WE RISE TOGETHER - Headspace

[Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] good morning church you all look good just take a moment welcome everybody joining us online everybody at all of our locations good morning let's just say good morning to our church family we love you church if you're new to vox uh vox church is one church that was a terrible little welcome from them that's all right though it's uh one church in nine different locations and of course everybody joined it at home too and so thank you for being a part of this move of the holy spirit were you involved in our baptism services last weekend wow i hope you either attended were baptized or watched online can we just say thank you jesus for all of those who were baptized last weekend oh it was it was just a blast i love baptism weeks they are so fun full of energy life so many life change stories i think it's still streaming on demand on the website or whatever but it's it was just such an awesome time make sure you watch it pray for those that were baptized what an incredible time i mean just just thank you god for the fact that you are moving in such a profound and personal way in our midst but in a teaching series called head space this is the last part of that teaching series eight weeks we've been talking about your thoughts the thoughts going on in your head that behind those thoughts there's a story right many of us don't think of it that way but that is in fact the case we have a story that informs our worldview the way that we see the world and it answers questions like why am i here and what's gone wrong in the world and why are people valuable at all and what's my purpose and what does it really mean to be free and so we've been looking at all these things this last number of weeks and we're going to conclude that series today tracking the life of daniel and so we'll be in daniel chapter 2 today and i feel like this one's important i mean i know the other ones were important too but i do feel that this one is is particularly important and i think it's important for you and so i'm glad that you're here i'm glad that you're joining us i think that the holy spirit wants to minister to your heart today daniel chapter 2 verse 48 when the king placed daniel in a high position lavished many gifts on him made him ruler over the entire province of babylon and placed him in charge of all its wise men moreover at daniel's request the king appointed shagrat meshach and abednego administrators over the province of babylon while daniel himself remained at the royal court simple text i want to talk to you today on the title we rise together we rise together everybody in the balcony i want you to know we rise even though you're higher than we are we rise together everybody's standing in the back we rise together everybody that's looking at me right now through that screen we rise together let's pray church let's open our hearts to jesus lord we thank you for this simple word thank you for these two verses and for all the truth that is contained in them i pray that you would unpack it in our hearts today that you would wake us up and that you would draw us to a whole new place i thank you that now is the time the spirit of jesus inside of me just prompts me to say now is the time that you are causing things to come to life in us that have been dead and so i pray let them come to life i speak it now by faith let them come to life in jesus name everybody said amen amen pia ferenkov she graduated from cardinal cushing central high school in south boston in 1983. she's one of nine siblings eight brothers and sisters she was an excellent student national honor society went on a scholarship to umass boston she never married had a handful of close friends stayed loosely connected to her siblings and her various nieces and nephews and then on march 5th 2014 piafernkov was found dead in her car it was parked in her garage at her home her body was discovered by two repairmen who had arrived at her house because it had gone into foreclosure she was not stabbed she was not shot the cause of her death was unclear but one thing about her death was unnerving and it was that as medical examiners looked at her body they determined that she had not died the day before she had not died the week before in fact they discovered that piaferenkov had not even died the year before she was found they determined that the date of her death was february 25th 2009. five years before her body was found by the repairman this means that this 44 year old lady passed away and no one noticed for 1817 days now just think about that for a moment think about that how can someone with nine brothers and sisters nine siblings eight brothers and sisters one of nine dozens of nieces and nephews every christmas easter thanksgiving friends co-workers neighbors how can a person die and go unnoticed for nearly five years now as the various people in her life were interviewed detectives came to no conclusion they don't know how this could come about they have no answer for this strange and tragic phenomena 2020 harvard professor robert putnam published his 20th anniversary edition of his best-selling book bowling alone and in his book he chronicles the last 50 years of what he calls the collapse of american community that from public gatherings to family dinners to church involvement to social clubs in virtually every possible metric americans are becoming more and more and more isolated he comes to this conclusion he says during the first two thirds of the century americans took a more and more active role in social and public life in their communities in churches union halls bowling alleys club rooms around committee tables card tables and dinner tables year by year we gave more generously to charity we pitched in more often on community projects we behaved in an increasingly trustworthy way toward one another then mysteriously and more or less simultaneously we began to do all these things less often by virtually every conceivable measure social capital has eroded steadily and sometimes dramatically over the past two generations now we have our virtues in our nation right and if you