Big Church |Big Picture (Downtown)

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Transcript

April 2, 2017

Big Church | Big Picture (Downtown) Petie Kinder | 2 Corinthians 4

How’s everybody doing? The 8:30 crowd! If this is your first time, my name is Petie, the campus pastor here. I’d love to meet you. I’ll be out at Connection Central afterwards. Just to give you a frame of reference. This is normally the point in the service where we’d be tuning in with our other campuses via Livestream to hear from our lead pastor Aaron Brockett. But today all of the campus pastors are preaching live. So that’s kind of how things will role. About 38 to 40 weekends a year we’ll be joining with our other campuses to hear from Aaron. And then about 12-14 weekends a year, we’ll have the campus pastors preaching live. Before we jump into our sermon, I want to publically file a complaint against you all. Last week I asked some people to cheer on my Kentucky Wildcats in their Lead Eight game against North Carolina. You all were like the best service, because our 11:30 service was like throwing tomatoes at me and stuff. It got nasty. But you all didn’t support my Cats and they lost. I want to file a complaint. I think it’s your fault. It’s your fault my five year old was crying on Sunday, “Daddy, is the season over?” “Yes son, yes it is.” But today I’m excited even though my Cats aren’t playing anymore. I’m excited about today because it’s Sunday. I love Sundays because we get to come to church. I love this Sunday in particular because we’re doing something tonight that we’ve never done before. At 6:30 we’re going to have an event here called Welcome to TPCC Downtown. It’s going to be a great opportunity for you if you’re new around here, if maybe you’ve been around here three or four weeks and are just getting to know us and you want to know a little more about the church, about who we are, or maybe meet some people so that way when you come to church you can maybe nod heads to some people and say, “I know that person.” It’s a great low-key hangout environment. There’s no need to register, no need to bring anything. Just show up at 6:30 and you’ll hear a little more from me about our heart for the city and what it means to be connected here. It’s a really great way to meet some church leaders and get connected with Traders Point. So if that’s you, if you’re new, you can get connected tonight at 6:30. Be here. Bring yourself.

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Big Church |Big Picture April 2, 2017

Now here’s what I want to do today. We’ve been in this series called Big Church. And we’ve been talking about what it means to be a big church and the baggage that might come with that. And what we mean by: We actually want to grow into a big church. And what that entails because that can come with some pretty ugly assumptions. We’ve been working through that. But today what I’d like to do is kind of backtrack a little bit. I’m going to lay out a few assumptions for you, some observations I’ve made about our city and kind of our culture right now. I want to spend some time talking about these observations. And one of them is an observation you’re going completely anticipate a pastor to say, and the other one, not so much. The first observation I want to say—and you’ll completely expect a pastor to say this. I don’t believe we as a country, we as a city, we as America, I don’t think we think about matters of faith, spirituality, and God enough. And again, you’re like, “Of course you would say that. You’re a pastor.” But here’s the deal. If it’s not real, if faith isn’t a real thing, if there’s not such a thing as a Spirit that lives inside you that will transcend the physical world, if God’s not a real thing, then we probably think about it too much. But if it’s real, and I think we could all agree, if there is such a thing as God and such a thing as a Spirit inside of you and if spirituality is a real thing, I think we can all agree we spend too much time thinking about what we ate for lunch today and not enough time thinking about what really matters. The second thing I want to say to you, playing off that, is this: Because we don’t think about faith nearly enough, what I’ve found is the vast majority of people in our city and our country really don’t understand what Christianity is all about. You might be taken aback and think I’m pointing a finger at you if you’re here and you wouldn’t consider yourself a Christian and you wouldn’t consider yourself a part of any church. You might think I’m pointing a finger at you like, “Shame on you for not understanding us.” No, no, no the fingers are actually pointed at us. It’s actually our fault. We can say it’s because our culture doesn’t think enough about faith, but really the reason people don’t understand what Christianity is all about is because we, as Christians, fail to live it out. We fail to talk about it in a way that is clarifying so the world around us can understand who we are and what we are all about. So today what I want to do, I want to actually unpack for you in a very basic way what Christianity is all about. Because my belief is that when most people think about Christianity, they’re thinking about something I would call, and the Bible would call, the old way. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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But there’s a new way, and it is way better. But more people, when they think about Christianity, are still thinking about it in terms of the old way. So I want to unpack the old way and the new way. The new way has got some incredible implications for how we function as Christians and how this church is going to function. So if you’re here and you wouldn’t consider yourself a follower of Jesus, we’re going to make three commitments to you today about the kind of church we’re going to be for this city, this neighborhood, and for this state. Three commitments about what we’re going to be, and I believe these commitments are so important to you if you don’t believe in Jesus. I believe these three commitments are going to give you every reason you need to keep coming back, even if you don’t believe what we believe yet. If you have a Bible, get to 2 Corinthians. If you have a Bible or a phone that has an app on it, get to 2 Corinthians. We’re going to be in 2 Corinthians. While you’re getting there, I want to take you to where my brain is. It’s a scary place. I want to get you thinking the way I’m thinking about this old way and new way. I want you to answer this question in your head: Is there anything you do that is an old way of doing things, that there is a new way and it is way better but you refuse to do it because you’ve got your old way of doing this? How many of you, by a show of hands, have and use an alarm clock? There’re a fair number of you. What are you doing? You’ve got a phone and it has a clock on it. Daylight Savings Time is not an excuse for being late. Your phones automatically update. This is not a thing anymore. There’s a new way, and you need to jump on it. How many parents in here still use babysitters? What are you doing? Your phone has Netflix on it. You just set that thing up, pick out a long movie, and then bounce. They’ll never know you left. It’s amazing, it’s amazing. There’s a new way that’s a better way of doing things. But there are some new ways that our culture and our society have invented and they’re so stupid and they should be completely rejected. I had so much fun because there’re so many of these. There are so many people just trying to make money so they come up with a new way. Oh that is so stupid, let’s go back to the old way. There’s one I found that just drives me insane. It’s called the S’mores Marshmallow. How many of you have ever used S’mores Marshmallow. Somebody decided around a campfire, “You know what I hate? I hate the time it takes for me to squish the marshmallow between the crackers. It’s just too long of a time for me to do it. So let’s make a flat marshmallow where it saves us time. And the slogan I love: S’mores in seconds. Do we not already have s’mores in seconds? At what point are you sitting around the Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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campfire going, “Man, this is taking too long. I’ve got somewhere to be.” Come on, this is stupid. We should completely reject the S’mores Marshmallow. We should put them out of business. This is awful. But my favorite one, my favorite one, is this thing if you go to You Tube and type in fireplace and then this video pops up. It’s just a video of a fireplace. Do we have any audio on it? I’d love to hear just the crackles. There it is. The question is, “Is anyone warmer right now?” No, you’re not warmer. “Is anyone cozier right now?” No. This is stupid. Ladies, if your man tries to setup a romantic date night and he turns on the TV and this is what he is playing to make it a romantic environment, smack him. This is not a good replacement for a date night. It’s so stupid. Let’s take fireplace video away. That’s too fun. There’re new ways of doing things that are totally stupid and should be rejected. There’re also new ways we should completely embrace. So now that you’ve got your mind kind of thinking what I’m thinking I want to tell you there’s an old way of looking at Christianity, and then there is a new way. It’s actually not new in the sense like new, as in time, but new in the sense that most people just don’t know about it. It’s actually been around for 2,000 years. Let’s talk about that old way first. Before we jump into the new way, we’ve got to talk about the old way. When you and I think about religion, we think about Christianity, not only about Christianity but about any religion, we all think about it in the same general way. It doesn’t matter if you grew up in church or you didn’t, if you’re religious or not. We all think about religion in the same general way. You can replace some of the rules. You can maybe change the name of the God. You can maybe change some of the cultural norms and practices. But we all think about religion in the same way. That is best summed up with this statement. The old way: I obey God, therefore I am accepted. So you come to this belief that there is a God. To some degree you believe in the existence of God. So then you think, “There is a being out there who is responsible for creating me, possibly able to end me, to some degree is involved with