you're right. And we all have opinions, and you have opinions and all that.
Alright, the first part I'm gonna say is a complete opinion. The second part I'm going to say is a gospel issue. Here's my point. I'm saying it this way for a reason because I want you to understand where I'm coming from. You're not going to find someone stronger on borders than me.
Just just the way uh you probably could figure that out from my boots and my truck.
Okay? Law and order, I'm all for it. All right, probably not a big shock to anybody in the room. Man, the way that Christians follow the crowd in speaking about immigrants is atrocious. Speaking about people that bear the image of God in a way that is anything less than human, like many of the political commentators do.
It's man, it is not becoming of us. Do you understand what I mean?
Now, can you see how that position just in and of itself raises questions? Where the outside world is like, wait a minute, you're just saying from a stage very clearly that you are very strong borders and all for law and order and you totally agree with Barack Obama that if somebody is here illegally, they should leave. Yeah, I am saying that. And you're also saying that the way that many times, especially the political right, speaks about immigrants, is absolutely counter to the gospel. You better believe it.
You can have both of those things at the same time. That's what Christians do. Christians are outside of the box. We look in and we say, oh, wait a minute, you got this wrong, man. I could not be more pro-USA than anybody else in this room.
And I promise you that. You come to my house on the 4th of July, I will prove that to you. At the same time, don't make a mistake. I'm a citizen of heaven first. And so, when I look at the word, it's going to have to dictate to me the way that I speak, and especially the way that I season the things that I say.
Now, my point is this. Are we going to be the type of people who say, hey, I want my life to raise questions in wisdom, in urgency for the mission, and in the way that I season my speech? You could very simply put, y'all, godly lifestyles raise questions that then we have the gospel as the answer. Look what it says in verse 6, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. It really is this simple.
Are we living a life in which we get a chance to give answers because people are asking us questions? By the way we parent, marriage, handle money, all that kind of stuff. The way we're wise, the way we have an urgency for the mission. Man, the way that we season our speech and we don't just go along with the crowds, right? That we stand and we say, No, this is true.
This is what I'm going to say, this is how I'm going to say it. Or are there parts of our life that just look like the world? You know, this is the hard work to say. I know we're in the chosen series, and I'm going to get into some adoption stuff at the very end, but really, the application. There's like as many applications as there are people in this room.
Because the Spirit of God is going to have to come and convict you in the same way that He is convicting me this week. to say, hey, these are some areas of your life. that really look alien to the world. But those areas of your life. I don't know that they look any different than if Jesus Christ changed your life or not.
Right, and so for those areas, I think we have a chance to wrestle with the Lord this weekend. All right, I don't know what it would be for you. Maybe there's some areas of your life. What's the temperature in the home? What are you know the death of life or in the power of the tongue?
What are the words that are coming out? How loud are they? You know, how how cutting are they? Man, are we using seasoned speech when we're talking about things like borders and all this, but we're actually not seasoning our speech at all in the home? with our kids.
Maybe that doesn't look any different than the world. Maybe just like the world, we're living beyond our means. Maybe just like the world, we're doing the thing, man. We're just going into debt, doing all this stuff just to have the latest whatever. And instead, we understand, knowing God's wisdom says, man, the one that's in debt is slave to the lender.
Man, these things are not gonna be become, we're not gonna have any room for margin to be able to give money away if we just continue to buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. I don't know what it would be for you. I'm just kind of throwing some things out. Maybe some of us are like, you know, would our neighbor look in? And they would just say, hey man, you're just as obsessed with your kids' success as I am.
It's a God to you, just like it is to me, right? These are very convicting things, and there could be a thousand other applications. I don't know what the Spirit might do in your life, but here's what I want to call us to as a church by way of application. Y'all, let's live question-raising lives. Man, let's raise some questions with the lives that we live.
And in the areas of our life right now that the Spirit is gonna put his finger on. Man, let's go ahead. And let's say, hey, that's an area that I'm going to repent of. Don't you understand? This whole thing is setting us up for communion.
And when you come to the table, you repent and confess. That's what it is. It's reminding us of what Christ has done in our life through his torn body and his blood that is spilled. It gives us an opportunity. To confess our sin to him.
And so I think that's what we've got to just kind of wrestle with a little bit here. You know, for Paul, he always had an eye on the outsider. And we need that, man. I have labored to teach our church for years that we need to have an eye for the outsider. It's why we get so excited about things like Easter and Christmas and another chance for people to come in.
