One Body, Many Gifts

Transcript

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

Thank you, Joey. Joey Quiniones has come to us, a recommendation of many, including David Tribble. Joey, thank you, man. It was a joy having you. It is a joy having you with us today. Last week, Daniel Oster did a great job kind of helping us hone in on God's will, okay? And he helped us have this kind of this dividing line between the book of Romans, which is what we're going to be in. This morning we're going to start in verse chapter 12 verse 3, going to be in Romans 12:3 today. And he spent a lot of time talking about how in Romans 1 through 11, and really 9 through 11 in particular, which is what our last series is on, we spent a lot of time on knowing kind of who God is, but then in chapters 12 through 16, we kind begin this whole big thing on how we relate to God. In all of these different situations that we find ourselves in, how do we relate to God? And

we often hear people that are trying to find God's will, like it's elusive or mysterious. And last week Daniel Oster brought us through chapter 12 verses 1 and 2, and he began to solve that mystery for us a little bit. He You say, look, if you wanna kind of live according to God's will, if you wanna find God's will, you look back and you find God's faithfulness, you kill your selfishness so you kind of deny that I know better impulse. And then you allow Holy Spirit renovation, which is what we at our church call the spiritual journey. Okay, Holy Spirit renovation is just the idea of asking God to change you from the inside out. Okay, change you from the inside out. We don't believe change happens from the outside in, we happen from the inside out. And when we do though, when we start on that journey, we often ask the question, what is God's will for my life?

And it's a very common question. We happen upon this question when we are facing major decisions typically. So, you know, moving, dating, career, you know, big permanent changes. And what we do, we ask this question and we ask it because we really want to be sure. We're trying to remove doubt, right? But sometimes the way we ask this question is a little weird because it kind of pretends that, it kind of pretends that God's will is a needle in a haystack for us to search through, find, and then have, okay? That's not really what God's will is. And this question, what's God's will for my life, kind of imposes that scene on us. So let me just invite us to ask it differently. Instead of asking what's God's will for my life, maybe we start to ask what is my life according to God's will, right? Right, what is God's will? What is it saying, and then what's my life according to that, right?

We're talking about it in life in terms of rhythm, of behavior, of perspective, instead of I'm gonna find God's will for this one decision and then now it's mine and I have the decision, thank you God, I'm gonna go over here now. That's not really what Romans 12 talks about, that's not really what the New Testament talks about, it's not what all the Bible talks about. The Bible talks about what is our life according to God's will, how does my life correspond to what God is doing?

How do I raise my children according to God's will? How do I love my coworkers, how do I love my family, How do I do exceptional work according to God's will? And this is where we begin in Romans 12, verse three. And I want you, it's really interesting because I want you to see the direction it takes even in the first three verses where we're looking three through five, right? It's an amazing direction. So just so that we kind of have it in our mind. Verses one and two kind of set the whole table for the next five chapters, 12 through 16, okay? And they really set the table for that.

And in the next three verses, three, four, and five, it really tends to, it really kind of points out, it's almost like focusing a light into a laser, right? It really kind of focuses down on that. So let's keep reading, let's find what it's talking about here. Romans, chapter 12, verse three, first part, it says, for by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think. Literally, this is saying don't think in hyperthink. Or another way to put it would be don't overthink yourself. Okay? This is the same idea as maybe hyping yourself up, right? So we talk about this like, oh, okay, I'm just getting hyped up, I'm getting hyped up, right? This is, don't say, look, don't hype yourself up in your own mind, like don't overestimate your value, okay? And then what does it say instead to do second part of verse three, it says,

but think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. So if you're going to find your life according to God's will, the starting point begins on how you see yourself. What is your estimation of yourself? And although it can be incredibly difficult to discuss, it is fundamental to discovering kind of your spiritual journey. If you would consider a map, right, like all I can think of is a mall map, but there's other kinds of maps, right? If you're in a big place, Disney World, if you're in a big place and you have a map, somebody gives you a map and you're like, oh, okay, great. We went to a, last weekend we went to Lake Whitney, park, right? And if you have a map of Lake witness, great. But if you don't know where you are, that map is worthless, right? You're like, oh great, I have a map. I can see where everything is laid out, but I don't know where I am. Maps don't help

