Crucial Conversations Jesus and the Screwup (Northwest)

Transcription

1 Transcript Jake Barker John 21:15-24 Hey everyone. Welcome to Traders Point. Man, we are so glad that you are here. Can you help me welcome Myron, our newest worship leader, to the staff? Man, we are so excited to have him. Myron grew up here at Traders Point, in fact, and now he is on our worship staff and we are so excited to have him. But like he said if this is your first time or you re a guest we are just so honored to have you and make this a part of your weekend. We know that coming to church for the first time can kind of be intimidating. Maybe even a little weird. So what we want to do is shorten a step for you and send you to one place after the service and that s Connection Central. It s right out in the lobby and you can meet some great people. Some of the leaders will be hanging out there after the service. We d love to say, Hey. On top of all of that there s a free t- shirt waiting for you. Who doesn t love a free t-shirt? School is about to start and you need to look fresh, alright? Get a shirt. Stop by Connection Central. We d love to say, Hey. If you are new you need to know that we are one church that each and every weekend meets in multiple locations. So you, right now, are at the northwest campus. We have a North campus that meets in Creekside Middle School in Carmel and we are so excited about the launch in early 2017 of our Downtown, Indianapolis campus. We re super pumped about it. It s going to be awesome. If you are thinking and praying about being a part of the launch team or if you have some questions about what the Downtown campus will look like then there is a date that you need to put on your calendar: Thursday, August 11 at 6:30 p.m. It s at the Downtown location, 1201 N. Delaware Street in downtown Indy. It will be a time when we will pray together and worship together and meet some of the other people who might be a part of that team and then you also get to check out the new digs, which is pretty cool. We re super pumped about the Downtown campus and cannot wait to see what God is going to do. We love our city and we are honored to be a small part of the big plans He has for us. So check it out: Downtown on Thursday, August 11, at 6:30 p.m. Now this summer we ve been in a sermon series called Crucial Conversations. What we ve been doing is taking snap shots from the ministry of Jesus and watching as He interacts with all kinds of different people. So we ve seen Him meet a skeptic and a scholar. We saw Him meet someone for the very first time a woman at a well. And then we saw Him, last week, interact with two of His friends whom He had known for a really long time. In the midst of the diversity of interactions there are actually two threads that are common in each conversation that Jesus has had. The first one is this: Jesus never demands that anyone come to Him. He always went to them. He didn t demand that they come on His turf because Jesus is not some detached deity who lives in an ivory tower and watches us live our lives. No, Jesus is God with flesh on. He came to live amongst us. So He sought these people out. Then number two: He always presented them the truth in a way that they could understand. So, He made the truth about Himself accessible to everyone that He met. He met them where they were then He made the truth accessible. We re going to see that again today.

2 If you have a Bible or a Bible app, we re going to turn to John, chapter 21. That s where we re going to be. That s where we re going to find our next crucial conversation. You can get a head start and head that way. If you don t have a Bible it s no sweat. We ll put the Scriptures up on the screen. What we re going to see today is maybe the tightest relationship that we ll see all summer. This person was incredibly close to Jesus but their relationship was kind of awkward in this moment because this person had let Jesus down in a pretty spectacular way. So, that s where we are going to be in John, 21. Maybe you know what it s like to let someone down whom you love. You said you were going to do something and then you didn t do it and then you had to deal with the consequences. I was trying to think of a way to illustrate that this weekend and so this week as I was preparing I texted my wife and I said, Babe, can you think of a time that I ve let you down? I don t know why I did that because she responded with a very specific list as if she had been waiting for me to ask this question for a really long time. I think she had a Word document saved somewhere. She was just ready for this moment. She said, Well there are times where I will send you to the grocery store for one thing and you will come home with a bag full of food except for the one thing that I sent you for. In my defense, when beef jerky is on sale it s easy to get distracted. We didn t need the garbanzo beans anyway, alright? It s not my fault. And then she said, There are the times when you pick the movie that we re going to watch, right? It s my job and she says that I m terrible at it. So it s not my fault Ten Clover Field Lane was a pretty good movie until the last 20 minutes and then it just got super weird. That s not my fault. I didn t write that movie. Last night we watched Back to the Future II so I won on that one, alright? That was a really good choice. And then she said that there was that time when I didn t give her her birthday present until October and her birthday is in January. Now in my defense there s no defense on that one. That was just bad and that one s on me. That one s on me. Maybe you know what that s like. You love