Unqualified to Unleashed | UNLEASHED | Kyle Idleman

[Music] so [Music] so i never thought i'd be one of uh of those people the person who goes to a pet store and buys a leash but not like for a pet or for the family dog but for a child for one of their children you know what i'm talking about the leash that you put on your kid keep them close never thought i'd be that parent always judge those parents a little bit and then you become a parent and you're like okay that makes sense um back in the day when my kids were younger and i had to go get a lease for one of my kids they weren't called leashes or they they were called leaders now if you google it like there's more socially acceptable um descriptions of this product like i looked online and now they're called like child safety harness which sounds much better than leash but you know when my kids were younger you couldn't sit at home and order stuff like that off amazon you had to go to the pet store and buy leash and so that's what i did i walked in just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible i asked the kid behind the counter where are your leashes and you know i think they'd probably been trained to try to connect with their customers so he's like well what kind of dog do you have don't have a dog i didn't want to lie to him but neither did i really want to be judged by this teenage kid who had no children of his own right like i don't i don't need that energy so i just went found the aisle got the leash for my precious three-year-old daughter took it home as we were driving home from the pet store i'm thinking through the psychological damage that this might cause like what were the what will the future conversations with the therapist sound like when she talks about her dad coming from the pet store and pulling out a leash and so you know we didn't feel like we had much choice though she was always running off always distracted lots of extra energy don't know where she gets that but had a lot of that and um you know we tried to get her to stay close we're like you know you want to treat you want to treat but she just wouldn't she just was always was always running off and um my wife and i sat down with her to try to mentally prepare her for life on a leash like that not her whole life but moments of living on a leash and we wanted we wanted her to kind of understand what the purpose was understand the why behind it so we tried to approach the subject with her carefully and surprisingly like she loved the leash like she thought it was awesome to pretend to be like she's like it got awkward almost so she's bringing us her leash asking to go for a walk and like i don't know if that's okay or not and and so it went pretty well we got looks of judgment like i remember going to six flags early on with the leash and just feeling people judge us and you know one lady it doesn't help because my daughter's pretending to be a puppy like that makes it a little more that way but one lady was trying to play with her you know and pretend along with her like what kind of puppy are you and i wanted us to sound like we were more impressive people because we have a kid on leash i'm like she's a rescue that way would make us i didn't that wasn't really rescuing wasn't really a thing back then but she spent a couple of years you know needing a leash when we went out in public and and it became an issue with how comfortable she was with it like we started off with the leash to keep her safe and we wanted to kind of prepare her for public places so that she would learn to stay close to us but we didn't want it to hold her back like we didn't want her to spend the rest of her life on a leash like there came a time for her to lose the leash we had to get rid of it no more no more leash i think 2021 for some of us needs to be a time where we cut the leash loose like we've gotten comfortable in different ways in 2020 we've become more self-focused i think in in some ways self-preservation would maybe describe us a little bit more thinking of ourselves and our immediate future a little differently in our own health and and some of that's fine and appropriate but maybe maybe we need to cut the leash maybe we need to be set free to not focus so much on ourselves instead focus on the needs of the people around us maybe that is really what god's calling us to in 2021 i know that when we start a new year our tendency is to focus on ourselves like you even see that in sermon series like hey let's make the most of the beginning of the year people are focusing on new habits and so let's do a series where we help people with their habits but as we begin this year we're taking the attention off ourselves we're putting the attention on the world around us because i believe what god wants to do is unleash the church to accomplish his purpose in 2021. there came a point for the disciples where they needed to have the leash cut like they were used to having jesus around them he was always with them and then we studied in the final discourse at the end of last year that that jesus began to prepare them for what life was going to be like when he went to heaven they were still on mission they were to go out into the whole world but he wasn't going to be physically in person with them and so in matthew 28 he gives them this unleashing commission all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me therefore go go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the father as the son and of the holy spirit and teaching them to obey everything i have commanded you and surely i am with you always to the very end of the age so they are unleashed they are sent out to change the world so the book of acts records for us these unleashed stories of how the early church turned the world upside down like have you ever wondered how it happened where it was a small group of jesus followers and it just it it just changed the world how did that happen we're going to study that in the book of acts over these upcoming weeks in this series called unleashed because one of the things we talk about around here a lot a mission for us the mission for us as a church is to unleash the full force of the church to love people one at a time like this is what we're gonna what we want to be about in 2021 to unleash the full force of the church to love people one at a time we believe that this is how we have gospel impact how we impact and influence the world around us and if you study through the gospels it's just what you consistently see this is the