Embrace Community

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

We're going to be working mostly in Proverbs 27. Again, we're going to be bouncing around a lot. We have been working through the Proverbs these last few weeks, and we have been likening the Proverbs to tides of wisdom, the tides of wisdom. And like the tides, they are incredibly stubborn. Wisdom is incredibly stubborn. Just like the tides, you cannot make it move where you want it to move. You can't sweep the tide in. You can't push the tide out. You cannot manipulate wisdom toward the outcomes that you want. It doesn't work that way. God created all of life to work a specific way. We've defined wisdom before as God's perspective, but that's just another way to say it, that wisdom is how God created all of life to work. And although the specific way that God created life to work is beneficial, it is beneficial to us and to everyone else, to many other people,

this way is also incredibly offensive. It offends us. Now, I say that in particular. I want to give you some examples. December 31, we looked at learning to fear God. And again, fear doesn't mean avoid, so we don't fear God like we fear spiders. But learning to fear God, fear is like walking into an operating room. You want to be really careful what you touch. You want to kind of mind your peace and cues. You want to be reverent. When you come to the Lord, you want to come in fear. And it hits our pride to be commanded. OK, don't do that. Do that. Don't touch that. Touch that. Don't do that in that order. Do it in this order. That's offensive. It's offensive to us that we don't know what we're doing enough to have to be commanded that way. But if we submit to that, if we obey the commands of the Lord, if we learn to fear God, we find his heart. But it still, it kind of hits our pride.

Two weeks ago, we looked at weighing our words. It infringes on our rights to not say whatever we want. We live in America, dang it. We get to say what we want. And if anybody tells us they don't like what we're saying, we can simply say in response, it's a free country. It's a free country, buddy. I can say what I want. And whatever Proverbs says to us, like, hey, hey, don't talk a lot. Weigh your words. Don't just say whatever you want. They're actually really powerful. You should be more careful with them. In fact, the way Proverbs describes our words is that the only way our words can accomplish good is if we give them to Jesus. They are a train wreck otherwise. That's incredibly offensive to us. We like what we say. We think we're pretty measured. Thank you very much. It's America. We can say what we want. But whenever Proverbs comes to us, it's unconcerned with offending us.

It just tells us to, it says, well, look, you've got to weigh your words. Last week, we looked at pursuing a godly future. And this is pretty offensive that God insists that his plan is best, that it's better than yours. Yours, by comparison, is a shot in the dark. Yours, by comparison, is just some haphazard throwing a stone on a pond, and maybe it'll land in a good place. That's your plan. God has everything under control. God's plan is best. Nothing is better. Nothing is better. Nothing you can think of is better than pursuing God's plan for your life, period. That's incredibly offensive to us, because we like our plans. We like the way that we think our life should go. But when we submit to that, we find that God invites us to go along with him in pursuit. This is where we've been the last three weeks. This week, we're going to continue in that offensive vein.

It's just going to be offensive to us. I'm not going to try to offend you, I promise. But Proverbs really just tells us this is how life should go. This is how God created life to work. And so as we look at what the proverb says about embracing community, we're going to find that it hits us where we are. To see what community is, we need to take a break from Proverbs. And we need to look at establishing a baseline. So I want to look at Proverbs 3. And Proverbs 3, it gives us a baseline for what biblical community is in the New Testament. And the verses will be up here. You can also follow along on your Bible app. You can also follow along in your paper Bible, see your actual like these things.

So here we go. Colossians 3, 12 through 13, this is our baseline. It says, put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. That's our starting point for biblical community. It's pretty high bar. However the Lord has forgiven you, so whatever that tally is, that's how you're forgiving other people. You're supposed to put on humility, kindness. When somebody actually makes a complaint to you, you should listen to it, consider it. And then if it's your fault, ask for forgiveness. If it's not your fault, then you're supposed to work it out with the person who's lodging a complaint against you. This is incredibly difficult, annoying stuff. This is frustration.

