AM I GOING TO HELL? | Aaron McManus - Mosaic

[Music] hi my name is aaron mcmanus and welcome to mosaic wherever you are i am so glad that you are joining us right now and this week something special happened i finally got up here and i'm speaking a message and i am so grateful to get to be with you and i hope that wherever you are you're able to learn something from this one thing that i absolutely love about this time in covit in the last nine months in 2020 is that we've been able to do something i never imagined we would be able to do we would be able to focus in on reaching people all over the world using the online mosaic gathering and i know that there's so many of us that miss being in person but i do think that we might miss what god is doing in our people in our world that are building as epic as it is at the rialto and in seattle and in mexico city and in venice and right here on the corner of hollywood boulevard and la brea it could never fit the amount of people that these messages are reaching now and it wouldn't happen without you people who are sharing the link people who are engaging their friends people who are sending people bad already a podcast that me and my dad get to do we are causing so much controversy i am so sorry but one thing that i've loved about this season has been being able to focus on the little things focusing on the details focusing on preparing this for your friends and now i have friends who would have never come to church and they're like are you guys open yet because i would love to stop by i'm like no no we're still not open yet and whenever this video plays whenever you're listening to it i think you are able to understand the time that we have gone through whether you're with your family or whether you quarantined alone or maybe you had roommates maybe you're with a girlfriend or boyfriend or husband and wife maybe you're with a business partner maybe you're just trying to survive we all will remember what 2020 was like i've made some new friends gotten to reconnect with some old friends there's some people i still haven't seen but but a few things have happened and i want to talk about them so many of my friends are married like all of them like every single one of them like almost all of them and some of them have kids kids on the way and it's a little bit we're getting to the place where i'm like okay i've got to find new friends new friends who are single ready to you know be unsingle but all of my my friends were getting married i love them so much and and john thomas got married my friend beau got married bohan and then and then one of my best friends we've been four time roommates four time roommates roommates four times that is crazy i've lived in more apartments with matt pagan than my sister has lived with her husband it is actually insane he just got married to a beautiful woman named sammy pagan now and if you anyone knows sammy and matt they're hilarious matt's one of the most chill people sammy is one of the less chill people but it's what we love about her as we were going away for his bachelor weekend a couple guys took him away down south had a weekend of it had so much fun and we got to this point where his brother whose name is mike pagan they're literally twins decided to plan everything he's the best man i'm probably gonna fight with matt about that later i think i'm number two in in the order though so i think of importance i'm second we we did this weekend away and for the most part we were all pastors so there wasn't much trouble we could get into you'd think but mike decided to play this game with matt where he had asked sammy a list of questions and so as he asked matt a question he'd have to answer it and figure out if he got it right or wrong and let's just say now because they're married and i can tell the absolute truth he did not get that many questions right and at one point i just kind of like looked like do you even know this person but what was incredible was about nine questions in some hits some misses he answers a question wrong and mike goes at this point mike is deflated thought this would be an easy win and he just goes no that's just super wrong and matt gets up so mad as like you do not know her like i know her she is wrong she may not even know her like i know her and what was amazing about it was i was just watching this whole thing going you never wonder like what god's voice sounds like because i have sat awake at night going god i wish you could speak to me and then in moments where i least expected it god engages me through humanity so i'm sitting at this dinner table with five or six other guys seven or eight other guys when matt is yelling at mike you don't know her i know her and in that moment i was like kevin pena good friend of ours he loves getting invited into to the groomsmen parties i will say even that he might have an unhealthy relationship that if he knows you're getting married he might try to become your best friend so he can get added into the lineup but kevin goes this is not going well i'm going to call sammy so he calls sammy we fact check and lo and behold sammy says i don't know why i even answered that like that you're right matt you do know me and in that moment i watched something so beautiful happen i watched god work in a metaphor where i realized that so many times in my life i forgot who i was didn't know who i was didn't know where i was going and i was reminded in those moments that god knew me more than i even knew myself i thought it was such a beautiful example of love to know that someone could know someone else more than they even knew themselves