United Together | Jennie Allen

hey it's going awaken excited to be here you know what i feel right now is i just want to pray again and i'm going to and here's why because that song we just sang we need it to be true and i was singing it down there i'm real big about things being real and true in my heart i don't want to get up here and i don't want to preach something that i'm not living that i don't really truly believe and i'll be honest i'm singing those words down there and i'm going god can you beat down the shadows can you be back the lies because that's what we're saying is that the lies are nothing compared to the power of god we're saying and singing that the shadows and the darkness is nothing compared to the power of god and so god help us believe what we just sang help us believe that the lies and the darkness and the shadows have nothing on you help us believe that your spirit is bigger and better and more powerful more beautiful god i think of the heaviness that i've been under and i i imagine that so many people here have been under if that's you just say yes i i just pray i know there are so many people god they're fighting anxiety depression fear paralyzing fear addiction the brokenness of relationships the desire for relationships god and it feels like okay i'm gonna get up today and i'm gonna do the next thing but god the power and authority that you've given us it feels far away and so right now we pray that your power your authority would come on this place that the spirit would move to and fro in this room that the lies the darkness the enemy would be pushed away and we pray that in jesus name amen and i believe it all right you all ready let me introduce you to my people because that always helps i always like to know what's this girl coming from let me just show you the chaos that i'm coming from they're awesome they're awesome and and you know what i am tired that's why and and largely what i worry about it's not the world it's not you know these huge issues that that to some degree i'm helping lead with it's largely you know is my seventh grade son going to make it without going to juvie you know like those are the things we think about a lot at our house and so let me just give you a little more context my this is this week my daughter um sends this text let me show you what she sent real quick here this is to me and her dad yeah that's the operation we're running yeah i was like does that feel appropriate to send us we yes we shut i'm sorry yes that's the world where we're fighting and and it does feel like the darkness is pressing in and here's how i want to start today you all are hearing incredible teaching you all are getting filled up left and right i want to give you a chance to process where you are before we get going in this message i want you to think about where am i right now and to do that i want you to write some things down if you have a paper and pen pull that out if you want to write it on your phone you can write it on your phone but i want you to write down a simple answer to each one of these questions you ready what do you want what do you want what are you longing for and then what are you grieving because i would say that a lot of life really exists around these two places in our hearts and our minds what do you want and what are you grieving what are you worried about what do you what are you hoping for okay so i want you to jot down two sentences we're actually going to give you a minute to do that i want you to pray about it ask god what is it what's what there is not a right answer to what you want but there is a real answer and i want you to write that one down all right i'll give you just a minute all right now this can go one of two ways this moment i'm gonna ask you to do something brave and it's gonna be uncomfortable and i want you to talk to your neighbor and i want you to tell him what you just wrote down it was a mean trick wasn't it such a mean trick this is gonna go somewhere i want you to trust me and depending on how you strategically play okay go ahead y'all are already doing it just do the thing all right all right all right some of you are like i need some counseling can you help me no okay we're gonna get a little braver i want some of you to say your two sentences out loud now not the thing you'd say to the counselor but just you know what you wrote down just i want blank and i'm grieving blank all right so raise your hand and here's what we're going to do because we get some mics in the back what we're going to do is we're going to go fast because i want to get as many answers as we can so if you're willing to share i want you to raise your hand look for a mic and let's go let's do this thing hi hi i want unity unity between everybody so that everybody can promote the kingdom of god and that everybody gets all the unity because god wants us to unite to spread his word grieving so yeah unity what are you grieving oh ah you don't get to just share the easy thing yeah um grieving wow that's a tough question i really don't know what i'm grieving okay i got one right here hi i'm claire um so really what i really want is to be perfect um in everything and i'm grieving my own sin and my own character flaws i want to glorify god and i am grieving unfulfilled dreams hey i'm mark um what let's say oh what do i want i want to go full-time ministry and then what i'm grieving is nature uh i'm new to texas and there's no mountains yeah and a lot of concrete hi i'm izzy and um i want to serve the lord along with my future husband in other countries and have a family and i'm grieving rejection from my real dad leaving me when i was a baby and boyfriends and all that so i'm zeus and uh i want to be a traveling missionary i feel like there's so many need across the world and we're here in america we're in like a small bubble and we just need to help across the world afghanistan everywhere i'm grieving for all my loved ones that aren't saved i pray that one day god will bring him home for we are all lost