Made for the Fire

[00:00:00] Thank you. [00:00:02] Good morning, you beautiful church. How is everybody? [00:00:06] If you can't be good after worship like that, we might as well just call today. You know what I'm saying? [00:00:11] I am Sarah. I'm the campus director here, for those of you who don't know me. And I just want to echo Taylor. And a huge thank you to everyone who gave their time. We had over 400 volunteers serving for night to shine. It was incredible. [00:00:31] When you come and you witness what God was doing, there was a joy in this place. Like, you just. I can't speak about it. It's like something you just have to experience. And I'm so incredibly proud of our church that this is who we are. Thank you, church. [00:00:50] Thank you. [00:00:52] Let me pray. [00:00:54] Dear heavenly Father, you are. You're all I want. [00:00:58] You're all I need. [00:01:02] I pray that you fill us today. [00:01:06] I pray that this room and everyone watching online, they can sense your presence. [00:01:12] That they can know that you are a God of eternal purpose, and you are worthy of it all. [00:01:20] Fill us. Show us your way. [00:01:23] I pray where religion makes us want to be weak, that the spirit inside of us will give us a spirit not of fear, but of power, of love and a sound mind. Let your will be done in this place. In your son's name I pray. Amen. [00:01:39] Okay, we're in trouble. I'm already crying. [00:01:43] Okay. Years ago, my husband and I, we kind of said there are things in our life that are going to be important to us as parents. And one of those three things was fun. So we made this kind of tradition. And every year after Christmas, we take our kids for a week to Hawking hills. And we started when my baby, who is now 18, he was five. And we bundle up and we would go walk the icy path, and we would do all the trails. And if you know my family, you know that my husband is the adventurer. [00:02:17] I love spontaneity. I love fun. But mama likes safety. Okay? I like comfort. [00:02:26] I like the good things of life, you know, ease. [00:02:31] Okay? So when we started doing this trip, my husband, he always pushes me. He always pushes me outside of my comfort zone. And we were one day going on this trail in hacking Hills. We were driving to it. And at the time, it was the Garmin. You guys remember Garmin? [00:02:50] He pushed the button called the scenic route. Has anyone heard of this button? [00:02:57] It's straight from the devil, if you ask me. Okay, so he pushes the scenic route. But the problem is, we're in Hawking Hills. We're already in the scenic route. You know, what I'm saying, we didn't know that the scenic route meant guaranteed death. Okay? I was talking to my kids because I was like, I don't want to exaggerate this story. What do you remember? And they remember everything the way I am about to tell it. [00:03:23] So he pushes the scenic route and he says, we are taking the scenic route. We didn't know what that meant, but we're like, okay, let's take the scenic route. So in Hawking Hill, some of the roads are just dirt paths. And we arrived on this dirt path and it got more narrow and more narrow and more narrow till it became not even a full lane road. Now, that would have been fine, except Armageddon had happened on this road and craters were in it. It wasn't just potholes, it was holes. Like the size that your car is going to tip into it. And we get to these spots and we're like, genuinely afraid. And I remember looking back at my kids and we're all laughing, but honest to God, we're all crying because we're like, this is it. We looked to the left and on our left side was a cliff. There was nothing there. There was no guardrail. It was a cliff of death to the left and a cliff of death to the right and a hole the size of our car in front of us. And we're laughing because we don't know what else to do. But we have tears rolling down our faces because we genuinely were afraid. We were also yelling at my husband for taking the scenic route and we couldn't back up. The only option was to go forward. [00:04:46] Now, my husband is delicious. He is a stud. I love him. He got us through it. But I'm telling you, my motto has been, we are not taking the scenic route. Okay? Mama loves the safety of the two lane highway. I love the safety of life. [00:05:04] But I'm afraid for a lot of us, that's how our spiritual life goes. [00:05:10] We miss the adventure for the comfort. [00:05:15] We miss the passion of the call for the safety. [00:05:22] We miss the mission that God has called us to so that we can remain status quo. [00:05:29] We can maybe come on Sunday and do that faith, but we're not really ever going to get risky in life. [00:05:38] We're not ever really going to take the scenic route because there is something inside of us that holds us back. [00:05:47] And church, I do not want us to be that kind of men and those kind of women. I want us to be the kind of church that chooses the scenic route, that even when the life brings us craters that we don't know quite how we're going to make it through, that we choose to follow our God faithfully, that we choose to trust in him even when the outcome is not what we want, expected or prayed for. [00:06:15] I am so incredibly challenged by the scripture I'm about to bring to you today, because it's challenging. [00:06:24] It's challenging when you know the pain and the reality of