somebody you ve been mean to. You said you were going to do something and you didn t do it and you let them down. And what we re going to see in John 21 is a spectacular let down. In fact this failure threatened the very fabric of the relationship almost to the point where you weren t sure the relationship was going to survive, one of those moments. In John 21 we re going to meet a guy named Peter. And if you re not all that familiar with the Bible, if church is really new to you man, we are so glad that you are here. Let me give you a quick character summary of our guy Peter. See Peter, politely put, is one of those action oriented guys. He was a ready, fire, aim kind of fellow. He just acted before he fully thought through all of the consequences. So there was the time when Jesus was walking out to His disciples who were on a boat and Jesus was walking on water. And Peter decided he wanted to go meet Jesus and so he jumped out of the boat and he began to walk on water as well only to look down and remember science, you know like science doesn t allow for this. So he began to sink when he took his eyes off of Jesus. Then there was another time when, in order to defend Jesus from being arrested, Peter took out his sword and he cut the ear off of one of the guards. I don t know if he had spectacular aim and that s what he meant to do or if he was going for the head and just missed. I don t know which but either way Jesus 2

3 grabbed the ear and snapped it back on the guy Mr. Potato Head style just right there. And He said, Peter, that s not what we are doing right now, alright. He acted before he thought. That s the way Peter rolled. But to Peter s credit, before he becomes too disparaging, he is one of the most courageous guys in the entire Bible. He was bold in his faith, he claimed Jesus for who He was unlike anyone else. Peter deserves a lot of credit. And, in fact, I find myself a lot in the life of Peter and maybe you will to because in Peter s life there were temporary moments of brilliance to be followed by temporary seasons of disaster. Can anybody resonate with a spiritual life like that? Yeah, me too. There are times when it looks like I have my stuff together and I figure it out and I do the right thing only to have the very next day follow with complete disaster. This is the roller-coaster of a spiritual life. It really describes the life of Peter. In John 21 we find Peter in a real awkward moment because he promised that he wouldn t do something and then he did it and now he is trying to figure out what to do next. See, late in the life of Jesus He s having this dinner party with His disciples. His disciples are the guys who followed Him, and learned from Him, and they were supposed to represent Him. And Jesus begins to foreshadow His own death there at that dinner party. And Peter s hearing that and he s like, This is lunacy. And because Peter is incapable of thinking something and not immediately saying it he blurts out to Jesus, No way. No way I would ever let you get arrested. No way You re ever dying. I will fight for You. I have Your back. I would die for you, Jesus. That s what he tells Him and then if you fast forward the story just a little bit later, Jesus has been arrested, and He s undergoing this illegal trial and Peter s there. And he s standing on the fringes. He s worried about Jesus safety. He s worried about his own safety. He s huddled around this charcoal fire. And that night Peter had three opportunities to follow his word. He had three opportunities to be the leader, to be the brave leader that he thought he was. People asked him, Do you know that guy? Aren t you one of Jesus followers? Aren t you one of His disciples? And he denied Jesus every single time. And in the Gospel of Luke we read that the third time that Peter denied Jesus, Jesus looked at Him. He made eye contact. Can you imagine the weight of that moment in the life of Peter? It says that he was crushed. He ran away. He was humiliated. And what we see Peter do, right there in that moment, is follow a path that you and I know all too well. In fact it s a path that we follow on a daily basis. It s really simple. It s three steps. We begin with this: I said I wouldn t, but then I did, and now what? Anybody know that path? I said I wouldn t do that thing, I said I wouldn t go back to that relationship, I said I was going to change my life then I didn t, now what? I said I wouldn t, then I did, now what? So I said I wasn t going to cut corners at work anymore but the project was due, my co-workers weren t carrying their weight, and I had to get it in so then I did. Now what? Or you and your boyfriend, you committed to one another you said you weren t going to be alone late at night anymore. And then you were, and you did that thing again, now what? Or you said that you were going to delete that app off of your phone, and then you didn t, and you saw those images again, now what? All of us know what the now what feels like when we re asking that 3