my current circumstances and can maybe alter them. Maybe this God is somehow going to decide what happens to me after I die.” You start to think all this stuff about God. So every civilization throughout all history asks the same question about God. How do I please Him? What do I do to get on His good side? Because if there’s a God who can smite me at any time and send me to an eternity of fire, I ain’t trying to burn. I want to get on that guy’s good side. So every civilization asks the same question, “How do I Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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please God?” And every civilization, every religion, every single one comes up with the exact same answer. I’m accepted by God if I obey. Again, we think about this in terms of our normal relationships. Think about parents. Your kids, they please you when they obey. When my kid steps out of line and doesn’t do what I want him to do, I about lose my mind on him. So we think, “This is how we relate to parents. This is how we relate to friends.” Your best friend in the world, they are your best friend because they do some things. They encourage you. They check in on you. They express care and concern for you. They hang out with you. If your best friend stopped doing these things, they would cease to be your best friend. All of our relationships function like this, so we assume this is how God functions. If we’re going to be accepted by God, we’d better obey God. So every religion comes out with their list of rules. Here are the things that please God. Here are the things that don’t please God. So then all the religious followers are bound to do the very best they can to follow these rules. This is the old way. This is what I’ll call the old way. This is the way every religion functions. But if you’re here today and you don’t believe in this stuff yet, you’re just kind of checking it out, maybe a friend drug you here today, you know something? You’re onto something. You’re super ahead of the game here. You see what this results in. You’ve seen people who claim to follow one list of rules, but then their lives look really different. It’s called hypocrisy. This is actually one of the biggest things most people outside of Christianity say against Christianity. It’s full of hypocrites. It’s full of people who say, “You know what? You guys say you believe this, but then your lives look like this.” And truthfully you’re right. We’re pretty bad at following the rules, all of us are, every single person, whether you’re religious or not. We’re all bad at following our own set of morals. We’re horrible at it. Even the most religious person, the most devout person is not 100 percent consistent. So if you’re outside the church you step back and say, “Man, if that’s what religion is, you guys aren’t very good at it. I don’t want anything to do with that.” And not only that, but my goodness, can you imagine the kind of life you would have to live if you believe there’s this God who’s going to strike you down if you disobey, who’s going to send you to eternal torment if you don’t obey His list of rule, the pressure and the anxiety of having to please an all-powerful God? It seems like religion, and again this is if you’re outside the church. It seems like religion Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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would just suck all the fun out of life. Who wants to live that kind of life? So if you’re here and you’re outside of religious circles, you wouldn’t consider yourself a Christian and maybe on the religious affiliation survey you would check none, you’re sitting there going, “Why would I ever want to be a part of that? That seems like it’s broken, it seems like it doesn’t work.” Well guess what? You’re right. It doesn’t work. Actually, guess what? You know the Bible way better than you think you do because the Bible even condemns it, it’s amazing. The Bible condemns this old way. In the Old Testament, if you’re familiar with the Old Testament, you know that God gave His people 10 commandments, 10 rules to follow. It’s not like 100. It was 10. And you’d expect the Old Testament to be filled with all these devout, religious people just following God and just obeying all these commands. And then you read the Old Testament and it’s a bunch of religious people who are committing adultery, and stealing each others’ stuff, and murdering people, and prostituting. It’s like, “What happened here?” This is crazy. This is not how religious people are supposed to act. And then, one of my favorite verses, and I think this should be the new Hallmark line of cards. In Psalm 14 it says this: “The Lord looks down from heaven on the entire human race; He looks to see if anyone is truly wise, if anyone seeks God. But no, all have turned away; all have become corrupt. No one does good, not a single one!” Congratulations on graduating. Congrats on your new addition to the family. By the way, they’re going to become corrupt. They will not seek God. They will become horrible people, like all the rest of us. Congrats. The Bible itself even condemns religion. This Bible itself condemns these things. If you’re sitting outside the church, if you’re sitting outside Christianity saying, “There’s no way I’m ever signing up for that. There’s no way I’m ever going to be a part of that.” Guess what? The Bible agrees with you. In fact Paul would write this. Paul was a guy who planted a bunch of churches right after the time of Jesus’ ministry on earth. Paul would say this about it, and this is so fascinating. This is the Bible talking about religion. “But those who depend on the law to make them right with God are under His curse, for the scriptures say, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the commands that are written in God’s book of the law.’ So it is clear that no one can be made right with God by trying to keep the law.” The whole old way of, “I’ll obey God, so therefore I’m accepted,” that every religion Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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operates under, the Bible straight up says it will never work. This is not how you gain right standing with God. The old way is broken. So if you’re here and you’re out on religion, I’m with you. The Bible is with you. That’s the old way. I’m here to tell you there is a new way, and it’s way better. That’s why there are people here who are finding life and freedom and joy and hope and peace. There’s a new way, and Jesus came to give it to us. Jesus came on the scene 2,000 years ago and He said incredible things. He lived an incredible life. Jesus came on and said, “I see that you guys can’t live by these rules We’ve set up for you. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to step in and live the life you could never live: perfect, sinless in every way.” The Scriptures tell us Jesus was tempted in every single way you and I are. There’s nothing you face that He didn’t face, yet He was never guilty of sin. He lived a perfect life. He lived the life you could never live. And He said, “I’ll take it a step further. The punishment you deserve from God for all those sinful thoughts, sinful deeds, and all that rule-breaking, and all that inconsistency in your life, the punishment you should receive for that, I’ll step in and take that too. I’ll live the life you could never live, and I’ll die the death you should have died, so that you can be accepted by God.” It’s amazing. Jesus comes along and He sums it up for us in this beautiful passage. Some of you have heard this verse so many times, John 3:16. But I want to read you not just John 3:16, but 3:17 and 3:18, because the whole thing captures beautifully what Jesus came here to do. It captures the new way I’m trying to describe to you. It says this. “For this is how God loved the world: He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him,” not everyone who obeys Him, “will not perish but have eternal life. God sent His Son into the world not to judge the world,” and not to say, “Look at you horrible sinners. Look at you horrible rule-breakers.” No, He didn’t send His Son to judge, no, He sent His Son into the world, “to save the world through Him.” Here it is. I love this last line. “There is no judgment against anyone who believes in Him.” That does not say obey. It says, “There is no judgment for anyone who believes in Him.” Belief, it’s an incredible offer. And it sounds so simple, and it is. You can be accepted by God, you can receive forgiveness, grace, and mercy. God can look at you and say, “I love this person. I’m in perfect relationship with him. I see a son or a daughter. I’m perfectly united, unified, and in good standing with this person.” All it takes is for you to say, “Jesus, I believe in You. I believe in what You’ve done for me. I believe You are who You said You are.” And you can be accepted by God. The old way was, “I obey God, therefore I’m accepted.” Jesus came along and flipped the script Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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completely unlike any religion you’ve ever found. And He says this, “The new way is I’m accepted by God, therefore I obey.” I’m accepted by God, therefore I obey. Do you see what that means? If you’ll place your trust and your faith in Jesus, if you believe in Him and that He isn’t just a fairytale, but the real deal, you are accepted by God. You don’t have to do anything earn His love. There’s nothing you could do to make Him love you more or less. Every single night when I put my two sons to sleep, my daughter is only five months old so I try not to bother her because we’re trying to train her to sleep and I know if I wake that girl up my wife will kill me, but my two boys, when I put them to bed and tuck them in I say the same two things to them every single night because I want them to hear their father say this over, and over, and over. It’s not like this super-holy like, “Son’s, listen to me.” We make a game out of it, we make it fun. But I want them to hear their father say the same things I believe God is saying to you today. I say this to my sons every single night, “No matter what happens I’ll always love you, and there’s nothing you could do to make me stop loving you.” That’s the love God has for you. There’s nothing you could ever do to make God stop loving you. There’s nothing you could ever do to earn more of His love, or to lose His love. It’s