Some Reasons to Celebrate - Ben Stuart

well when i was in elementary school we would play a game in p.e called octopus and the way the game worked was they would take all of us kids and line us up on one wall of the gym and when the coach blew the whistle we had to run across the gym to the other wall not a particularly complex game but the coach would always designate one kid as it and when it tagged you you didn't leave the game you had to sit down wherever it was that you were tagged and you became a participant in this great drama you were part of its squad you didn't have the mobility it had but as you sat there you could tag other kids and they would have to sit as well and so with each pass across the gym this web of its evil intrigue would increase across the floor and so i remember the first round of this one particular day i crossed the floor and crossed it again and was having a pretty good game made it several times through this web of evil and yet right at the end of the game i got tagged it was very frustrating didn't win and so the next round came across and i'll be honest with you second round i got tagged very early uh i wasn't focused hadn't cleared my mechanism uh to focus too much emotional energy in the last game got tagged early sat down so when the third game came across i wanted to do this right i wanted to be the winner i wanted to be the last man standing and so i was focused man the game started i'm running across the gym i'm back i'm making moves i'm getting past people dodging hands little people all over the place and but one by one as the room increases with drama i'm making it across the floor until at one moment i remember i tagged the wall and it was close and i remember looking out at this sea of humanity and thinking i don't know how i'm going to advance in this web of darkness so i looked along the line to size up my competition who's left and next to me was a kid named josh mermis and josh was maybe 50 pounds soaking wet he looked terrified he was shaking and i thought this guy's toast he doesn't have what it takes and i looked past him and on the other side of him was brett bilik brett would go on to play lacrosse at harvard and even back then was just a strapping young man and i remember brett as he looked over at us with all his confidence muscles i'll never forget he looked over at josh and myself and he said follow me i know the way and i didn't have any better ideas so i followed him and i remember the whistle blew brett took off josh behind him and ben and sure enough brett's leading us through this network and i'm making my way across and yet at one point about mid-room i'm feeling good about me and i see an opening over there and i think i can advance if i go that way i see brett going that way but i got a vision so i start making my own moves and i don't even notice i get hit and i gotta sit down and like a second later whistle blue coach says that's it winner and he points over at two guys brett millick and behind him little josh mermis brett's the winner because he had the capacity to overcome josh was a winner because he had the good sense to stay in brett's wake now why do i mention that because that's the book of colossians this little letter is a beautiful letter written to the believers in jesus in a city called colossae colossi wasn't a particularly large city it was in asia modern-day turkey and the gospel had spread its way there through the ministry of paul the apostle paul came to christ and as he was traveling to minister in the name of jesus went to a city called ephesus and in ephesus paul was able to secure a a venue where he would give evangelistic messages day after day for about three years and as he did that luke says in the book of acts that he was so successful that all of asia was hearing the gospel from radiating out from this moment paul had in ephesus and so paul had never visited colossae but it was about a two three day journey from ephesus and as paul preached people put their faith in jesus and one of those people was a guy named epaphras he was a native of colossae he came to faith in jesus and he took that message home and a church was launched there and a young fledgling group of believers began to grow in this really multi-ethnic community colossae was kind of an agrarian town along a riverside and there were phrygians there and greeks and a large jewish contingent had moved centuries earlier so it was a really mixed community of ethnicities a mix of philosophy and there in that mix people came to put their faith in jesus through the ministry of the local boy epaphras but a preference paul called him not just a fellow worker and saint he calls him in a later letter a fellow prisoner apparently apophis went back to meet with paul and paul was imprisoned when he wrote this letter epaphras was either visiting him in prison or more likely imprisoned with him and in that moment he's telling paul about this young fledgling church that paul had never visited he said hey these people have taken off they've been rooted in the person of jesus and yet a false teaching had began to weave its way in that they found themselves with the faith in jesus but like a lot of young people they go okay but i want to advance i want to move forward i want to progress as a human being how do i do that and here in this matrix of all this philosophy some different ideas were being put forth to them that yes you began with the faith in jesus that's great but if you want to advance as a human being if you want to become better than you are now let's kind of mix in some greek philosophy some jewish ideas and let's begin to mingle you started with jesus and that's great but if you want to grow to be a spiritual elite you have to grab a philosophy about the fullness available through this different teaching and so here in this