4 question: now what? What we really mean is now what does God think about me? Now what am I supposed to do. Now how do I get back into God s good graces? In John 21 we re going to find Peter in the midst of his now what? He said he wouldn t, then he did, now what? See, historically speaking, Jesus has been crucified, and He s been buried, and He s been resurrected and Jesus has already appeared to His disciples twice before John 21 but it was always in a group setting. And so Peter has seen Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, but he hasn t had any time with Jesus one on one. It s always been with other people around. Can you imagine the anxiety that would cause in the life of Peter? All he wanted to do was talk to Jesus. All he wanted to do is to explain himself. All he wanted to do was to apologize but he hadn t had the chance yet until John 21. And we read that Peter was hanging out with some of the other disciples at a place called the Sea of Tiberius. And because they re guys, and because they don t sit around talking about their feelings, they are out fishing. That s what guys do. So these former, professional fishermen had had a terrible night of fishing. They didn t catch anything. And as the sun was rising this shadowy figure appeared on the shore and He called out to the disciples saying, Hey, why don t you cast your net on the other side of the boat? As if the professional fishermen hadn t thought of that. So they grab their net and they put it on the other side of the boat and they catch more fish than they could ever haul in. And this unlocks a memory in the minds of John and Peter. They are like, Wait a minute. This sounds all too familiar. I ve seen this movie before. Jesus did this before. That s not some shadowy figure. That s Jesus. And so Peter now has his moment and he is not going to miss his shot. So Peter, the ever impulsive one, jumps into the water, fully clothed, and swims to the shore. He doesn t wait for the boat to get there. He needs to talk to Jesus. He has desperately been waiting for this moment so that he could have his crucial conversation between him and Jesus. We re going to pick it up in verse 15. John, chapter 21 Jesus kicks off the conversation and He says this, When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these? He said to Him, Yes, Lord; You know that I love You. He said to him, Feed My lambs. So this is the first one on one conversation that Jesus and Peter have had since that thing that happened. And they re talking there on the beach. They ve finished breakfast. They ve have their conversation and Jesus kicks it off with a question. And it may seem a little odd at first. He says, Peter do you love Me more than these? And the these that are in question are the other disciples. So, essentially what Jesus is saying is, Peter, do you love me more than the other disciples love me. At first glance that seems like an odd question. Is Jesus playing favorites? Is He trying to make them compete? Why would He ask such a question? But what Jesus is doing is that He is making a point because Peter, in fact, did love Jesus more than the other disciples loved because He knew exactly what Jesus had forgiven him from. You see James and John they could only imagine what Peter was living with. And Thomas and Nathanael they could attempt to be empathetic. But no one knew the grief of Peter. No one knew what it was like to make eye contact with Jesus in their darkest moment. See Peter was incredibly aware of what sin he had committed. He was incredibly aware of what Jesus had forgiven Him from and that produced a great love in Him that exceeded all of the other disciples. And when you and I when we 4

5 come to full grips with what exactly Jesus has forgiven us from we will have the same love in our lives as well. But here s the problem. Here s the challenge for many of us. If we misunderstand our sin, we ll under appreciate His grace. One more time: If we misunderstand our sin, we ll under appreciate His grace. This is truly a serious problem for some of us. More specifically, if we misunderstand the weight of our sin, if we misunderstand the gravity, and the darkness, and the prevalence of our sin then we will under appreciate His grace. It s like a very nice gift but not something that we really need. You see, if we were to pull back all of the layers and get super honest and super real, there are some of us who have come to the conclusion that God really didn t save us from all that much. We had some messes, and yeah we had some indiscretions, and maybe we weren t perfect, But God didn t really save me from all that much. The only way that we can get to a conclusion like that is by playing the sin comparison game. Have you ever played that game? It s a blast. You should play it. Here s how it works. Really simple what you do is you acknowledge your sin. You say, Here s my mess. Here s my junk. Here s what I am dealing with. And then you find someone else who seems to have a darker and bigger mess and you feel better about yourself. That s the only way the game works, you know? You say, Well, at least I m not like them. At least I m not like those people. At least I m not like a terrorist. I m not a terrorist. That s the bar that Jesus set. At least I m not a terrorist. I m not killing people. I m not one of those evil people, alright? At least I m not like those people who when they place the toilet paper on the roll they put it behind against the wall instead of over like God intended. I m not a psychopath, alright? I m not one of those people so I m doing alright. What we do is that we say, Yeah, yeah I ve got a mess. I m messed up but I m not like that. Honestly, I m doing okay. I m relatively a pretty good person so God didn t really save me from all that much. And we know that we can t say that because it sounds super arrogant and there s no way that we would say it out loud. But here s how we do say it. When someone asks us our story we say, You know I really just don t have much of a testimony. That s not part of my story. Or, When I m telling my salvation story I really don t know who would want to hear it because I have a pretty good background. I had a pretty normal life. And what we re saying is, God didn t really save me from all that much. I was a pretty