grew up here in the states you know that one of the great american virtues is you know what sometimes is referred to as rugged individualism it's this idea that you know i make myself i value my individuality i value my privacy but somewhere and somehow in the midst of all of our individuality and our privacy we have produced a people who are more isolated and more lonely and that isolation and loneliness is in fact killing us one journalist stephen march said it like this he said we are living in an isolation that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors and yet we've never been more accessible check this out over the past three decades technology has delivered to us a world in which we need not be out of contact for a fraction of a moment in 2010 for example at a cost of 300 million dollars 800 miles of fiber optic cable was laid between chicago mercantile exchange and the new york stock exchange to shave three milliseconds off trading times yet within this world of instant and absolute communication unbounded by the limits of time and space we suffer from an unprecedented alienation we have never been more detached from one another or lonelier statistics tell us that one in four americans say they have no close friends not a single one and adults in 2019 were twice as likely to say they're lonely compared to a decade earlier and it's in this environment where people have been for 50 years progressively becoming more and more unattached and lonely that we have now for the last 12 months experienced a global pandemic lay on top of all of our systemic loneliness issues a global pandemic and what do you see you see divorce rates domestic violence addiction depressing anxiety loneliness going through the roof yesterday i received the news that someone i've known for years in his mid-20s who at one point came to this church they had moved away but yesterday i heard he took his own life and i i've just been carrying it since i heard that news and it's so strange because most of what i've just said is not a surprise to us we know that as a people we are lonelier and more isolated than ever and yet with that knowledge many of us continue to avoid opening our lives to others and we have to ask the question why if we know that loneliness if we know that being isolated is actually killing us why are we so prone to live that way certainly health concerns complicate things people are concerned about staying healthy in the midst of this pandemic understandable everybody has to figure that out and decide their own terms for that but i think that this pattern predates the pandemic for the vast majority of people that this is a pattern that's been going on for a long time why is it that we're so hesitant to open our lives is it that we're afraid of losing control you know we've lived in a world where we just control everything now we can control the temperature in our homes we can control the you know tv show that we watch we can control the food that we eat we get with so many controls that in previous generations and times we did not have and we become so attached to those controls that introducing someone else just messes up all those controls right some of us it's because we're afraid of being hurt you've been hurt by a church you've been hurt by a relationship you've been hurt by family members or friends or a romantic relationship and now you find that you keep everybody sort of at arm's length because it's just easier than opening up your heart and experiencing the possibility for hurt again but i think that if we're honest the number one reason the majority of people avoid close community and accessibility is that life just seems easier that way it's easier to build a fence in my backyard than it is to interact with my neighbor it's easier to look at my phone in a crowd than to look up and make eye contact with a stranger it's easier to stay in my little silo and watch my tv show by myself than to shut it off and have a meeting conversation with my son or my brother or someone who lives in my house it's easier i don't know what your personal propensity is but i know for me i'm naturally an introvert it's almost comical that god made me a preacher because i'm like my perfect day is to be alone all day i don't know if anybody else is like that but you're like dude i'm loving this whole pandemic thing it's great everybody just leaves me alone no there i mean seriously there's there's a part of me that just loves to be alone and yet i realize that if i don't become aware of my need for others that aloneness turns to loneliness which is incredibly destructive i think that some people you know even now in the midst of this pandemic with all of its limits some have stayed at home and maybe you're watching online right now for health concerns or concerns for your kids or someone else in your home whatever and that's fine we honor that everybody has to make their own decisions there but i think that some have stayed away from church gatherings not so much because they need to stay safe physically but because it's just far more convenient doesn't require the same level of emotional availability to watch behind a screen in your pajamas and so we champion privacy and individualism and boundaries and yet at the same time we experience this profound loneliness that drives us to some dark places personally and some of you know exactly what i'm talking about so for the last seven weeks now this is week eight we've been looking at the life of daniel all the amazing things god has done through him and we see that daniel he lived differently because he saw life differently really really important right he saw life through a different lens remember the story you believe sets the trajectory of your life and so he saw circumstances through a different story allowed him to interpret things differently and then functionally live differently but what we have to see is that behind all of the miracles of the lion's den and the writing on the wall and all these crazy stories that we've looked at over the last number of weeks that behind these there is this underlying cadence of his connection to a sacred community he has this