moment as the pafras tells paul about this there's a teaching going on that's trying to help people move on but move on not with christ but from christ paul's going to write this letter and he's going to tell the corinthians or the colossians do you want to move forward in life you don't move forward from christ you move forward with christ and it's the same for you and the same for me do you want to advance and look it's a new year everybody does everyone's looking at hey what's the next program to help me improve as a human being to get smarter to get stronger to get fitter to get wiser to get happier how do i advance and what he's going to say here is that you don't grow apart from christ you grow with christ you don't outgrow him you grow in him and the letter of colossians is a beautiful letter because it contains the highest most exalted beautiful praise of the son of god jesus christ it extols the authority and supremacy of jesus that he is above all earthly powers that they said back then in this kind of false teaching in colossae that man you need to move on into the fullness by understanding these different philosophies and paul's going to argue to them no the fullness of the godhead is in that man you don't outgrow christ you grow with christ you don't outrun him you will advance if you stay in his wake this is a letter to young believers a young church in a cosmopolitan city giving them the road map of here's how you improve as an individual and here's how we grow as a community and i gotta tell you church that's why i'm so excited about doing this series together we are going to soak in the scripture in colossians and let me tell you what i want to do in this time i want us to grow in christ and let me tell you something speed is the enemy of that depth it's interesting this week i read an article that was talking about how numbness is the hot feeling right now people want to feel numb that sensory deprivation tanks are at an all-time high in popularity now that i can put myself in a tank where i just block out all sensation and you go why is that hip right now i think because everybody's a little fried which is the constant bombardment of crazy and anxiety and nuts in the world today it's just become too much like i don't know if you've been around a little baby as a newborn when their hands are open and they're screaming and kicking and you've asked what's going on and some wise older parent will say that child's over stimulated you ever heard that language there's just too much stimulus too much information too much coming at them and the kids like ah it's too much and i think that's many of us so we're looking for how do i how do i kind of curl in and simplify and not get just the constant anxiety and anger pumping through the world today and here's the reality what i want us to do is see that hey speed is the enemy of depth so as we move into colossae let me tell you something i don't want to go fast i want us to slow down and sink deep so we can't spring up as we enter into this spring season together i want us to grow and here's the cool thing uh we know where the city of colossae is but it's never been excavated you can see the tell that's the big mound where you know the ruins of this ancient city is but fantastically it's never been unearthed and excavated by archaeologists and the reason is because a big chunk of that tell is still farmed today that every year seeds are put in the soil of colossae and wheat comes up to feed the people and what's wild about that is paul in this letter will use agrarian imagery because of the fertile soil of the area he'll say to them i want you to bear fruit and increase and then he's going to tell him how that you would be rooted in christ and established in him and growing in him so that you will bear fruit and increase and i love that picture because i want that to be true of you and me i want you to bear fruit i want you to increase but you're going to increase by being sunk deep in him i want us to be rooted in colossians so that we can bear fruit in this spring season so we're going to slow down we're not going to go fast with this book we're just going to do a couple verses at a time because too much is going fast in the world i want us at church take a deep breath we're just going to do a couple verses at a time but i want us to sink deep in the soil of colossae so we can spring forth in this season and grow fruit i've told the story before of a young man that came to christ in my ministry when i was a youth pastor and i encouraged him man you need to grow with the word of god this is the nourishment that makes you grow and as i shared that with him i've told the story of he didn't know when to read his bible of the rhythm and so we kind of finally figured out about three o'clock in the afternoon after school he had nothing going on and the only place he could focus was his garage and so at three o'clock every afternoon he'd hide out in his garage and i told him right out the book of colossians and if you're gonna write it out by hand you do maybe a verse a day and i said that's fine man go slow let it let that seed slowly sink into the soil of your soul and let it take root don't let it stay shallow let it sink deep seeds don't flourish in the shallows let them go deep in so they can spring to life what i didn't expect would happen was over the next year as i got to watch this man grow and develop every time he hit some challenge in school some relational difficulty he had gotten colossians so deep into him he was constantly saying you know ben i was dealing with this relationship issue and it reminded me of colossians you know ben i had this decision i had to make and colossians 3 says and all through his life over the next year he was able to navigate the complexities of life because he was lockstep with the