And when people are like, oh, here we go with the numbers again, I'm like, man, you just don't get it. Because all of those numbers Are people that we need to have our eye on and try to be living lives that make them wanna lean in so that they can hear the gospel message straight? Clear, not cute, not clever, blood, cross, resurrection. That's what we need. And that's what the mission is.
And so, my question for us is: man, are we going to commit to what we need to do to live lives that will open doors in people's minds? You know, are we going to live lives that open doors for people to give us the chance to tell them our story? Man, I was lost. You have no idea what kind of sin and shame was wrecking my life. And then I had the opportunity to meet Christ, and he took all those things away, and I'm growing slowly in him and get a chance to share what God has done in our life.
All right?
So let me do this, two things and I'll be done. First. If you're not a believer, all right, if you're if you're not a Christian today. Man, the biggest thing for you is, hey, You're probably here hearing the gospel this very weekend because somebody has lived an intriguing life. That invited you to come, or you're just interested, or God's doing some stuff, and you've seen these questions raised by the way people are living.
And my question for you is: man, what if tonight was the night that you had the opportunity to come from one who was kind of leaning in to one who becomes a question raiser yourself? Where God has done something in your life. that raises questions for the world. And so my question for you is, hey. Would you admit your sin?
Would you believe in what he has done? Would you confess him as the Lord of your life? And for the rest of us that are believers. That are leaning in. Man, let's go broad first and then we'll go narrow on adoption.
What area is God putting his finger on your hearts? Where our life just doesn't look different than the world. Can we repent? And can we confess? You know, the communion table, that's what it's about, man.
The communion table is supposed to warm our heart. It's a moment that God has given the church. You know, I don't know if you've ever just had an incredibly spiritual moment. in your life, in worship or in a communion or something like that. I remember one time.
It was super cold outside. Came in, man. I had just got done preaching. Get down in the front row over on our other campus, or our old campus. And man, we start worshiping.
Dude, I'm telling you, something.
something starts to just come over me. I mean, it's the spirit. I'm like, dude, God is moving. There is something, and I'm getting, and then I'm realizing, like, man, no, my temperature is literally raising. Oh, yeah, both of my boys had slipped hot hands right here in my pockets.
I thought the spirit was moving, man. It was the hot hands, okay? It was manufacturing an experience.
Now every analogy breaks down, okay?
So don't don't Communion is a little bit of like a built-in way for the Lord to manufacture some things in our life. It's like a built-in kind of hot hands. Like, hey man, this is gonna get us going here a little bit, where we hold the elements in our hands. of what God has done. And breaking the bread and the juice, and to say, hey, the body was torn and the blood flowed.
Why? For me. Man, that's what he has done. in my life. If that's true, is there anything that we would not confess?
and repent and say, God, I know my life looks like the world right there. I don't want that to be so. Look what he has done for you. Wouldn't you do that for him? You're part of a new family with a new culture.
Men must live into that culture. Let's do that together while we're going into communion. And then finally, I just want to say this: guys, I said it earlier. I'm going to say it again, man. If you got a church.
Greensboro, High Point, McLean'sville, different campuses, but right here in the tryout. And all of a sudden, Five years from now, we look back. And there was a thousand children. affected by the gospel. Through adoption, foster care, and their families being helped through The parents being helped through families count.
Can you imagine the questions that raises in a community? Why would they live like that? And of course the answer is because chosen people choose people. Adopted people, adopt people. Right?
That's the answer that we have the chance to give to the community when our life. Raises questions. Man, I know this is true in our life. People, it's so funny. People are trying to, they're trying to be so polite, but they don't like when Anna and I tell our story, or we're getting to know some people, and they're like, wait, you had three healthy.
Kids, and then you adopted one. We're like, Yeah, it's almost like they're like, they don't know what to.
Well, can you could you still have had kids? Yeah, yeah, that's not. This is not. We have three from biology, one from theology. You know, this is our gospel baby.
This is our chosen baby. And they're trying to figure it out. They don't want to say it because they don't want to be rude. But the question that's on the tip of their tongue is... Why?
Why would you take that on? Why would you do that? Man, if one little family raises questions, we got all these families all. What happens when a church goes all in together? In every phase of the game.
Thousand chosen kids. We'll see. what kind of questions that raises in our community. Let's prepare our hearts for communion. Father.
We come before you. And Lord, we just pray that our lives would be absolute open doors. God, give us opportunities to give answers because people are asking questions of us in our lives. But only you can do this. Father, I pray that you would grow us in this.
Now Lord, give us the courage to repent. Confess. As we come to the table in Christ's name, amen. Mm-hmm.
