The Church of Eleven22 - Saturated 2017 - Wednesday: Pastor Matt Chandler

Episode Date: September 13, 2017

Let me tell you, I'm really excited to be with you tonight, not just because you've fasted, not just because you're seeking the face of God, although those things are, they help my heart celebrate being among you. It's an easy thing to step in and just open up the Word of God to people who really want to see God work and move among them. But, man, I love being here. We have worked at trying to get me here for four or five years now, it feels like. And so that it all kind of lined up when we got here, I couldn't be more excited. And one of the reasons that I love being here is that whether you know it or not, like you're my kind of people.

And here's what I mean. What I mean when I say that without knowing you, because I know something like, you don't know, okay, I don't even know who you are. Here's what I do know. Like, I'm the kind of Christian who loves the Word of God, loves big God theology, loves the thick, transcendent, omnipresent power of God and let it humble me. But it's never made me crusty. and so man I like to laugh and play and so like this might sound crazy to you because you're in the

middle of something that's a God thing and when that happens you tend to start thinking that what you're in is normal and I'm just trying to help you understand that what you've got going on here it's not normal I mean I am the president of a church planning network with 700 something churches globally and what God has done at 1122 is not normative and so you're in the middle of something right now, and it's marked by a real seriousness about the things of God that has not led you to be haughty and arrogant and crusty, but alive by the power of the Holy Spirit. And so, man, if I can kind of just come in and be with you in the midst of what God is up to, man, man, I want to do that.

And so it's a pleasure for me to be here. I love your pastor. You've got a gift in this man again, and I think, yeah, you can celebrate that. But again, God works through broken vessels. And so I'm not trying. Wait, come on, you got to let me finish the sentence. And so you should celebrate that God in a very real way has decided to lead and work for his good pleasure through Jobi and his family and the elders of this church.

And again, if I could leave you with anything, I want to leave you with the gospel and a clear understanding of it. But if there's a secondary thing that I would want to leave here with you kind of getting a grasp on is that all that you, you're tasting and seeing in the Lord's goodness in this place, most places would die for. And yet God has decided here and now and you. And I say this to the village all the time. What if this isn't the big thing? Like what if the big thing happens 15, 20, 30 years from now? And this big thing that we're in right now is actually just a tiny little seed that God's going to put in the ground. And then long after we're in glory, our grandchildren, great, great-grandchildren, be part of the really big thing, right? That global revival thing.

Yeah, let's dream that way. I mean, don't get me wrong. I want all I can get while I'm here. But, man, just let's do this. Let's go to Romans chapter 8. Romans 8 is the Mount Everest of chapters in the Bible. I really think I could do several years in Romans 8, but don't worry about that.

I'm not going to try to cram all that into my time with you tonight. So go ahead and grab that. I always like for you to see it. So if you have a Bible or a device or a neighbor with the Bible or a device, kind of scooch over. I want you say, I need you to see. that I'm not making any of this up because it sounds absurd. All right.

Now, on February 6th, 2003, my wife and I woke up, we had not slept well, got in the car, and we drove down to a hospital right around 20, 25 minutes from our house. And I don't know how you'll feel about this, but we went in and Lauren was induced. She, Audrey, had blown well past her due date, decided just to hang out in there, apparently was really comfortable, and so she was fine. So they induced Lauren, and about, gosh, about seven or eight hours later, Audrey was born. My first born was born. And here's, like, I'm in the room. The room's confusing. Husbands, I don't know if you've done this. The room's terrifying and confusing. Your wife's a different person in that room. Like, my wife is fierce and godly and beautiful,

and in the middle of some pain, I just said, baby, can I get anything for you? And she responded, you can get out of my face. And she had never talked to me like that ever. And then I didn't know, oh my gosh, does she mean it or does she not mean it? Like if I get out of her face, am I going to get in trouble? What am I supposed to? I'm going to take her at her word and I'm going to back out. And so all I know is that when Audrey was born, I thought the nurse was a little rough.

Like snatched going to start scrubbing her and sucking stuff out of her face. And I could feel in me like me measuring up this nurse to see whether or not if I smacked her I could win. So I'm just saying, and then they kind of bundled her up and put her. And as I begin to walk her, they let me kind of push the cart down the thing to the nursery. It kind of hit me that I had a daughter, that I had a baby girl. And there's something about a girl and her daddy. I mean, I haven't read any of the studies about it, but there's something about that, that firstborn daughter. And she just had me. Good Lord, she still has me. And man, as I'm walking her down to the nursery, I mean, I've just got this unbelievable love that just popped into me. I mean, it was like, I kind of had the idea of the way I'd feel about this little girl,

but then when I got to hold her, now I'm just overwhelmed with the type of love I had never felt before in my life. The way I love my daughter is not the way that I love my wife. They're not the same love. Lauren does not need me, she likes me around. I'm just going to be straight. She's just a fierce woman, right? I'm blessed because she's independent enough to let me run, but then likes it when I'm around. So that's kind of a win, win, win, right?

And so Audrey, though, I mean, she came into our home and she can't do anything. Not only that, but she, honestly, that first three years might have been the most selfish human being I'd ever been around in my life. Me, me, me, I, I, change me, feed me, pat me, comfort me. She wasn't bringing anything into the family dynamic.

She didn't bring in no coin in. She's costing us money. She wasn't replacing that with anything. There was never, hey, finish that up and then get to me. It was get to me now. Don't care what you're doing. Hang up your phone. I'm going to scream.

