Kinetic Faith
Well, we're going to be in James chapter two, if you want to grab a Bible and turn there. You can do it on your phone, but the phone is going to try and get you to think about other things while you're turning to the book of James, so use the book if you can. This thing is called a book. It's been around awhile. It's pretty good.
But yeah, James, chapter two is where we're going to be and we're in the series “Kinetic Righteousness.” Hopefully it's starting to make a little more sense to you — not just some vague term — but the idea is that the the righteousness that God desires, the righteousness that God seeks, the righteousness that counts in his economy, the righteousness that he takes delight in, is a righteousness that is active. It's a righteousness that has hands and feet and finds the places where unrighteousness has caused damage. And it goes there with the righteousness of God and it makes things right. Right relationship, restoration, healing. That's the righteousness that God is after.
And the frustrating thing for Jesus was the righteousness that the Pharisees were after. They were practicing a righteousness, but it was much more about being righteous than doing righteousness. And as you read through the scriptures, and especially in the book of James, you see that the righteousness that God is after is kinetic.
A line that I just don't want us to miss, and all of the words that I'm going to say today, a key verse here from the book of James is, you see that a person is considered righteous by what they do, not by faith alone. Now, that kind of talk is what has gotten some people to actually think James should not be in the New Testament, because it's a little bit dangerous. And it's true. You can take this too far and you can try and be legalistic. You can try and earn your salvation through works or deeds or righteousness. And that's not true.
Hear me very clearly as we're going into this book. We are made righteous by Jesus Christ’s work on the cross. There is no other way to become righteous, but by Jesus Christ and being hid in him. One hundred percent, absolute, no doubt about it.
However, Jesus has not made us righteous so that we can stand there and look pretty. He has not shown us mercy so that we can just sit there and be like, “Wow, this is so great. Check me out. Covered in mercy. He has not put light inside our souls so that we can just sit there and kind of look in a mirror and marvel, or get around each other and just be like, “Hey, you got light. You got light. We got light. It’s a good light.”
He has made us righteous so that we can then go into places of unrighteousness and make a change. He has given us mercy, just like Jeff said last week. Such an awesome message. He has shown us mercy so we will multiply that mercy into the places where people aren't experiencing mercy, they're experiencing a lot more shame and pain. I loved when he told the story about run — we want to be a church that runs into the places of pain. Not so that God will love us and save us, no. That’s already been established on the cross. But because God loves us and saved us, we want to be those who run into that pain, and we want to be those who are so grateful for the light the Christ has given us through his word, through his Spirit, through his family. And we take that light into the darkest places so they can get a taste of what Jesus really is all about.
This is what we're trying to do is be kinetic in our righteous. And righteousness is such an important thing.
I grew up mostly coming to church and I had a few years at a Christian school. And the righteousness that I grew up hearing about and experiencing in those places, a lot of times was a righteousness I just was not interested in. It was a lot more about, like, achievement. It was a lot more about kind of winning. It was a lot more about rules. It really looked a lot like religiosity. And even though they talked bad about the Pharisees and Sadducees, I was like, “Why you talking bad about them? That's what you are.”
And so I just I kind of had a real distaste in my mouth for the idea of righteousness. But the more I've read the scriptures, and the more I've experienced the righteousness of God showing up, the more beautiful I have really seen it is. And I think it was getting kind of confused by these other people.
And on Wednesday night, when the panel was sharing the stories of kinetic, when righteousness became kinetic and showed up in their lives, it was so beautiful. It was like, I want to see that so badly in my life and the lives of our church.
Psalm 112, I think, gives us a good picture of what righteousness looks like when it shows up in our lives and in the lives of others. And I'll read it to you:
Blessed are those who fear the Lord,
who find great delight in his commands.
Even though some of those commandments are tough!
Their children will be mighty in the land;
the generation of the upright will be blessed.
Wealth and riches are in their houses,
and their righteousness endures forever.
It's not about right now. It's what comes later.
Even in darkness light dawns for the upright,
for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous.
Gracious and compassionate go along with righteousness.
Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely,
who conduct their affairs with justice.