good person who just needed a little help but I didn t need to be saved from anything. And if it s possible that you ve walked yourself up to that conclusion let me give you some Biblical evidence that flies in the face of such a conclusion, alright? Paul writes this in Romans, chapter 3, For there is no distinction: for fall have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus... So Paul is making it very clear. He s saying that every single one of us has fallen short, every single one of us has sinned. There is no distinction. No disqualifier. No parameters. He says every single one of us has fallen short. That verse is meant to put us all on the same level but you and I have the tendency to kind of rank sin as if there are certain categories or certain tiers. We say, As long as I stay in tier one and never get to tier three, I can feel pretty good about myself. There s no evidence of that in the Bible but that s what you and I do. So Paul is saying, No, no, no. No distinction. Every single one of us has fallen short. 5

6 And we say, Okay. That s fine. I just did some of the light sin. I didn t do any of the heavy sins. And Paul says, No, no, no. Romans, chapter 6 says, For the wages of sin, not some sins, not those sins, not tier three sins,... the wages of sin, the consequences of sin, is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. So Paul is making two things very, very clear. Every single one of us has sinned and the consequence for every single sin is death. There is no such thing as death penalty sins and slap on the wrists sins. He s saying, No, every single one of them leads to death, even the ones that you and I rationalize. Even the ones that you and I excuse on a regular basis, every single one of them lead to death. So the wages of gossip is death. The wages of greed is death. The wages of lust is death. The wages of envy is death. See, the Bible is incredibly clear here. There aren t certain sins that are worse than the other, every single one of us has fallen short and every single one of us was headed toward death except Jesus stepped in and that changed everything. In fact, to paraphrase Pastor Tim Keller, he wrote it like this, My sin is worse than I think. His grace is better than I can imagine. My sin and I m talking about me right now. My sin is worse than I think. There are days that I try to avoid that reality and there are days that I try to compare myself to you, I try to compare myself to people on the news, I try to make myself feel better as if I m not really all that bad. My sin is worse than I think. It is far more prevalent than I d ever want to admit but His grace is far better than I could ever imagine. See I don t know if you realize that in every book that Paul writes he s like, Here, look. Here s the reality of sin. It is worse than we think but His grace is better. His grace is stronger. His grace is bigger. His grace is better than we can ever imagine. So here s why this matters. Here s why we ve only gotten through one verse. Here s why we ve only gotten through one question. We have to understand this, okay? Our gratitude the degree to which we are grateful to God for grace is directly tied to our understanding of sin. The level of gratitude that we will have toward God for saving us from our sin is absolutely tied to the way we understand the reality of our sin. And if we think that we are primarily good people who just needed a little bit of help, or that God didn t really save us from all that much then we will not develop the gratitude and the affection that God deserves. In fact, in the words of Jesus in Luke, chapter 7 He said, But he who is forgiven little, loves little. So for us, when we realize exactly what God has saved us from not some slap on the wrist, not some minor indiscretion but from the pit of hell, then we will develop the gratitude and the love that Peter had on that beach that morning. Let s rejoin the conversation in verses 16 and 17, Jesus keeps going on Peter, He said to him a second time, Simon, son of John, do you love Me? He said to Him, Yes, Lord; You know that I love You. He said to him, Tend My sheep. He said to him the third time, Simon, son of John, do you love Me? Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, Do you love Me? and he said to Him, Lord, You know everything; You know that I love You. Jesus said to him, Feed My sheep. So here on the beach, after breakfast, Jesus and Peter are having a conversation and Jesus asks the same exact question three different times, Peter do you love Me? And the imagery was not lost on 6

7 Peter. He knew what Jesus was doing. He was talking about the thing that happened. He was hugging the awkward. He was calling out the elephant in the room. Jesus was going after that moment. And we have to ask the question: why would Jesus do it like that? Was He being passive, aggressive? Was he trying to bring up the thing? Was he trying to rub Peter s face in his sin? What was Jesus doing? What we see right here is something that we ve seen in every conversation this summer. Jesus was leading Peter to conviction, not condemnation. Those things are totally, totally different. This is so, so important for us to understand, alright? He was leading Peter to conviction, not condemnation. See, when you and I have our spectacular failures and every single one of us have them when we fall on our face and totally make a mess of ourselves, we have a bunch of emotions in that moment. We just feel stuff. I learned a new word this week and it s appropriate for this moment. I m going to teach it to you. We re going to expand our vocabulary. You can impress all of your