Our Very Lives - 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 - Waiting Well

Amen, guys. Well, it's an incredible start to the sermon here, all right? So, hey, I want to alert you guys to something.

Thank you guys. On the way out today at all of our locations, all right, on the way out, you're going to have an opportunity to grab one of these magnets. And this magnet is like their prayer card, okay?

We've learned if you stick it on the fridge, it doesn't get lost, all right? So stick it on the fridge and begin right now not only to pray for Rachel and Josiah Hudson and the team that is being formed right now to go with them, but also be in prayer before the Lord. God, is this what, is this something you might have me think about doing? I know that sounds crazy, but there are people under the sound of my voice right now and at all of our campuses that honestly think that is there's no way I could ever and God's going to call you and he's going to send you there, all right? And so I pray that you will just kind of take that and believe it and put some faith with it and just open your hands and pray that the Lord would do some incredible things in them and through us.

I do want to do one thing real quick. I want to try to connect some dots for us because when we get a chance to do something as incredible as sending out a team to a place that they're going in South Asia. This is the first time we've been able to send kind of this many people in one shot and that kind of idea.

We've got to connect it back. Listen to the generosity that we call you to in the church because the mission goes about as far as the generosity of the church takes it. And many of you right now are involved in something called the deeper initiative. Some of you are so brand new you don't even know exactly what that is, but in the deeper initiative we have committed together in order to pool our resources and give our money as a show of God being our deepest desire so that we can see things like this happen. Now here's the way I want to connect the dots for you, all right? I know sometimes it's hard to kind of say, okay, but how does my giving end up producing that type of going?

Well, let me just show you, you know, let me tell you exactly kind of how it works, all right? So for example, our giving funds a college ministry, okay? Actually this weekend they launched, right?

They had their fall launch. Over 175 college students are now connected into small groups for this fall. We're praying for hundreds more than that to be gathered up into our gathering, you know, during the weekends.

But why is that so exciting? Well, let me tell you why that's so exciting because your generosity is funding a college ministry. And oh, by the way, seven years ago one of those college students that was baptized right here in this church, I'll show you the picture of her, was named Rachel, and she was sitting right here, or she was standing right here.

And for those of you guys that may know, that's the guy baptizing her is Jeremy Daeger who is now playing at the church in Halifax, Nova Scotia, but this picture was taken pre his midlife crisis, so there's not a bunch of tattoos, okay? So, but my point in all of that is, man, when we fund and give of our time, talent, and treasure, sort of the machine, the hotbed of discipleship, it happens here, and then it spills over into what we're seeing among the nations. And so, guys, we have a huge goal of this church. Man, by 2032 we want to see 500 missionaries sent out from Mercy Hill, all right?

And that's kind of our true north. It's the goal that we're going after, and so if we're going to hit that, then we're going to need to continue to see generosity from the church, so just wanted to connect that for you and make sure you understand, man, if you're on the sideline, jump in and get on the front lines, all right? All right, let's dive in. We're going to be in 1 Thessalonians Chapter 2 today as we have the opportunity to continue in a brand new series called Waiting Well. Now, Waiting Well is the tagline of the series, and here's what we're talking about from 1 Thessalonians. Man, we don't want to be the type of people that wait, we don't want to be the type of people that waste time. We want to be the type of people that wait well in terms of waiting for the kingdom to come, waiting for the ultimate manifestation of God and his kingdom to come. Man, we don't want to be twilling our thumbs and looking up at the sky and just kind of wasting time. We want to wait well, and part of Waiting Well, as we're going to see today, is sharing our lives with others and living the type of life that allows them to kind of look in and see something that is intriguing in the life of the Christian as we are sharing the gospel with them.

If I try to give you guys just all that in a big idea, here's what I would say. The Christian life gives credibility to the Christian message, that the way we live authenticates in a lot of ways. It sort of proves or disproves in people's mind whether the message that we have that we're sharing with them is legit or not. Now, I got to say this, okay? We live in a culture that wants to believe that whatever you believe about something makes it true or not, and that is obviously false, okay?

I mean, that's everywhere. If I believe it, then it's right and it's true, and obviously that's not true, okay? I don't have to go way into that. But what I will say is this. When you think about what is true or not, the way someone hears it from you is all wrapped up in the credibility that they see in your life. Whether the gospel is true or not does not depend on your failings and your shortcomings in terms of the way that you share it, but the way someone hears it has so much to do with the way that we live out the message. You cannot take the heart of the message away from the heart of the person.