Surely the righteous will never be shaken;
they will be remembered forever.
They will have no fear of bad news;
their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord.
Their hearts are secure, they will have no fear;
in the end they will look in triumph on their foes.
They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor,
their righteousness endures forever;
their horn will be lifted high in honor.The wicked will see and be vexed,
they will gnash their teeth and waste away;
the longings of the wicked will come to nothing.
There is pleasure in sin for a season, but then comes destruction. There is nothing lasting in there. There there's nothing beneficial in there. And especially not for the generation to come after you. But with righteousness, if we can get this stuff right, if we can walk into the beautiful, compelling righteousness that the Bible puts forth, it's going to affect those who come after us. It's going to affect your children. It's going to affect the generation that you're in, and the generation to come. It will create something that lasts. It will affect the poor. It will affect those who need somebody to lend to them. And what it will do is, it will cause something to ripple and continue on long after you're gone.
This is the kind of righteousness that God is calling us into, that we're trying to learn about and walk into. And our guide for us here is James. “James the Just.” So let's read James, chapter two, verse 14:
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”
“I'm more on the faith side. I’m more in the mental ascent. I'm more in the kind of saying the right things, learning the right things. But I'm not so big on actually doing all of those things. We're just different in that regard.”
But then James says:
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
James is, as you know from the last couple of weeks, he's kind of like the guy that, like, let's say you were getting in a fight with James. It's what it feels like. Whether you like it or not, reading in James, you think he's fighting you. You don't know why, but he's the kind of guy that goes into the fight and doesn't kind of like, you know, size up the opponent. He's not the guy that goes into the fight and just kind of like dances around a little bit. He's the guy who goes into the fight and starts with a head butt. Just comes right at you. You know? Now, what are we going to do?
So here he's basically talking to his church, because he was a pastor of a church and he's telling them they're just like demons.
Verse 20:
You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.
In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
Now, again, you can see how someone could kind of make way too big a deal for works-based righteousness or works-based salvation. Not talking about that all. What James is saying here is, yes, there is a reality where we come into a relationship with Christ, we come into a submission, a surrender to Christ and what he did on the cross. And we find a justification, a righteousness, a salvation in that, no doubt about it. But then there is a working out of that salvation. There is a walking out of that.
And he even says that our salvation, our righteousness, our faith is made complete as we walk that out. And so we’ve got to watch out for that kind of far extreme, but at the same time, we’ve got to hear what James is trying to say to us, Wwat he's trying to teach us.
And James the Just is a guy who has a very interesting perspective on what it means to be Christlike; because he grew up in the same house as Jesus. Alec talked about this in his awesome message a few weeks ago.
I told those guys to stop doing such a good job when I'm out, because, you know, I got a little weird, you know, and they're so good. No, I didn't say that at all. They’re just so good. I loved it.
But James grew up. He was the half-brother of Jesus, right? Not the same dad. It was virgin birth. Christmas. You with me on this? So James is the half-brother of Jesus, the younger brother of Jesus, and he grew up in the same house.
And I think James is so interesting, because I've always wondered what happened between 12 and 30 for Jesus, like Jesus was born in Bethlehem. We know tons about that, right? We sing about it. We celebrate it. And then at one time, at 12 years old, he spent the night at the church. And then it's just like radio silence. And then 30 — bam! Here he is, you know a lot about those next three years. But James knows what happened in those years. He knows all about those years.
Younger brothers, they study their older brothers. How do I know? I got two older brothers. And they study them. They study them, you know, to find out what good they're doing. But they also study up, you know, so they know what stupid things not to do.
And I had great examples of both. As a young brother, I had two older brothers. They were both state wrestlers. And I was a basketball player. So they punished me all the time for that. But I learned from them and there were so many times they would actually, like, make it so that I was not able to do certain things — even though they were doing them; because they knew they weren’t right and they knew they weren't beneficial. But they wanted to make sure that I didn't fall into those traps.
It was so interesting to me. But I got to study them. I got to see what good they were doing and kind of exemplify those things they were doing and stay away from those things.