friends. And technically it s not a real word. So if you look it up in a dictionary it s not going to be there. But I love this word. I think it should be. It will be soon. It s the word pregret. On the count of three say that with me: pregret. Pregret is when you regret something that you re about to do. It s like preemptive regret. So when you walk into the house and you are welcomed by the aromas of Nestle Tollhouse you pregret eating 13 cookies. That s what you do, I m doing it. I know it s going to make me sick. I know that I m going to feel terrible but I m going for it. That s pregret. Or maybe you are a man of a certain age and you have yet to come to grips with what that really means. So every time that you re invited to play basketball with some young guns you say, Yes, even though you pregret the way that you re going to feel in the morning, alright? That s pregret. You re welcome. I taught you a new word. You can impress all of your friends. Now in a much more serious way there are two things that overwhelm our hearts in our moments of despair, when we fall on our face, when we completely just bite it it s these two things: shame and conviction. And these things are actually really, really different and what Jesus is leading Peter to is one not the other. You see shame is the humiliation that we feel for what we ve done. We re humiliated because we got caught. We re humiliated because other people know. We re humiliated because our reputation will never be the same. What happens is that shame rarely leads to healthy behavior. Shame leads to things like despair, and isolation, and depression. And the most twisted thing that shame does is that it threatens to become our identity. In fact, no longer is that a thing that we did, it s now who we are. And Peter was dangerously close to allowing his shame to become the rest of his story that forever he was going to be known as the guy who thought that he was brave but he wasn t, that talked a big game but he couldn t follow it up. He was the guy who denied Jesus three times and that was about to be Peter s story. But here s the thing. Jesus knows this about Peter and He knows it about you and me. Shame is an unacceptable destination. You and I cannot live there forever. So what Jesus was doing is that He was walking Peter from shame to a different place called conviction. 7

8 Conviction is very different than shame. See, conviction is when we look our sin dead in the eye and call it for what it is. We stop playing games. We stop shifting blame. We stop anything else. We look at our sin and we call it what it is. Conviction leads to healthy behavior called repentance. Repentance is just this fancy word that really means that I was headed down one path that was headed for sin and destruction and I m turning around. I m turning around through the power of the Spirit and I m headed back toward God. That s what repentance means. So Jesus is walking Peter through this conversation, asking him those questions not to condemn him but because He knew that shame was an unacceptable destination for Peter and it s unacceptable for you and me. That s what s happening on the beach here. Now there are some of you who are hearing this and you are stuck in your shame. You re humiliation is debilitating. It is threatening if not already becoming your identity. And what you did has now become who you are and you don t know where to turn. And if you think that that is the end of your story, may I lovingly point you to this moment between Jesus and Peter on the beach. See Peter betrayed Jesus. He denied Jesus. In the moment that He needed him the most, Peter was a coward and He ran away. And Jesus forgave him. And He set him on a new path. See Peter s story did not end in shame. It began with conviction that led to repentance and now he had a true purpose. Look what happens next in verses 18 through 19. Jesus just wraps up the conversation, Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go. (This He said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this He said to him, Follow me. So Jesus has now led Peter from shame to repentance. He s moved him from crushing guilt to redeeming purpose. And because Peter truly understood the weight of his sin, he fully appreciated the impact of Jesus grace, and he lived the rest of his life as a self-aware sinner saved by grace. And in this moment on the beach we see that grace is more than some get-out-of-hell-free card that we put on the shelf for when we die some day. But grace changes our lives here and now. See here s the truth for both Peter and for you and me. We were saved from something for something. You and I were saved from something for something. Peter was saved from his betrayal for the purpose of ministry. So maybe you don t know the rest of Peter s story but that same guy that same guy who was too afraid to stand up for Jesus in the face of opposition, the guy who woosed out would go on to preach the very first sermon in the history of the church and watch 3,000 people come to faith in Jesus. That s an incredible turn-around. But that s not to credit Peter. It s not because of his intellect. It s not because Peter deserved it. It s because that s what happens when grace takes over. We can turn around and we can do things that we never possibly imagined because of God s Spirit alone. We were saved from something for something. So I have a couple of questions that we re going to wrap up with today. I want you to ask yourself these questions, ask the people who you love these questions, in your Group talk about these. The first question is this: from what have you been saved? From what have you been saved? 8