puppies and need a home um i'm gabby and i want pure joy and i want to make god's heart glad and i am grieving the death of my father and my past life hi i'm allie i want to get married and i'm grieving lost time and past mistakes i'm michelle and i want my life to emulate him and only him and so i'm grieving my control and the ability to let go of my plans and what i want that's good um i'm lacey i want to raise children to love god and i'm grieving infertility hi i'm courtney i'm craving emotion and not to be numb all the time and then what i'm grieving is a future i had in mind for myself um i'm justine i want to feel whole and loved and i am grieving uh recent divorce and sexual trauma all right i want you to look at these lists and how many of you relate to things that are up there okay i want you to keep your hand up for a minute and i want everybody to look around because y'all are all jacked up together and isn't that comforting i talked to a counselor once about these questions and he said we spend so much time with this voice in our head we've got these desires that we want and then there's this other voice in our head there's a part of us that's judging what we want and judging what we're grieving right anybody else have a busy mind like that and yet these are just you know that was pretty raw y'all just said what you want what you're sad about and the whole room related together we are struggling can we can we agree to that can we just start right there together we are struggling because how many people feel like whatever they struggle with you are struggling alone just in your room at night that's not okay that's not okay there is an epidemic and it's a it's a rarely or fairly new epidemic actually it's it's loneliness and loneliness has actually only been in the last you know few hundred years there wasn't a lot of documentation about loneliness prior to that and it's rampant now three in five people pre-coveted felt lonely so postcovid what's that number gotta be five and five four and a half and five i mean we definitely have a problem that people are lonely and yet how many people want to be lonely i mean some of you are introverts don't raise your hand okay because you don't really you need somebody to still be there for you you may not want to use as many words as me but but you need somebody to be there for you so so how many people want to be lonely none of us and yet most of us are lonely and disconnected and that is a problem and yet we're all unanimously jacked up struggling those words we feel those things together and yet the enemy is good because he has tucked us in our corners on the planet all alone and made us feel like we are struggling alone and in the dark with the devil he can tell you whatever the heck he wants the lies are real the lies are strategic the lies are real the lies are strategic i loved what jefferson talked about this morning oh it was so good because what he did was he said hey here's the story you're a part of here's what god's doing throughout history we're taking up a little bitty dot on this incredible amazing adventure of eternity we're we're living our moment we're living our second and yet we're a part of something bigger we're part of something bigger and so i actually want to go back with jefferson i'm going to go back to genesis and we're going to look at this because here's the deal guys the greatest in it the greatest weapon that god has given you to fight the dark to fight the enemy apart from this book and knowledge of him is other people we need each other this is war and we're treating community and connection like happy hour so we've got to start by getting really serious see i just did a study of this for for the last year of my life and and what i found was that what i didn't want to do was i didn't want to write a book about friendship i was like that's so cheesy like i don't want flowers and friendship i'm like i i don't think that's what this is supposed to be because this epidemic is requiring more than just let's find our two to three best friends and ride off into the sunset together no we're at war and we need fighting buddies we need people holding our arms up yesterday when i was tempted to just spin in anxiety and and sadness last night and it was just about the world guys it wasn't even about today i was excited about today it's just the heaviness of the world and leading in it and instead i go downstairs i tell people to pray i bring people in because we cannot do the things god's called us to do on this earth alone so let's go back to genesis what did he say some of you know it he creates a human he sets them on the planet and he says what it is not good for man to be alone and all the men said but guess what some of you need a good fat kick in the pants you need to ask some girls on a date here it is not good for you to be alone but guess what girls the implication was for marriage sure but it also was god was creating out of something right eternity is forever it's always been and god has always been and he has existed in community within himself the trinity uh tim keller calls it the great dance that the three members of the trinity are in relationship and when god created he did not create in a vacuum he created out of community community within himself he created out of love he created out of sharing this awesome eternal relationship with us and so he creates he sets the man down and he looks at the three of them and it says so we created man in our image right he he uses the plural tense throughout genesis 1. it's real interesting because god doesn't often do that let us make mankind in our image in our likeness it's very intentional that god is speaking from the trinitarian god that there are three and there are ones some of you didn't even know this was about jesus more or less you don't know what the trinity is let me just tell you this it's very complicated i went to seminary and i don't know but but god is three and god is one and the three one god created out of