ministry model of jesus jesus had a short amount of time to change the world and he did it by loving people caring for people one at a time so much of the gospels is written that way and we're gonna see that in the book of acts two it's one story after another of the church caring and loving for people one at a time so i just want to make sure we underline this that the early church changed the world not listen not because there were a handful of highly educated politically powerful ultra wealthy influencers that made it happen that is not the story of the church the story of the church would be a united group of everyday ordinary people coming together for something bigger than themselves ordinary people being used by god in extraordinary ways and i believe that in this season that we're in we have an opportunity to live that out in ways that many of us have never experienced before like i know that we hoped 2021 would start differently than it has like we hoped it was this kind of a reset button and yet the last week we have been reminded of the division of the hostility it just continues to escalate but in the midst of all of it the church has an opportunity to shine a bright light if we can come together unleash the full force of the church and love people one at a time the gospel will advance the light will shine brightly and i i think that's what all of us want like deep down we want to be difference makers we're not always sure what we can do but we we want to do something we feel compelled to say something sometimes those efforts get misdirected but the intention i think is often good like we don't want to just be space takers and time wasters we want to be different makers we difference makers we just don't know what our role is or what part we have to play but we don't want to sit on the sideline or stay in the stands we want to be a part of the game we're just not sure what that looks like and so in this unleashed series as a church this is what we're going to be focusing on is how do we come together to make a difference in the world during this time and for us to embrace that to understand that one of the shifts that need to take place is for us to understand what the bible calls the priesthood of all believers this is the biblical teaching that the mission of the church is not just for pastors or for missionaries it's for all of us we're all part of the priesthood we're all part of the mission that god has has given us like we're all to be on mission and it doesn't it doesn't work if 80 of the church thinks that oh wait no the church exists for me and for my entertainment and so that i can receive it it won't work to be the church that god has called us to be it means that this year you're not just gonna attend but you're you're gonna engage or if you're watching online it means that this year you're you're not going to just watch online like you might not be ready to come back to one of our campuses physically but you can still engage in the life of the church we're going to give a lot of new opportunities for that this year it means that your mentality is not received but it is give it's priesthood of all believers it means that you're not just going to sit but you come to serve like i i think some of you who are watching online you'll have this moment later in the year where you start to feel like okay i can come back and the question you're gonna have to ask yourself is am i just gonna come back for me or am i gonna come back and gather for the good of others like that's that's what we have been called to do it's it's um it's not just for ourselves it's for other people priesthood of all believers and so the title of this message is unqualified to unleash because i think the least that holds a lot of us back is that we feel unqualified i don't know if you can relate to this but it's it's this um equation we start to do some math in our heads and we you know we add up our inadequacies when we multiply that by our mistakes and we look around at the problems in the world and we come to the conclusion that we're not the answer like we want somebody to be but it's it's not us it's not that we're unwilling it's just that we don't feel qualified and maybe that's because you think you have the wrong pedigree like you grew up in a home that was broken and maybe dysfunctional you didn't grow up studying god's word or going to church or parent praying together as a family and so you feel like you were almost kind of disqualified from the beginning or maybe you feel like you've got the wrong degree like you you haven't really studied the bible a lot you don't know answers to some basic questions you've spent more time in your life maybe running away from jesus and pursuing jesus and so in your mind you're like well you know what i want to make a difference but probably best just to leave that to the professionals or maybe you feel like you've got the wrong resume like you just can't really point to any moment in your life where you made a significant spiritual impact in the life of someone else like if if if you're filling out a resume to be a difference maker in the kingdom of god you're just not sure what you would write down you don't you don't feel qualified but here's what we're going to see as we study through the book of acts in the beginning of the church it's really what we see throughout scripture is that god loves to unleash the unqualified he loves he loves to demonstrate his power and our weakness he loves to take the very thing that you feel like most disqualifies you and use that for his good and for his glory to accomplish his purposes it's in some ways the one thing everyone in scripture who's used by god in extraordinary ways has in common is that they all feel ordinary they all feel unqualified and two of the people that we're going to study here as we begin looking at some of these narratives in the book of acts would be peter and john we talked about them a little bit in our series at the end of last year so you're familiar with peter and john the disciples but keep in mind that peter and john didn't apply for the job to lead the church like they didn't apply for that job they didn't ace some you know rabbinical school or hand over an impressive resume or nailed the interview they they didn't seem qualified in fact if you look at peter and john it's it's easier to make a case that they are unqualified that they're disqualified think about peter he he was kind of impulsive had a knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and yet what