9 Now there are some of you who are hearing this and you received the gift of grace. You did it. Jesus is your Lord and Savior but that was a while ago. And the good news has kind of become old news. And in this season of life you ve kind of become convinced that maybe it wasn t all that bad to begin with. And maybe you actually are a pretty good person and what you ve done is that you ve lost appreciation for just what God saved you from and your gratitude has deteriorated over that same period of time. And it is time, and I actually lovingly encourage you to wake up. The moment we convince ourselves that God didn t save us from really all the much is the moment we have fully lost sight of what God has done for us. And so, today is the day when you wake up and say, God, I remember. I remember that not only did I need you back then, but I need you today because I m still a mess, I m still a work in progress, and I m still a sinner saved by grace. And there are some of you here and you can t answer that question yet because you ve yet to receive Jesus. And maybe there are a bunch of different reasons why you ve kept Him at an arms-length distance. You ve kind of stiffed-armed Jesus for a long time. And maybe you ve been convinced that you don t need Him. You think that you re a good person who does relatively good things. You ve got some pretty good relationships. Yeah, you mess up every once in a while but you don t need to be saved from anything. I can t convince you of much. All I m going to say is that the Word of God disagrees and that Jesus sacrifice on a cross disagrees. And the beautiful thing is is that we don t have to avoid that truth anymore. We don t have to be ashamed of our sin because Jesus saved us from it. And we can just selfadmit I ll stand up here and self-admit to you that I needed to be saved and I am a sinner saved by grace. That s all I am. I have nothing to boast in other than Jesus. Maybe you re not convinced that you need Jesus. Maybe you re convinced that you don t deserve Jesus because of your past and because of your mess, and because of the things that you ve done. You ve convinced yourself that grace is for 99.9 percent of people but you re the.01. And you think, If you had been there, if you had seen me, if you knew what I said and what I did... Again I just want to point you back to the beach. I want to point you back to Jesus and Peter. Peter betrayed Jesus, he denied Jesus, and he was saved. I was saved. And there are a lot of people around you who have been saved and you can be too. Grace is strong enough and big enough for whatever junk you bring into this. Jesus wants to give you the gift of grace today. So in a few moments we re going to give you an opportunity to respond to that invitation right now, today. Here s the second question. The first question was from what have you been saved? The second question is this: for what purpose have you been saved? Again we were saved from something for something. There is something to do about this. For what purpose? Again, Jesus didn t redeem and restore Peter so he could just go fishing with his buddies for the rest of his life and not go to hell. That wasn t the story. In fact, Jesus redeemed Peter so that he would live his life on fire for Jesus. And he did. He preached sermons. He started churches. And he would even go on to die for the cause of the kingdom of God. So the question is this: what is God calling you to do? What is He calling you to do? Now, if you ve lived in the church world long enough you might hear this word calling and it takes on kind of a mystical proportion like some of you might be waiting for an angel to come down with some lights and some 9

10 harps and say, Hey, thus saith the Lord. You shall volunteer in Kid s Ministry, or whatever. Maybe that would be helpfully specific but I don t know if that s going to happen for you. Here s really what it is. Calling doesn t have to be complicated. We can reduce it to this: what are you good at? And how can you use that for Jesus? It doesn t have to be more complicated than that. What are you good at? What are the skills that you have? What are the resources that you have? What s your personality? And how can you use that for Jesus? That s your calling. That s what you do with the gift of grace. We didn t do anything to earn it but now we can do something in response to it. So here are a couple of stories of people who are responding to grace here at Traders Point. Like I said, we re one church that meets in multiple locations and so we have a North campus that meets at Creekside Middle School. And because we re meeting at a school for this year, we have to set up and tear down all of the equipment that it takes to make church go. That requires someone, actually a handful of people, to drive some trucks and trailers with all of the stuff. And they pull those trailers into the school at 5:30 a.m. They set it all up. They stay for both services. They tear it down and drive it back at 1:30 p.m. Sunday morning day off: 5:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Now those people are good at driving trucks and they re good at packing those trailers. They may never get a microphone and a spotlight but here s the truth: the North campus could not happen without them. They were saved from something for something. Here s the wild thing, okay? I don t know if you know this but in the church world in July people just like disappear. They just don t come to church and then they come back. But you guys haven t done that. You guys keep coming. We re not really sure what s happening. And so at the North campus get