supremacy of christ he was growing and flourishing because he had rooted so deeply in this word and i want that for you and want that for me and so we're going to slow down so we can spring up and that's our idea but i'll tell you where we're going to begin we're just going to look at these first eight verses together and here's all i want to do i want to present you some good news isn't that great that there are other emotions available in our world today other than anxiety and anger did you know that they're possible for us there are other emotional expressions to experience and here's the great news for paul there's some serious issues in colossae there's some false teaching that's dangerous there's some activities that they're opening themselves up to that will hurt them and so paul out of pastoral concern is joining epaphras and telling these young believers hey there's some ways of thinking that are destructive to you there's some way of living that's not healthy for you here's some better ways to live and so he's got to address some serious issues and so do we and we will and yet paul is able to start with some good news we do this in meetings all the time at church we call them jesus stories before we get into the the the issues we have to figure out as a church let's pause to celebrate what it is jesus is up to and it's amazing the perspective shift that can have i've told the story of when i ran a marathon with my sister and you know when we were training for that marathon i hated running and so i let her know that at really every possible moment while we were training as we began running i'm like my knees popping my face hurts my lungs feel like they're being dried out we're just constantly complaining and so the first month of training i remember we just looked at each other and we're like this isn't fun we're not having any fun at all i hate this and then one of us probably her came up with the idea of you know we haven't talked to god about the fact that we want to run this marathon together and so we just started praying and as we were praying it dawned on us yeah running a marathon is a good goal there's some things you can learn about life by training but but this is time that my sister and i get together every single day to train maybe there's some purpose to that and then we realized you know we've let our mind get fixed on the negative things rather than fixed on some positive things and so as we were praying when we were done we made a vow let's try to focus on the good things around us and not miss that in the midst of the obvious hard and so it was awkward at first when we would begin running together we'd start running and my knees hurt and elbows hurt lungs hurt but i would say you know surprisingly my nose feels okay there's no nose pain at all it's weird you know my hair it's it's feeling good and we would laugh about how ridiculous that was but over time as we focused on the legitimately good things around us it began to shift our perspective even as we face the hard things and paul's got some difficult things he's going to approach but at the beginning of this letter he's going to start by focusing on some good things he says hey colossians let me show you the movement of our message let me show you what god is doing on our behalf in the world and if you want to outline it ahead of time just for the rest of our time together i just want to unpack two second sentences he's going to tell them the message about a man that makes us holy and makes us a family and he's going to say this message is deeply personal and this message is global so let's just take it frame by frame people verse 1 says paul an apostle of christ jesus by the will of god and timothy our brother this was a standard greeting in that day you would introduce yourself by name and then talked about the people that you're writing it to and then give a word of greeting this is kind of a typical layout like songs today kind of go verse verse chorus verse bridge it's that sort of thing and yet paul would take this common structure and he would fill it with theology and fill it with deep feeling because that's our message that we have light for the mind and heat for the heart and even as something as wrote as introducing yourself by name and then their name and then a wish of blessing paul will shoot all of that through with deep theology and deep feeling because that's our message light and heat and paul will often tip his cards as to where his letter's going right here in the intro and i gotta tell you there's a mini sermon even in that first word paul his name was saul that's the name his mama gave him saul was part of the jewish educational elite in his day and then had a radical encounter with jesus christ that changed his life and here as he writes this letter he introduces himself as paul that was how he was known in the hellenistic roman world that his name as he exited the banks of his ethnic community and went out into a wider public sphere rather than call him saul his jewish name they would call him paul and your name changing as you cross ethnic lines was pretty common you see in the bible uh yeshua in hebrew as it journeyed into greek context became yeasu because it was the way they'd pronounce it they'd hear jews say yeshua yesu and then when it got anglicanized we say jesus jesus they didn't have that hard j sound in hebrew or in greek but his name kind of changed in some inflection as it moved beyond ethnic barriers i've seen it with my own name my name's benjamin but i grew up in texas and as i had friends from mexico they would call me benjamin because the j makes a different kind of sound in spanish your name changes in inflection as it crosses ethnic barriers and here is saul he is in his mind a messenger to the gentiles he is god's official emissary to the ethnos to the