you if you don't know where you are, and when you do, when you pinpoint where you are on the map, everything else makes sense. Everything else opens up, right? That's how maps work, okay? So what we need to understand, what we need to, with Romans 3 telling us, look, look, know where you are. Know who you are. We're gonna find that in the next couple of verses. Okay, so let's keep reading. And when we do, as we do, I just want to tell you, kind of just have some perspective here. What we're gonna discover whenever we begin to kind of see ourselves like we need to, we're gonna discover that we need to, we need to see that we're part something bigger than ourselves, we need to, we also need to find our part in that something bigger and we need to see where that something bigger is going, okay. In order to see ourselves rightly, we need to see where part of something bigger,

how we contribute to that individually, and then where that something bigger is going, okay. So we're gonna start with kind of what what 3b said, what talked about the measure of faith that God has assigned, okay. What is this measure of faith. Let's keep reading verses 4 and 5. It says, for as in one body we have many members and the members do not all have the same function so we though many are one body in Christ and individually members one of another. I want you to consider a baseball team. So that won't be totally difficult. Consider a baseball team. And I want you to consider that a short stop, right, if I'm from Corey Seager, I'm not running behind the plate to catch the pitch, right. In fact, if I'm the short stop and I run behind the plate to catch the pitch, to do the catcher's job, then I'm actually leaving a hole at short stop, okay. I'm not running, I'm not doing what I'm supposed to do, and if I'm

the pitcher if I'm maybe from Nathan Yuvaldi. I'm not running after I pitch, I'm not running to center field to try to catch the pop fly, okay? I'm not doing that and we know this and I am saying it this way because I need you to understand that that teams function well when everybody knows their role, when everyone knows their position, okay? So that so that there's trust, right? So if I'm shortstop I trust the catcher to catch the ball. If I'm the pitcher I trust the center fielder, okay? What verses three through five is saying is that if we're gonna see ourselves rightly, we need to see ourselves as part of a team, as members of one body, as members of one another. And this is where we need to get this, right? This is Romans chapter 12 verses one through five. We talked about one and two last week, three through five right this second. If you want to see yourself rightly, if you don't want to

Don't overestimate yourself. If you wanna understand where you have a measure of faith that God has assigned to you, then you need to begin, begin with the team that you're on. And the team that you're on is the local church. Verses four through five tell us this. It says you're part of a body. Now look, you can kind of universalize that. You can say like, oh, we're all part of the big body. Okay, that's fantastic. What you have here though is an apostle writing to a church talking about them, that church, a local church. And what he's saying is you want to be a living sacrifice, you want to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, what it talks about in verses one and two, you want to know God's will, right, you want to know your life according to God's will, then that road goes straight through a local church. It's one of the only ways to grow spiritually.

It's one of the only ways to live your life according to God's will is through a local church. Now, listen, it is very, very, very common for people to say, well look, I'm a Christian, but I'm not part of a church, I don't need a church. If I want a church, I can go out in the woods and go and find God there. God's not only in this church building, and I don't mean to say that. I don't believe that God lives here. This is not, in that sense, God's house.

This is not that. But let me tell you, the thought that people don't need churches to grow is a relatively new thought in the history of all Christianity. It's about, I don't know, maybe about 150 year old thought. And it also, again, might seem like I'm saying that churches control salvation, but that's not what I'm saying. Let me show you, let me show you what I'm saying with the text, because the text assumes it, human nature shows it, and to be blunt,

we are culturally blind to it. We're kind of predisposed against it. So let me show you how the text assumes it. Remember, all of Romans 1 through 11, It kind of is culminating into Romans 12. Romans 12 begins with these big statements about living for Jesus. And then immediately in the next three verses it talks about, it turns to the local church body as if to say all of this truth we just covered in the first 11 chapters of Romans, all this big view of God, these huge implications, these cosmic realities that are bearing down on you, these tectonic plates of faith that are just shifting moving and you're a part of that all those things that you see all of that the way you respond to that primarily is through a spiritual family that's what you see in Romans 12 1 through 3 the text assumes it human nature also shows that we have this a really great analogy of a biological family right in a