And James was that as well. He grew up watching Jesus as a younger brother, and also it was probably the most frustrating thing in the world. Because James, you know, he’s, like, going to mess up every once in a while. He’s going to break something, he’s going to do something, and then he'll be like, "No, it wasn't me, it was Jesus.”
And then Mary would be like “James, um, I'm going to go ask Jesus if it was him. So what do you want to do right now?”
Because Jesus never sinned! Jesus never told a lie. James did not follow Jesus. James did not think highly of Jesus until after the resurrection. And I don't blame him. It would have been so frustrating to always be like, “What went down?” Mary would be like, “All of you stop talking! Jesus, what happened?” You know?
And I know a little bit about that, because I grew up with with two older brothers and the three of us, we broke a lot of things. We did a lot of dumb things. We fought a lot. We did all the things. And I had a best friend named Phillip Buckley.
By the way, Mark and Kristina Buckley started Living Streams Church in their living room thirty seven years ago last Monday. Living Streams is thirty-seven years old. Watch out. Um, and and it's just awesome to see what the Lord has done. They have tons of stories.
But Mark and Kristina's son, Phillip, their second son, and I were best friends growing up. And Phillip never told a lie either. And he's the best friend, he was so awesome. He's also like the worst friend. Because, same thing in our house. My dad would be like, “What happened? Who broke that?"
And you know, Peter, my brother Peter, he loves to talk. He loves to tell stories. He doesn't know what exaggeration is. He just think it's like a game. And so he would come up with seven stories on the spot — he’s brilliant.
And then my brother Jon would just kind of like grunt and and like, you know, just not really say what happened. He’d just kind of avoid saying things. And that I would just kind of, you know, I was a little manipulative and I'd always somehow get Jon in trouble, I think.
We just we all had the way we come at it. Whenever Phillip was there, he would just — no, we weren't allowed to talk. He'd say, “Philip, what happened?” And we all would kind of hang our heads a little bit, because we knew were we were going down. We were going down, for sure.
That's what it was like for James. But he learned about Jesus. He learned what it was like. And then, after the resurrection, he just, you know, I mean, fascinating to think what happened in his heart and soul after the resurrection. And then calling his older brother, “the Lord, the Messiah.” I mean, that's the place he came to. And he committed the rest of his life to following his example and living for his glory.
And he became the leader of the first church in Israel as they decided, you know, who was going to be the leader of the church. Yes, the apostles are there, but they kind of spread out in different places. And James became the leader of that first church. He was cultivating that community. And his job was he was trying to help that community look and feel the most like Christ. And he had some of the best perspective on that. And so he was doing that.
And so he's writing this book about 30 years after the resurrection. So the community of Christ has really taken some shape and form. And actually, a.d. 30 is when Jerusalem was destroyed and they went through all of that. So it's right before that. It's kind of a very interesting time. And James puts this letter out to the community of faith, and he's saying, “I think you guys are kind of really emphasizing a little too much the right things to say, the right things to think, and you're not emphasizing enough the aspect of Jesus that was so just service-based. You've become so good at statements, but you've lost the heart of service.”
And he goes through all of this and we've got a little outline that we've been looking at. In James Chapter one, he talks about the kind of religion that that God accepts. And again, he's got the whole image of Jesus in his mind. And he's saying that the religion God accepts is one that is all about orphans and widows in their distress, and keeping yourself unspotted from the world.
And when James looks back and thinks about what Jesus is all about, he was all about the vulnerable. And James is saying we can't forget that as we're walking out as the community of Christ.
And the second thing we talked about, which is last week, Jeff took us through “mercy triumphs over judgment.” James got to see that lived out, that Jesus lived perfectly righteous. And yet he didn't hold that over people. Instead, he showed people mercy. He got to learn that mercy is what's more important than anything else.
And it's funny, because in this Kinetic Righteousness series, I've been really looking at justice, because justice really is kind of like kinetic righteousness. It's doing justice. And I've been studying justice. I've been diving in. And I know our culture right now is wanting to really understand and see justice happen.