I don't care what time it is. I mean, just a selfish, self-centered human being. And I was insanely in love with her. I would do just anything for that little girl. And it's funny what happens as you get older, parts of the Bible that lay dormant or have some kind of meaning but gain greater significance once you had the experience started opening up to me. And so if you're like, that sounds like heresy. The way you read Ephesians 5 before you're married will not be the way that you read Ephesians 5 once you are. You tracking with me?

All right? Because over here, it's like an ethereal idea. Yeah, love your wife like Christ, love the church. right over here it literally punches you in the soul where over here you're just like oh that's a great concept right over here it's like you're failing repent and so you're going to see it differently and so what started happening to me with audrey and has not left me was this kind of beautiful idea throughout the gospels and throughout the pauline epistles of adoption and this idea that the way that I feel about my daughters and my son is very much the way that God feels about me.

And I'm going to be real honest with you. Like forgiveness, it took me a while to finally get forgiveness, if you're with me on that. Like, that just forgiveness is free and full and forever? What? Like, all of my sin, past, present, and future? Like, the stuff I ain't even blown yet, it's forgiven? Like, it took me a long time to get that. And then even then I was still wrestling with that.

and then all there sounds like, I'm crazy about you. Get in here, I like you. I don't just forgive you. I love you. So then I'm just like, oh my gosh, this is just like too big. I couldn't grasp it. And yet it's understanding that that I think drives almost everything else in our walk with Jesus Christ. It's certainly the fuel to worship, but it's certainly the fuel to obedience. You will not run towards who you're hiding from. You will not run towards who you think you've disappointed.

You don't even do that in the human world. Right? And I know this happens all the time at churches with multiple services. Like some of you duck somebody by going to another service. Like you didn't show up for lunch or, man, you said something in home group and they got highly offended. And so you just didn't go to group that next weekend. You went to the nine instead of the 11 because you know they're usually at the 11. And you just kind of avoid people, right? And so if you think that God is perpetually disappointed in you, right? Like he's always just like, man, I cannot wait for you to grow up. Like this is what I bought. Are you serious? Like hanging on the cross? You?

I'd like a redo. I'm God. Can I have a redo? Like, if you think that, you're never going to run to the very source of life and faith and power that you've been designed to abide with. So with that said, let's read this text. This is Romans 8. We're going to start in verse 15. We're just going to read 15, 16, and 17. We're just going to camp out. for you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children than heirs, heirs of God, and fellow heirs with Christ,

provided we suffer with him in order that we may be glorified with him. So I just want to stop, and I want us to go back and start to work our way through this. So here's what he says about those of us who are Christians. He says that you and I, as Christians, we are no longer under the spirit of fear that leads to slavery. That's not who we are anymore. We are not slaves to fear. We are not slaves to that spirit of fear that once enslaved us. Now, I want to talk about where that spirit of fear actually happens and how it gets its hooks into us.

us and has us living a life of slavery to sin and death rather than vibrancy in life in Christ. Here's the way it works. We're all born, according to Ecclesiastes, with a hole in our heart, right? If you've got a church background, you know any matter of every, they've got a God-shaped hole in your heart and only Jesus can fill that hole. Well, they're getting that from Ecclesiastes 311, right? God has put eternity into the hearts of man. That's where we get that concept that you by being made in.

in the image of God, have a little spark of the divine, the spark of the eternality of God in your guts. And that drives us to try to solve and fill that ache for more. And so human beings, by and large, regardless of context, tend to chase the same four things in order to kind of fill that shape of Christ, that heart-shaped hole in the middle of their guts. The first thing they buy, and this is predominant culture, Western culture, loves this. The first place that we run to that makes us a slave and operate in fear is the lie that a better version of us is going to solve that angst. Have you ever found yourself giving into this lie? Like if I'm just a better version of the me right now, God would love me more. I would be more

welcomed in his presence. I would walk in greater victory. So what I need to do is become a better version of me. People do this before Christ all the time. The largest section of books in any bookstore of self-help? What is self-help except a very public acknowledgement that something's broken in me? I can't fix it. So let me go try to fix it. Right? And so lost people do this all the time. Now, what's difficult is because Christians will often shift back down into this when they've actually been set free from it. Right? So when Christians start to believe the lie that a better version of me is what God is going to accept, we nullify the grace of God. Because if righteousness could be formed through the law, Christ died for nothing, right?

You know your Bible? Like, if you can earn this, if a better version of you is what God is really after, then why does Jesus have to come and die? Is not the cross, the public display of our need for a savior greater than ourselves? And so what ends up happening is you start looking for silver bullet theologies that take you in all sorts of errant ways into crazy town. Right? We want the silver bullet of some charismatic experience. We want the silver bullets of being set free from demonic oppression. We want the silver bullet of worship.

We want the silver bullet of going over. We want the silver bullet, right? We start banking on that. I've got to get better at these things. If I'm better than God, will love me. Well, listen, that can't be true. It can't be true. If it's true, then Jesus Christ died for nothing.

Are you really accusing Jesus for being too dumb? Are you really making an accusation against God that your sin is greater than his cross? Is that your accusation against the King of Glory? I appreciate the whole death on the cross thing, but I got this. Listen, now what happens when you do this? So remember, I'm tying this to being a slave to fear. And so what ends up happening when you do this is you're projecting an image of yourself that's inconsistent with who you really are.

Look at me. Your whole life is a lie. You're going to project the same. Well, praise Jesus' name. I'm great. Man, how was the first night of Satirate? Oh, my gosh, blessed my life. You should have been there.