biological family they those are foundational spaces for people to grow little kids to grow and discover who they are and kind of how they fit into society and so parents and extended family and siblings they display to to us how to live how to grow how to be local churches work the same way they they are a foundational space for disciples to understand who they are in Jesus Christ both both what's true about them in in Christ but also how they're gifted, how they're made. When you serve people that you know, when you serve people that love you, you find something that you don't find out in the woods, right? It's different. Lastly, I want to say that we are culturally blind to that. We kind of have a bias toward individuality, okay? Within the New Testament, so I don't know if you know this, but the New Testament from Matthew all the way to Revelation was written in Greek.

Greek, Koine Greek, first century Greek, a very particular kind of Greek. Okay, when you are reading the New Testament, you are translating from Greek to English, but you are also translating from individualistic thinking to family thinking, right? So we kind of come to the Bible with this incredibly individualistic lens. In fact, it doesn't do us any service, it really doesn't, but in English, you, Y-O-U, is both plural and singular.

You have a plural you. Okay, in the south, we have a y'all. That's why we have a y'all, because you ain't plural. Y'all is plural, okay? All right, just saying. But our Bibles don't have y'all in them. Although I think we could start something. We could have a y'all Bible. Okay, I'm just, I'm up for it, I'm up for it. It doesn't help us because sometimes we read you and it means y'all and we think ourselves and it means our church. That's a big miss, especially for us. Individualistically bent people, right? It's a big miss. And so whenever I say people, sorry, When people say that people don't need churches to grow, they are ignoring the text. They're ignoring what the Bible's actually saying. They're running contrary to human nature and they're being more American than they are Christians. People do need local churches. The primary expression and the primary avenue for you

to grow is through a local church. And it doesn't, it doesn't, you know, like somehow give us the keys to people's salvation. That's not what I'm talking about. But I'm talking about in the New Testament, it says, okay, you want to grow, you want to serve, you want to love, you want to, you want to climb up on the altar and be a living sacrifice. Start with the local church. That's where you're going to go. And that's what the first three verses here tell us. We need local, local churches to grow spiritually. But then the text is also going to show us how, in other words, we don't just need to be around a local church family. We need to know how we're gonna be in a church, verse six. Romans 12, verse six. It says, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. Okay, we are about to hit on a very particular thing. This is what is typically referred to as spiritual gifts.

Okay, there are several different lists of these in the Bible, Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, 1 Peter 4. Okay, a couple places. When those Ephesians four, when those gifts are listed, sometimes people wanna just kinda throw them all together. I don't know if that's wise, I don't really know if that's how scripture is talking about them, but what we're gonna do, we're just gonna look at these gifts kind of in isolation. Okay, we're not gonna talk about all the spiritual, there's seven listed here. We're gonna quickly look at each gift and then we're gonna talk about We're gonna look at kinda what scripture says about motivation for serving in those gifts. The life that serving in these gifts creates and the church family that serving in these gifts creates. Okay, so when I say quickly, I mean you can time me, I'm gonna be less than 20 seconds on each one. If somebody wants to keep time, that's fine.

We're gonna quickly look at each gift, Romans 12, 6b through seven, so it starts to list them. It says if prophecy in proportion to our faith, service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching. So it's listing gifts at this point. So the first one is prophecy. Okay, so it says prophecy. So what is that? First Corinthians 14-3 prophets speak to people for their building and encouragement and consolation. Okay, prophecy is not writing Bible. Okay, nobody's writing Bible anymore. If somebody says, I have a word from the Lord and it contradicts what's here, they're wrong. Okay, First Corinthians 14 actually says that 1429 says let people weigh out what prophets declare okay no one's no one's speaking with with extra biblical authority right that's not happening when I come my authority given me as as a pastor here in this church is is to is to preach this authoritatively but it's not my

authority per se that that I bring to the Bible it's actually the the authority that the Bible has that it confers to me, right? That's how that works, okay? And so if anybody says like, I'm a brand new apostle and I have a brand new word from the Lord that contradicts most of what the New Testament says, I'm just saying run. Don't stay there. That's a bad idea, okay?