life and that it's not always what you expect it to be. To remain faithful and more than just remaining faithful, to let your life have a purpose, a passion, and a calling that sets your soul on fire. [00:06:44] No one knew this better than John the Baptist. Now, John the Baptist, he's an incredible person in the scripture, we get to see these snapshots of his life that kind of help us see the full picture. [00:06:59] And John experienced what most of us could only dream or hope for. [00:07:05] You see, before he was even born, an angel of the Lord shows up and visits his dad, who was a priest at the time. And he visits his dad and he says, you're going to have a son. He's going to be set apart for God. He's going to bring the lost children back to their good and mighty God. John has a mission and a purpose. [00:07:27] And then John's mom gets pregnant, and she's related to Mary, who is now pregnant with Jesus. And Mary goes and visits John's mom while they're both pregnant. And the Bible tells us that inside the womb, when Jesus heard the voice of Mary, when he got close to that pregnant belly of Mary inside his mother's womb, he actually leapt like the Holy Spirit was already working in John's life then. He already knew who Christ was before he was even born. [00:08:01] You see John then grow up, and he's kind of a wild man. He wears this camel hair, and he has a leather belt, and he eats locusts. And he's like, if he was on alive, he would be the lone stander. You know what I'm saying? Anyone watch alive? [00:08:18] Nobody watches alive. Is that what it's called, Jacob alone? [00:08:24] It's not called alive. [00:08:27] I only say that because I like the comfort of my own safety and the alone. I like to be alive. You know what I'm saying? Has anyone seen the show alone? Okay. They have all these people that go, and you're alone, and who can make it the longest? John was, like, rugged. [00:08:44] He was a man. He's a man's man. [00:08:48] He would have his disciples, and they would be preparing the way for Jesus, and he'd be like, one is coming whose sandal I'm not even fit to untie. He knew Christ. [00:08:59] He would see him. And he had this unbelievable moment where he is baptizing, and Christ comes to him and says, I want you to baptize me. John's like, whoa, you need to baptize me. [00:09:13] But Christ is like, no, we're going to fulfill something here today. And then John experiences this moment of the heavens splitting, of the spirit of God descending like a dove. And then John gets to hear the voice of God almighty saying, this is my son whom I love. I am well pleased. [00:09:35] John knew Christ. He knew him with every fiber of his being. [00:09:45] But then comes a moment. [00:09:49] I don't know if it's a crisis of faith or if it's his expectations weren't met. [00:09:59] You see, John was bold in his faith. And at the time, there was a king named Herod who was just doing things that were not pleasing to God in any way, shape, or form. He took his brother's wife, and she was kind of a miserable human. I think of her as a snotty brat. I'm allowed to talk her about that way because she was. She had a brat for a daughter. Too much. [00:10:25] And John told Herod that he shouldn't be doing this. [00:10:31] And Herod threw him in jail. [00:10:35] And now John is sitting in prison. [00:10:39] And in Matthew eleven, we're going to start at verse one. [00:10:44] How many of you have the Bible app on your phone? [00:10:47] Jovan always says, who's got the word of God? Who's got the word of God with you? I say, if you've got it on your phone. Praise be to Jesus. You are taking him everywhere you go. Amen. [00:10:57] Okay, John or Matthew eleven. After Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee. When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples to ask him, are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else? [00:11:19] Jesus replied, go back and report to John what you hear and see. The blind receive sight, the lame walk. Those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on my account. [00:11:40] This will also say, is not offended by me. [00:11:45] John is sitting in prison, and it's not how it was supposed to be in his mind. [00:11:53] He was supposed to be out preaching and teaching and sharing Jesus. And now he's sitting in prison and he's hearing his disciples tell him all that Jesus is doing, and instead of it being like this shot of adrenaline to the heart, it becomes salt in his wounds. [00:12:16] And he gets his disciples and he says, can you go ask him, are you the one? [00:12:21] Are you the one who's to come? Or should we start looking for somebody else? [00:12:26] Church his circumstances started to erode his vision of who Jesus Christ was in his life. This is a man who knew. This is a man who believed. This is a man who went heart and soul for Jesus Christ. [00:12:42] And in the moment when it just did not turn out the way he thought it should be, he had this crisis of faith. [00:12:53] Church. I do not want us to have these moments of crisis of faith. We are going to have times when we are living life and it's just turning out in a way we did not expect it to be. In a way we didn't pray for it to be, in a way we didn't hope for it to be. [00:13:11] But how we view Christ will always matter. [00:13:17] I wish this story had a pleasant ending. [00:13:20] I wish this story was something that we