do you find with peter he is in some ways the primary spokesperson for the church if you look at his life though it doesn't seem like there's anything that would qualify him for that think about john we studied the gospel of john quite a bit last year and if you remember john before he became a follower of jesus was known for having a short temper he was known for having anger issues so much so that they had a nickname for him the son of thunder remember like son of thunder is not the nickname you give somebody who graduates at the top of their seminary class like that's not it's not what you call them the son of thunder is like it's like the nickname for the guy who who rides into town on his harley with the face tattoo of him riding on his harley like that's that's more the son of that's more the son of thunder and yet you see john become more and more about love it took a while there was a scene in the gospels where he asked jesus for permission to call down fire from heaven to destroy a town and jesus is like um no and and john and his anger and emotion was convinced that that's that's what god would want not really loving people one at a time but then you get to the books of first second third john in the new testament and the theme is love god's love for us our love for one another it's coming from the son of thunder the very thing that seemed to disqualify him if you're going through his resume if you're looking at his application you're like no this this will never work god transformed that and then unleashed him and so i want to look at a story with peter and john as we start in the book of acts and what i want to do here is i want to pick up in the middle of the story um a moment where peter and john are are standing trial and we're going to go back to the beginning and catch up to this peter and john are standing trial they're before the ruling council of religious leaders um and here's what the religious leaders the ruling council realized they realized that peter and john were unschooled ordinary men they were not qualified unschooled just means on school like they they weren't taught what words to say and how to say them it's like going to the mechanic and you don't really understand what's wrong with your car but you're using whatever terms you you know thingamabob and watch them call it and and you're trying you're trying to tell them what's wrong but you're not using the right language and you can see the two mechanics looking at each other like yeah this person didn't go to mechanical school they don't know exactly what terms to use or what that's peter and john they they were unschooled they were ordinary um the word ordinary comes from the greek word idiots which is where we get the word idiot now it didn't have the same kind of uh you know insult or ridicule connotation then as it does now but they're saying that peter and john are are uneducated idiots they're they're not qualified they're not qualified to do what they're doing but but yet they're they're doing it and i was thinking about some of the un words that make us feel unqualified like maybe it's not unschooled maybe you know all kinds of words here untalented uninspiring unexperienced under-resourced unprepared uncertain unattractive uncompelling unemployed unessential unequipped unexciting unworthy just came up with these pretty quickly you want to know how i mean this one's a big one for me i feel that way almost every time i walk out here i have to remind myself i'm not worthy jesus makes me worthy unequipped unprepared like that describes a lot of 2020 for me now i hate to tell you this but like i have no idea what i'm doing a lot of days not sure what it has felt like and it's easy when you're feeling that to just think you know maybe maybe i'm not maybe i'm not qualified now here's the tendency and i did i tend to do this with myself i tend to want to do this with you i tend to want to say no no no you are qualified like i want to look in the mirror and say no you are prepared but the truth is and it was true for peter and john the truth is they were uneducated and ordinary the truth is that maybe you're not that talented or inspiring or experienced or resourced or prepared maybe you're not that equipped or compelling like that's the truth but here's where we find confidence we don't earn it we don't qualify ourselves it's jesus who qualifies us and so that is what we're gonna see as we study throughout the the book of acts is that he he loves to take people who are unqualified and unleash them for his purposes and so in acts chapter three and four here's the story it starts with compassion these two ordinary unschooled guys show extraordinary compassion so acts chapter three peter and john are heading to church heading to the temple outside the temple is a beggar asking people for money as they came in acts chapter 3 verse 2. now a man who was lame from birth he had always been crippled was being carried to the temple gate called beautiful where he was put every day every day this is where he existed sat outside this temple gate and he begged people for money who were going into church and he's been doing that his entire life and when peter and john walk by he calls out to them and asks for help and acts chapter 3 verse 4 we're told peter looked straight at him as did john this isn't what we tend to do we tend to instinctively not look we tend to keep our eyes straight ahead we tend to do our best to avoid eye contact it says they look straight at him and the language here is that there was this glare not a harsh or critical glare but like an intentional stare they're they're seeing the person and i got to think that for that beggar it was not something that was normally practiced most people would walk by every day and they look at him but they don't they don't see him now here's what's interesting it says that he had been there every day peter and john and jesus by the way must have walked by this man many times before this wasn't the first time they had seen him but this time they stopped they they look at him it's an opportunity it's the right time to speak and to do something for him i i know that as we begin this new year it is the right time for many of us to live this way where we start looking at things that we've too long been looking away from we're going to be doing this as a church in some ways that will make you uncomfortable we're going to look at some of the challenges and struggles in this world and what we can do to make a difference for jesus in a way that