And the more I've studied justice, the more I think justice is not really what we want. What we want is mercy. Because if really everybody got what was just, then there would be a lot of inequity. Because some people work harder, some people have more abilities, those type of things, so it would kind of create this weird type of thing.
But the only true place that we have equity is actually in our sin — that we have all fallen short of the glory of God. And therefore, we are all in desperate need of mercy. Mercy is what's going to bring us together. Mercy is what really we long for.
And somehow God, in his amazing wisdom, accomplishes justice through mercy instead of judgment. Fascinating stuff. Fascinating stuff.
And then, actually, we started off the series because, you know, my whole Covid month, with Ryan teaching us about “Those who sow in peace will reap a harvest of righteousness.” And again, I've been chewing on that big time. Today we're talking about kinetic faith. And then we've got a couple more teachings: “The tongue and unrighteousness.” James is real big on the tongue. And all of us understand that the tongue is probably one of the greatest purveyors of unrighteousness in our day — and James would say the same thing about his day.
And then and then in James Chapter five, it's interesting because the heading in your Bible, which has been around for a long, long time, is “Warning to rich oppressors.” And I just think it's so awesome that the Bible's been there, done that. You know, society is really doing a lot of critique on a lot of different things in our society. And I don't think that's necessarily bad. Critique is not bad. But I don't think society really has the best perspective on what righteousness is. So I love that we can go to the scriptures and we can have a whole section that's warning to rich oppressors. And we're going to be going through that. So maybe go to a different church for a few weeks or something. But, you know, it's good for us. It’s what we need to hear. And so that's a little bit of our outline.
And then we've got this passage, and in this passage, James unpacks for us three different examples I want to look at, of what he what he would say helps us in the process of having kinetic faith or kinetic righteousness. And the examples he gives, there are three of them. And I've got a point for each one of them. You can put the points up there:
First of all, he gives an example that helps us remember we need to get proximate and generous. If we want to do righteousness, it has a lot to do with being proximate to pain and generous in the face of needs.
The second point is we need to be obedient and sacrificial. Obedient and sacrificial. Oftentimes, when God tells us to do something, it comes with sacrifice — just as a heads up.
And then the last thing is we need to take care of the vulnerable.
And so the first example he gives is the story of you come across someone who's hungry and doesn't have enough clothes, whether they're they're naked, or whether it's cold and they just don't have enough warm clothes.You come across the situation of the person in need, and James says so often the church nowadays is saying, “Hey, be warmed and filled. I pray a blessing over you. I'll give you a tract, or or I'll tell you a Bible verse and then be on our way.”
And James is just saying that is not at all what Jesus would have done. That is not like Christ. What James would say is you need to get in there. You need to get proximate to the hunger, proximate to the nakedness, proximate to the pain, and the lack, and the poverty. You need to get so close that you actually are close enough to get your shoulder underneath the burden that person might be carrying. And you need to be generous and meet those needs.
And I don't know your situation, I know there's a lot of people in this church that they are champions of this. They are doing so well at this. We had the panel on Wednesday night. They did such a good job of sharing their stories from their lives of how they got proximate and how, again, the proximity is not so that we can come and rescue; but somehow we can enter into this space where there's this mutual rescuing, which is so beautiful, and exquisite mutuality, and extraordinary kinship.
But if we spend all of our lives avoiding pain — whereas Jesus told the story, you know, those who walked on the other side of the road from the person who was in pain — we’re going to miss out so much on the beauty of righteousness that God wants to produce in and through us, and the beauty of the blessing of of having that mutual rescuing go on — that only God can do — of mercy showing up. So we need to get proximate and we need to be generous.
The second example he gives is Abraham offering up Isaac. If you don't know that story, way back in the Old Testament, Abraham, father of faith Abraham, is just a guy who actually was a was in idolatry. He was worshiping other gods. But then somehow Yahweh called to him and said, “Hey, I want you to leave everything and go to the place I show you.”
And Abraham, “OK.” So he takes his whole family and he goes to this desert and he's just out there and God continues to give him Step-By-Step instructions about what to do and where to go. And at one point, Abraham, you know, he was old and he and his wife were old and they wanted to have a son. They weren't able to have a son together. And finally they had a son, Isaac, in their old age. And there was this beautiful accomplishment of this promise. And he was so excited.