It binds itself together, and we end up giving credibility or taking credibility from the gospel message in terms of the way that we live our lives when we share our lives with one another. Guys, I think we would all sort of understand this. Many of us probably at some point in your life have had some broke uncle that had no money and was in debt up to his eyeballs trying to give you investment advice, right? And it's like, man, he's got this big scheme about borrowing money to buy crypto on Robinhood app or something like that, and you're just like, man, I don't know. The lifestyle here is too much. It kind of feels like whatever you're telling me.

I think about that. It's like, man, if you go to the gym, you don't really want to get a bunch of workout advice from a weakling, okay? I see this at the gym all the time. These young guys come in. They weigh 100 pounds. They got all the gear. They got all the pre-workout, okay?

They got all the stuff. They got all the programming, and the reality is if you strap 300 pounds to their back, it would break them in half, and then they would die, okay? And it's like, man, if you can't do the weight, I don't need your program. Now, maybe you're onto something, maybe you're not. I can't hear you because of the credibility that you lack, right? And that's what we're going to get into today.

I never do this. I never give too big ideas, but I want to give you a rewording of the big idea, okay? Here's the rewording of the same big idea. It's hard to hear truth from somebody who ain't living it.

Isn't that right? It's hard to hear it whether it's true or not. It's hard to hear it from somebody who is not living it. And so what we want to do today is we want to say, hey, man, part of waiting well is sharing our lives with others in a way that helps them verify, prove, give credibility to the Gospel message. 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 1, for you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain. But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the Gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. Now, here's what he's going to say, all right?

He's going to say this, hey, you guys know us. That's his whole argument here in this passage. We came to you, we lived among you, we shared our very lives. That's going to be the whole point of this in 1 Thessalonians 2, 8. We didn't just share the Gospel, we shared our very lives.

And something in our lives wrote a resume that is credible for you to be able to hear the message of the Gospel. And that's why he says in verse 1, our coming to you was not in vain. It was not worthless.

It was not fruitless. There was a change. The Gospel came. Remember, the Gospel walks. It came to you. The Spirit fell upon you. Part of that was bound up in you seeing something in our life that authenticated the message that we gave you with our words. I think one of the ways that you could think about 1 Thessalonians 2 is like this.

Man, Paul is saying we're all sort of writing a resume with our life as to whether or not the Gospel is effective, of whether it changed us, of whether the Spirit is truly moving in our life. You know, I don't watch a ton of TV. Okay, there's a lot of trash on TV.

I understand. One show that I love is a show called Homestead Rescue, all right? And I've shared this with you before, but Homestead Rescue, man, they go into these failing homesteads and they do all these fun kind of crazy projects and a lot of ingenuity and stuff. Well, the guy that's the leader of the show is a guy named Marty Rainey. He's a 65-year-old mountain man, Alaskan. He's been working on pipelines and building cabins, I mean, for his whole life, okay?

And here's what he does in the show's intro, the older show's intro, all right? He would say this, you want to see my resume? I mean, he holds his hand up to the camera like this and he says it's right here. And some of you guys know what I mean because you had a dad that work, you know, was a working man and worked and their hands are just different, right? A guy like that has been swinging axes and running chainsaws his whole life.

Big, scarred, muddy, you know, and that's his resume, right? What he's saying is, man, you want to know if the gospel's true, you need to look at our life and you tell us whether we're the real thing or not. And I think that's what he's getting into here when he says, man, you know, for you know, you yourselves know. When we came to you, it wasn't in vain, but you know that we came to you, listen, in the midst of great persecution and affliction and trial. In other words, there is something about our life that authenticates the message.

You can say it like this, the messenger is not disconnected from the message. And the way that he's going to start that argument is by saying, if you want to think about bullet points on a resume, all right, the first bullet point here on the resume would be, guys, when we came to you, it was not all, you know, dandy and great and we came to you from Philippi. Now you can go back and read that in Acts 16.

I'm talking about getting beaten, thrown in jail, you know, singing all night. I mean, you guys can go back and read this story, but the concept that he's getting at here is this, we were treated shamefully, yet we did not change our message. We didn't shy away from telling you the truth. We didn't shy away and become those who kind of run from, no, no, no, we were bold before you.