this on July 17, last weekend, middle of July they had the most people that they have had since the launch weekend. They are reaching people like crazy at the North campus, crazy. And none of that happens none of that happens without people waking up at 5:30 a.m. and driving trucks and trailers. They were saved from something for something. Or let me tell you a story about Sarah. Sarah is a pediatric occupational therapist. I had to practice that for like 30 times this week. Pediatric occupational therapist, that s her job. That is the skill that she has developed and worked toward but she brings it to our church to serve our Special Needs ministry. See every other week Sarah will observe our volunteers as they are interacting with the kids and she will give them tips and tools on how to better serve our special needs kids so that they can be the best volunteers because they love those kids so much. It doesn t just make the volunteers better. Those notes, those tips, and tools we hand them to the parents when they pick up their kids so that they can love their kids even better at home and improve the family life. Sarah is good at that. That s what she does. That s awesome. Sarah said, Here s what I m good at and I can use it for Jesus. She was saved from something for something. Then there are Gabe and Abbey. They lead one of our New Member Life Groups. And in our group settings what we ask our leaders to do is to gather everybody together and facilitate a discussion and care for one another but they re going next level. They re meeting with each individual couple so that they can know them better and disciple them better. And the cool thing is that Gabe s story is not traditional, alright? He didn t grow up in church. He had an on again, off again relationship with his dad. He got mixed up with the wrong crowd when he was young 10

11 but he had a moment like Peter had a moment on the beach, like I ve had, like many of you have had Jesus saved him. And God is not using Gabe despite his story. God is using Gabe because of his story. And the same can be true of you as well. Gabe and Abbey they were saved from something for something. See, Jesus did not go to the cross and die for our sins so that we would live a life of passivity hoping for some day when we get to avoid the fire. That wasn t the big story. That wasn t the goal. God not only saved us for eternity but He saved us for the life he intended for us today. It s time to do something. So here s what I m asking. If you would, stand to your feet. If everybody would just stand up as we wrap up for today. You see sometimes when God is moving in your life, there is a really great reason to talk yourself out of responding. Maybe you would drag your feet. Maybe you would respond later this week. But we re standing right now two groups of people, alright? There are some of you who have been saved but you ve shifted into neutral for a long time. And you ve been watching as other people were in the game and they were using their skills and they were playing the game and you re just kind of observing. It s time for you to get in to the game. God saved you from something for something. He made you good at something and it s time to use it for Jesus. So today there are going to be some people on the side of the room and they would love to pray with you about what it looks like to get into the game what it looks like to actually respond to the gift of grace and make a difference not for your own glory but for the glory of God alone. So we want you to take that first step. You ll be received well. They ll talk to you about the next things that you can do and most of all they would love to pray a prayer of courage so you can keep it going. Then there s another group of people and I m pleading with you right now, hear me. There is a group of people here who have convinced themselves that grace isn t for them and it was dark and I know it really bad. I don t know what you did and I don t know what you said, and I don t know how much pain you caused but I m promising you, I m promising you that grace is big enough and grace is strong enough. And when Jesus died on that cross He wasn t ignorant of what you had done, He did it for you. So today is your day. No longer do you talk yourself out of it. No longer are you waiting in the now what. Jesus has said, Here s what. You come to Me. You come to Me and I will forgive. You come to Me and I will give you peace. You come to Me and I will set your path anew. You can have life and life to the fullest. So if you have questions about what it would be like to follow Jesus, or if you re ready to become a Christian today there are going to be people on the sides of the room during this song who would love to pray with you and talk with you about what the next steps are, alright? We don t want you waiting 10 minutes. We don t want you to send it in an later. We want you to go right now. Let me pray for you. Father, we are so grateful for Your Son. We are so grateful for Your word. We are so grateful for people like Peter because we see ourselves in Peter and we are so grateful for this moment on the beach. Peter not only needed those words, I needed those words. I needed to know that You were not done with me. I needed to know that shame wasn t my story. So right now for those who are hearing this and are feeling something, that You are stirring something in their lives, I pray for the courage to take a first step to go pray with someone, to go talk with someone, and to allow You to guide every step from here on out. Father, we know we can trust You with that. It s in Your good name that I pray. Amen. 11