This is hard to do. However, in Jesus, we share in common a different kind of community, a different level of community. This level, this kind of community, is called a church. It's more than neighborhood consequences. It goes further than college buddies. It goes further than moms that you go on play dates with with your kids. It describes a community that is knit together in a covenant, in a promise, and in friendship. The Bible says that we are spiritual brothers and sisters. That we have God as our father. We have Jesus as our brother. And we have a shared Holy Spirit inside. These are the words of being knitted together, the words of being under a covenant together. And we see from the verses that this kind of community, it calls for things that are difficult from us. It calls for this kind of firm honesty. But also, at the exact same time, calls for this deep grace, firm honesty, deep grace,

at the exact same time. The firm honesty, you can see three verses actually before this in Colossians 3:9. It says, do not lie to one another. Just straight out. Just don't do it. Don't lie to one another. That's a bad idea. You need honesty as kind of this baseline for this kind of community. Don't lie. But even then, I mean, it takes honesty to logic and complaint. It takes honesty to bear with another person. And it also takes tremendous grace to do those things, to forgive other people. So you have this firm honesty and this deep grace. And these are the kinds of relationships that are expressed in Proverbs. And so if we're going to hope to live or thrive in this kind of community, if this is the kind of community that we want to be, then we have to take a look at ourselves in the mirror and say, are we ready for that? Am I building that kind of community now?

Am I a part of that? Am I doing that? We need wisdom or widsome. However you want to say it, we need widsome to work toward this kind of community. We need wisdom to thrive in this kind of community. So Proverbs, it gives us three different ways to do that. We're going to start in Proverbs 27. Proverbs 27 verses 5 and 6. Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Profuse are the kisses of an enemy. We've got two more Proverbs that kind of go with that. One's in Proverbs 28, 23. The other one's in Proverbs 27, 9, both are up there. It says, whoever rebukes a man will afterward find more favor than he who flatters with his tongue. 27, 9, oil and perfume make the heart glad and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel.

In each of these things in Proverbs, in these two verses in the verse I read before in 27, five through six, it is offensive on the front end. In all of these verses, it is offensive on the front end. It is offensive, an open rebuke. An open rebuke, you're openly telling somebody that they shouldn't be doing what they're doing. That's offensive, you want to get somebody mad? Tell them that. It's pretty simple. It will anger that person no matter what.

Whoever rebukes a man will afterwards. So it's saying, look, there's later, there's afterwards, it's coming, but not immediately. It doesn't say whoever rebukes a man will immediately find more favor than, no, you won't. You won't find the favor immediately, it's gonna be later. But on the front end, it's offensive. Sincerity coming from earnest counsel is often very difficult. So you see this in the Proverbs where it's offensive on the front end and maybe here's a way to say it. If we're gonna build community, then we need to understand that honesty is our down payment. If we're gonna build community, then we need to understand that honesty is our down payment. In other words, honesty, if you've not bought a house before, honesty comes first. It comes very first. It is the first thing you're putting down. If you don't put that down, you really don't have the foundation for community.

A friend group that I was a part of in college that I kinda left and they kept going in their own little atmosphere. There was a couple in that friend group and they were high school sweethearts. And they married. And we'll call this couple Alan and Jenny, just because they're real people. After a few years, so still in this friend group, after a few years, Alan and Jenny had difficulties and they separated. And while they were separated, Jenny began seeing another guy in the friend group.

This is the stuff that rom-coms are made of. Or horror movies. So Jenny started seeing another mutual friend. This really happened. These are people that I actually know, but I've just changed their names. When that happens, the whole friend group freezes. They have no idea what to do. Okay, do we take sides? We love Alan, we love Jenny, and then we love this other guy that Jenny's now seeing. We love all three of these people. What in the world are we supposed to do? And one of those friends who's still my good friend today, one of those friends stepped in and gently, oh so gently, told Jenny, hey, what you're doing is wrong. You're still married to your husband. You don't need to run around with this guy. And even if you're not, even if you're conducting yourself above board, you don't need to lead this guy on. You don't need to date another person. You're still married.

Needless to say, that was not extremely well received. Okay, did not receive that like a birthday cake. Okay, it's hard, hard to swallow, hard to process. And Jenny quit talking to that person for a while. And eventually, surprisingly, Jenny went back to her husband, actually reconciled with Alan. So in the process of like six months to a year, Jenny's reconciled.

And then later, and I don't mean months later, I mean years later. I thought it was months, and I actually called my friend about the story and just to get my facts straight. And she said, no, it was like four or five years. Four or five years later, Jenny reached out, they finally reached out and said, hey, I want you to know, it really meant a lot to me that you said to go back to my husband. You were the only one who told me to go back to my husband. It's really terrible, actually, that friend group is pretty stinky for that. You might need a new friend group. But you were the only one and that made all the difference. That one person, my one friend who said, hey, you don't need to mess around with other guy. You don't need to date this other guy. You're still married. You got to figure that out first. Real community requires us to be more honest than is comfortable.