And that's really the first thing in our life that maybe you should take note of. And maybe it authenticates the gospel message. See, God gives us boldness to declare the gospel despite being treated shamefully, despite persecution, despite affliction.

The heat was turned up on Paul and he says, man, I didn't back down. And the fact that I didn't back down in the oven, in the furnace, when it was hot, when it was hard, that shows you that God was doing something. Our life is so connected. Man, listen, I know what many of us want to do right now. We want to say, man, I don't know that I'm living a life that's so connected that I want people to see.

You know what? If you're a believer, you don't get the chance to just take your ball and go home. The Bible has called us to make disciples. And what the Bible's telling us here is the life we live will help us or hurt us in that endeavor.

We don't get to choose whether we are going to do it or don't do it. This is the call of a disciple. And so we've got to think about for a moment here is, wait a minute, if it's true that perseverance and affliction and not shying away from the truth is going to give, well it did for the Thessalonians here, it's going to give them sharing our life in that way, it's going to give them confidence in our message. And we've got to ask the question about our own character here. Character to persevere brings credibility to the message. Man, this is, you know, we celebrated the last couple weeks, I'm not going to celebrate it again, but if you're a college freshman, man, we're excited that you're here.

And we all understand and we're rooting for you. And we know many of you at the Clifton Campus and many of you at the High Point Campus, you're walking on campus right now and you're trying to figure out, man, am I going to walk the line and live this Christian life or is the heat going to get turned up too high? You know, living that Christian life despite the persecution that may come into your life, it is a mark of authenticity. Some of us, man, you know, we have people in our church that are hanging on. And what I mean by that is, man, you've become a believer but your spouse is not and you're trying to live this Christian life before them.

You're doing everything that you can do. Listen, the living of that life in the midst of that hard situation, it is a mark of the authenticity of the gospel. We have multiple teachers, listen, in this church right now that have either been fired, so serious, or threatened to be fired by mentioning God in their classrooms. Guys, they were teaching the Constitution. I mean, they're teaching the founding fathers. They're teaching the Declaration of Independence.

They're teaching these different documents. It's like, you know, I mean, are we endowed by our Creator? It's like, it's hard not to, but here's the deal. Man, you know, in the moment of the persecution, in the moment of the heat being turned up, it is a mark of gospel authenticity that we wouldn't shy away. That we would be bold in that moment. And this is what he says, man, God is giving us boldness and you saw that. Then he says this in verse 3, for our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive. But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak. We've been approved by God. We've been tested by God, so we speak. Not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. Now one of the things I want to pause here and just make a quick mention of, and then we're going to continue in this and just kind of teach them through this here, is that he calls the gospel, verse 3, an appeal.

Now that's really important, okay? Because for some of us here, and some of us on our campuses today, you might be thinking to yourself that the gospel is just a message. The gospel is a message, but in that message is contained a question. And the question is, what are you going to do with it? It is an appeal. It is an appeal. What are you going to do?

It's not just an assertion, it's a question. Will you believe this gospel message? Will you give your life to this gospel message? Man, I don't want to keep singling you out, but some of the freshmen that are coming into this church right now, the college students, listen, you don't need to know a lot of things for your life to count in a huge way for God.

But you do need to know a few things and decide that you will give your life to them, that you would live for them and die for them. And the gospel is one of those. It contains an appeal. Man, do you believe in what Christ has done? That he loved you enough to send his son to die on a cross, that he desires the praise and worship of the world, that he has sent you on a life's purpose and a mission to make other disciples. That you believe that today you've accepted the appeal.

Is he calling you today? But look what he says in verse three and four, right? Because verse three and four is truly a thesis, I think, for the passage.

What he's getting at is this. Man, our appeal does not spring from error, impurity, or attempt to deceive. He's trying to say there's nothing nefarious about the motives of which we have come to you with the gospel. Instead of being nefarious and instead of having some ulterior motive, because many commentators believe that Paul is defending their ministry against people who have said, oh, they're just trying to make money. They're sending you a message trying to get you to give money.

Or they're trying to get social status. What Paul is saying is, hey, it ain't about finances and it certainly ain't about fame. What it's about for him is something that has been approved and tested by God to give to them. And that's what he's trying to get at here.

I think what he's saying is something like this. Man, our appeal comes from a heart that has been tested by God. And in it, it's not false. The message is not false, the motives are not impure, and the methods are not deceptive. It's been tested by God. And I think he's saying this, man, you see it in our lives.