It was hazy and there. I thought maybe they did a foggy. It could have been like Shikana Glory. I'm not even sure what happened, right? I blacked out. I might have got slain in the spirit. I don't know. How are you?

But it's all a projection, right? It's not real. You're pretending. And why would you pretend when reality is available? You don't have to pretend to be in love with Jesus. You can be. How crazy is that? And so when you're projecting an image, you're a slave to fear. Because you always have this fear that you're going to be found out.

Don't you? I mean, those of you are in, don't you? You're just afraid, man, they're going to find out I'm a fake. They're going to find out. Man, I'm not really who I'm protected. Like you and you're in small group and your answer. well, you know, it's like Matthew 6 said, when you're regurgitating stuff that you've heard on a podcast,

you've never experienced it in your own hurt. You're just like, you know, I was thinking about this the other day. It's, you know, adoption is, you know, you haven't really experienced it in your heart. You're just kind of regurgitating someone else's experience with God. Man, you're just going to be an enslaved of fear. You're always going to be worried about being found out. But this is not the only place the world goes

and Christians who downshift go, right? The second place that we tend to go. If it's not a better version of us, it's another person will satisfy me, right? I call this the Jerry McGuire syndrome, right? The idea that there's some other person out there that's going to complete me, there's some other person out there that's going to help me see myself or who I really am. And what we're needing then is our wife or our husband or our children to satisfy in us

what only God can satisfy in us. We need our friend group to validate us. We need our husband or wife to validate us. We need those in our home group to validate us. We need those who serve with us. us to validate us. We need someone else to say, you're good, you're great, you're worth it. And I just want to love you enough to say, like husbands, women make terrible gods. Wives, husbands make even worse gods. Parents, children are the worst gods out there because they grow

more powerful with time. This, you just shouldn't worship your kids. Your kids should not set the trajectory of your house. And I get it. They're going to be a pro ball player and, you know, it's the greatest soccer player since Pelae here in Jacksonville. But other than that, more than likely they're not. More than likely they're not. And even if they do, which they're not, wouldn't you rather them be rooted in Jesus as they do that so they not get swept away about all the trappings of that life? So what you should, you know, no, I appreciate sports. My kids all play something. I'm out in the yard playing with them. I've spent stupid money helping them get there, but we don't let them drive our lives. You know, Sunday morning game. Yeah, call your coach.

Tell them he can come to church with us. I mean, you just got to, other people will never satisfy or validate you. They can't, they don't have that kind of power. So lost people do this all the time. But Christian people will oftentimes downshift outside of grace and start going, I need this person to validate me, if I could just get in this inner circle at church, if I could just be best friends with this person, if I could just get into this group. And so sometimes it's not a better version of you. Sometimes it's not other people needing to validate you. And again, does this not enslave you to fear if you need other people to validate you?

Because you've got to put on, depending on what environment you're in, for the people you're with to get them to validate you. Right? And so then you're a liar because you're saying one thing with this group and another thing with this group, and you don't even have an opinion except the opinion of those around you. You can't differentiate yourself from anybody around you. So once again, enslaved to fear. And if it's not a better version of you and if it's not somebody completing you,

then a lot of people just, man, they just think the trinkets and toys of the world will satisfy them. So they think worldliness will satisfy them. So they run to the world. And listen, I think there hasn't been enough preaching and teaching on the spiritual power of worldly stuff. So I think we want to tease it out from the spiritual realm.

But listen to me, new stuff has spiritual power. So let me give you a couple of examples. Have you ever noticed that when you get something new, you feel like a better person for a couple of moments? Like when you get that new iPhone, when you get a new old car, wherever you are in life, when you get new clothes, when you get, like you just feel,

like spiritually feel like you're a better person. You're not. You're the same schmuck you were before you bought that Civic. All right? You just have a new, it's just a schmuck driving around in a new Civic. But it's got power over us, right? It does. It numbs the hum. It numbs that hum of eternity whispering to us. There's something greater. Yeah, I know it's that $1,000 iPhone that just came out. I can't wait. This is what happens to us. And then if it's not self, if it's not others, if it's not the world, then listen, here's the worst one, the worst one for Christians.

They think that religion will help them. Hey, look right at me for a second. Do you know that it's just as possible to run from Jesus Christ with Sunday school than it is with heroin? You know, you can run and really state, I don't need God, I don't need to submit my life with them, and just jam your life filled with religious activity that's devoid of relationship with them?

Do you know you can do that? I mean, you should read the God. because if you know who Jesus is really leaning on, it's the Sunday school pin kids. Did you know they used to do that? Like if you had perfect attendance? Anybody, any old schoolers in here? Like, yeah, like one year, two year, three years, you'd be like, you know, General Patton up there.

Like the pastor would salute you when you walked out. I don't know if that's truly the case. I'm a military brat. So now what ends up happening is we give our lives trying to tilt these scales in our favor. I'm going to do good and not bad. I'm going to do good. but those scales don't exist. You're expending all this energy

trying to tilt scales that don't exist so that you might be approved of and loved and forgiven by the God of the universe. Now all of that would be the equivalent of me expecting my newborn daughter to get a job and provide some kind of addition to our family before I'd be willing to love her. It'd be the equivalent of me bringing home my newborn daughter

and putting her in her crib and like, hey, I'll see you when you can stand up and get a job and contribute and stop being so selfish. Can't believe we decided to have kids. You make me sick. And then just sitting and living and going to, you know, I'm just going to wait. When she wants to come to me, I'll be right here. But the Bible's like, no, no, no, that's not what we do. That's not who you are.