nations and so you see even in his name he said my job is to take the message of the jewish messiah jesus to the world because this was god's plan a from the beginning of the bible that you see that god took a man named abraham back in the book of genesis and told him i'm going to bless you and through your seed your offspring i'm going to bless the entire world every family of the world will be blessed through your seed the blessing was coming to the jew but it was meant to explode past the banks of their ethnic group to the entire world and paul saw that message the jewish messiah the christos the christ jesus it's not just meant for me and my crew it's meant to jump the banks of every ethnicity and go out to the world and as he saw himself he said this is god's global plan and it's his plan for me that my job is to take this message out into a broader world and i will have an unbending theology but a malleable strategy and you see paul is willing to see anything in his life be rearranged so that the people of the world might know jesus even his name that i am paul and i am the apostle that word apostle was originally about a ship that would carry cargo from one nation to the next i have something of value that i'm bringing to you and then it began to carry the idea of an emissary that i have taken a message from one king and i am carrying it to deliver it to you it's not my message i didn't come up with it i am the transport through which this edict from the king arrives to you and paul saw himself and he says i am an apostle i'm an emissary of christ jesus notice he puts the christ first and some of you may go well yeah what's that about i thought christ was jesus's last name why did he put it first no it's the man's title in hebrew it was messiah the anointed one the king as it crossed into greek it was christos the anointed one the hero of the story and paul looks and he says i am the official emissary of your king and mine jesus our hero why does he identify himself this way notice he doesn't call timothy an apostle or epaphras that was paul's official calling under god and he's using that official language because i think he needed to put his stamp of approval on the ministry of epiphros so he's riding with his official apostolic letterhead to say what epaphros taught you was true and some other things that you're thinking are not helpful and so here paul puts his entire weight behind it and he says i am an apostle of christ jesus by the will of god god wanted me to deliver this message to you god made it this way it's by his thelama his desire that this message is coming to you and paul saw his life and he said i have a purpose i didn't generate it came from heaven it's the same for him and for you now paul may have had some specificity in that calling you don't have but god has a purpose for all of our lives and paul saw that jesus changed me for a purpose and my purpose is to take this message of jesus beyond the banks of my ethnic and communal crowd beyond my little tribe i meant to send it out across the tribes of the world for his glory that's my calling and god has a calling on your life and mine today as well and you see it in these next few verses he says paul an apostle and timothy our brother timothy was half jewish and half gentile which at times was a tough spot for young tim it meant in this context he wasn't always accepted in either community but i want you to notice paul calls him our brother that our association with jesus christ changes our association with each other that god is sending out this message and one of the implications of this message is jesus is building a family that men from jerusalem and lystra and colossae and all around the world are being knit together into a family because of the work of jesus and not just a family notice in verse 2 he says to the saints and faithful brothers in christ at colossae we have a message about a man and that message is we are family because of him and we are holy that's the word saint it means set apart that in the old testament god designated his jewish people you are holy set apart to me and god made a covenant with them i am binding myself to you which was radical in that day many people believed in the gods but the gods were capricious didn't care about you you just did sacrifices to try to placate them so they wouldn't hurt you but the jew had the audacity to say no there is one god who rules over all and yet he stoops down to know us and to care and binds himself in covenant with us because he loves you so radical so scandalous so unbelievable but so true that the maker of the heavens and earth is building a family and he's looking at people and saying i want you to be holy unto me i want you to be set apart to know the god who made you that god is on the move to take people from all over the world and to knit them together into a family how does it happen to the faithful in christ jesus it's by faith in jesus christ the son of god jesus was asked one time what is the will of the father what does god want and he said believe in the one that he sent what does god want for you today you fix your eyes on him that jesus christ is the god man come to change things for you and for me and for all the world and paul is preaching this message and it landed in this community grace to you and peace from god our father what has jesus brought what's the message paul's preaching is grace kindness not judgment not condemnation but the smile of god is available for you today uh c.s lewis used the old illustration of how could hamlet meet shakespeare how could hamlet a character in a play ever meet shakespeare the author of the play he can't unless shakespeare writes himself into the play and you and i can't know god he is unknowable to us unless he chooses to condescend to reach us and hear the fantastic news