Honesty as a down payment. It is extremely, extremely popular to spare feelings. Extremely. It actually always has been. It actually always will be, because it's easier. Because in our desire to be liked, we will pull back on honesty. And we can say, oh, we're doing it for them. And maybe that's true on some level, but on another one, you're doing it totally for you. Because you don't want to be the villain. You don't want to be the person who's holding a standard. You don't want to be the mean one. And I get it. I don't want to be the mean one either. Nobody likes being the mean one. I'm not going out there encouraging you to be mean. But there are times whenever people are doing things with their lives that they should not do. And if you consider yourself a friend to them, if you are in covenant community with them, that you should, you are under an obligation

to say something to them. And if you don't, if you don't say something to them, you're the bad friend. You might feel like the good friend, but you're not. You're not really being in a community with them. It's tough to do. People love quoting Proverbs 27, 17. It says, as iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. You ever heard iron sharpening iron? It's close to nails on a chalkboard, okay? Just imagine one rough piece of metal being scraped against another rough piece of metal. That's like not fun. I can barely scoop my dinner chair out against my vinyl flooring, you know, and not like, oh, not shriek a little bit, you know, not get a little tense. Metal scraping across metal. Iron sharpening iron is not fun. It's not comfortable, doesn't feel good, doesn't sound good, there's nothing great about it, except that's how we're sharpened. Except that the end is worth it.

Honesty is very painful, and it requires us, and here's why, it requires us risking happiness for relational strength. Strength. We can choose with everybody that we love, we can choose, we're either gonna be strong, or we're gonna be happy. Sometimes you see it, sometimes you see it, married couples have been married a good while, and they're like, oh, you know what, we never fight anymore. Yeah, you never fight, because you never talk about anything real. You just leave each other alone, and you've like worked that out, okay? So your roommates, yeah, you never fight. But you also don't have anything significant between you, it's tough. We choose between happiness and relational strength. That's why honesty is tough, it's painful. It's worth it every time. It's worth it every time, even if you lose the friendship. It's worth it every time, even if you lose the friendship.

Proverbs 27 six that we just read, faithful are the wounds of a friend. Look, it's always better to be faithful, even when your friends don't get it. Even when your friends aren't faithful, it's better to be faithful because God sees it, and God rewards it. In Proverbs, we are not promised that if we go to our friends who are being stupid, and in all honesty, and in love, and in gentleness, we go to them, and we say it perfectly, man, we go and we just say, oh, look, from my heart, man, look, I just, mm. I wanna let you know that what you're doing is gonna just completely derail your life. You should stop doing this now. You should turn around, you should run. You should not do this anymore. There are no guarantees that we'll be friends after that. Zero. Zero. My encouragement is not to be friends with as many people as possible. My encouragement in Proverbs and in the New Testament

is to love people where exactly where they are, and to help them understand what's true, what's real, to show fidelity to them, to love them, not to just make them happy or make them feel okay. That's a tough thing, man. It's tough. But if we're gonna build community, then honesty needs to be our down payment, and it needs to be our down payment before we know if we're gonna be lifelong friends. It needs to be our down payment before we know if they'll help us whenever we have to move house, okay? Before all that, before they can do any good for us, okay, before, like, you know, when I think about it that way, before all that, honesty comes first. Honesty comes first as a down payment. Honesty's not the only thing you need to build community. There's one more thing that, two more things you need to build community. Second one we see in Proverbs 17, nine, also in Proverbs 10, 12.

And let me just say this too. I'm busting out all these Proverbs. What I'm trying to do is just help you see that these themes, these elements are all over Proverbs. So what I'm listing is not some exhaustive, I'm not just cherry picking three Proverbs because it just says exactly what I wanted to say. I'm trying my best to just pull out big themes in Proverbs so that you can see that Proverbs has a lot to say about building community. It has a lot to say about weighing your words. It has a lot to say about fearing the Lord. And that all these things kind of combine, that they swim together to help you have, and me have God's perspective, has wisdom, and to understand how to swim with the tides, how to cooperate with the way that God made life to work. Okay, so I just wanna say that. I know it might look like I'm cherry picking, I'm not. That's where we're at, okay.