I'm going to keep going back to that. Don't separate. You can't separate the heart of the man and the heart of the message. It's all wrapped up together. And I know, listen, I know that many of us today, I've already said this once, we don't really love that.

Like what we want is to kind of say, you know, I want the world to hear this message, but I don't really want them to look at my life. And Christian, we've just got to realize today, the world doesn't work that way. In every area of our life, our credibility is bound up, you know, in what somebody is going to do with the message. I bet you haven't taken a bunch of marriage advice from somebody who's been divorced four times, and I don't mean to be calloused about it. I'm just saying, isn't that true?

You're not taking a bunch of financial planning advice from somebody who has gone bankrupt a bunch of times in their life and has never recovered from that. Like we just understand this. And Paul is trying to get us to see in the Christian life, you cannot separate the messenger and the message. He's coming to you and he's saying, hey, our message, it was tested and approved by God. And you, he's saying to them, know that. Now, how do they know that?

Well, here's what he says. Look, well, you know it because we never came to you with flattery. We never came to you, nor with a pretext of greed.

God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from people. It wasn't about the finances. It wasn't about the fame, whether from you or from others. Though we could have made demands as apostles, but we were gentle among you like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.

I think the idea that he's trying to get them to see, here's the gist. God tested our hearts. Our motives were pure. And you know that because you saw us because we shared our lives with you. And you know what you didn't see in our lives? You didn't see us trying to flatter you.

You didn't see us trying to butter you up. You know, one pastor said it like this, the opposite of a friend is not an enemy. The opposite of a friend is flattery. The opposite of a friend is somebody who's in your ear. Read the Proverbs.

Somebody who's in your ear telling you the things that they just know you want to hear. Love is telling someone what they need to hear, not always what they want to hear. That doesn't mean that we bully. It doesn't mean that we use the truth as a weapon.

But it does mean that we say things that are unpopular and we say things that are true. And that's what Paul is trying to get them to see. How do you know he's not a charlatan that's in it for fame and in it for finance? I think he would say this, man, I probably wouldn't have brought you the message that I brought you about how wicked you are and dead in your sin and you have no hope other than Jesus and all this kind of stuff, right? It's like, man, the message is kind of crazy if the point is to get a lot of fame and to get a lot of finances. And I think that's kind of the point that he's trying to make. Instead, he's saying, hey, I said things to you that were true, not flattering, but they were true and they were unpopular.

You know, if you're new to Mercy Hill, you're at one of our campuses or you're here. And I don't mean this to be a cavalier in any way, but I try to live by this and I try to live by this and I try to teach the pastors of this church to stand in this pulpit on this stage to live by this as well. Man, we're going to say things that are hard because it's not about flattery. We're going to say things that are hard because that's what love is. Do you know how many people get upset with the things that we say a lot of people do? They walk with their feet, I get emails, whatever, and it's like, man, that's fine. I've been doing it for 10 years.

I can take 10 years. We're going to continue to be loving and call the church to God's design for their generosity. To call the church to trust God's design for the way he made the family. We're going to call the church, right, off of the sideline and onto the front line to serve. We're going to continue to stand and say things that the culture thinks are crazy.

Yes, we believe that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way that anybody gets to heaven. My point is this. My point is this. Sometimes we say things that can be popular in here.

They're not popular out there, right? And I want you to hear me today. There's new people at every one of our services, people that are not quite believers yet, things that you get rubbed the wrong way by things that we might say or I might say or whatever, and I just want you to hear my heart.

It is from love. If it was about flattery, I might try to go build some big movement with some other message. I mean the message. Think about the message. The message is, okay, that you and I were so wicked, there is no amount of good works we could ever do to overcome the chasm that we created in being pretty much disowned by God, breaking the relationship that we have with God. The only way back in is that the Son of God would die and his blood be shed in order that he could be a perfect sacrifice for you. And oh, by the way, when you become a Christian, nothing in your life is yours anymore, and I mean nothing.

Everything we have, we steward for his kingdom, our time, our kids, our talent, our treasure, our future, our work, every single thing about our life. Our life is no longer about our name. It's about the name of somebody else, and oh, by the way, we're waiting on Jesus to come back, and when he comes, he's going to be riding a white horse. That's the message, okay? Now, if you understand what I'm trying to do, the same thing I think Paul is trying to do. Like it'd be crazy for this to be the message to try to go build finance and fame on, because it takes the Holy Spirit of God to unlock the heart and the chains to fall off.