fellowship and we'll see today that that fellowship is more than just friends him and shadrach meshach abednego they form this unique supernatural community and it's actually a picture an old testament picture of a new testament promise that jesus spoke of often called it the family of god right today we call it the church and in our minds we think of church and sometimes you might think of a building or even an institution but that's not what jesus had in mind he had a people a community in mind a family of believers the family of god and it was always god's purpose to reveal himself to the world not through a preacher or through a person but through a people that we would be the people of god maybe you've read the sermon on the mount jesus most famous sermon in matthew chapter five and six he says some incredible things there like you are the light of the world you are a city on a hill and most of us in our individualized thinking read that and we hear it as a list of moral commands for ourselves do this don't do that but if you actually look at the original teaching jesus uses the plural pronoun for you throughout the sermon and so he's not saying you individually are the light of the world we don't even have a word for it in english unless you live in the south he'd be saying y'all are a light of the world that's what he's saying y'all are a city on a hill that's his message that it's together that god has intended to create an alternate city on earth an alternate community a community made up of people who live by a different story establish a different society not separate from the world integrated within the world a city within a city you are called to be a part of an eternal sacred city living in the midst of the city in which you dwell come on somebody say amen you missed a real good chance to clap that's an important point that's right we're still kind of waking up it's a little chilly today paul used the illustration of a human body you've been on church you heard this right he talks about the human body to describe this alternate community this family of god look at it with me in romans 12 he says just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function you're special by the way a special function so it is with christ's body check this out we are many parts of one body and this is the important part here and we all belong to each other now in our american individualized way of looking at life there's actually something fundamentally offensive about that he just said that you don't belong to yourself that you actually belong to each other he's telling you that if you say yes to jesus it means that you are saying no to a life of autonomy and individuality that you now belong to a community that it is actually impossible to commit yourself to christ without committing yourself to his body and that when one tries to commit themselves to christ without committing themselves to the body the illustration shows that it's actually a grotesque reality if you just had an eyeball rolling around on the ground or a finger in the middle of this hall here you'd say this is disgusting that's terrible it's it's grotesque it is because you know it's supposed to be connected in the same way the parts of the body are not useful unless they're connected which means you are incomplete without the people of god wait a minute am i supposed to clap i'm not sure because there's something in me that that actually offends you know like my individualism it makes me uncomfortable i'm incomplete without these weird these crazy people i don't know if i like that i'm not sure if i want to be that connected daniel and his friends start to form this sacred community and i want to unpack what it looks like with you just for a minute okay because the holy spirit wants to do something big inside of you today and what we see first is that they shared a history they shared a history if you're sitting with someone that you can actually talk to that you're close enough go ahead and tell them that tell them we share history we share history you might not think so on the outside maybe that doesn't seem true but i want to show that it is in fact true see daniel and his friends they lived through an incredibly traumatic experience if you ever want a challenging read go read the book of lamentations where the prophet jeremiah describes the destruction of jerusalem under the babylonians in which daniel and his friends lived through they were dragged from the city of jerusalem into babylon to be servants of the king and it was terrible i mean people were murdered bodies were stacked up in the streets women were raped buildings were destroyed their homes were burned this is what daniel and his friends lived through but it's so important because there's there's no evidence in the text anywhere that these kids knew each other before they ended up in babylon in fact the percentages would say that there's almost no chance that they did that they show up in babylon just a bunch of exiled jews and they're smashed together and that's important because they didn't choose each other okay they didn't choose each other circumstances chose themselves for each other and so what we understand is that in this moment they find themselves in a foreign land and all they really have is god and one another and so they're stuck in this little tribe and they have to begin to form community i love one of c.s lewis's books where he talks about the four loves you may have heard of it he outlines the four loves the four different types of love that must be active in the heart and the life of a believer in order for you to really experience fulfillment and the first love he talks about is agape love and you've probably heard of that if you've been around church agape love is the greek word for god's love it's sacrificial love it's supernatural love it's agape love and then he talks about phileola fellaio love his friendship love and most of us are familiar with that you know philadelphia the city of brotherly love so we understand this idea of love friendship everybody wants friends right and so that's wonderful and then he talks about romantic love and and most