paul is celebrating is the god of all things is bringing his kindness to us that i can be your father the father of jew and gentile of greek and phrygian that i can be your dad through the kindness available in jesus christ you can have peace peace with god you can know you're okay peace within yourself peace within humanity shalom it doesn't just mean the absence of conflict it means the presence of flourishing that peace is available today to the message of jesus christ this message that paul's proclaiming is such good news why because it makes us holy to god and it makes us family with each other that paul's and timothy's and epaphrists have a place together once far apart now a family we've got some friends that even now are adopting a son from india that son was in a very difficult and fragile situation and yet this family set their love on him and is bringing them into their family and even now sent a video of him laughing and enjoying and being fed and cared for and you see he's being knit together with their biological children their adopted children that they're building a loving joyful family because of the kindness of these parents and that's what paul's celebrating here that god is knitting together a family because of the grace of the son of god jesus christ and this message is deeply personal you see it in verse three he says we always thank god the father of our lord jesus christ when we pray for you as a jew paul had developed the rhythm of praying three times a day morning noon and night each for an hour paul prayed three hours a day which for some of us sounds crazy until you think about the fact that you and i average spend three and a half hours on our phone every single day the average american looks at their phone for three and a half hours every day not talk on their phone not do work on the screen look at your phone what you think about will be what you care about and what you care about you will chase and some of us feel frustration that we don't feel like we're advancing as people are advancing spiritually and yet it's your inputs that determine your outputs how could paul know god so deeply he lingered in the presence of god for three hours a day for many of us we linger in the chaos of our phones and wonder why we're anxious the inputs determine the outputs what you think about will shape what you care about and what you care about you will chase and paul had set his mind on god three hours a day and for some of us it's time to advance and are lingering before the almighty to slow down so we can spring up and as paul did that he would pray for this community and as he prayed for them he said i'm constantly thanking god for you i'm thanking god for you all the time why is that he said because i heard about your faith in christ jesus and i heard about it because i hadn't met you but i heard you trusted jesus christ that's what god wants that you would trust his son the emissary he sent to bring you into relationship with him you put your trust in christ jesus not in a philosophy not in an ideology not in a political system you operate and live and move within this man jesus christ and that has produced a love for all the saints paul told the god galatians later nothing matters except faith working itself out through love how do you know you have real faith in jesus christ faith in him becomes love that as i trust him i care about the other people who trust him too my trust in him becomes love for others faith becomes love and i won't belabor this because we did a whole talk on this in our previous series he says this faith in this love is because of the hope laid up for you in heaven it's interesting when the bible talks about hope it can talk about the internal feeling of hope or it can talk about the external reality of what you're hoping in and here he says your hope is laid up in heaven the message of the gospel is that jesus christ has come to give you a relationship with god that is secure forever i think paul mentions it here because you find out later this false teaching that moved into the colossians said you're not okay and so you need to do some work or else god will be disappointed in you you live under the frown of heaven unless you hustle i remember when i was a college minister first moving into college station i knew some young guys who had began with christ they put their faith in him and yet someone began to teach them you don't know if you're really saved unless you're really out there fully committed to him and if you're never fully committed if you say no to him at once god does know and they begin to feel all this pressure if i have to perform in order to get the approval of god and for some of them they would be out at midnight one o'clock in the morning at a walmart handing out gospel tracts not because of a love for christ or because they wanted other people to know him it was because of a terror that if they don't keep performing that god's going to dismiss them and man if you think that you're always insecure you can't be a loving person insecurity leads to self-absorption if i'm insecure and have a scarcity mindset i gotta worry about me to make sure i'm okay but if you're secure you're free to be generous and here paul tells them your hope is laid up in heaven it's secure your approval to god is fixed in the heavenlies and when you have that security that hope becomes love now i'm not running around just worried about myself how to make myself secure i know i'm secure and so now i'm liberated to trust god in the present and to care about you you see it in the world today the most loving and generous children statistically over and over again are the ones that are in stable homes where they know they're loved by their parents when they are confident in that stability it liberates them to be caring for others and here he says