I mean, it's just crazy. The Bible would say it like this. It's foolishness to the world, but this is our message. And so if you're here today and you're not a believer, but listen, you're like, man, I'm kind of hanging out, but you say things that rub me, I just want you to hear. Maybe it does, but it's from love. It's not from trying to do anything other than that. Man, it's from love trying to give you a message that the Spirit would empower to move upon your heart.

Here's what he says in verse seven, but we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. All right, dudes in the room, this is getting weird, okay? I'm just going to be honest, all right? I don't know if any of you guys, we have a bunch of athletes at our church now, all right?

Over 40 collegiate athletes are attending Mercy Hill and coming to groups and all that kind of stuff. And I was just imagining trying to disciple somebody in the locker room, and I'm like, bro, listen, I'm going to be to you like a nursing mother. That's who I'm going to be. That's who I'm going to be to you. If I ever, you know, if I ever meet Paul, I might say, you know, that one didn't age all that well.

No, I'm just kidding. But what's he trying to say? Okay, what's he trying to say? All he's saying is we could have beat you over the head and thrown our gospel authority because he's talking about his apostolic authority. What he's saying is I could have thrown my weight around. I didn't do that.

Maybe within my rights, not what I did. What I did was I came to you in gentleness. And we've talked about this a lot. We've mentioned over the last couple of weeks, man, are we gentle towards the world? Like meaning like this. Man, we never shy away from truth.

But when we talk about the things, our Christian doctrine that we hold so here, Christian, are we saying things in a way that helps win people over, or are we just trying to win an argument? And you know how you can tell? It's pretty much if you're gentle or not. It's kind of like our demeanor, you know?

That's it. And that's kind of what he's getting at here. I was this way to you. Now, here's the whole crux of the whole thing. When I was in college, we led a Bible study that was, I mean, it blew up among our football team and all that kind of stuff. It was all based out of this verse. And the idea was, wait a minute, the resume of life has to be shared.

You may be living an incredible Christian life, but are you sharing that life with anybody else? And here's what it says. Last verse for today. So being affectionately desirous of you, just so we understand, only time in the New Testament, this kind of word construction is there.

And it's actually, from what I understand, pretty rare even in the ancient times. So being affectionately desirous of you, loving you so much, an overflow of love in our heart for you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves, our very lives, because you had become dear to us. This is the whole deal, all right?

This is the whole deal. Why would you ask God to have sin fall away from your life, man, to follow after him, to try to have your life kind of imitate Christ? Why would we do that? Well, we do it for a lot of reasons, man. We do it because God calls us to. We do it because we love him. We do it because we believe it's the best thing for us.

We do it for a lot of reasons. One of the reasons is because I understand that the credibility of the message is bound in the credibility of the messenger. And so here's what he's saying. Man, you know how I walked among you. Man, I wasn't trying to flatter you. I told you the truth. It wasn't all about the good times. We came to you in persecution.

All the stuff we've talked about, right? And here's what he says. And all that stuff in my life that God has been doing, I didn't hoard it like a pond. I let it flow out of my life like a river. And it flowed into your life.

And that's what he's saying here. Why? Because of our great affectionate desire for you. Because we love you.

That's what he's saying to the outside world. Man, because I loved you. My heart broke for you. There was a burning passion that I had for you. And that's why I was willing to live this life and share the gospel with you guys.

I'm gonna be honest with you. It has become in vogue in the Christian world, comfort circuit and all that, to do that. They talk about it relational evangelism.

Here's how it goes. Man, you get in a relationship with somebody and you love them for a long, long, long, long time. And you win credibility in their life. And then you share the gospel with them.

Here is the problem with that. What that means is I'm actually loving you with an ulterior motive to end up sharing the gospel with you. That is not what he says here.

What he says here is the exact opposite. We don't love so we can share. We share because we love.

That's the idea. That somebody has come to me and in my life they have loved me in a way that overflows. And of course I'm gonna share with you because I love you. I'm not loving you so I can share. Right?