Holiness, oh, excuse me, prophecy is not a holy sneeze. It's not uncontrollable. It's not like, oh, I got a word, I got a word, I got a word, I got to say something. 1 Corinthians 14, 32, that the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets, okay? So that's what it's not, what it is. In this gift you tell the body what time it is. If you have the gift of prophecy, you remind people of God's timely word. You are in a sense a standard bearer, a holder.

My wife has the gift of prophecy, and it's a good thing, and every once in a while she just sees something that makes her mad. She's like, this is wrong. It shouldn't be this way. And it just makes you mad. If that happens to you, it could be prophecy. Okay, let's move. I'm over my 20 seconds. Second, second give, table service. In Acts 1, it talks about table service,

that you're kind of solving logistics of Acts 6:1, the widows being neglected in the daily distribution of food. So you are taking care of logistics. You are prepping things. You are setting up meal trains. You're setting up for events. your coordinating things, you're caring for little kids, this is table service. In this gift, you help the body run better. You meet needs well. You often shun the limelight and you kind of run to the place where nobody can see you and you're prepping and you're busy and you like that. That's table service, or service it is also called. That same word for table service or for service right there is deacon. So it's not the role, per se, but it is that same function. Third gift, teaching. This is less classroom, more living room, okay? This is Jesus with the disciples. He's not just informing them of things, he is demonstrating those things.

He's modeling those things. You have Paul with Timothy, Paul with Titus, same idea that he is demonstrating these things. This is information embodied. You are demonstrating the truth. In this gift, you help the church pass the faith on and to love truth, right? To hate ignorance, to hate repeated mistakes, okay? This is what teachers are trying to do, okay?

Romans 12a talks about more gifts, the one who exhorts. So in exhorting, Hebrews 10, 24 says, to spur one another on, to love and good deeds. Okay, you are lifting people up, but there's a bit of an edge to it, okay? I don't know if you've ever been spurred on the side, It does not feel awesome, okay? Spurs hurt. And so to spur or to stir up one another to loving Godesus is encouragement, right? This is like, hey, do it, right? Hey, get this thing done. James 2:18, it says, I'll show you my faith by what I do. And that's kind of a life verse for somebody who is into exhortation. In this gift, you spur the church into action. You want people to do what they are created to do. and so you encourage them toward that end. You say, listen, I know you're made for this, you're not doing this, I'm annoyed at you, please do it. Okay, that is encouragement, promise.

You also want the church to accomplish its mission, okay. Giving is another one. Giving's another spiritual gift. Acts 4:34, you have people selling things to help needy Christians. Second Corinthians 8:14, you have, within the church, that this idea that money should be kind of generously shared. It's not a commune. It's just still your money, but you're sharing it, right? The point of it is that people should give. And that spiritual gifting of giving, it doesn't just pertain to rich people now. You know, you'd be like, oh, I'd love to have the spiritual gift of giving.

Although people that are good at giving are good with money, It's more true that they are good stewards generally. So sometimes that's money and sometimes that's, many, many other things. What you do is you help the church grow good things. You help the church grow good things by investing in them. Sometimes that's people, sometimes that's initiatives, but you invest in good things. You wanna see good things grow and you understand kind of intuitively those things need investment. Those things need time, okay, giving, leading. First Timothy three, one through 13 talks about pastors and deacons' role in leading the church. If you go back to Acts six, you have a division of labor between logistics and word, okay? In leading, we talk about this a lot, but in leading, we help organize, leaders help organize the church for mobility, health, for obedience. Pastors work with the Holy Spirit to set course

for where our church is going. Deacons work with the Holy Spirit to pave that path, to make it happen logistically. That's how leaders work in the New Testament, and this is the gift of leading here. Sometimes you have a gift of leading without a role of leadership that's okay. You can still exercise that gift without an official role. But in leading, you come out of a deep care of people.