And then one day God says to him, “Abraham, I want you to take your son Isaac up onto the mountain and I want you to sacrifice him to honor me.”
And Abraham did it. He got his son. He got the wood for the sacrifice. He took them up the hill. He got out the knife. He laid his son Isaac on the altar and he went to kill him. And an angel actually stopped his hand. He said “Abraham, I don't want you to kill, I take no delight in human sacrifice. But what I delight in is you have chosen to cherish me above everything else.”
And Abraham was willing to be obedient. He was willing to be sacrificial. And it counted as this beautiful righteousness.
And God's calling you and me to get uncomfortable. He's calling all of us into an obedience that is going to make our flesh so upset, that’s going to make us vulnerable, that’s going to make us experience pain and discomfort, that’s going to make us sacrifice. And I would be lying to you as a pastor if I didn't tell you that following Christ is going to cost you. But everything that you pay in, every price you pay, everything you sacrifice, God keeps track of. And he will reward those who diligently seek him.
But it's so important, according to James, as he remembers the life of Christ and he's trying to form this community that he loves and cares for, it’s so important that they remember they need to be obedient and they need to be sacrificial.
And the last thing is he gives us is the example of Rahab, protecting the spies. And the title here is Taking Care of the Vulnerable, and Rahab, is so fascinating. Rahab is a prostitute in Jericho, like Jericho, the Canaanites, the ones God was sending his people in to, kind of wipe out because he had given them 400 years to turn to him and they have continued further and further into their debauchery.
And here's a prostitute living in the walls of Jericho that the Bible talks about all the time as this example of beautiful righteousness. And what she did is, the Israelites sent spies into Jericho to kind of check things out, and they found themselves where the guards of the of the soldiers of Jericho found out they were there and they were coming to kill them. And they were running and hiding. Don't know how it happened exactly — watch the movie when we get to heaven.
But they ended up finding their way into Rahab's house. And somehow she knew what was going on. And somehow she had heard about the God Yahweh and what was happening and and really was convinced that that was the true God. And so she ends up protecting the spies, hiding them away, and the soldiers come and she's like, “No, they're not here. They just went that way. If you go quick, you will catch them.”
So she's lying. She's a prostitute liar. And the Bible’s like, "Dude, check her out. You got to check this lady out. Just so, so righteous.”
And that act ends up bringing salvation to her whole household. She somehow becomes a community of the Israelites. And not only that, but then she actually becomes in the lineage of Messiah of Jesus Christ. She's like the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, (whatever) grandma of Jesus. Rahab, is like the great, great, great, great grandma of David the King of Israel. And time and time again in the New Testament, they're like, “Oh, yeah, remember how righteous Rahab was?”
So, first of all, whatever your past is doesn't matter. The righteousness of God is always more powerful than our own righteousness. Every second of every day. It’s not even a contest. Our righteousness comes in with a head butt, bam. And unrighteousness is like boom.
But in this story, what James is wanting to understand is she took care of the vulnerable. She didn't have it all figured out. Her faith was not dialed in. She didn't know all the things to say. Her statements probably were not in order. But she took care of the vulnerable. She took care of the foreigner. She took care of the illegal. And it was counted onto her as righteousness. And they got the other stuff worked out later, for sure. Taking care of the vulnerable is a really big deal for the heart of Jesus. And what James is trying to remind us of.
When I say vulnerable, we're talking about the ones downriver. We mentioned that a few weeks ago, there's a whole bunch of people that live downriver from you. And what you do with the river, what you do with what you have is either kind of stealing everything from them or it's helping them experience some of that. And right now, as an American, guess what? You're at the front of the river. You have all the resources of the river. And the whole world, in some extent, lives down river from us. And we're going to be judged accordingly. We need to keep that in mind as we do business.
The other thing that I think is important, the vulnerable, the ones the amendments don't stand up for, the ones that don't fit into your plans. I feel like the Lord’s stirring up, you know — when I was reading this and studying this — abortion. I mean, I have a daughter with a special need, and when we found out in the womb that she was going to, the first thing the doctor said was, “Do you want to abort?” Like, “What?” Talk about vulnerable.