and when they were checked on it when they were called out for it like yeah i realized yeah you actually do know this more than i do know this myself but what is it about us that we forget so easily who god has told us we are i want to jump into this verse john 10 14 15 he says this i am the good shepherd i know my own and my own know me just as the father knows me and i know the father and i lay down my life for you what i love about this verse is it is an absolute reminder that god knows us that jesus knows us more than we often times know ourselves and we wonder at moments in in this season of nine to ten months a year of coveting quarantine and political unrest and so many protests and riots if you're in a major city there was probably buildings burning i've realized over the last nine months i i've forgotten who i was so many times that i would wake up and just feel this sense of panic that that i know who i am in my career i know that i want to be like my father i know that i love working with my sister and my mother i love know that i have a great team i know that i feel filled with purpose but there are moments where it just feels like i've lost who i am that i'm unsure who i could be and we all need a reminder that that god knows you more than you might know yourself and that what he has for you is so much better than what you think is coming and if 2020 is a reminder it's that this year is not the definition of our humanity however stagnant you may feel however complacent this year it may have been however stir crazy you may be maybe you feel lost maybe you feel exhausted maybe you feel unhealthy there is someone who created you who has come to know you who always remind you exactly who you can be and who you are and who you will become but i find that hard to accept at times because i'm 32 now but at 23 years old i did not understand and go going even further before i was 19 years old and i was going where god are you in my life i was 18 years old going god do you exist because the christians that i meet the people who have jesus that are around me i do not understand them i felt more alone maybe than i ever have in my entire life to not only be trying to figure out who i am as a man but also to figure out who god is not just in relationship to me but me in relationship to him see one of the first things that people ask me because i'm a pastor's kid and i've always been a pastor's kid and that's something i didn't sign up for it's not a political party it's not a job i got to interview for it was something i inherited and it's not always something i loved but at 21 22 23 i realized la as big as it is is a little too small for me to figure out who i am i always find it ironic when when when i feel like i need more freedom than i actually do i am someone in all of the personality tests has established and it reminded me that i need so much freedom it's almost unhealthy it's how i thrive it's how i survive it's how i feel like i'm not trapped and i think there's a generation of people around me and under me who feel the same way but with freedom freedom isn't always free freedom can oftentimes come at a cost at 22-23 i started kind of being more awakened to the reality that this was taking a toll not just on my heart or on my mind but on my soul and i think we can live in a place in our life where we forget who we are and not just who we are but where we come from and i'm often reminded as a pastor's kid you know your dad is like this your mom is like this your sister's like this so you need to be like this we talk about it a lot on the podcast but you're a pastor but i'm a pastor what i'm not human i'm supposed to be supernatural i'm supposed to have this life of x y and z of expectation of projection now as 32 year old i'm accepting a lot of it but at 19 at 18 i did not understand what that meant didn't understand what it looked like didn't say what it felt like so all i needed was freedom freedom to go figure it out freedom to live my life and with freedom it came across at 23 years old i was exhausted i walked into a nightclub and a door guy of the nightclub said aaron mcmanus he called me out by name you come in here but i want you to come to church and i'm also reminded of another another friend that i sat down recently with and and and it was a new friend and and because i'm a pastor's kid a lot of people ask me weird questions weird questions like you know what do you think about this do you believe in science are you a republican or a democrat there's all of these things that are projected on me that we project on other people because of who their parents might have been or who their past or what their past might have been like but one thing that i asked myself whenever people say you know ask me a weird question i usually try to roll it off with a joke i don't know if it's unhealthy or not but i try to bring comedic relief to awkward moments my friend looked at me and i was looking at my phone and said am i going to hell and i kind of chuckled and said if you're going then i want to go too and i realized that was inappropriate so i tried to take a step back and said if you're going i would never want you to go anywhere that i wouldn't go and then i looked up and and i realized that this person was so serious they had actually opened a door to themselves so vulnerable so raw so human so i took a step back and i asked why do you ask that i said i don't know like you say you weren't perfect when you were younger and you say you've had a past and you say there's things you're still struggling with and there's things you're still working through so like if you're