will make you want to look away like you're going to come on some weekends and you're like i don't really want to i don't really want to hear about that but this is this is how we make a difference in the world this is what it looks like for the church to be unleashed is we see people who are in need and we we lean into that moment so peter and john they look right at him and and they show compassion so here's the way that we could say this is unleashing the full force of the church happens when ordinary followers of jesus show extraordinary compassion as much as anything when followers of jesus show extraordinary compassion it unleashes it unleashes the church it makes room for the gospel so acts chapter 3 verse 6 says then peter said silver or gold i don't have but what i do have i give you in the name of jesus christ of nazareth or what walk the guy gets up he starts walking creates a huge stir because he's been sitting there every day and and now he's walking around praising the lord and people begin together gather around to listen to what peter and john have to say about jesus so here's what i want you to catch is their act of compassion their act of compassion gives them credibility and creates an opportunity their act of compassion gives credibility to the gospel and creates an opportunity to connect people to jesus and so this is what we're going to be about in 2021 that we want to go out of our way to love people one at a time because every radical act of compassion gives credibility to the gospel and creates opportunity um have you seen on the food network have you seen the uh show called chopped you know the show where's your hand if you know the show okay yeah quite a few of you do so i'll give you a quick rundown if you don't four contestants four executive professional chefs come on the show and uh they go through a series of cooking challenges where they're given a mystery basket and inside the basket are usually like one or two ingredients that are really good solid staple ingredients and then one or two ingredients that are not at all like this cheese whiz and gummy worms and pickled pig feet it's it's it's things that you would never want to cook becoming worms are good but you don't want to cook them with cheese whiz like so it it's a challenging mix of ingredients and then they have to come up with something um and they they they cook and each round one of them gets chopped so i was watching this episode this past week where there was a contestant named lance and lance was a uh a christian how do you know lance was a christian because lance said it repeatedly talked about being a christian kept talking about his faith now i'll be honest with you there's part of me that i just have a you know my my cringe sensitivity can be high because you never know how those people are going to represent you're like i don't know i don't know it's a cooking show lance maybe just tone it down a little and and so lance is talking about being a christian there's another chef on the show on that show and she's maybe in her late 20s um she had had a hard life her grandmother raised her and her grandmother lived in paris and didn't have much time left and so if she won the ten thousand dollars of prize money for the show she was going to go back and spend some time with her grandmother well it ends up in the last round where it's just these two it's just lance the christian and this girl who wants to go see her grandma before she dies and i'm like sorry sorry lance like i'm rooting for her i i was pulling for this this um this gal to win but lance ends up winning the show and when he wins the the female contestant she kind of hung her head and walked off and the camera followed her out and it was supposed to be just lance there kind of celebrating his big victory on chopped but as she's walking as she's walking off you hear you hear lance say hey wait wait uh unscripted moment awkward tension with the judges like what you what are you doing lance and she turned around he said come back here and he said i didn't plan on winning this money didn't think i'd win i want you to have it to go see your grandma i'm like okay lance is a christian like all right you can now you can say it say it if you want to like it totally changed how i felt about his testimony like i appreciated his encouragement and his intentionality to say those things but the moment the moment he backed it up with compassion game changer listen we will have we will have opportunity after opportunity this year to say hey wait and people who think they know about jesus and who think they know about the church will see the gospel in a whole new light compassion acts of compassion can bring credibility that can create opportunity for us to connect people to jesus and that's what was true for peter and john it wasn't their qualifications it was their compassion that unleashed the gospel now now right now we see all these things going on in the world and we think the way to influence things the way to change things is by power and position and this is especially true when things get very tribal and there's like two sides and we want to use power and position for whatever side we're on this is not the way of the kingdom it's not this is not how jesus lived it's not how we love now i get it like i get why we can be more attracted to that like i get i get the fact that having that kind of power and position and domination about whatever side you're on that's going to get you a lot more followers it's gonna get you a lot more comments but the way of the kingdom is humility and compassion that is the way of the kingdom and so the opposite the opposite of humility and compassion is pride and indifference in 2021 we are going to have incredible opportunities if if we will come together and be united as a church incredible opportunities for the full force of the church to be unleashed with radical acts of compassion that will create opportunities and give credibility to the gospel acts chapter four verse four says many who heard the message believed and so the number of men who believed grew to about five thousand so it's like fifteen twenty thousand people so peter's preaching so it's an act of compassion followed by words courageous words and i i think we can put it this way unleashing the full force of the church happens when ordinary people start speaking with courage there's a connection between compassion and speaking with courage just notice the order right like peter had credibility to speak with courage because