could all paint our warrior face and be like, yes, but this story has a bad ending. [00:13:33] You see, Jesus here, he says something at the end of these verses that it troubled me. I talked to every pastor I could. I called my dad this week, and I was like, can you help me think about this? Because here's what I'm thinking. [00:13:46] It said, blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me, or blessed is the one who is not offended by me. [00:13:56] What's Jesus saying to John? John already heard the news. He already heard the things that God was saying. And Jesus ends with this. And blessed is the one who is not offended. Or blessed is the one who does not fall away on account of me. [00:14:13] Church, what I think he's trying to say is, John, you know, I'm the one. [00:14:19] John, you've seen things that nobody else will see and hear. [00:14:28] But my purpose isn't what you thought. [00:14:33] And blessed is the one that even when life isn't what we thought it should be, blessed is the one who does not fall away. Blessed is the one who is not offended. Blessed is the one who lives by faith and not by sight. Blessed is the one who has the courage to remain, the courage to hold the courage and the passion and the mission to follow Jesus Christ faithfully. [00:15:03] Church, I don't know about you, but I look at John's life and I think to myself, his purpose was fulfilled. [00:15:11] You see that bratty wife of Herod? [00:15:15] She wanted John killed and she got her way. [00:15:20] Herod ends up beheading John because of his wife and that bratty daughter. [00:15:28] And John's story isn't what he thought it would look like. [00:15:34] But I guarantee if we were able to talk to him today, he would say it was an upgrade. [00:15:40] Death was only sad here on this side of eternity. But I get to be with my father. I get to be in heaven. And what I believe with all my heart is that John, he was made for the fire. [00:15:54] Church. There's people in my life that I look at their life and there's struggle after struggle after struggle after Struggle. And I'm saying, I don't know why, but you are made for the fire. No matter what comes your way, you seek God, you trust him. You are made for the fire. And I believe your heavenly father wants you to know, Christ Church, you are made for the fire. [00:16:15] There are going to be seasons and moments that hurt. There are going to be seasons and moments where you may want to walk away, where you may be saying, jesus, are you the one? [00:16:26] But you are made for the fire. And that means you walk by faith and not by sight, that you trust in a God who is loving. Because here's the deal. Religion can make it soft, man. Religion can make us weak. We can be seeking the comfort of comfy chairs in a nice building, and we could be seeking that, or we could be seeking to follow after the heart of a mighty king, a king who started a brand new revolution, a revolution of sacrificial love, a revolution that was radical love. He couldn't stand some of the religious leaders because of their haughty heart, but he would always seek the sinner who was seeking after him and church. We are sinners who are seeking after him. We are sinners who are broke and lost. And we need God. We need a mighty God. [00:17:22] Students and young people, I want you to hear this. There's going to be adventures that you can take in life, but the greatest adventure you will ever take is following Jesus Christ. [00:17:32] The greatest adventure you can ever go on is to trust in him, to follow him, to seek him heart and soul. [00:17:40] Church parents, sometimes we want to teach the rules of Christianity to our kids because I want them to be good. I want them to trust in God. I want them to do the right things and make all the right habits and choices. And sometimes we lay down the law trying to teach Christianity instead of trying to teach our children to experience the reality of Christ in their life. My husband and I, we parented different. [00:18:15] My kids never got grounded. Their keys never got taken away. [00:18:20] We went straight to the heart. I don't know if it worked or not, but I have some pretty amazing kids. When my kids struggled, I would say, let's get to the heart of the issue, because this isn't about right or wrong, right or wrong. This is about what's going on in your heart. Let me teach you how to connect to God when you're troubled. Let me teach you how to seek him when you want to do all the wrong things. Because sometimes that doesn't go away. You know what I'm saying? Adults, sometimes we're still wanting to do the wrong things. But if you can teach your children not the rules of Christianity, but the heart of following a mighty savior, the heart of seeking after a mighty God, then you are giving and equipping your children for something so much more beautiful. [00:19:08] I am sweaty and hot. [00:19:14] I want to help us. I want to be men and women that learn how to process, right? So I want to show you something that I learned from my awesome mentor, my dad, several years ago. Because I don't want to just talk about this and feel it and then go home and not know how to apply it. I want us to learn how to apply it. How do we process in life? [00:19:38] Jacob Berger, everybody. Okay. [00:19:42] Hate to see you go, but love to watch you walk away. You know what I'm saying? [00:19:48] Dad will be back soon enough. Don't