relationship he created a man looks at the man and he says what it is not good for him to be alone so he created eve and together they created a family and that family grew into a people group and that people group divided into many nations okay that's the story of the people on the earth and so our trinitarian god he he creates a man he creates a family he creates a community a people group and then he writes this book throughout history through many people and the whole book is about people the whole book people groups families people that screw up hurt other people wars it's a lot of people the whole thing is written in fact almost every passage that you have memorized that you have heard since you were a kid when you hear the word you you took it to mean you but almost every single time in the hebrew and the greek it is a plural form of you the book was written to people not an individual not a person people and then we have an enemy because the people of god coming together in a powerful way defeat the darkness wherever two or more people are gathered i will be with you the people of god will in the end defeat the enemy it's where this will end we're a powerful group of people especially together the spirit of god is in this room the word of god is being preached and the saints are gathered and that's dangerous to hell so what does the enemy want to do he wants to defied god's people he wants you to be hurt so hurt so wounded because let's think about it what are the best parts of life and what are the hardest parts of life both probably involve people the best parts of your life involve people and the hardest parts of is that true why is that so true and so of course this is not easy of course this is not simple this is war this is war and the more the enemy can get you alone in the dark the more power that he has so what do we do we fight back and we don't treat this like happy hour like we need a few friends to come over for dinner we treat this like it's war so if god is a relationship and he created us for relationship and the enemy hates this so badly what does it look like for us to fight see we aren't meant to just taste little glimpses of community like a great meal i'm sure this weekend you all will have incredible meals together i hope you will you will connect with great people you will have just incredible conversations but it's not meant to be in two or three days on a conference it's meant to be lived out in your day-to-day life if you look back throughout history which i just did i literally look back throughout biblical history the history of mankind and what you will see is that all of life has been done in village-like communities in fact most of the earth today lives in village-like communities and together what they do is they make fires love fires something about a fire right i mean not like burning the house down fire but i but at night we we got a fire pit and and some of my favorite moments have been davey flowers coming over with with her keyboard or her guitar and just singing in the backyard and yeah that was special i'm lucky that she's my friend praying and singing and being with people that i love there's something about a fire and throughout history most villages they cook by a fire they converse by a fire they come together by a fire and at night they would tell stories by fire this is how almost every generation on earth has lived they didn't live with doors with locks if you go right now to rwanda or uganda you'd see the same thing that i saw which is most people have huts and no doors and they have a big fire pit in the middle and they all come out and they come in and they share what they have and they walk down to get water and a lot of their day is spent together taking care of things that yes involve survival but require community it's a beautiful way to live i got to interview someone that that actually grew up in the slums of india and and he told me we we were talking about how incredible his life is now he lives in atlanta and the great story and he was he was telling that story to help raise money for a great non-profit and it was a really positive story and at the end while i was writing this book i said what do you miss and he teared up and he said i wish my my kids would be known like i was known in the slums of india i mean i would go out and i would get in trouble and everybody knew my name and they knew my grandmother and they'd say your grandmother's gonna hear about this and he said i wish people just stopped by he said used to all of my friends we'd be playing out in the trash and we had nothing nothing but if we were lucky that day and could scrape together some bread and rice my grandmother would fix it and it didn't matter if those kids had eaten somewhere else she never asked she just fed him bread and rice whoever came through her door and he said you know and he knew he wasn't supposed to be negative because he was raising money you know to for child sponsorship which i do believe in but he said you know i don't know in that way if it's better here he said i'm afraid we're we're growing up really i'm raising my kids really lonely there is an epidemic and there is a foundational reason that as a generation we feel so isolated but we can fight this there is a way to fight this so so we have several things not on our side one we grew up in a very independent society right we've grown up with literally founding our country the declaration of independence like we are independent americans and that is those of us that are and that is how we've been raised i mean if we were in texas i mean we're worse you know i mean pull yourself up by your bootstraps i'm sorry that was written in texas like that that came from a texan that wrote that some cowboy this is how we were taught to live it's how we think it's very difficult to even lift you out of this mindset and and for you to imagine there could be a different way to live and so what we've got to start with is we have to fight this we have to fight to have