You've not been given that spirit. In fact, you've been saved from that spirit. So here's my encouragement to you. you if you're a Christian. The difference between, say, a Christian and a non-Christian, when we're talking about these four things, is a Christian has the ability to spot it and repent of it in a way that a non-believer does not. So the Christian can go, oh my gosh, I'm doing it again. I'm believing than a better version of me is going to make God love me more. Oh my gosh, can't believe this. I'm doing it. Hey, I need somebody to hold me accountable. I'm trying to get my wife to be for me

what only Christ can be for me. I need some help, man. I think that this is. house, this card, this promotion, this space in the social pecking order somehow validates me. And I know that's not true. And I need you just watch my life where the world just sees these things as the air they breathe. The Christian can go, no, no, that's a lie. I'm not going to believe that. I'm going to repent of that. I'm going to trust in Jesus and Jesus alone. But then it makes this amazing turn. You haven't been given that spirit. You've been given a different spirit. Right. So the spirit that you've been given is one by which we cry out, Abba father. Now, I don't know what your background is, but a lot of people will say that the idea of

Abba kind of has the connotation of Daddy, you know, oh, I don't know if you've prayed with somebody like that. You know, it's just calling God Daddy all that. Oh, Daddy, I just want to crawl on your lap and take hold of your beard and look you in the eyes. It's just like, awkward and uncomfortable. I'm like, are they really that intimate with the Lord? Or do I need to repent of something? This is just weird for me. I just want out. Can I pray and just wrap the thing up? and right. And so what, it does have a connotation of intimacy, but within the context of Romans 8, it's talking about something much, much bigger. He would be the best way to describe it. It's the only way that I've been able to figure out how to kind of describe what's going on in this Greek word, in this text, in this passage. There was this thing we used to do at the playground. I grew up on

basis. My dad's a military guy. And we would kind of get into this thing where my dad could beat up your dad? You know, I'd be like, rough senior, your daddy like five, six, man, I ain't worried about your daddy. You see my daddy? Yeah, he's skinny, but he's like seven foot tall, so bring it, if you want. You know, my dad, fling your daddy across. And so what's happening in Romans 8, in this Abba, that we have this spirit by which now we cry out, Abba, Father, it's really this kind of idea of our, have you seen my dad? Are you serious? Like later on at the back of Romans 8, what shall separate us from the love of God that is found in Jesus Christ? nakedness, can sword, can famine, can angels, demons, highs, lows, can anything separate us?

All of that is caught up in this Abba. Like, you've seen my dad? Famine? You see you? You're coming at me with famine? You see my pops? My mom's a backhand famine. A sword?

You're going to kill me to die his game. Let's go. Oh, you're going to throw me in prison? Well, I'm going to convert all your guards. Let's do it. You see my dad? What can happen to me? So that drives out fear.

What can man do to me? I belong to him. Abba, Father. Now this is, I'm going to be straight, man. This is too hard to believe. It's just too hard to believe that if you get into the kind of transcendence of God, how hard is it to believe that God would want to believe? kind of get on the floor and play with you. Go out back and hang out with you. Just freak out when

he saw you because he was super excited. Like how hard is it to believe that when the Bible says that he rejoices over us, that he delights in us, that he sings over us, that those things are true? Let's be straight. That's really difficult for me because I mean, I've said this for like 15 years. Like it's hard for me not to believe that the version of me that God loves is the future version of me. right when I'm just a little bit better than God will be like okay finally let's hang out just really annoying those first few years but I like where you're going now now let's go okay yeah so it's really hard to believe so the Bible then is going to help us out um by helping us understand how we can be confident that this is actually a reality so look at what the text says

that the spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God so because it's so hard to believe that we can cry out, Abba, Father, have you seen my dad? What can man do to me that I am loved, delighted in, rejoiced over, celebrated that God wants me in his presence, has made a way for me to be in his presence, delights in me coming into his presence, because that's so hard to believe. It's like God knows our objections. So he says that the spirit testifies to our spirit that were children of God. So how does this work? How does this work?

The way that the spirit testifies to our spirit that were children of God is almost always seen in our hunger and desire to know him, follow him, and serve him. So how does the spirit testify to our spirit

that we're children of God? Because we want God to do a work in our life that's so profound and powerful that we're more fully surrendered to him. So I want to be so bold as to say this, knowing that I get to go on a plan and go home, and at worst, you can send me a mean email that I'll delete. If you have no desire to follow Christ,

if you have no desire to submit your life to him, you have no desire to follow after him, you should not count yourself a Christian. You shouldn't. Whatever form of Christian you think you are is an unbiblical form of Christianity. it. Now, I am not saying that you are perfect or nailing it. In fact, our pursuit of Jesus will always be imperfectly executed, always. Always, and that's where the grace of God comes in, right? That's why we

don't just get saved with the gospel, that we stay in the gospel and let it remind us and rejuvenate us and refuel us over and over and over again. But no desire to know the Lord, no desire to submit to him, no seriousness about following him. You just shouldn't call yourself a Christian. I don't know what kind of Christian that is. And I don't know Jackson will well enough, but in Dallas, man, people tell me they're Christians because they were born in San Antonio or because their parents were. You know, your parents' faith has nothing to do with yours. You can't be born a Christian. Did you know that? Like, you can't be, so don't, if you say that thing where you're like, I've been a Christian my whole life, I'm just guessing that what you're talking about is you don't really have a memory

of not trying to follow the Lord. Because you certainly weren't born a Christian. You certainly weren't been, you hadn't been a Christian your whole life. Maybe faith was nurtured in the home of your youth and you don't really remember day where you weren't pursuing after him. But there was this moment where the Spirit of God did the regenerating work that only the Holy Spirit can do, right? And so what does it look like for the Spirit to testify to our spirit? It's not my perfection. It's not me going, I used to do this and now I do it. None of that. What it is is me saying, I want to know you, I want to submit to you, I want to lay my life at your feet, and I want to grow in my knowledge of you. And sometimes I'm faster to that, and sometimes I'm slower in that.