you worry. [00:19:53] Okay. [00:19:57] When hard things come up, how do we process? In the kind of way that makes us live differently and in the kind of way that helps us become better. Okay? So here is a simple way of drawing this. I'll move out of the way so you can see it in a second. Just imagine this as your brain, okay? [00:20:17] In your brain, you have an area of consciousness, okay? This is where you're conscious. You're aware of what you're thinking. You're aware that we're in this room, that God is good, that we are made for the fire. Amen. Okay? But then you have a subconscious, and in your subconscious, these are places that you're not aware of. But it's your emotions, it's your thought, life, it's some of your habits. And what happens is sometimes your subconscious will pop something up into your consciousness so it'll look something like, story of your life. [00:20:56] Something hard happened. [00:20:58] Story of your life. [00:21:00] And then you can play this reel of hard is all around me. Something hard. Story of my life. What's new? [00:21:11] And then you start telling yourself, story of my life. This is hard. I can never do anything. And then what happens is when this thought goes away, it goes back down into your subconscious, but it goes back down the exact same way. [00:21:24] Hello, gorgeous. [00:21:28] It goes back down the exact same way that it came up. Okay? And so what we want to do is we want to transform the thought. So when a thought comes up, I'm afraid I can't do this. When the thought comes up, then you need to claim it, and we are going to claim it in three ways today with the prayer. The first prayer is going to be, we are going to declare our love for Jesus Christ. So something pops up, I'm afraid. Father, I love you. I declare that you are my God. I declare that I follow you. I love you. We're going to declare it, okay? We're not going to be like Jesus. I want to love you in this moment. We are declaring it. We are declaring, Father, I am afraid, but I love you. [00:22:19] And then the second thing we're going to do is we're going to ask, can you show me what you created me for? Father, I am afraid of this, but I want to live not the life that I have designed for myself. I want to live the life you have created me for. And so we're going to declare our love for Jesus Christ. Then we are going to claim, I want to live the life that you have created me for. Can you help me to see it in my biggest fear, in my biggest rejection, whatever. These things will pop up sometimes. Mine will be like, you're a loser, you're a joke, you're no good. [00:22:58] I'm going to claim it, Father, I'm feeling this way, but I love you, Father. I want to live the life that you've created for me. So help me, Father, this is the third. Help me to see you. Help me to see you move in ways that only you can move. Help me to see things from you that I could never dream, hope or imagine. And this is going to be a three part process that you're going to do when these bad thoughts pop up. My relationship's doomed. [00:23:29] No one loves me, Father, I claim that you are Lord and God. I love you. You have created me on purpose, and I feel like I am not good enough. I feel like I am unloved. But I am trusting in you and who you've created me to be. Will you help me to see you move? And what happens is when you start recoding your brain, you're going to start sending things back down a little bit different. [00:23:58] I was afraid, but I trusted in God. [00:24:02] I was afraid. But I asked him to show me the life he created me for. And I walked in afraid and did it anyways. Church. I will throw up sometimes before I come preach. I was so afraid this morning. I looked at my daughter, I was like, girl, we are afraid, but let's go do it. Let's go do it. Scared. [00:24:21] And what happens is the more you do it, the more you do it, the more you do it. You're starting to recode who you are. You're starting to recode what God is working in you. And through you and church. Here's what I know for sure. That my family, we have seen the pain of life. [00:24:40] We have seen loss. [00:24:42] We have felt God. I thought this was going to happen. And I thought I had this expectation and it turned out different. [00:24:52] We've seen the moments in life where I was just like, it can't be you who's working because it hurts too bad. [00:25:00] But here's what I want to tell you. My family, with all our hearts, we declare we will walk by faith and not by sight. We declare that we are made for the fire. And when it gets hard, when it gets crazy, we will choose to take the scenic route. Church, let's take the scenic route together. Amen. Let's pray. [00:25:27] Father, I just. I ask myself, are you worthy? [00:25:35] And how worthy are you? What am I really, truly willing to step out and do? [00:25:43] My whole soul, my whole body, my whole mind and soul claims that you are worthy of it all. [00:25:51] Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. [00:25:58] Father, I pray that you help us to feel and yearn for a relationship with you. [00:26:06] I pray that more than anything, Father, we will know you and that we will walk by faith even when it gets hard, even when the outcome is not what we want. We will trust in you because you are worthy. It bless each and every person here. [00:26:22] Guide us and show us your way. In your son's name we pray. Amen.