there for you. You can be totally and completely accepted by God because of what Jesus has done. That means you don’t have to worry about whether or not you live up to the standards. That means you don’t have to worry about whether your good outweighs your bad. You don’t have to pretend you’re any better than you really are, because nothing about your standing with God is dependent on your performance. The audition is over. You passed. Jesus has hit the button and His chair on The Voice has turned. You’re on His team. It’s there. He’s already accepting you if you’ll just simply believe in Him. The rules are not rules for us anymore, there’re actually opportunities for us to express our gratitude to Jesus for what He has done. You see, the rules are not rules anymore. They are guardrails Jesus has given us. He says, “This is the life I want for you.” But let me tell you, when you disobey those guardrails, every single Christian in here right now, when you disobey those guardrails, when I disobey those guardrails like today, we’re forgiven. It’s not held against us. It has nothing to do with my standing with God. I’m completely and totally accepted by God, therefore I obey. It’s a whole new way of doing things. Tim Keller puts it like this: "The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope." And somebody better amen that. Somebody better get excited about that, because that is life changing. That is life changing stuff right there. There’s a new way, and it’s way better. I know some of you have struggled, even Christians, some of you have struggled to move over to that new way. You’re still living as if you’re in an audition. The audition is over. You belong to God. He loves you. You’re covered. You’re accepted by Him. And some of you outside the church are thinking, “I would never want to be a part of a religious movement like that. I would never want to be part of a religion with all that pressure.” Me neither. There’s a new way, and it’s way better. But that new way has some implications for how we are to function as a church in this city. So what I want to do for the rest of our short time together is from 2 Corinthians 4, starting in verse 1, I want to make three commitments to you about the kind of church we’re going to be in this neighborhood and in this city. So let’s read together. “Therefore, since God in his mercy has given us this new way, we never give up. We reject all shameful deeds and underhanded methods. We don’t try to trick anyone or distort the word of God. We tell the truth before God, and all who are honest, know this.” The first commitment I want to make to you today is: We will never try to manipulate you. We’re never going to get you here and guilt you into giving money. We aren’t going to get you here and sell you anything different than what the Bible says God is offering. We’re not going to promise God is going to make your life easier. We’re not going to promise if you become a Christian you’ll have health and wealth and prosperity. We aren’t going to try to twist the message to get you in. We aren’t going to bend the teachings of Scripture to make them less offensive to you. Trust me, they’re plenty offensive to us. We’re struggling with them ourselves. We’re not going to change it to try to bait and switch you in. We’re going to try to be 100 percent transparent, 100 percent accurate in the way we talk about this message and we live it out. We won’t be perfect, but we’re going to do our best. We won’t manipulate you, but we’ll challenge you and we’ll push you because we all need to be challenged and pushed, I’m right in there with you. But we will never try to manipulate you into believing what we believe. And there’s a reason for that. Truthfully I believe this new way is good enough to stand on its’ own. I believe the offer Jesus is giving you is good enough to stand on its’ own. I don’t need to try to manipulate it. It’s Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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the most amazing news you could possibly hear. There’s a reason the Bible calls it good news. But there is another reason we won’t try to manipulate you and it’s slightly offensive. I’m going to give you a heads up, but it’s the Bible. Look at the very next verse. “If the good news we preach is hidden behind a veil, it is hidden only from people who are perishing. Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the good news. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.” You see the Bible tells us we shouldn’t try to manipulate anybody because it doesn’t work. I can’t change your heart and your mind, I can’t. We can trick you and maybe get you to come back a few times, but in the end it’s God who changes your heart, it’s God who changes your mind. I have nothing to do with that. So if you’re here, we will never try to manipulate you, we’ll never try to bait and switch you because we believe at the end of the day only God can change you, because only God can change us. There’s nothing we did to be standing here, there’s nothing special about us. I know you’re probably thinking, “That sounds so awful. You brought me to church to tell me Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers?” Welcome to church. I