when you put your faith in jesus christ you're not worried if the gods are okay with you you can know you can know today you have peace with god because of the finished work of jesus and when you have that security my hope is fixed in the heavens that liberates you to be loving how did they land in this place he says of this you heard before in the word of truth the gospel which has come to you as indeed in the whole world that is bearing fruit and increasing he says this was so personal to you did you see the repetition of the word your this message came to you that epaphras came to you and he gave you a message about a man the god-man jesus who lived the perfect life you could not died the death you deserved rose in payment over your sin that when you put your faith in him then you know i'm fully forgiven i am part of god's family i'm not trying to earn my place in his family i have it i'm secure as a son or a daughter of the king i can trust jesus and when i do he's knit me together with his family this beautiful community and i get to love each other as we walk into the future he has for us the purpose he has for us this message that's in him moving forward that i have hope and that gives me faith and that gives me love and he said that message came to you but then he says it's not just personal he says it's come to you and indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing paul looks at them and says hey what happened to you in colossae let me just pull the lens back and tell you it's happening in the whole world the message of jesus christ is advancing across ethnic barriers across national borders across tribal tribal separations the gospel is advancing and let me tell you some good news today friend that's true today too that look i know we read the news all the time and it's just depression on repeat anxiety and constant replay but let me tell you something it's fascinating to think that as paul was writing this nero was coming into power in rome nero who was slaughtering his enemies nero whose moral decadence was leading rome into destruction but nero would have made the front page every single day paul was just some guy writing letters in a prison cell but i promise you if i asked any of you to fill a three by five card with facts about nero you couldn't do it no one cares about nero but the words of paul have changed the world sometimes the spotlight's not shining on where the real action is and if your life is filled with anxiety and anger right now because all the headlines as we move to the end of this can i tell you maybe you're missing a bigger story because the headlines may not show you what god is up to but this personal message of jesus christ building a holy family it is bearing fruit and increasing all around the world the center for the study of global christianity at gordon conwell regularly publishes the status of global christianity and they put out this last year that globally there are 7.7 billion people on the planet and of the 7.7 billion 2.5 billion identify as christian roughly a third of the planet now says i belong to jesus christ and as you look at it christianity is currently growing faster than the world population that on the planet right now the number of people who identify with jesus christ is growing faster than the population in the world and it's not just about fertility rates people who claim jesus are having more kids that's not it that the world population is growing but the number of people who are putting their faith in jesus is growing and particularly the subsets of christianity are growing are those that preach this gospel of faith in jesus christ repentance of sin to be adopted by god for his glory this message is on the move and as they look at this study they saw that atheism has really peaked in its numbers that atheism the lack of belief in any god has peaked it's not growing and yet christianity is not just growing it is outstripping the world population and let me tell you something it's not an euro-centric religion either the center of christianity is moving and even now it's moving to the global south it's fascinating pew research did a study of the christian population in the world and they put out this fascinating study you know i'll get to it in a second but if you look at where the center of christianity is located at the very beginning it began in the middle east in jerusalem then it drifted through asia places like ephesus and colossae over to rome and then really landed in europe shifting to north america but now as you see the center of christianity it is no longer in europe or north america it is increasingly in the global south and in 2010 one quarter of the global population of christians was in europe one quarter was in latin america in the caribbean one quarter was in sub-saharan africa 13 in asia 12 in north america so think about that a quarter of christianity is on this part of the world a quarter in that part a quarter in that part what do you see that this religion was never just kind of built on one ethnicity or one particular tribe the jesus christ came from the jewish people in order to be the messiah of all people that through the seed of abraham the nations would be blessed that it jumps the banks of all of our boundaries to knit together a holy global family for his glory that's what started in paul's day and it continues in our day we are not a regional or local or eurocentric religion we are a global movement celebrating the person of jesus it began in paul's day and he says this gospel is continuing to bear fruit and increase across the globe and it's doing it now you see when a tree drops a piece of fruit it has seed within it but when that fruit hits the ground that seed doesn't just bear another piece of fruit an apple doesn't become another apple that apple falls and as the