of the compassion that he had demonstrated and um what happens next had to be pretty scary for them if you look at acts chapter 4 verse 1 it says the priest and the captain of the temple guard and the sadducees came up to peter and john while they were speaking to the people keep in mind these are the same people who are responsible for the trials that would sentence jesus to death same same people not just the same group same people and it says they were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people proclaiming in jesus the resurrection of the dead so they seized they rested peter and john because it was evening they put them in jail to the next day i know for some of you you have subscribed for a while to this idea that your faith in jesus is supposed to be just a private thing that you don't ever talk about it we no longer if we ever did which we didn't but we certainly no longer live in a time where that is it's it's not just inappropriate it's unkind to not say anything to have this hope in jesus to find this peace in jesus and then just say well i don't want to make it awkward i'm not going to not going to say anything i know it takes courage to speak up but the days of not speaking up are our past it's compassion followed by an opportunity to speak to someone about jesus peter and john knew they might be killed for speaking but that didn't stop him acts chapter 4 verse 7 says they brought in the two disciples and demanded by what power or in whose name have you done this and then peter filled with the holy spirit we're going to talk about that in this series filled with the holy spirit said to them rulers and elders of our people are we are we being questioned today because we've done a good deed for a crippled man really like we helped somebody you're you're going to try to make us look bad because we helped somebody it's hard to do acts of compassion it's hard it's hard for those people to be enemies and then they say do you want to know how he was healed let me clearly state all of you and to all the people of israel that he was healed by the powerful name of jesus christ oh he said his name and then just in case there's any confusion on what jesus christ uh that would be the one that you crucified and the god raised from the dead for jesus is the one referred to in the scriptures where it says the stone that you builders rejected has now become the cornerstone and there is salvation and no one else god has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved and so what we see about peter and john and we'll talk more about this in the series as they spent time with jesus and they were filled with the holy spirit they spent time with jesus and they were filled with the holy spirit as a result acts 4 13 the verse we started the story with when they saw the courage of peter and john and realized that they were unschooled and ordinary men they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with jesus and this is why jesus loves to unleash the unqualified because what gets noticed is not that they're super talented or super resourced it's that they spent time with him so here's the way we can say it is unleashing the full force of the church happens when ordinary people spend time with jesus one of the ways we want to give you an opportunity to do that in this series is next week we're going to be starting groups i want to really encourage you to jump in a group we're going to be going through the unleashed series together in groups we're going to have a lot of opportunities for you not just to learn but to live this out i know for some of you that you've never done anything like that it might seem intimidating it takes some courage okay well this is a great time to do that it's a great time to step across that line and say okay i'm not just gonna attend i'm not just gonna watch but i'm gonna engage i'm gonna i'm gonna hop in a group they spent time with jesus and that's what gave them this compassion that's what gave them the courage to step up and and so as as we begin this uh journey together studying through the book of acts i know there's a lot of on words that you might circle on the board and you might say well i don't know i don't know if this is for me because i feel too uneducated too unexperienced too uncompelling too unworthy none of that none of that um is true because of jesus he makes us he makes us that way but there is one onward there is one onward that tends to keep us keep us leashed and it's the word unavailable that's the one word like it's amazing if you study through scripture what god does through ordinary people as long as they are available the one thing though that keeps us leashed up is that we just we say no or we don't say no we say not right now we say maybe when things get back to normal a little bit maybe when things slow down at work maybe when i get my life together maybe when i get some things cleaned up maybe maybe right now i need to focus on this it's being unavailable that keeps us oftentimes least so my challenge for you especially i want to speak to those of you who are part of our church family is to lose the leash like let's come together and be united my prayer is that god would just unleash the full force of this church to love people one at a time in radical ways and you know what pastors on staff and and some of our core volunteers they do they do a lot but but the power of the church is when we all come together to be a part of something bigger than ourselves let's pray jesus i know that you have called each of your followers to be a part of this mission i i know that our western mindset western world mindset is to say well i'll leave it to the professionals i'll let somebody else do that i pray god that you would would help us as we begin this new year to say to you i'm available that would be our commitment got the song that we sang before the message we sang together i lift my hands up i lay my life down i pray that that would be our posture that our hands being lifted would be an act of surrender where we say all i have is yours and make ourselves available to to you to accomplish whatever you want to in us and through us it's in jesus name we pray amen

Channel: Southeast Christian Church

Views: 3,984

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Southeast Christian Church, Dave Stone, Kyle Idleman, creative church, sermon series, worship, Jesus, God, Louisville, Kentucky

Id: w1Yvide4f1M

Length: 37min 37sec (2257 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 10 2021