And the way that Jesus described it was the least of these, the least. The ones society has totally forgotten, the ones that no one would ever pay attention to. Poverty of health, poverty of wealth or opportunity, poverty of spirit or education relationship, poverty of mental health. These are the ones that Jesus really wants us to learn and know.
Tim Keller, a guy who teaches and I think it does a really a lot of great things. I'm going to say what he said, because I am too nervous to say it myself. He said, “If you don't know the name of the poor, you don't know the name of Jesus.” I thought that was very James-like.
And so these three things have worked themselves out in my life in a couple of different ways Recently getting proximate, I met a kid, eight years old. I was twenty-three. We met at this summer camp. And after the summer camp, I was like, "Hey, man, let's hang out.”
And so I used to show up and take them, you know, to out to eat or to go do some fun things around his birthday, Christmas kind of big brother stuff. And I got a little insight into the world that he lived in with his family. And it was hell. And every time I would drop them off after we hung out, I would just drive away begging the Lord for mercy, for him to cover him somehow, because it was really rough.
And years went by and years went by. And I continued to just kind of — and I would lose him sometimes because they moved a lot and he didn’t have a consistent cell number. And I would lose him. But then somehow I'd always, like, find him. Literally. Like one time I was at Magic Mountain and he showed up and I was just like, “What? What's your number now?” We reconnected. It was total God thing.
But for 20 years, you know, we've just been hanging out and kind of showing up a little, wishing I could do more. There were times where I thought, Man, could he come live with me and my wife? I don't know. And I was newly married. Like there's just all these different things, all these challenges. But I just felt like, I'll just show up and give what I can.
And then his mom called me one time and told me he had been arrested and he was in a mental hospital. And so I went and visited him and we talked. I went home and I was telling my wife about it. And my wife, who is just so unafraid. She said, “Why don't we why don't you ask him if he'll come live with us now?”
And I mean, the thought had never crossed my — I got three daughters and he's got schizophrenia, he's got serious mental illness, all these things. Again, I'm not saying you should invite everybody into your home. Please don't hear that. But what we really felt like the Lord was saying was, "This is the moment."
And so he came and lived with us for a year, and we were able to really find out some interesting things. He had voices speaking to him all the time. But because of all those years, because all that time of proximity that we had together, he could trust my voice. I was the only voice in the multiplicity of voices that he had ruining and ruling his life. He could trust me and he would come to me and he'd say, “I hear the voices are saying this.”
And I'd say, “That's the voices. That's not real.”
And you could see it was so difficult for him. But he knew he could trust my voice. And so we were able to get him some help. We were able to get him with some doctors, were able to get him with some system. We got him on things and he's like winning the battle with schizophrenia right now. And we're still walking together.
And I had no idea that all those little bits, I mean, I was just literally hanging out. I'd take him out to eat. We’d go see a movie at Christmas. When I was a high school youth pastor, or whatever, I'd take him on weird trips and he’d be like, all the high schoolers and there was this guy. And he was just like soaking it up. I didn't know. I didn't know the Lord was building something so important for a season in his life. I had no idea how beautiful it would be when the righteousness of God showed up and how powerful it would be. Now we would get to experience it together and find that rescue together.
And so it doesn't have to be some grand, massive thing, it could just be one kid you just walk with for years and years. Getting proximate.
And then the other thing, the Lord’s really challenging me right now is, is I feel like the Lord told me he wants me, and us somehow, to strengthen the church in South Phoenix. And I'm like the poster child for “not the person you want coming in to help minority communities or anything like that,” and I get that. Totally understand. But the Lord put it on my heart, so I'm trying to be obedient and walk into this thing.
And I just went to an all black church last Sunday because I was all cleared and everything with protocol but they told me not to come here. So I just walked in and it’s a friend of mine’s church. We've been kind of getting to know each other, building a little bit of relationship. And I showed up and I walked in. And you know it was very different from here. There were about 30 people. And I walked in and I was trying to be really considerate and set everybody at ease. And, you know, obviously, I was very different. And so there was lots of reactions I would get.