seed goes into the dirt it becomes another apple tree that produces more apples that drops apples seeds that become more trees and you see as the gospel begins to bear fruit in our lives of good works it begins to launch other trees that begin to produce more fruit and you see exponential increase in the world and you see it even today that the 10 countries with the largest christian population are the united states brazil mexico russia the philippines nigeria china the congo germany ethiopia what's the common denominator none that the largest christian populations are spread out across the globe because jesus christ is building a global family for his glory holy unto him it's bearing fruit and increasing and let me tell you something we've seen this here at passion that is weeded conference in january just a month ago hundreds of thousands of people around the globe joined us in worshiping god it's amazing one of our team was in kind of our um i don't know what you call it our technical hub in the back room his conference was happening in the beginning of january and he said ben it was the most amazing place to stand there were screens all over this room showing us where all these people were zooming in from to join us at passion this year and he said ben i'm looking at a screen and it wasn't just individuals on their laptops group had got groups had gotten together and he said i was looking at a screen in this moment of prayer and there was algeria and azerbaijan and a group in austria and a group in australia and he said ben i was just in the a's and i'm seeing crowds of people seeking jesus christ together and then you look and he said we had 500 000 people at the beginning of this year from all over the world at passion conference just one little slice of jesus global family and yet all over the globe gathered together in jesus name did you hear about it in the news no but let me tell you something the globe is seeking jesus because he sought us this gospel is bearing fruit and it's increasing just as it's done it among you and let me tell you something we're seeing it here you saw that obviously coronavirus has been a major disruption and a major tragedy but even as we exit our second year of existence in dc and move towards our third year of existence our reach has quintupled this year and yes we want this virus to go away and life to change and yet we look and say even in our little slice of this little slice we see the gospel bearing fruit and increasing god is on the move building a family it's global but it's also very personal god's coming for you and he's coming for me it's fascinating christianity today put out a prayer list from open doors ministry praying over different parts of the world and they were talking about in iran ministers there felt that man there's a longing for christ and so they decided to up their evangelistic programs and to try to teach people to share the gospel of jesus and they said we were seeing anywhere from 20 to 50 people a week put their faith in jesus individuals longing to know god saying they don't have to find a way up to him he came down to us and they said as we taught people to share their faith they said suddenly this last may we went from around 50 people a week to 500 people a week putting their faith in jesus they said now we're running an average of two to 300 people in iran saying i want him and even in our country modern statistics even now are showing that gen z is a generation that says we're unaffiliated religiously and yet they're also disconnected socially and are being dubbed the loneliest generation and in recent surveys of young people you see there's a longing for spiritual and relational connection we were made for god and this message has been bearing fruit and increasing around the globe it's global but it's also very personal and so paul says it's doing this among you since the day you heard it and understood the grace of god in truth just as you learned it from apophis our beloved fellow servant he's a faithful minister of christ on your behalf and he made known to us your love in the spirit this gospel is bearing fruit and increasing around the world and it wants to bear fruit and increase in you what do you need to do hear the message that you're not okay all of us are broken because of sin and god has a solution he said a savior the messiah the king jesus christ and when you hear that message of grace you don't earn heaven it's a gift as a powerful god stoops in love to redeem you when you hear the truth of the grace of god you learn it and then you put your faith in him the love of god through his holy spirit lands in you faith in jesus becomes love for god love for others because of a hope that your future's secure it's a global message and it's a personal one for all of us who believe god is on the move and he is moving in the lives of those who have stepped into the wake of the king of kings jesus christ do you know him he's our message he's our hope and all of your growth and advancement in life is going to come in him and through him we grow to the degree that we grow in him we move to the degree we move in him the best thing we can offer you today church is him do you know him let me challenge you this spring sink your roots deep into the soil of this word and let spring up in you the fruit that's born of those who were rooted deep in him you

Channel: Passion City Church DC

Views: 7,400

Rating: 4.9285712 out of 5

Keywords: Passion, Passion City Church, Passion Sermons, Ben, Stuart, Washington D.C., Passion D.C., christian, sixsteps, (six), passion conference, passion, passion city church worship, passion church, passion music, worship, jesus, ben stuart, above all earthly powers, colossians

Id: YjHKwQWG93E

Length: 46min 0sec (2760 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 02 2021