Proverbs 17, nine. The second thing it takes to build community. Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends. Proverbs 10, 12. Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses. And in these and in many other Proverbs, it encourages us to use our speech in particular to protect people, to use our speech to protect people, that we stop, stop, gossip, and slander. That's another thing that's offensive about all this, like if you have somebody and they're coming up to you and they're like, listen, I just really hate this person, and I wanna tell you all about it. That's typically not how it starts, but when gossip happens, right, that really, if you're a good friend to that person, you're gonna say, listen, hey, you should stop right where you are, love you. I really don't wanna hear that, because that's gonna hurt you and hurt me

and hurt this other person that you're gossiping about. Let's not do that. That's offensive. That will hurt feelings. It will, it'll hurt, and there's a general way to do that. I'm sure I did not demonstrate the perfectly general way to do that just then, but that is what we were called to do. We were called to stop gossip, stop slander, but at the same time, we still welcome rebuke. We still welcome correction. We still welcome warning. It's hard. It's incredibly difficult to do, but we must do this if we're gonna build community, because if we're gonna build community, then honesty's our down payment, but gentleness is our monthly payment. I'm getting way into the house metaphor here, but maybe you can see it. Gentleness is what you are doing. It's like paying rent, man. I mean, it's every month, okay? Probably more than once a month, you need to be gentle. But in our desire to be honest,

we can slip into brutal honesty pretty easily, and we can kinda just baptize it in the name, but you know, hey, look, I'm just being honest here. Well, no, you're being a jerk. You might be being honest, but you're also being a jerk. You're not giving any room for gentleness. You're not giving any room for a soft word. You're not making room for that. You're not being creative. You're being lazy, and you're kinda taking out some aggression on somebody in the name of being honest.

And look, it's hard, man. It's hard when you were truly frustrated with somebody for ruining their own life. It's hard not to come with a tone, okay? It just is. Like, hey, I need you to really stop wrecking your life and the lives of people who love you. I mean, that's hard. It's hard to be gentle with that, but that's what the Lord calls us to do. There is such a thing as saying the right thing in the wrong way. Trust me, I know, okay? I've done it, and you have too, okay? It's hard sometimes. It's hard to know exactly what to say, how to say it, but it's really important for us to be gentle. The Proverbs actually make a huge deal of this, that a soft word, it can break a bone. That's what it says. Soft word can break a bone. It's a good thing.

Proverbs 12, 18 says, there is one, this is just repeated from Way Your Words a couple weeks ago, there is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. There are two guys that were talking, again, friends of mine. One of them was a university philosophy professor, so smart guy, okay? University philosophy professor, and the person that he was speaking with, my other friend, was completely unaware of that fact. And they happen to be talking about philosophy. So my friend trips into a conversation with a philosophy professor, and he's talking about philosophy, okay? So what does he do? He starts talking about philosophy, and he begins to instruct a little bit, instruct this philosophy professor on some of the basic tenets of philosophy, okay? This is like me explaining physics to my father-in-law or electrical engineering.

I don't need to say anything about electrical engineering. I cannot add to that conversation for my father-in-law, okay? This guy could not add anything to the conversation about philosophy. However, the philosophy professor, who just, he just sat there and listened, and asked questions, and just was gentle about the whole thing. Well then, about 10 minutes later, my friend finds out that he's a philosophy professor at University, he didn't find out in front of him. He found out through somebody else, and he just felt so little, felt so dumb. But you know what, he also understood, at a really basic level, man, that guy was just super gentle with me, and he had tremendous respect for him. More respect than if the guy would have just said, well, I'm a philosophy professor. You know, way more respect came out of that. Because he was gentle, think about that, because he was gentle.

When you are gentle on a regular basis, it builds trust. It heals. And so, just a way to think about how are you in conversation, right? And not normal conversation. The conversation where somebody tries to over explain something to you, so it's also called mansplaining, I don't know why. When somebody assumes that you don't know something you know extensively about, how do you respond to that? You gentle? When somebody interrupts you in conversation? Oh. When someone accidentally insults you, it's tough. It's tough being gentle right there, right? You wanna put them in their place? You do, I do, I don't know, I mean, maybe you're not like me.

It's tough to be gentle. Those are our moments when we can be, though. Being gentle with people regularly, when we do that on a regular basis, and there's nothing you can plan, there's actually nothing you can fake. Because when you are gentle with somebody, it just happens in the moment. And when you are gentle with them, it builds community. Honesty is our down payment, gentleness is our monthly payment. Let's look at the third thing. Proverbs 18, 24 and 17, 17, says a man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. 17, 17, a friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. Moreover, in the New Testament, 1 Peter 4, 8 says above all, keep loving one another earnestly. Sincere love covers a multitude of sins. It's part where the Old Testament, New Testament kind of overlap here. To build community, we must understand,

to build anything, you need tools, right? If you're gonna build anything, you need tools. You can have honesty as a down payment, you can have gentleness as a monthly payment, but what are you gonna do to actually put the thing together? Well, you need to understand that the tools that are in your hands are trials. Trials are your tools. All the trials that we can think of, diagnoses, losses, grief, suffering, setbacks, confusion, pain, frustration, all of those things, all of those trials that we go through, all of these things that we go through, that we suffer through, all of these things are things that we can actually pick up and build with, actually.