this we have to want this bad enough that we're willing to sacrifice for it because the way that many of you do community the way that you think about it is you know a girls night out or you know coming together at church with a big event that is not community now to some degree what i just forced you in that would count because that was real what we have to do is we have to want this bad enough that we are willing to ready i'm terrible at what i'm about to say we have to be willing to need people we have to be willing to need people it is so uncomfortable to need people it isn't easy it isn't i i hate it in fact i have had good friends quit me very good friends quit me decade long friend quit me and they told me that they looked at me in the eyes and they said i don't want to be friends anymore and the reason that multiple friends have quit me is because of the same phrase it has haunted me you don't need me i'm like i i want to need you i don't know how to need you i'm working on it i'll go to therapy you know i i i don't know it is not easy to need each other and here's the thing it's vulnerable and some of you just did it some of you stood up and you said things that were incredibly vulnerable and i just want to say well done because that is the first step of needing each other it's actually saying what is wrong my friends i have one of them is here today i call them my like friend coaches because i i knew i was bad at this and and so i said okay you need to help me do this and so we would get together and they would say i want you to share what you need like what is it that you're feeling what is it that you're sad about what are you anxious about and you know what i felt my first reaction was i'm going to take up all the oxygen in the room and i'm gonna keep it short and i don't wanna you know i don't know how long is right to talk like i am just really awkward is what i'm learning about myself and i needed to say it but it was so hard now some of you are professionals at this you know some of you are like i share my problems way too easily good for you good for you i don't i was taught that i need to lead out of strength i need to have the answer i need to help people and not draw too much attention to myself and so needing people isn't comfortable at all for me so we need to need each other and we also have to initiate we have to initiate quit waiting for people to initiate with you they're not going to do it i hate to say that but we are all staring at our phones most of the time we are not making plans we are not imagining our next little fireside chat we are not inviting people in we are waiting to be invited and we have to become those who invite jesus was king of this he walked into a town was like come to dinner guy in the tree let's go come on let's go i'm going no he was even better he needed him and he initiated guy in the tree let's go to your house for dinner i'm going to impose my posse on you and we are going to come all to dinner tonight at your house do you understand how beautiful it is when somebody just says hey let's do this let's do this come with me let's go to your house you know it is a little bit of an imposition and awkward and it's so good one of my friends she's here we moved to dallas a few years ago and i had very few if any friends and i decided i needed to make friends because this was important and so i tried and again obviously awkward like i mean so awkward this girl is and so i don't know how to do it but i know that i liked this one friend and i think she liked me and then one night she shows up at the door with her kids in tow with her husband and they'd just taken christmas card pictures and i'm in my robe and i opened the door and i'm like hey new friend hey we just wanted to see your i wanted to show my husband your backyard patio furniture i think he's going to love it do you care it's all there all our kids you know and i'm like and they look beautiful and i'm like sure come on in and then y'all they came to the back and of course what do we do we lit the fire they sat down i stayed in my robe we pulled weird snacks out from the pantry their kids crawled all over me and i have never been happier because i knew she's my friend and she wasn't afraid to just bust in and she wasn't afraid to say although she kept saying we should go you're in your robe but but she stayed she stayed we initiate we initiate and we need each other and then point three are you ready we fight to keep this we fight to keep this let me tell you if the enemy hates this and this is one of the most powerful weapons that we have to fight the dark then we have to not give up so easily i want you to think about the people in your life and especially the people that have hurt you or that you have hurt and how easy it is to walk away when i look back at the history of the world people couldn't walk away like they literally lived with the same 50 people their whole lives like they literally couldn't leave so if they got in a fight it would be awkward awkward awkward but eventually they'd work it out it's called like they smoked a peace pipe or something i don't know but they they worked it out they literally had rituals to work things out because they couldn't go anywhere unless they wanted to take their whole family and their friends and set up a whole new tent city you know and that was a lot of work so what they do is they would stay well we have the luxury of moving on and moving on and moving on and moving on and moving on and never putting down roots and taking the better job in the cooler city and leaving behind people that know us and that's you know it was interesting when i did all the work biblically on this there's so much there's so much about community in the bible but there never was much about staying because people just stayed and if they left they left with a whole people group somewhere and they took their families and they stuck together it's how people have lived throughout history we're one of the first generations that