know that sounds so crazy, but I want you to understand that I believe you being here today, you sitting in the seat you’re in now and hearing this could very well be part of the story God is writing in your life where your eyes were open to this new way. That’s what happened for me. The reason I believe that is that’s what happened for me. I didn’t grow up going to church. I didn’t grow up in church. But when I was 17 years old, I had a friend who kept inviting me to church. Finally I said yes after many, many declines on that invite. I finally said yes and I showed up to a church a lot like this that was talking about a new way to follow Jesus and a new way to approach Christianity like we’re talking about today. That was the day everything started to change for me. So if you’re here and you think that verse sounds harsh, I would say it sounds very merciful that God has you here today. Today could be the day everything starts to change for you. We’ll never try to manipulate you. The second commitment I want to make for you comes in the very next verse. “You see, we don’t go around preaching about ourselves. We preach that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we ourselves are your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, ‘Let there be light in the darkness,’ has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ. We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves,” and I love this verse, “are like fragile clay jars containing this great Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.” The second thing I want to commit to you today is this: We will never pretend that we’re better than you. The whole holier-than-thou thing if you haven’t caught onto it yet is a complete lie. We are no better than anyone. I have plenty of good friends who do not follow Jesus, who don’t call themselves Christians. And they are way better people than most of you sitting in these seats. They’re way better than me. I look at them and I’m like, “You are such a good person. I don’t trust you.” That’s kind of like my bar. If you’re better than me as a person, I don’t trust you. There’re a whole lot of people I don’t trust. I’ve got trust issues. But we’re not going to pretend we are better than you. We are just as messed up as the next person. There is a reason Paul says, “We’re not going to go around preaching about ourselves and how awesome we are, because we’re not awesome.” There’s a reason Paul says, “We’re like fragile clay jars.” Have you ever held a fragile clay jar? My mom used to own a little pottery business, so I would occasionally help her, very rarely. I was a young teenager so I was rejecting all involvement with my parents. But I remember that clay with the slightest wrong touch could completely crumble. That’s what Paul says we are like. That is so true. If you guys could have seen me last week, last Sunday night when U.K. lost to North Carolina, if you could have seen me and my family you would have been ashamed to call me your campus pastor. It was awful. As a 32-year-old man I care so much about an 18-year-old boy’s ability to put an orange ball through a round hoop. It is awful. I’m like throwing things. I’m setting an example for my son. He is looking me in horror like, “Ah, what is happening to my dad?” But you know what? It’s because I’m no better than you. My heart can get caught up in things that are so stupid. My mind, my heart, and my spirit can get caught up in things that are so dumb that mean nothing in the end. I can get tricked into things just as easily as the next person can. I’m nothing. I’m a fragile clay jar just like all the rest of you. Here’s the thing right now. If you’re new, and I asked you to stand up and say, “Share your deepest, darkest struggle,” I know you wouldn’t so I won’t make you do that. But if I did that, you know what would happen? You would have a whole bunch of other people in this room who would stand up and say, “Me too.” You have a whole bunch of people who stand up on this stage and lead you every week who would say, “Me too.” It’s a me too kind of place. Whatever you’re struggling with, chances are there is someone else here who is struggling with it too. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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We’re never going to pretend we’re better than you. We have this thing we said a few months ago, and I’ve been just mulling it over and living by it. We would never expect someone who hasn’t committed their life to following Jesus to act like someone who has. So come as you are. Bring your mess, we’ll bring ours. We’ll be honest about it. We’ll see what God does growing us together. We’ll never pretend we’re better than you. The last verse is verse 15. I want to jump to verse 15 and this is the last commitment I want to make to you guys today. Verse 15 is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. I just love this verse so much. “And as God’s grace reaches more and more people, there will be great thanksgiving, and God will receive more and more glory. That is why we never give up.” We’re seeing God’s grace reach more and more people. We’ve got people of every ethnicity. We’ve got people in every age demographic. We’ve got people on both sides