still working through these things if you're still trying to find who you are can can you still can you go to heaven or are you going to hell because i was raised that if i'm full of guilt and shame and sin if i've made mistakes i don't know if i can get to the next place that i'm going to be stuck in this middle ground and and i don't know about you but but i i pride myself on being logical but it the reality is that i'm quite emotional and i was with someone who was new and and i just wanted to like break open and cry and i out of just fear and embarrassment i i did it and i and i we decided to have this dialogue on where do we go from here how do we know god's love and i looked at this person and i said well it says in romans if you declare with your mouth and you believe in your heart then you will be saved and i often think about those words because i say saved a lot i say that that my friends in new york saved my life my pastor in new york saved my life and a man named matt the door guy of a nightclub saved my life that a friend named joe saved my life that his brother john influenced my life that this couple amazing couple carl and laura saved my life and my dad were always why do you say saved that's like such old language and i'm like you know it is such old language i mean it's literally in the bible but i think the way that i meant it was that i was so self-destructive i knew who i was and i was running from it so hard that the only place i was gonna go was somewhere dark and heavy and alone so i think when we forget who we are we have the tendency to isolate ourselves from all of humanity that we might be filled maybe in a room filled with people but do they actually know who we really are i always find it ironic and i am one of these people when people wear like a cross around their neck i had to take it off because it was jingling so much when we were recording this but i wear one and i love it i keep it close and i have friends who wear them and i always find it interesting when they wear it on the outside because it's obviously a marker of something that we believe and obviously is an association of a freedom that we have a different kind of freedom that we have stepped into that oftentimes i look at myself and go are you worthy of wearing the thing that reminds you of the thing you've been freed from the thing you oftentimes run away from we began to have a conversation about stepping into a relationship with jesus what that looks like what that means how do you live that out does you have to be loud can you can it be for you how do you what happens when when when god brings you into situations where people ask you about your faith i shared a verse in jeremiah where it says your word is in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones i have to speak your name and i'm paraphrasing now but it's something that lives inside of my mind that i have all the freedom in the world i can choose any choice but will i choose a step into a relationship with the one who created me so this question got me thinking am i going to hell because to be really honest i'm wildly ocd and every time i pray i have like a very catholic prayer i'm like god please forgive me for everything i've done since the last time that i prayed to you five minutes ago that it was even so bad in high school i remember a moment where my mom looked at me and said aaron mcmanus i need you to stop touching things because i was so ocd i could not get into my bed without turning off the lights 15 million times and getting in the right way i look like an old character on tv called monk like i would touch things i would i would i would hold things i would uh turn things up turn things down turn these up turn things down i'm so grateful i figured it out by the time i drove a car because i probably would have driven it in circles 000 times but with that ocd i realized i get into these patterns in my life where i'm like god please forgive me for everything i've done wrong you know it's kind of mean to test like five minutes ago i kind of mean my sister like 10 minutes ago i really i like i had some thoughts like what what am i doing how do i be better how do i fix things and i realize that i don't actually step into the relationship with god in a way in which i know that he knows me he knows the mistakes i'm gonna make before i make them but it's interesting how humans have these feelings like shame and guilt and fear and loneliness and i realize over the last year in 2020 i felt an assortment of these things when i was young the ocd would really drive me to a place where i would have anxiety attacks at a young age i didn't know how to manage my emotions because i didn't know how to manage my mind i didn't quite understand the connection with the health of my soul so here's the question am i going to hell i have to be honest when my friend left and and and we stopped talking about it i i could not leave it it was one of those questions that kind of stirred inside of my soul my brain started firing off and even though i felt like my heart was broken my mind was desperately searching for the answer that would help my friend feel the most free so sort of looking in revelation which is like a weird place for me to look because to be honest when it gets into some of the dreams i'm not entirely quite sure what to do but right in revelation 1 i was so surprised because it was exactly what i needed to read it says in verse 17 117 when i saw him i fell at his feet as though dead then he placed his right hand on me and said do not be afraid i am the first and the last i am the living one i was dead and now