In fact, you can't pick up anything else and build with it. It's your trials that you must pick up and build with. So when you are, let's just say you're in a home group, it's a week and a half from now, and you're in your first home group meeting, okay? And you're in a home group with another family. And you know, first week, you're getting to know them, things are okay, you're listening to them. Next few weeks, they begin to open up about their financial troubles. They begin to open up about their rebellious children. They begin to open up about this deep anxiety that is costing them sleep, right? They begin to open up about those things. What happens? What happens when that finally happens? What happens when people open up about that? A brother is born for adversity. You get to help.

In that process, you become brothers and sisters. You become community in the midst of that process. Just think about it, think about it. Consider all the close friends that you have right now. Just think of like three of them, two of them. All the close friends you have. Have you survived tough times together? Probably. Probably. Or you've never been through a tough time. One or the other.

The people that are closest to you are the people that have been through stuff with you. Think about that. If you don't go through anything with anybody, you're pretty lonely. I mean look, just take a cue from movies, right? Think about every great saga out there. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, all those things. Trials, I mean, movies can't even deny this. Trials are what band these people together. It's how the Avengers became the Avengers, right? Because the Earth was being attacked and they had to be, okay, I'm not getting too far into the movie. I'm just trying to illustrate for you, nerd out right here in the middle of a sermon. I'm just trying to illustrate for you that it is the trials that bring us together. And if you aren't okay talking about your trials, then you better be okay being alone. And you better be okay not building community. We are in such a unique position as a church body right now.

It's sweet, it's good. We have the opportunity to build community by opening up. And when people open up, being gentle with them, being honest with them, using those trials as tools to build community. I want you to think about how you're gonna respond. Because it's not if, it's when. When you're in a home group or when you're in a conversation with somebody and they begin to open up about things that they are going through, okay?

When that family in that home group opens up and what they're gonna do, when that happens, you don't know this, you might not be aware of this. But that they're actually putting tools in your hands. Their trials, your tools. What are you gonna do with it? When it's your trial, are you gonna put it in somebody else's hand? You gonna trust them? It's hard, it's hard. It's always worth it, always worth it. But it's not easy. We pray as a church, I pray as your pastor, I pray that that risk pays off. It's a risk, but I'm praying that it pays off. I'm praying for the Lord Jesus Christ to say, listen, Lord, you know these people are gonna be just honest with one another. They're gonna be talking about things they don't wanna talk about. They're gonna need to trust people and people don't trust people just that easily. It just doesn't happen overnight. It's hard. All right, let's put this together.

Okay, if honesty is our down payment and we're paying it in faith, if gentleness is our monthly payment that we're earning trust, if trials are our tools, so Jesus has given us community to handle adversity and that adversity grows us together, here's two things, three things I want you to do. I want you to do three things. The first thing I want you to do is to make time for community. It's the first thing I really need you to do. You might say, I'm busy. Look, I know, I know you're busy. I get it, I'm busy too.

I'm fond of saying this, that everybody is busy with what they want to be busy with. If you wanna be busy with like binging on Netflix, man, you're gonna be busy. Busy, yeah, you sure are. If you're like me, you're busy with some things that you should be and a lot of things that maybe you don't need to be busy with. You're busy, but is that prioritized? Everybody's managing their own sleep. Everybody's doing what they need to do when they need to do it. When we start Home Groups next week, I want you to consider jumping in. When we start Home Groups next week, so not this Sunday, but next, I want you to consider jumping in. You got some questions? Cindy in the purple sweater will be right there and she smiles and her smile is so great. It makes you smile too. If you don't believe me, just watch her smile. It'll make you smile, I swear. She's great to talk to, she'll answer any of your questions.

She's completely knowledgeable. How else can I build you up, impossibly? She has no weaknesses. Sorry, sorry. It's terrible. But Cindy's gonna be there with your questions. Consider jumping in, so make the time for it. Just make the time, second thing. Give and take honesty. Give and take honesty, gently, but give and take honesty, even when it's uncomfortable. Here's what I found, that the tides of wisdom are a little ruthless, they're a little treacherous, but that most times, most times people know when they've screwed up.