I remember when I walked in, like, you know, it was cool because they were like, "Oh, well, what's up with this guy? Is he lost? What's going on?”
But then they leaned in. They were like, “You know, come on.” And, you know, they were very welcoming. It was awesome. And then I was sitting there and I remember a couple of times, you know, someone would look back and then they'd see me. And there was a couple of people — and it grieved my heart because I think the reaction was either suspicion or fear. And the reality was that they've heard about white guys like me going into churches and shooting people up like those. And so, like, legitimately, they have to process that out. And it just broke my heart that there's this like challenge between us. That is a reality.
And so they would kind of like overcome that and I would try and set them at ease. But we ended up having this wonderful time together. Again, you know, 30 people and me just sitting there and the worship time was just rich and awesome. And the Lord totally ministered to my heavy heart.
And then I got to listen to the message. And the guy was preaching in a way that I was like, “Dude, I got to learn to preach, man.” These guys know how to preach and I don't even know how to preach.
Yeah, I remember he had like you would do like three wipes with this towel on his forehead, and then it was a full wipe. It was like three wipes and a full wipe. It was like this rhythm. I was like, “Yeah,” it was so awesome. It was wonderful. And the Lord spoke some deep guidance to some questions in my heart, and I loved it. And then I just sat there and in the last song was going on, I was like, “Lord, OK, what do you what what do I need to learn?”
And I felt like the Lord said that this church, this church of thirty people — and obviously there's more and there's a whole history with this church, but there's more online and all that — but he said this church, this church has alleviated just as much pain as all the big churches in this city. This church pound for pound is one of the best paying elevators in this city. They know how to be generous and be proximate. They know how to be obedient and sacrificial. They really care about taking care of the vulnerable.
And I just, my heart just both broke and soared at the same time. And I want us to be a church that can alleviate pain, that runs in to it. That pound for pound, we are alleviating pain in the city, we are taking care of the vulnerable. And you're not going to find them unless you go. And you're not going to find them unless you somehow help them know they don't have to be afraid of you, you’re not coming to do some sort of project, but you actually come to just get underneath their burden and walk with them. You're not better than them in any other way. You're just full of mercy because of what Jesus has done. And you want to see if they want some mercy.
And my example means nothing in comparison to Jesus's example. And Jesus, more than anyone else, he became proximate. The whole incarnation. He was in glory with the Father in heaven. And yet he saw us in our pain. He saw it in our lack. And he became not some royal priest, but he came a babe in Bethlehem, born in an awkward situation. A lot of people thought illegitimate. And he lived consistently, that he didn't break out of poverty. He didn't break out of oppression. He continued to live in it.
And we're still talking about him today, all these years later, in a far off place. And not only was he proximate, but he was obedient. Philippians 2 tells us he was obedient and sacrificial even to death on the cross. He was not afraid to sacrifice, even though he had never sinned. And we know very clearly he took care of the vulnerable. One — actually with signs and wonders and preaching good news to the poor. But also he took care of all of us who are vulnerable because we were stuck in our sin and we were headed for hell and he provided the rescue we need to be with him forever more.
What an awesome God, what an awesome Savior. Worth following and worth emulating. In our world today, let's pray:
Jesus, we love you. We want more of you. We want to be a community that just looks, smells, feels and tastes just like you. So we need your blood to cleanse us and make us righteous. We need your Spirit to fill us and empower us. And we need to know what things you want us to step into, Lord. Bring people to mind or bring situations to mind. I pray ou would use this kinetic righteousness deal to connect people in this room to people in pain, if they're not sure how to do that.
But Lord, I also want to pray for those who are experiencing a lot of pain right now, experiencing a lot of poverty right now, whether they're online or in person. I pray that they would just know how proximate you are and feel your comfort. That they would cry out to you and you would be found, Lord.
I pray for those who don't know you or aren't walking with you. I pray that today, Lord, that would all change and they would step out of the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of Light. That they would receive you, Jesus, and find you such a faithful friend.
We pray all this in your name, Amen.
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