Last one is mercying. Your translation might have acts of mercy, or a couple of different translations. Literally, it's mercying, okay? That's what the Greek says, mercying. So what do you mean? If you are a mercier, then you are listening, you are helping pick up the pieces, right? You are ministering to people because you care about them deeply, okay? In this gift, you help the church process grief, pain, loss, suffering. You feel with people hard. It is sometimes hard for you to separate your feelings from what somebody else is feeling because you feel so hard for them, okay? You gravitate toward people that are down and out. I have a friend who's dad. They tease him because everybody who is emotionally needy or completely downtrodden, they immediately flock to him. He used to work at a church and they would just, he always finds those people, right? And I'm like, hey, he might have had

the spiritual gift of mercying. But when you do have that gift, you help people learn those things. So look, okay, so that's the seven kind of in a snap. If everyone is hitting all their assignments, then if we can look at these seven kind of holistically, if everybody's hitting their assignments in a church, the church body is listening to the Lord for obedience, prepping with logistics, demonstrating truth, spurring toward loving good deeds, investing in good things, organizing to move forward on mission, and they are cared for intentionally and genuinely. And that sounds like a great church to be a part of, honestly. That's awesome. That's a great kind of paradigm, even, for what our church should be. Okay, so we've seen these individual gifts. Let's look at a little bit about how they work together, which is what the rest of Romans 12 spends time on. Romans 12, nine, A begins.

It kind of kicks off this, I'll describe it as hodgepodge. It's just kind of a, It's a various and sundry kinds of encouragement, okay? And there's more maybe stylistic connections than there are thematic. In other words, you're not gonna read Romans 12:9 through 21 and go, okay, I see this universal theme here. But it's really, there's more of a heading, and this is the heading, let love be genuine. Let love be genuine, okay? Gifts only work in love. If you are trying to find God's will for your life, your life according to God's will, you're in a local church, you begin to discover your gifting as you serve, you serve in those gifts, it doesn't work if you don't love people, right? And so I wanna look at three obstacles and three cultivators of love, and we'll see kinda each one in these chunks that we look at. This is a big chunk, Romans 12, nine, B through 13.

Let's read all this together. It says, abhor what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful and zeal, be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints. And seek to show hospitality. Okay. When you look at these, there's kind of something that bubbles to the surface a little bit. And then if we're gonna pick out an obstacle to love, then that obstacle would be guilt.

You cannot love out of guilt. You can't do it. You can try and you can think you're pretty awesome for it, but you're not alleviating anything and you're not really loving people because when it talks about showing honor, when it talks about being fervent in prayer, when it talks about rejoicing in hope, none of those things can happen whenever you're motivated by guilt. Guilt blocks all of those things. In fact, in most religious activity, Most religious activity within local churches all across this great nation, and I'm sure throughout history and throughout the world, the big temptation is just to heap on a lot of religious guilt, to say like, hey, you should really do this, because it's the right thing to do. You ought to do this. Well, there's nothing wrong with saying that somebody ought to do something, but if it's void of any kind of real motivator, then eventually it's gonna kind of eat itself.

It's gonna just, you're just gonna burn out. You're not gonna know why you're doing something. You're just motivated by guilt every once in a while. If that's an obstacle, then what's the cultivator here that's maybe the opposite of that, and that's worship. Worship cultivates loving motivation. When you are serving in your gifts, truly, when you are serving in your gifts,

somebody would have to actually suppress what the Holy Spirit wants to do in you. Does that make sense? When you're worshiping, okay, worship Jesus, here's my kind of, my challenge. Worship Jesus and then try not to serve somebody in your gifting. It's really hard, okay. Worship the Lord and then try to suppress that desire that you have to give to somebody else, to encourage them, to teach them, to declare truth to them. When you worship Jesus, those gifts come out. It's not, look, if you need to get beat down with a religious whip to do anything religiously, anything in a local church, then you're doing it wrong. I'm not really good with the whip, okay? I don't particularly like whipping people into anything, because I think it's just, even if you get what you want, you don't get what you want. What I want, what I want for you, your pastor talking to you right now,

what I want for you is for you to worship Jesus and for that to erupt in service in your gifting. That is the only scenario that's good. That's what I want. And so whipping people metaphorically, I don't actually have a whip. Okay, it's your first Sunday, I don't threaten people with whips all the time. A lot. Gifts only work in love, guilt doesn't work, worshiping cultivates. Let's look at the next one. versus 14 through 16 of Romans 12.