thinks it's okay to just abandon a great deep community for a better job we walk away too quickly now what i did find in scripture that was really clear was a lot of one another's of how we would do this together and it sounds really really christian i'm going to read them to you really quickly but really what they read as is a very long list of very difficult conversations admonish one another be at peace with one another forgive one another be of the same mind toward one another how hard is that one give preference to one another bear one another's burdens love one another be subject to one another confess your sins to one another and we throw those phrases out like oh do these things and you'll have great friends y'all those are horrible things to do together that list let me let me i rewrote it let me let me tell you what i hear um look at your friend and tell them what they are doing wrong that's fun love so completely that you are willing to be rejected by someone and then keep loving them when someone ransacks you i mean destroys your heart let it go when you mess up and you feel so ashamed and you want to hide instead call a friend go to coffee and say it out loud and then risk that they could use it against you when someone is selfish and horrible to you give them preferential treatment when your person is crying on the bathroom floor get on the floor and cry with them when you feel misunderstood you don't run see this is not as sanitary and easy and so of course we give up of course we walk away because this is a you know what show like this is a mess and a lot of you know exactly what i'm talking about because you've lived in that mess you've been burned and wounded by that mess and i'm saying you don't give up now there are times you know this is a different talk you draw boundaries and you say okay this is too far and i need to set a healthy boundary there is but you know what we are we have gotten so good at boundaries that we've forgotten perseverance we've gotten so good at boundaries that we've forgotten what it means to really forgive someone when it feels impossible to do so and we've forgotten that all of the relationships we're talking about in this context has to do with the blood of jesus christ that died for our sins even though we spit in his face see that's what we're ultimately talking about is we can love each other we can't fight for each other we can stay because of what jesus has done for us but we've replaced really deep messy difficult relationships with years clocked for shallow supper clubs shallow conversations shallow connections and y'all our souls are dying and here's where you see it my friend kurt thompson he's a neuro researcher counselor dude and he says this he says we all come into the world looking for someone looking for us and then recently we were together and and he added to it he said actually all the humans and this is about to save you on marriage counseling so get your pins out right now the curt said let's add to that just a little bit we're looking for someone looking for us and ultimately what we want from everybody is that we want to be seen and we want to be soothed in our hurt and we want to feel safe we want to be seen we want to be soothed and we want to feel safe and all the guys are like i'm good i'm good and let me tell you something you're really not we all act out of not having this in different ways but all the humans crave this crave this as women sometimes we're quicker to know that we're craving that but i'm telling you for the rest of your life you do this for people people will walk away from you and they will feel loved i'm sorry i can't imagine how hard that was see knowledge is not our problem a lot of you came into this and you know a lot you know a lot about god you know a lot about this book you know a lot knowledge is not our problem we need a good swift kick in the pants sometimes we don't need to know more we need somebody that kicks us in the booty and says hey live this and let me help you let me not just kick you in the pants let me tell you about the grace of jesus and let me do it beside you i want to do this beside you i don't want to leave you in this stuck place guys all those things you name let's look look at him one more time all those things that you name that you're grieved by that you desire all those things we need over that the love of jesus if you go to people and try to get what only god can give you're going to be very needy and codependent that is not this sermon though okay it's a different sermon you should listen to that sermon someday but that is not what i'm talking about because i think that we are so easily protective of ourselves we build our fences and our walls and our boundaries and we don't let people in or we only let them in in this much of a way these are things and places that we need each other we need each other afghanistan right now i've been blessed to become friends with a pastor in the underground church in the middle east and he's just we're just talking often and he's telling me what's going on over there and the stories are incredible but guys they have what we're craving they have what we're craving i want to read you some of these quotes that that he said to me this is before the the debacle of afghanistan in the last few weeks we were talking about community and i asked him are you all divided in afghanistan are you divided are there lots of different issues that you fight over and he laughed he thought that was funny and he said this he said persecution keeps you clean he said we need each other we protect each other we couldn't live a day without encouraging and eating with each other and he told me about when quarantine happened 20 of them moved into the same house so that we wouldn't have to live those months alone and most of us we've lost our families because we follow jesus so we become each other's family it's not easy and many of the people that follow jesus their former taliban prostitutes murderers drug lords it's not easy