And that's what he's getting at here. Man, I was so affectionately desirous of you. I shared my life with you. I shared the gospel with you. Now, as a pastor of this church, I've got to be super honest with you guys here. I want to be straight up. This is incredibly hard for me. And I need the gospel in this moment as much as I needed it the day that I got saved. And for some of you, you're gonna be in that same boat with me. I don't think that I'm alone. Here's why.

You know why? Because I want my life to be about the things that I want it to be about. My time is my time.

My treasure, my treasure, my talent, my talent. You layer on top of that, I know this shocks people because I'm up here preaching, but you lay on top of that being a pretty high introvert and have had to learn over years how to do a lot of social, you know, and relationships. You layer all that up together and here's what it means. Man, I'm perfectly content with a few deep friendships and I don't really care about sharing my life with a whole lot of other people. And I'm looking at you guys right now and I'm hoping somebody else is in that same boat, okay? Because y'all are kind of looking at me like, man, he's really jacked up.

Okay, I'll be that. Some of you may not be there, but here's the deal. Listen, this is how the gospel works.

It cuts everybody. You know why? Because if you are a super people-y extroverted person, you know what you're gonna have a hard time with? Telling somebody the truth. Because you don't want them to leave. If you're a little more like an introvert, like, man, I'm kind of fine being by myself a lot.

I might be fine with telling you the truth so that you would leave. But it's like, man, now I have to, right? Now what the gospel does to me, see, the gospel is for all of us. Now what it's doing to me is saying, wait a minute, you can't just hoard this.

You need to share your life. And the gospel does this for us. Where do I, me, where do I get the motivation? As somebody who has wrestled with this and I'm like, man, it's hard for me.

This is hard. Where do I go? Then we go back in the same place that we always go. We need the gospel as much today as we've ever needed. Here is the gospel. In my sin, I had no hope.

I have a life with God in eternity. But listen, Jesus came and shared his life and truth with me. As simple as this. Man, if Jesus shared himself with us, how could we not go and share ourselves with others? I mean, that's really as simple as that.

I've got to go back and I've got to go, wait a minute. In communion, I am literally picturing the body of Christ being shared with me. Eating his body, drinking his blood.

This is what the picture is. He is sharing himself, all of himself, with me. It's my only hope. Man, I needed the blood of Christ to cover all my sin and he went to the cross for me and my sin I was separated from God. Man, I needed Jesus to come and he did and he lived a life I didn't live and died the death that I deserved.

And in his resurrection, he gives me the hope of a new life. He shared that with me. And he didn't hold back.

It's like, man, you need this. It was truth. And he shared his life. And so I don't know where you land on the spectrum. But for us, man, are we leaning towards sharing truth or leaning towards sharing life?

Either way, man, how is he going to call you to do this? Ball team, kids, friends, co-workers, family members, who do we need to be sharing life with? Believer, here's the application for this weekend. I'm going to give you a couple of little points on this and then we're going to be done, all right? Share your Christian life with others. I think that's the point of this passage. Share your Christian life with others.

You build a resume with your life and you share it with others. Now look, for some of us in here, what's going to happen at our campuses today? What's going to happen is this. You're going to be tempted to say, and this is what we do. We use it as an excuse. We're like, well, man, I don't want to hurt the kingdom movement, you know? I got these sins in my life and I'm not real faithful here and I got this pornography thing over here and, man, I'm kind of not real honest with my job over here and I don't want anybody following me, you know? So I'm just going to kind of, I might do the message and I might bring, you know, invite somebody to come to church or something like that, but I'm not really going to share life because if they get to know me, then they're going to see that I'm not the one that God is changing and moving in and so I'm just going to, and we use that as an excuse like it's okay.

Christian, you have no option to take your ball and go home. The only option we have in that scenario is to say, okay, well then who's going to be the first one at this altar at your campus to repent of that sin and then to confess it to somebody because we repent to God for healing or for forgiveness. We confess to each other for healing, James says. So we've got to just kind of realize, so the first thing I would say is this, if we're going to share our life with others, there's probably repentance that's needed. Repent of the sin in your Christian life.

That's the first thing that we would say. We're all called to make disciples, so are we going to repent of sin and confess it today? Man, some of us need to repent of sin and get away from that smartphone and trade it in for one that don't have internet on it. Some of us need to repent of the way that we're using words and language in the home, at work, on the ball field, whatever it is.