This is three couplets of kind of response, right? So here we go, verse 14 says, bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another, do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly, never be wise in your own sight. So there's these three couplets of how to respond to people. When reviled, bless. When people need company, be company. And with everybody, generally strive for harmony beyond your status or beyond your insecurity, right? Love does not work in selfish busyness. If you're always onto your next thing, if you're always onto your family's next thing, and if that's the only thing you've got going on,

then you cannot respond when others need you. you'll miss it, because you'll be too busy with your eye on the ball of your own life, of your own family. You can't see what other people need. You can't respond to that. You cannot love in selfish business. Look, people are busy, it's fine. Nothing wrong with that, nothing demonic. But selfish business is time. Time with people, presence, that cultivates a loving motivation. And to put it bluntly, people make time for what's important to them. Right, people prioritize things that they believe are important. People do what makes sense to them, right? There's much to be said about being present in somebody else's life. We have a mentoring ministry that is going on and part of just that mentoring ministry is just being present in somebody else's life. Like, there really is nothing magical about attending a kid's soccer game.

There's nothing actually magical about it at all, but it is a genuine expression of love. When that kid understands, this adult is here just to see me. Mom and dad, they kind of have to be here, let's be honest. But this other person over here, they don't have to be. They love me. That's love, time, right? Prioritize, here's the application, prioritize praying for your church family.

And I think just a good diagnostic question would be like in the last three weeks, just last three weeks, you don't get any credit for anything that happened more than three weeks ago. Okay. In the last three weeks, how responsive have you been to your church family? Did you know when people needed company? Did you know when people were rejoicing to rejoice with them? Did you know when people were sad so that you could cry with them? Did you know what was going on? Gifts only work in love. Worship cultivates love. Time cultivates love. As these things are happening, as worship and time with each other's happening, churches grow and you grow at the same time. This is what Ephesians 4:16 talks about, about the whole church building itself up in love. It's the idea that, look, it's not just that you're benefiting somebody else, it's that you actually benefit in that process, right?

That there is an exchange even. And you're not trying to exchange anything, you're just serving them out of love. It still works, let's look at the last one. And we're only gonna look at verse 19. Verses 17 through 21 are written like a poem. They're written in what's called chiastic structure. I don't need to go into that that much, but it's just that say that the main point is in the middle. In chiastic structure, the main point is in the middle. So in the middle, it's verse 19, it says, beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. You cannot love in self-preservation mode.

If you're taking vengeance for yourself, if you are trying to repay every evil that is paid to you, then you are in self-preservation mode. And if you don't believe me, all you need to do is to compare marriage advice with war strategy. Okay, some of you might know the war strategist Sun Tzu. Okay, famous war strategist, he wrote The Art of War, Not a light read, not a book I'm gonna recommend exactly. It's interesting though. One of the things he says is all warfare is based on deception. If that is your marriage strategy, that will not work for very long. Okay, some of you that is your marriage strategy and you gotta repent right now, but not even a laugh. I really hit y'all like in a deep place. I'm sorry. Man. Marriage requires the opposite of that, right? Marriage requires openness to pain, openness to hurt, to loss, to struggle. Self-preservation mode is the opposite of that.

Self-preservation mode closes you off to all those things. And it makes, eventually, it makes close relationships impossible. When you're going for your own vengeance, you're saying, in effect, I'm the only one that is going to take care of me. I'm the only one that I can count on. That's self-preservation mode. That's when you're taking vengeance. The opposite of that vulnerability, vulnerability creates loving motivation in you.

Verse 20 of the 17 through 21, verse 20 says to love your enemy. Verse 21 says do not become, sorry, do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good. Do you know how much vulnerability it takes to overcome evil with good. When somebody's being evil to you, to be good to them, genuinely good to them, you risk everything. You risk being made fun of, you risk being thought a fool, you risk all of those things, right? It's vulnerable to do that. If you can think of it, this is kind of a visceral example, but if you can think of it like, somebody being evil towards you is like somebody coming up and they're ready and they're gonna punch you right in the face. And what, it's talking about loving your enemy, Again, this is probably not good war strategy, but emotionally, it's just standing there with your arms down, just waiting to take the punch. That's a metaphor.