And men, I stumble and fall a lot, and I've got really bloody knees. But I know you got me, and you're my Abba Father, and you love me, and you're powerful enough to keep me in your hands. And then he goes on, and it gets even better. So not only does the spirit bear witness to our spirit that were children of God, but look at what he says next. And if we are children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. So now on top of Abba Father saying, I love you, I delight in you,

I rejoice in you. In fact, I'm going to sing a song over you. You are blameless and spotless. holy in my side, get into my presence, approach my throne of grace with confidence, all who are weary and heavy laden, get in here. I mean, what kind of invitation is that? You broken, you're socially awkward, you're depressed, anxious, don't have any personal space. Get in here. You're my kind of people. Depressed, addicted, kind of a jerk. My kind of people. Get in here. I'm going to help you with that. Like, where else do you get that invitation? Like Jesus, this is what Jesus says. Get in.

here, my kind of people, I can help you. Get in here where I am. So on top of that, he then starts talking about that we're kind of, we've got this inheritance coming that's wrapped up in Jesus's inheritance. And so you and I have coming for us an inheritance from Abba Father. And so let me just mark out a couple of those. I'll go from least important to most important. The first thing that the Bible would teach us is that as followers of Jesus Christ, adopted by God the Father through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. All of that matters. That you and I will get an inheritance of a remade heaven and remade earth,

a new heaven and a new earth. The prophet Isaiah says that when all things have been made new, that the mountaintops will produce sweet wine, that the deserts will bloom with roses, that the wolf and the lamb, they'll lie down together. In fact, they'll eat together. record they eat together now? Just the lamb's not really crazy about it, right? And so you've got, and then it goes on to say, and the lion will chew hay like the oxen. We could just keep going.

One of my favorite quotes ever, Augustine is kind of my ancient friend, so if Augustine wrote it, I've kind of muscled through it. And here's what he says in City of God. He's the bishop of hippo in northern Africa. He's looking at the sunset there in the Mediterranean. Here's what he says, if these are the beauties afforded to sinful men, what does God have in store for those who love him? Isn't that amazing? Like looking at the sunset over the Mediterranean, he's like, if this is what God shows those who hate him,

like, what does he have in store for those who love him? He's speaking of when all things are made new, creation is reordered, which means all the beauty of the natural world, even now, is bent and broken by sin, and you and I inherit the new thing, the renewed thing that is as God designed. it before sin fractured it.

We get to inherit that. That's pretty cool. The second thing, but remember, I'm going least to greatest. The second thing the Bible says that you and I get, according to 1 Corinthians 15, is new resurrected bodies. Now be straight with you when I was in my 20s that didn't, this didn't land. Like, yeah, okay, great. What's wrong with this one?

Now I'm 43. And the older I get, the more I'm longing for that new body. Like no one set me up to know that one of the more dangerous things I would do at 43 is just sleep. And that really bad things can happen to me while I sleep. I could wake up my neck, be all jacked up, the shoulder twisted over to the front pack. And like, what happened to you, man? Were you in a car accident? No, man, I just slept seven hours.

I need a new pillow or something, right? Like, I can feel, like, for a while I could get this sense that, oh, man, I could still do what I used to be able to do. It just feels different when I'm done, right? I need ice bath, medicine. And then what's happened now is I can't even do what I used to be able to do. And now I don't even care to try. Like you may say, man, you want to play? I'm like, no, I don't.

Dude, no, I ain't blowing out my Achilles to ball with you interns. It ain't happening, right? That's where I am now. I'm just a quitter. We're playing flag football, Chandler, you in? I'm in. I'm in, if I stand on the sideline and jaw, yeah, I'm in. But I'm not playing.

I ain't blowing out my ACL with some 20-year-olds. That's where I am now. I'm just done. That's why I like hunting. I just sit there. Bam, sport. I love it. Right? So I like because it's a sport I can do without risk of injury, I hope. Now, the other thing, and here's the big thing. Remember, least important to greatest important. New heaven, new earth, resurrected body doesn't get sick, doesn't get disease, doesn't die, doesn't, right?

It's an eternal resurrected body. Got that coming for me, eager for it. New heaven. New Earth, eager for it. But what you and I get as an inheritance is God himself unfettered. And if we get God and nothing else, we have everything, and if we get everything else and don't get God, we lost at all. The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is not that if you give your life to Jesus, everything's going your way. That's not the good news. The good news is that when we surrender our lives, to Jesus Christ, we get God, and he will be enough regardless of life circumstances. So it's not give your life to Jesus and all your dreams come true. It's give your life to Jesus and God will become your dream come true. And that's the good news. Anything else and you're trying to use God to get what

you actually want. You don't actually want God. You want something else and you're trying to use him. And it's really hard to manipulate an omnipotent, omnipresent being. I'm interested. I'm just really difficult to manipulate someone who knows everything and is everywhere at once and, right? Just really difficult. And so then the text goes here, and I wish it wouldn't see, if you just stop there, I mean, here we're sons, we're beloved, we're all these great things. And then on top of that, we've got this amazing inheritance coming, you know, boom, you know, new heavens, new earth, yours, you know, you could hang out with a lion. They chew hay now, you don't have to worry about that. You've got beauty beyond your wildest imagination. You're a co-air with Christ. That's part of

your inheritance. And then you get this kind of stunning resurrected body with eight-pack abs and universes for hair. And it's going to be this stunning, amazing thing. And you get God unfettered access to the king of glory. In fact, we don't even need the sun anymore because God's there. Right? You don't need no electricity. He's here. And then provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. Now, part of me is like, gosh, couldn't we just put the period back there? But then here would be the problem with that. If the period was back there and this wasn't said, this would not line up with our reality, would it? This would not line up with our reality.