General rule of thumb, most times people have an idea that they are living in rebellion or that they screwed up or that they meant well, but they really didn't play out, they know, they know. And a lot of times they're waiting to see how gentle you're gonna be with that. They need gracious honesty to know that it's safe to admit that they feel stupid. They do, you do, I do.

We all need this, let's give it, give it and take it. Lastly, I want you to consider leveraging your own adversity. Leverage your own adversity, okay? The American way is to hide from adversity, to avoid adversity, to get as much insurance as you can, sorry Daniel, to avoid adversity. Daniel worked in insurance, I'm just teasing. And if you can't avoid it, then you downplay it. If you can't avoid adversity, then you downplay it. But let me tell you, adversity comes for all of us. However we might try to downplay it, however we might try to avoid it, it comes for all of us. And sometimes, it's our fault, and sometimes there's not much we could have done. But in either case, we need grace. In either case, it puts tools in the hands of other people when we admit it. Even if we were the stupid ones who put ourselves in that situation. The Lord, it says in Proverbs many times,

the Lord makes it rain on good and evil. Everybody gets the rain, everybody gets the thunderstorms, everybody gets it. You're either on your way out of something or you're underway into something, or you're in the middle of it. But nobody's really out. I'm just gonna end with some honesty here. I'm gonna call the band back up. And I even, I struggle to say this because I don't,

I don't want the attention that it brings. So just bear with me here for just a second. I have a deep, a deep pain in my hip, right here, my right hip. It really hurts. It hurts right now. It's been hurting me for like two and a half weeks. I don't know what to do about it. My wife just signed me up for some physical therapy. I'm 46 years old. I don't need to walk with a limp for the rest of my life, but I might. I'm scared about that. It's tough for me to open up about it. I get a little choked up thinking about it. But this is real. This is what I'm going through. I don't like talking about it because it makes me look weak, or it makes you question my ability to lead, or just some other concoction that doesn't really make any sense. But I do wanna tell you that it's real. I do wanna tell you that I'm going through that. And I guarantee you that's not the worst of what people are going through here.

It's not. I actually know that for a fact. It's not the worst. It is what I'm going through. And I don't know how it measures up to what other people are going through. And when I'm trying to lay in bed at night and I'm in excruciating pain, it doesn't, I don't care. If somebody has it worse than me, it hurts. So I just wanna encourage you. I don't, you know, don't put together a sympathy line for me. We don't need a meal train. We're okay, okay. We're, I'm not asking for that kind of attention on this. What I'm trying to do is just help you understand that, man, everybody's going through something.

Everybody needs your help on something. It's always hard to talk about. It's always worth it. I swear some of you's gonna give me, one of you's gonna give me a meal train this week and I'm just, I'm gonna be a little annoyed, but you're just doing what I told you to do in the sermon. So I can't be mad at you. Look, so look, do this. Pray for me, pray for my healing, okay? I'm worried. I've got a deep hip pain, okay? That's not a small thing. This isn't like a, this isn't like a bruise or something. This is painful. And I could be totally fine at being a wimp about, I have no idea, right? I'm gonna see a specialist sometime soon, probably, but my encouragement is don't let me be the only one talking about this. Don't leave me hanging out here, okay? I just did this in front of like a lot of you and I can't control how you think about me. I can't do any of that, but neither can you.

All you can do is just kind of be honest and open. So do it, right? Whatever's holding you back, just do it. Just get over that, jump in, admit it, talk about it, jump into a home group where you have people that wanna be there and love you in your moment. Don't just go to a coffee shop and like really hope somebody's there that can listen to your problems. Man, go to a home group. So much more advantageous for you to be able to do that. So that's my encouragement. Make that time, give and take honesty, and then leverage your own adversity.

Don't be too ashamed. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for the way that you made us, bad hips and all. Pray that you would help us to listen when you tell us to be honest and open. Pray that you would help us to listen, to jump into community with eyes wide open. Not thinking it's gonna be some perfect place where everybody else is okay and they can help us, but that we're all just leveraging adversity. Help us to take whatever that next step is. It's your name that we pray, amen. Before we stand, I just wanna invite you, if you wanna talk about something other than my hip,

we can talk about my hip after, but for this time, I want you to respond, right? If you need to talk about something going on, if you need to take a step, if you just got me, if you need prayer, if you need something, say it. Say it, come see me. I'm gonna be back there at those couches and chairs and they're really comfortable, and if it's just music there, it's kinda sad. So my encouragement is come talk to me, come say something. Let's stand as we say it.