look i am alive forever and ever and i hold the keys of death in hades and this verse to me is so extremely ominous epic incredible and it's in the last book of the bible and it's something that just rings so heavy i could not shake it do not be afraid that i am the first and the last and i hold the keys of death and hades death and hell and i always will remember this because one it's just such an iconic image i wonder if jesus he's holding the keys to death in hell and i wonder where he put them kind of like us where we put crosses around our neck i wonder if god decided to gold plate this thing and throw it around his neck as a reminder because the way i view god in my ocd in my humanity in my guilt in my my my shame is that god is not only the judge but that i deserve to be judged that there is nothing in me that could quite possibly make it out of the hell that i put myself in and into the heaven of the relationship of walking with jesus that i realized that i snatched the keys from god from jesus and i locked the door with myself inside but what i love about jesus that he gives us the choice to step into a relationship with him i love about john in this verse says in a vision that when i saw him i fell at his feet as though dead and he placed his right hand on me and said do not be afraid that when we step into a relationship with jesus that we step into his presence there is something inside of our humanity inside of our being it's like a muscle memory that we fall at his knees as though we are dead that everything inside of us the life force inside of us returns to the source of life i often wonder if we could ever even choose to step away from his presence once we are actually in it but he gives us a choice and i think in our humanity we have this thing about us that labels guilt and shame that feeling as something you should be ashamed of let's look at your past and see what you are guilty of what we know a judge to be we enact we enable we judge the ones around us we condemn the ones around us we say well if you don't want to go to hell turn to god and what i think god's saying is once you are in my presence how could you ever choose anything else do you ever connect to the wi-fi you ever connect to the wi-fi i live in downtown sometimes my wi-fi is so bad then it says next network connection lost see i think as humans we take these feelings and we label them with a negative connotation when actually we were created with these feelings we've just assigned them to negative realities when we feel this guilt and this shame this brokenness this loneliness that is actually the feeling that god has put inside of us to understand that the network connection has been lost that whatever we did we need to undo we step into his presence we step into a relationship with him that network connection is refound it's found again we're able to get rid of this guilt and get rid of the shame if you've ever been someone who has been labeled a sinner and labeled someone who is guilty do not let the definition of others over power the definition and the relationship that god wants you have with you he says i know my own and my own know me very similarly to the way that matt said no mike i know sammy better than you do and maybe better than herself she is wrong you have that same characteristic in your creator that i imagine jesus in some other realm is looking at you going i know you better than you know yourself will you wake up to the reality when we step into the presence of god and we step into the relationship with jesus that so often we don't just get to know him but we get to know us ourselves through him i was 23 years old and i walked through this this door of this nightclub that i never really intended on going in i actually wanted to walk to the water and i just saw a door open and it seemed cool and i was in a weird place i actually had just jumped out of a cab full of people and i was disgusted i was going through something i knew i was lost i had just landed i was gonna go do what i always do just run and hide from my current reality and when i stepped into this door and this guy grabs me and says no i know you you're aaron mcmanus come to church with me and i looked at him and said if you really know me you would know that i don't go to church unless i have to and i have to a lot so no thank you i ended up going inside and i don't know why i don't know how and i look back at moments in my life and realize that god was all over the space i just didn't know him yet just wasn't aware or attuned and we worry so much about hearing the voice of god but can we see god's movements in our lives sometimes we're so focused on the freedom that we need to have to feel alive to feel like we lived our lives i remember when i was young in a young age i knew that i just needed to get this out of my system i needed to go explore the world i needed to try things i needed to feel happiness and joy and pain and then i got to this place at this crossroad with this young guy named matt and i went to church the next day and it wasn't awesome because i wasn't awesome at all i was filled with anxiety i was filled with anger i was filled with bitterness i walked into this church and there were all these people singing and i was like this is so dumb he puts me in the middle of the row and kind of just like leaves me and says hey meet the people around you you'll love everybody and what i realized is i was not the only person matt had invited to church that he had actually filled the whole four first four rows with friends that he had made at the nightclub and invited him to church i remember being