And one of the reasons that I am convinced that the Bible is true is because it throws stuff like this in here to make sure we stay where we are and trust God with where we are. provided that we suffer with him. So in James, chapter one, James half brother of Jesus, again, this is for free. How do you convince your half brother you're the son of God in a way that makes him follow you and actually lead out in the church of Jerusalem? I think it has something to do with resurrecting from the dead, but could be wrong. So here's what he writes in James 1, 2, 3, 4, and I love the extent to which he goes in this text. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.

I love that various kinds there because it's like that junk drawer in your kitchen. You know what I'm saying? Just like anything can go in there? You're like, count it all joy when I face trials of various kinds. Do you mean marital difficulty? That would be various. Goes in the drawer. What about financial?

Various, right there in the drawer. Got a kid wild and out. Various. Struggling with some depression, that would be various. I've got some doubt in my heart and that. That would be various. Hey, I've got this. It just all goes in that drawer in your kitchen.

consider it all joy, my brothers, when you face trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. So I love this. Here's the thing on suffering if you're reading your Bible. God does not drive an ambulance. You know what I mean by that?

like God never shows up after. Oh my gosh, what happened? Where's his leg? We've got to try to fix this. That is not the God of the Bible. Suffering is wielded with God like a scalpel where he removes from us what might destroy us to replace it with what will actually save our lives. Eight years ago, a man named David grabbed me

and he drilled holes right here in my forehead and he cranked this thing down, this halo-like thing on him. And then he took a saw and he opened up my skull. And he popped my skull up and he took this kind of like burnt, like I don't know what it was, like a soldering thing. And he cut out the bulk of my right frontal lobe. And then he stapled my skull back on. And then he tried to poison me for 18 months after he actually had the gall

to radiate my brain like a crazy person. Now, right now, David Barnett sounds like a really evil, terrible man, we should actually go to his house and handle this. Except Dr. David Barnett was actually my neurosurgeon who removed from my right frontal lobe what was called an anaplastic oligodendro glioma who grade three. And that timidar and radiation, as painful as they were, were actually used by David Barnett. Actually, God used David Barnett and Karen Fink and a guy named Scott Cheek to sustain my life, remove from me what was surely going to kill me and to restore healthiness. I don't think healthiness is a word.

We'll just say tonight it is. I'm going along. That in this, that my life has now been saved. So I don't believe that God is going to be the cause of suffering, but it's like suffering is the servant of God. Are you tracking with that? So I don't think God causes it, but I think when suffering shows up because of a sinful world, God's like, okay, go ahead.

I'm just going to use it to redeem, restore, build faith, and establish my world. work in his heart. So that suffering becomes a servant of the king of glory. And so everyone in this room will here and there suffer something in their life. No one gets out clean. And we think we're strong and we think we're in control, but all of that's an illusion. And if you struggle with anxiety, I'm certainly not trying to trigger you tonight. But there isn't anyone in this room whose phone can't ring right now with news that it'll feel like it'll break your soul. So he's saying here, you're my children, I have you, I love you, I'm for you, I'm your Abba, Father, I delight in you. And there'll be some dark days, and I'll be there with you.

Let me close with these two illustrations, both of them having to do with Audrey. On this suffering piece, we were heading out on a quick family vacation up to a lake in Texas called Possum Kingdom. I'm sorry, I don't know either. Everybody's got something weird about where we are. I mean, Possum Kingdom. Like, who in the meeting didn't go? Possum Kingdom? Why would we do that?

Do we not want people to settle here? And so we got a little lakehouse out on Possum Kingdom. And we're getting in the car, and my in-laws are coming with us. And my Audrey, she's probably about six at this time. She started getting, it looked like she'd been bitten by something. And so my mother-in-law were getting gas for about two hours from this place. And my mother-in-law reaches in and touches her leg. She's like, ooh, that's hot.

You probably need to take her lunch. She's going to need to get that lanced. So what do you do when you're six? What does Lance mean? What does Lance mean? So my mother-in-law's like, oh, dang, she's out of practice. We're not out of practice. Grandma's out.

Gigi's out of practice. We're not. We're like, oh, my gosh, what have you done? And so then Gigi, she tries to explain Lansing to my daughter. She's like, what they do, honey, is they'll, like, spray some cold stuff. And they take a little bit of knife and then just cut you a little bit, and then it lets all that stuff out. So what does my six-year-old do?

I don't want him to lance it. I don't want to be able to land it. So for two hours, man, I'm like, I'm turning up the music, rolling down windows and pronouncing curses over my mother-in-law as my six-year-old screams in the back. So surely it's actually swollen some and gotten more hot to the touch by the time we get there. So we got to pull into a hospital at Possum Kingdom. Guys, like a vet and the doctor there. I don't know.