of the aisle politically. We’ve got tattoos, we’ve got no tattoos. We’ve got a mixture of anybody and everybody coming to this place and starting to call it home, starting to find a new life with this new way that Jesus has offered us. We believe this new way is too good to keep to ourselves. We’re comfortable with saying big church. We’re comfortable with the concept of becoming a big church, not for bragging rights, nothing like that. Not to boast in ourselves, but we believe this new way is too good to keep to ourselves. It’s too good to sit on. Can you just go with me for a second? If you’re here and you don’t believe what we believe, I just want you to put yourself in my shoes for a second. If this is all real, if I believe in my heart of hearts that God is real, that there is such a thing as a Spirit living inside me, and there is such a thing as an afterlife and I believe Jesus is God in the flesh, that He is the only God and He has offered this new way to live, it can change everything. It has eternal implications for everybody. Do you know how much I would hate to have you to sit on that? Do you know how much hate I would have to have for the people of this city for me to just kind of hole up here, for us to kind of hole up here and do our thing? We can’t sit on this. It’s too good. It’s too good. We’ve got to share this with people. That’s why we’re consumed with seeing God’s grace reach more and more people throughout this city. And we’re seeing God do some incredible stuff here, absolutely amazing life change stories of people finding this new way. And we’re addicted to it. That’s why, if we become a big church here, we’re cool with that. We have to be because as God’s grace reaches more and more people … I don’t know how it can reach more and more people without getting bigger and bigger. I don’t know how that works. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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Big Church |Big Picture April 2, 2017

If you can find that math for me, let me know after the service. We’re consumed with this. And that’s why I want you to know the last commitment we’ll make to you is this: We will never give up on you. We will never give up on you because Jesus will never give up on you. We will never stop opening our doors. We will never stop inviting you to come in. We will never stop making such a big deal about Sundays. If you follow me on social media, one day you’ll say, “Petie, you are so hyped about every Sunday.” Yes I am, back up. We will never stop praying for you. We will never give up on you. God hasn’t given up on you. I’m telling you, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done, it doesn’t matter how far you’ve gone. It doesn’t matter how lost you feel, how alone you feel, how self-sufficient you feel. God has not given up on you and neither will we, because we are addicted to seeing God’s grace reach more and more people. You can ask as many questions as you want. You can bring as many doubts as you have. This is a safe place for you. You can come and experience this as many times as you need to. No one is going to look down on you. Nobody is going to try to force you to drink the Kool-Aid. You’ve got time and we’ll always be here. It’s a safe place for you to belong before you believe. I just want you to know if you’re here and you wouldn’t call this place home yet, you wouldn’t call Jesus the Lord and Savior of your life, you wouldn’t call yourself a Christian—I just want you know there is a church here that’s for you. We’re for you, and we always will be. We’ll never give up on you. So I want to pray that for you right now. Let’s pray that together. Jesus, thank You so much for Your love, Your grace. Thank You that You give us a new way. Thank You that those of us who believe in You will never have to worry about whether or not You love us. We’ll never have to worry about our standing with You. We’ll never have to worry about whether or not we’re accepted by You. But because of what You did for us on the cross, because of the life You lived, the live we could never live, and the death You stepped in and took for us, for our sin, because of that our audition is over. Our pressure to perform is over. We’re forgiven and free. We are sons and daughters and we’re thankful for that. God, I pray for those in the room right now who are just wrestling with what they believe. God, I pray You would convict them in these moments. You are the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I pray that today would be the beginning of You opening their eyes to this new way of life and that they might keep coming back to learn more about You, Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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Big Church |Big Picture April 2, 2017

to know there is a safe place and they can belong here before they believe. We know that kind of a mind transformation, a heart transformation is only possible through You. So God, we don’t try to manipulate anybody. We ask You with Your power to do what only You can do. We love you, Lord, and it’s in Jesus’ name we all pray. Amen.

Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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