I'm not telling people to take abuse, but I am telling people, if you're going to return good, when you get evil, it's like getting hit in the face. It requires a vulnerability that moves past Even when you are hurt, even when you are taken advantage of, even when you lose things, even when you suffer things, still being vulnerable. But it is the only way to trust God to take up your cause.

It's the only way to put that in the Lord's hand and say, Lord, you know what's happening against me, but this is yours, so I'm just gonna put this in your hands, vengeance is yours, Not mine, it's hard. Hard to do even within a church family, right? People hurt each other, families hurt each other, okay? It is not always easy, okay, being in a family. And sometimes you get hurt the worst in a family.

And the same is true for a spiritual family. Listen, I've heard many stories, okay? Many stories about people coming to check in our church and they will say, hey, I was, listen, I went to this church over here and I was really hurt. I went to that church over there and I was really hurt. And it's not that I disbelieve them, right? But it is to say like, that happens, man. It's not to excuse it, but it's to say like, yeah, like, something really bad happened to your church and then you were excluded or you were maligned or you were misrepresented or you weren't contacted quick enough, it happens. It does, it does. There's no way to be in a church family and guard yourself from all of that. We must give ourselves to it. Gifts only work in love, in worship. We only truly begin to see who we are as we exercise those gifts in that family, as we purposely worship, as we purposely spend time,

as we are purposely vulnerable. And that's not only how life in a church works, it's also how life works. It's also how our spiritual life works. Some of you are facing a tough time. Maybe you are up against a deep frustration or a crisis. Has you kind of guessing what to do next? Or you've just, even just, you've got a big decision. My encouragement to you is take some time to worship in the midst of that. Take some time to spend time praying for other people and their needs in the midst of that. Don't cave in on yourself. Don't do it. There's nothing there.

Don't slip into self-preservation mode. Don't believe the lie that you're the only one taking care of you. Because it's not just how it works in the church, it's also how it works with us. When we are in the midst of whatever we are facing that's frustrating, when we reach out, we ask for help, we stick our hand up and we say, Lord, I need you, listen, whenever we're worshiping, I know that many of you are not like the two hands raised type, some of you are the one hand raised type. I just wanna encourage you, sticking your hand up is sometimes just good because it shows just like, Man, I'm just, the Lord's the only one that can help me. That's a good thing to do. That's a good gesture to have, okay? It doesn't mean anything else about you, it just means that you are reaching out for help for the Lord. Look, man, that should be our posture, right? We should walk around with one hand raised,

sometimes with two, okay? If my shirt were better, I'd pick two hands up more, but I can't without being too revealing. We should read Romans 12. And we should find this pathway, not just to using our spiritual gifts, but to understand that we are a part of something bigger. Joy, I want you to come on back up. It's not just that we are using gifts that we're a part of something bigger, and that something bigger is something that we contribute to individually. That something bigger is something that the Lord God in heaven has for us to participate in.

My encouragement to you is as we sing, as we pray, my encouragement to you is to respond to that. If there's something that you need to do, if there's something that you need to pray for, if there's something that you need to, you just need help processing on that. I'm gonna be at that couch, just in the back of that room, right over there. It's a comfortable couch. I've sat on it, it's nice. So I'm gonna sit at that couch, I'm gonna be standing near the couch. If you wanna talk, if you wanna work things through if you need prayer, I'm gonna be right back there and I wanna encourage you to do that. So as we've seen this last song, my encouragement is mean it, right? Let's take these words and let's sing it to the Lord. Let me pray for us. Lord, we ask for you. Not anything else, not anyone else, no other help but you. You call us to be a part of a local church.

You can be a part of a spiritual family. Help us to do that. Help us to respond well. Help us to pursue it. Genuinely, vulnerably, in worship, in prayer, sacrifice of time.