And then, so we take her in this poor young doctor. He walks in, he feels it. and what do you think he says? He's like, yeah, we're going to have to what? Lance that. Now, my daughter loses her mind. And so the nurse is trying to hold her down and don't sleep on gangly Chandler's. We're strong. We're just gangly. And so he's having a hard time. So I have to get on the bed. I have to put my forearm into the chest of my daughter and force her down into the bed while they straighten out her leg and give her a little and lance that thing. And I remember her just giving me this look like, I can't believe you're doing this, dad. I

I can't believe. And then I'm tearing up and I'm wanting him to hurry to freak up. Like, I don't know what's taking him so long. Let's wrap this thing up. What are we having? Open heart surgery here right now. It's a little nub on her shin. And then he finally got it open and then squeezed the pus out or whatever. And then she was, and I got this sense in this moment that when we suffer, I wonder if this is what's happening with the Lord. Is the Lord kind of helping pin us down and knowing it stinks and knowing it hurts, but loving us so much that it's not worth us losing the leg. I think it might be. My last illustration to close our night together. When you have your first kid, you're like, you can't wait for them to walk, right? You celebrate all

these little milestones like, oh my God, they ate with their own hands. They held their own bottle. Oh my gosh. And what became apparent to us was Audrey was getting close to being able to walk. So she had kind of pulled herself up on the coffee table. God bless her, she had this huge head and her little body. It looked like somebody took a toothpick and jammed it in orange and set it there. And so she would kind of bounce, and I always got worried that maybe she was going to die. She looked like Merton Hanks, if you're a 49ers fan. And what she ended up doing is she would let it go, and then you could just see the head was kind of dominating her. And then Lauren and I were getting excited.

You know, we're like, oh, my gosh, she's going to walk. Anytime now, she's going to walk. And she let go of it, and then she kind of turned, and then her giant head kind of came forward. And if you're a science person, here you go. Now, what's happening? It's physics, right? Giant head pulling tiny body. and now you've got what scientists called momentum.

And so at that moment, she's got two choices. She can stick out her foot or she can die. So she stuck out her foot, and then now momentum has built. So now it was step, step, step, and fall to the ground. And you know what her mom and I did? We lost our mind, right? We're like, oh my gosh, she's walking. This is before smartphones.

We had to find the phone. We had to hit that button. Look at the house, find the cordless. We're calling parents. We can't. We've got to get her back up. Three more steps fell to the ground. Now we're celebrating everybody.

Audrey's walking. It's finally happened. She's walking. And I wonder if that that happens in every family on earth is a picture of how our heavenly father celebrates over. There's children that are walking. Look at me. You know what I never saw?

I never saw her fall. I didn't watch her go step, step, step fall and go, oh my gosh, three steps. Pathetic. baby this is on your family because everybody in my family walks i'm hey i don't want to fight i'm just are you serious no one has ever done that no the most abusive man in the world has never done that you just you're so caught up in the fact that they're walking that you don't even you don't even ever acknowledge it's a fall except to pick them up and put them back down so you can get excited about them walking again right like

like oh gosh let's you know no we picked her right back up set her and we're just come on come here blam come on a little bit far a little bit farther. And it's just this epic celebration of steps. Then you believe that that's how God sees you? Or can you not get over yourself? You really think that your sin has more power than the cross of Jesus Christ? You really want to make the accusation that Christ died in vain? So here's what's great. Whether you believe it or not, if you're a Christian, your heavenly father delights in you. Well, you don't know me. You don't know what I'm stuck in. You don't know my secrets. Here's what's great. I don't have to. Because the Bible is filled with people that make your story look junior varsity. And junior varsity third string tied in an offense that doesn't use one. Right? So this is part of being a Christian is getting over yourself. It's getting your eyes off your belly button and looking at the king of glory. The more you make this about you, the more. The more you make this about you, the more. miserable and locked into fear you're going to be. And the more you can get your eyes on his

sufficiency, his power, his grace being enough, the more free you'll actually be. It's so stuck in holding up the persona, so trapped in pretending to be more than you are. Look, I love you. That's the stupidest trade in the history of the universe. Fake life instead of life. fake joy instead of joy, fake peace instead of peace. Look at me, what are you doing? What are you doing? My guess is you've been hiding for so long, it's kind of become the shield for you.

And you feel like if you were to put it down every way you know to protect that persona, feels gone and you feel naked and ashamed, the one who delights in you, the one who rejoices of you, the one who already knows. So all you've done is you've fooled a bunch of other fools. You certainly haven't fooled him.

His love is still here. He has not asked for a mulligan. He has no regrets in saving you. He knew what he was buying in the cross. He knew what he was getting. That stuff could get down in your guts and you'd have the courage to believe it. Lay your yes down. put your faux persona self off to the side and step into the light.

You'd find his kindness and his grace waiting for you. Or you can stay a slave to fear by thinking a better version of you is going to get you there, or some other person is going to get you there, or worldly toys and trinkets are going to get you there, or you're going to figure out the right combination of worship missions and small group that finally sets you free. The combination is the blood of Jesus. That's the only combination.

The spirit of the living God dwelling inside of you. That comes with confession and repentance. So to get into this space, it requires stepping into the life. Look at me. And don't think I don't know. Some of you would rather die than do that. What I'm trying to help you see is you're already choosing death. And life is available to you.