Some of us need to repent of the anger and the volatility that is beginning to characterize our homes and maybe our kids are seeping that stuff in. I mean, I don't know what it is in your life, but I do know this, if you're going to share your life with others and what we want to do is say, well, I just want to share my life with others, you don't have that option, all right? We don't have that option, so what we need to do is repent. You know, Christian, if you're a believer, I've said this to you before, man, the Spirit's work in your life is evidenced in the fight.

It's in the willingness to continue to get off the mat over and over and over. So let's repent today of some things. Secondly, name some specific ways that you can share your Christian life. If we walk out of our campuses this weekend and we're just like, man, that was a good message, I'm going to think about it a little bit, if we don't write two or three things down, it won't change anything. All right, so let's think about it. Man, what are some ways that you and I can share our Christian life?

Hey, this is the kind of stuff I'm talking about. For some of us, it means diving into a group, all right? You know, we got our regroup is going on. You guys, I don't want to have a slide for that, but I think about regroup. Maybe it's diving in to a group, all right? That's sharing your life with one another.

I'm going to come back to that here in a few minutes and talk about it again, but I wanted to share the slide, all right? For some of us, it's going to be hosting a group. For some of us, it's going to be getting to know the names of the people that are on your kids' ball teams.

I mean, I'm just giving you, I'm popcorning here, just different ideas that we might have. Man, for some of you, sharing your life means you need to kind of finally let go of some things and move into what God is calling you to and actually become an adoptive parent or become a foster parent. We, listen, we've got a big goal at Mercy Hill. By 2025, 200 adoptive and foster families raised up out of this church. We're at almost 150 now, okay, that have come through. And listen, for some of that, I mean, hey, we went through this stuff.

We fostered a child once, and that's fine. It's like, man, that's fine. God calls you that in that moment. Maybe it'll circle back.

Maybe it won't, all right? But you stepped off the sideline into that. We have others that feel like it's a life calling. Some of us, like my family, have jumped into adoption.

Some of us have jumped into rope holding. How can we share our lives, right, with others? I think about this, you know, for us, hosting a group. We have a family in our church right now. I mean, they literally moved into a new house in order that they could host students for community group and their own community group of adults. I mean, they moved, relocated. We had another family that just renovated a basement, didn't even totally need it.

Renovated the basement so that City Project students could live with them summer after summer after summer after summer. And how can you share your life, right? And thirdly, and finally, well, actually, let me give you one more.

Hey, you guys have, sorry, you guys have these cars in your seats at all of our campuses, right? Man, another way that you can share your life this fall is to get back in the swing, get back in the rhythm, and jump back into serving. Now, this is an on-ramp to serving.

This card is for people specifically who have served in the past. You went to the weekend or you served in the past, but listen, life happened. And I want you to hear this, and I mean it. Life has happened to me before. You think when Faith Ann came into our home, we were up here serving?

You think Ann was up here checking kids? No, no, no. When life happened, when Faith Ann came into our home, there were months where we were totally pulled out. And therefore, we cannot have a culture of feeling kind of ashamed around that and then jumping back in. It can't happen, okay? Like, life happens.

It hits us in the mouth sometimes. If life has happened to you, summer's happened to you, all right? And it's time to jump back into serving. Man, you fill out this card and turn it in on the way out, and we're going to jump back in and make sure that you have a chance to on-ramp back into serving so you can share your life with others that are coming in, with others on your team. Hey, the final thing I want to say today is this. Step into people sharing their life with you.

All right? And this is where I want to land. Guys, we're moving into regroup season. I'm praying for 1,500 people to jump in for groups this fall. Man, we need it. We're built for community. And for some of you here, the thing I want to say is this. You need to be prepared to have someone else share their life with you. Okay? It's like, man, you understand what I'm saying?

It's like, you know, when you're flying and you got to get the mask, and they're like, put your own mask on first, you know? So that you can help anybody else. Man, are we willing and open to have somebody share their life with us? I want to show you that regroup slide just one more time. Guys, it's coming up.

September 10th is when the season starts, but regroup at all of our campuses is open right now. So let's jump in. Man, every adult at Mercy Hill, jump in to a community group and allow your life to be shared and allow others to share with you. All right, let's pray. Father, we come before you right now, and Lord, we ask that as we move into this final song, God, that your spirit would be at work. Lord, I pray that you would overwhelm our church with the thought that you have been so good to us, and from your goodness to us, what you have shared with us, we would be willing to share with others. In Christ's name we pray, amen.