but we love each other and we need each other and we would die for each other and then he said this true discipleship isn't something you do once a week it's it's what you do every day because that's when you get to know people it's when you're with them through the good times and the bad times when they're sick and when they're healthy that's what brings together a true family the blood of christ makes us family but we have to experience it together in the everyday we come and go into each other's houses we don't have to call we just go because it's family we meals together we go and disciple people together we share life together it's a community it's what you see throughout the new testament and then afghanistan happens we're still talking and everything the tone has shifted and he tells me the story of of one of the leaders that actually got out a week and a half two weeks ago and that person said i want you to put me back in and so they sent her back in and before she left they looked at this person and said hey if we send you back in and we can't get you is that okay like we're basically sending you to your death and they said do not pull me out if i'm with other believers do not do not pull me out if i'm with other believers because i don't want them to go down alone and i think about this future that we don't know what's coming but i know that that while we're not daily our lives are not on the line y'all daily that list is coming for us the shadows the lives the darkness is coming for us and we're just kind of having happy hour together we're just kind of talking about what's going on and and we're not truly investing in a place and in a people and saying hey you're my person you're my people i need you to show up i need you to show up if something bad happens and i need you to show up tomorrow and the next day and the next day for the good things too i need you and let me tell you why i started with those questions because honestly that's the fight right it's what we want and what are we grieving it's the heaviness that we feel on a given tuesday it's it's a hard that we're living in that is it like you want to know where to start this is where you start this is coming in the front door this is the fireside chat this is living life together it is living known and not saying the easy answer but saying the hard one fighting for each other not abandoning people but guys you can't have 50 people you got to have like a few a handful a handful that fight for you and you fight for them and some of you are going i would love it what you're saying i want it yes sign me up that's where i have to say you're it you've got to go be it first you've got to go create it first and we can do that because we have the dearest friend we have the dearest friend the best friend i have ever had the only one that has never stabbed me my back every other one has hurt me in some way on some day and jesus has not and so because of that because of what he has done for us we actually get to go give away this love and here's what i want to do as we close i want us to close our eyes and and the team is going to play and here's what i want to do i want you to reimagine community in your life i want you to imagine a few things and i'm going to and we're going to pray and we're going to ask god show us how you want this to be show us how you want us to live and what are we missing so god the first question that we bring before you is is what is the point what is the purpose and what do you want us to see about about the plan that you have for our lives and i pray you have a vision i pray that as you pray those words that something came to mind a picture of you living out the purposes of god and then the next question i want to ask is who do you want beside me on this mission on this purpose and pray for specific names and the last question is this who have i not forgiven where is there still a part of me that i am i am spinning and wasting energy holding a grudge and being bitter and god would you help us lay that down so that our mind and our eyes could be fixed on you and the purposes that you have for us here god i i pray for this room that that there wouldn't be anchors holding them back that they would be free to run the race that was set before them casting off the burdens and the sins and entanglements of this life fixing their eyes on you the author of this story and the perfecter of this story and i think about these days and how sacred and and unique they are that we could be with this many people that love god and and praise him openly and how how precious this is and i pray god that even as they go out and take breaks and spend time together over dinner and in the coming 24 hours god would there be conversations that are breakthrough conversations because god you have a way you have a way of piercing our souls with people that love you that speak your truth that remind us of your truth and so god i pray that those conversations would happen in abundance the people would be set free god not from the messages from the stage but god from your spirit entangling yourself through the relationships and connectedness of your people and that that relationships and conversations would go out yes and people get married too that'd be great god we'll take it because us together as a team on mission for you unified not distracted that is powerful that is dangerous to hell so god make us one so that we can show this world how good you are how delightful you are your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven amen

Channel: The Porch

Views: 240

Rating: 4.5555553 out of 5

Keywords: the, porch, dallas, watermark, community, church, christian, christianity, ministry, movement, fort, worth, faith, sermon, dating, truth, bible, advice, biblical, counsel, jonathan pokluda, the porch, watermark community church, young adults, fort worth, david marvin, todd wagner, the bible

Id: pOtgSaPRYFY

Length: 48min 21sec (2901 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 15 2021