Would you do me a favor? why don't you bow your heads, close your eyes, and we'll chat for just a second. There are these two concepts at play here. I want to talk about both of them briefly. The first concept is this concept of forgiveness that in the coming of Jesus Christ is life, death, and resurrection, all of your sin, past, present, and future. All of your past sins, all of your present struggles,

all of your future failures, have been, listen now, fully, freely, and forever forgiven in the cross of Jesus Christ. Not because of you, but because of him. Not because of your glory, but for his glory. And I just have to believe that some of us in here, we just, our past just will not let us believe that. Our present struggle just won't let us believe that. Some of us, we've got serious addiction to pornography. Others of us, man, we've got addiction.

to all sorts of things. Our whole kind of life is kind of a front and we've learned Christianese and we know how to say things that are Christian. We know how to show up in Christian things and we like the whole idea of this, but we have not said yes to Jesus in such a way where we've walked into the light

past our false self and into the light. And I just have to wonder if some of you are just tired enough tonight to finally just come clean. Come clean about that affair eight years ago. Come clean about that addiction to pornography.

Come clean about stealing your kids at a roll. Come clean about this emotional connection you have with a coworker. Come clean about this or about that. Those things that gnaw at your soul make you hate yourself and therefore be angry with everyone around you.

Step into the forgiveness of Jesus. And if that's you tonight and you would just say Matt Chaley, you don't matter, you're about to head home, so it doesn't. But if I have to be straight with Jesus, who already knows me, who already knows everything about me, I have never come clean in some areas of my past and in some current areas of struggle. And I am running out of gas because of that. If that's you, would you just raise your hand? There didn't need any shame in this room, right? The Bible is filled with a lot of heroes of ours that would testify. Just get that hand up high,

right? We ain't Baptist in here. You can get that thing up. All right. Praise God. Why don't you put your hands down? I'm proud of you. Praise God. Thank you. And then I'm wondering if there aren't some of you in here. They go, no, no, no. I get the forgiveness piece. I get the forgiveness piece, Matt. But if I had to describe my relationship with Jesus,

I would describe it as stale, as distant. Because, man, I just thought I would be so much farther along than I am right now. I just thought, man, I'd know more of the Bible. I thought I'd be more bold in my faith. I thought I'd be more zealous for Jesus. I just thought I would be more. And so when I think about where I am spiritually, I just have a hard time believing that I'm not a little disappointing to Jesus.

And man, if what you're saying is true, man, I want to come and just lay my yes down, that I'm not going to let my failures dictate God's love for me anymore. And if that's you in this room, you're like, look, I'm out of gas here, Chandler. I am so tired. I just thought I'd be farther along than I am. I thought you would just raise your hand and go, man, I thought I'd be farther along. I'm just not there.

Just raise that thing up high and be bold. Praise God. I want you to look at me. Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to pray in just a second. And then when I say amen, if you raised your hand and you said, man, and there were a lot of you. They were just like, man, I have just never come clean or I'm stuck in something right now. And nobody knows about it.

I'm keeping that a secret. And so, man, if that's you, what I'm going to ask you to do is as soon as I say, amen, I want you to find somebody that's on the prayer team here. And I want you to grab it. I need you to just kind of confess, just vomit it on them. All right, you just need to come clean and trust the work of God's grace in your life moving forward. And they can counsel or, listen, if it's over their head, they can connect you with someone who can give you counsel on how to move forward in this.

But I want you to get that darkness out of you tonight. right we destroy darkness by dragging it into the light i am aware of how terrifying this moment will be for you what might be on the line here what repercussions might come but i want you to trust in the kindness of jesus that stepping into the light always leads to life not death and then if you're and you raised your hand on the other one you said listen i i just have a hard time believing that's true my relationship with Jesus is stale. I think he's disappointed in me. And so if what you're saying is true,

I want to just come up and thank Jesus for that and confess that to Jesus and ask the love of Christ to wash over me by the power of the Holy Spirit. What I want you to do when I say amen is, man, you've got these great kneelers up here. In fact, I'm going to go back and try to get us some at the village. We've got these great kneeler. Why don't you just come up and spend some time with the Spirit of God?

What does Jesus say? Come to me, all who are weary, heavy laden and I will give you rest? Why, you come get your rest? And here's what's great. If this is too hard to believe, here's a great prayer. It's too hard for me to believe. Give me the faith to believe.

Gosh, isn't the closest people to Jesus asked that same thing? Remember the centurion who wanted his son healed? Do you believe? I believe, help my unbelief. I believe, but help me. Like, God knows it's scary to be us. He knows we're frail. knows we're human.

Not what the book of Hebrews tells us that we have an empathetic high priest? God does not disdain your humanity. Because of Jesus, he understands it. Weak and frail are we. Have you seen our dad? You seen our dad? What could man do to us?

Let's pray and move. Father, I thank you for even the baby steps in this place tonight. That baby steps will lead to rejoicing. seen in heaven. That those who are courageous enough to drag darkness into light, I pray your grace over them personally, I know how terrifying that is, and wondering how you'll be viewed and how you'll be seen and what your spouse will think and what your kids will think and what other

people will think that have had this picture of you that you've been projecting that's incorrect. I just pray that you not let their courage run out at this moment of truth. I ask that light will flood into darkness and overcome it. I pray for those who just feel dry. They feel disappointed in themselves. Would you energize their spirits, Holy Spirit of God, by helping them get a sense

that you know all of their secrets, all of their background, all of their future failures, and all of it was accounted on the cross? If that were not true, you'd still be in the grave, but you have resurrected and sit in. at the right hand of the Father, where you are interceding for us at this very moment.

That you delight in us is too much for us. We'll need your Holy Spirit to help us. And it's for your beautiful name, I pray. Amen.