in the middle and i had like this overwhelming feeling like i want to say that it changed my life and maybe it did but i just had like this massive anxiety attack i just started getting so tight started sweating everywhere it was probably hot in there i was so freaked out at the message i was so freaked out by the worship i don't even remember what was said but the next morning i saw my dad he flew into town and i said dad i went to church and he looked at me eyes real open and he was like who how did why did you go you went on your own i was like not really i got invited well did you like it and i was like no and we began to have a conversation where he challenged me where he knew the state i was in and i had never really even told him what i was going through or what i was doing or what i was running from or how i was hiding i remember i was so rough so rigid and so raw he looked at me and said maybe you need to lean into that thing that makes you feel so uncomfortable maybe god's trying to speak to you and the people around you and i began to get to know the creator of the universe god and his son jesus in my life and the way that i heard the voice of god the way that i found a new freedom the way that i realized he knew me better than i knew myself is by realizing that he had been at work in my life all along the freedom i thought i had was only the beginning of what he was going to give me this knowledge about myself this self-awareness this fake self-confidence i realized that it was based in only what i had and what i had seen but not in what he had had for me what he had for me and what he was willing to show me the next four or five years of my life were so hard i want to say that in a moment it all changed but in a moment i became aware and i started doing the work to change that i realized i was called by god to live out a life so far beyond what i'd expected and i'm here to remind you that no matter what you think you know about yourself there is a god who is calling you and he sent his son jesus into this world to grab the keys of death and hell so that you would never be alone you would never be afraid you will never be stuck in your anxiety that you'll never go someplace you would never meant to be that you'll never be alone and you will be reminded there are people all around you who want you to be the most free the way that he had created you to be i don't know when it happened but i woke up one day and i knew that god was at work inside of me there was people who refused to leave me alone people who refused to stop calling me and inviting me into spaces where i could meet more people and feel more loved and i wanted to invite you into that space today that we may not be 10 feet away that we might be thousands of miles but that i would like to invite you to step into a relationship with the one who knows you the most the one who wants the most freedom for you the one who wants to know you more closely than anyone in this world today is the day that you can make that decision to step into a relationship with jesus what does that look like i said it early in romans it says confess with your mouth jesus i love you jesus i need you believe in your heart jesus you've come you've down the cross for my guilt and my shame you've attempted connecting with my soul now it's on me to choose you and my life you confess with your mouth you believe in your heart and you will be saved and i often think about those words what was i saved from i was saved from myself from the self-destructive nature my inability to be aware of the love that was around me to filter what i needed and what i did not need in this life if you're ready to step into a relationship with jesus i just want you to say these words that jesus i give you my life that jesus i need you today is the day and there is no going back that i am going to live and how you have created me and how you know me and in the freedom that you have given me you've said those words you've prayed that prayer i just want to pray for you right now give you that chance i want you to know that you are surrounded by people digitally right now in whatever city you might be in that want to know you that want to love you that want to help you run this race and live this life you were never designed to do life alone your faith was never just meant to be you in god but you and god and all of his creation dear heavenly father god we love you so much and i pray for every single person who is looking at this screen right now who is closing their eyes right now who is running who is driving who is listening to this in the shower who maybe cannot get out of bed or maybe stuck in the hospital might be on a plane maybe in their dorm or maybe they're afraid to tell anyone else that they're going to church right now jesus you will meet them in their space you will overwhelm them with love with kindness with hope with faith that today will be the day that they will never look back how humanity has defined them but step into this relationship and this new definition you have established with them in this moment in your beautiful and glorious name we pray amen

Channel: Mosaic

Views: 8,608

Rating: 4.878788 out of 5

Keywords: MOSAIC, MOSAIC Los Angeles, Erwin McManus, Erwin Raphael McManus, Los Angeles Church, YouTube Church, Church, Jesus, Worship, Mosaic MSC, Mosaic, MSC, Aaron mcmanus, sermon on hell, Aaron McManus sermon, mosaic hollywood church, mosaic la, youtube church, mosiac, pastor erwin sermon, los angeles churches, hearing gods voice

Id: uuPoRQrfO2M

Length: 33min 13sec (1993 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020