of us are pretty comfortable with i don't understand what romantic love is you know me and my wife we fell in love we love each other that's romantic love and so so we have these three and then there's a fourth love and if we're honest you've even read the text most of them are like oh yeah wait what's the fourth one i don't know i can't remember it's something else and so the one two and three are kind of known but four is often forgotten four is what he calls storge love that's the greek word and that word means family love it means love that evolves between two people because they're forced into consistent relationships so when a mom has a baby and she's holding that little child in her arms and she loves this child even though they've never done anything right or wrong that's storgela when two brothers grow up in the same home and form an unbreakable bond one to another that's storge love it's family love it's an important part of the love that must exist in the heart of a healthy soul now agape love friendship love and romantic love they usually come with a clear starting point in other words the day arrives when i fell in love the day arrives where our friendship begins whatever but with storgy love it hardly ever has a clear starting point it usually just kind of grows on you like moss on the back of a you know uh of a creature like it just it just kind of slowly oh how to get all that you know like it just over time you don't even realize that it's there and it's interesting because the other three loves the individual must choose the person to love so you probably chose your spouse at least i would assume that you did or you probably chose your friends but you didn't choose grandpa did you you didn't choose your cousin you didn't choose your mom or your sister you didn't get to choose those people they're the people you didn't choose in fact if you look over your family and you had a moment of honesty between you and god you're probably like well i probably wouldn't choose that one and i probably wouldn't have chosen that one either but through your shared history something starts to grow right you say man we grew up together every christmas morning it was me and her we were always running out together you know we went on those crazy family vacations together we were stuck in the back seat together she used to put her bubble gum in my ear was gross you know like i had all these things you know we used to do this stuff we have memories we remember that time we went camping what were even thinking we did that together you know and you know what grows a unique special love that forces your heart to widen because you're learning to love someone you didn't choose this is so important because this love storge love it only happens when you stay long enough to love the person you didn't choose and some of us here today you've experienced real friendship you've experienced romance and you've even experienced god's love but when it comes to the church there's a disconnect and you say i don't really have any friends justin i didn't really find my spouse yet here at the church and you're looking for something but you're not sure what you're looking for friend what you're missing so often is that god's actually called you to be a part of a bigger family a bigger family with a shared interest and a shared history and this this it may not have a shared interest but it does have a shared history where what we see is that over time that love begins to expand and grow because i'm actually forced into community with some people maybe i wouldn't have chosen but we share this divine history together and you might be sitting here today and say well i don't have a real history i just moved here from some other place in the country i don't have a real history with this family of faith this church and we have to see is in eternity you actually do have a real shared history because if you're a follower of jesus it means that at some point in your life you discerned that you were a sinner separated from god that you became aware of your inability to reach god in your own capacity and so you had to turn to christ and receive his free gift of grace and when you did his heart filled you with peace he washed away your sin and you became in your spirit a child of god god took his holy spirit placed him within you and an unbreakable bond between you and christ was formed so that you were born from above now with the living spirit inside of you which means that now as a follower of christ i am in christ check this out and christ is in me and christ is in you which means in the mystery of god you are in me and i am in you the same blood cleanses me that cleanses you the same blood connects me that connects you and for some reason for too long people have thought of church and we've used our paradigm of individualism to think about church and we say well what's it all for me how does it connect to me my spirituality needs to grow in this way and we don't stay long enough or commit deeply enough to learn to love the person we didn't choose and we miss out on the real secret of god's family only one person in the balcony club that's all right though we're gonna get you guys i'm coming for you and so daniel and his friends they they develop a brotherhood it's beyond friendship they develop this sacred brotherhood they start to form this family but the bond is quickly tested and if you know the story nebuchadnezzar the king of babylon he has a dream and he says that all of his advisors he says you have to interpret my dream and they can't interpret it and so he says i'm going to execute you all what good are you and so daniel learns that he and his new brotherhood are going to all be killed by this king and he runs back to his house and he gets his friends in the room and they have a conversation verse 17 i want to show you says then daniel returned to his house he explained the matter to his friends hananiah michelle and azariah that's their jewish names and he urged them to plead for mercy from the god of heaven concerning this mystery so that he and his friends might not be executed with the rest of the wise men of babylon verse 19 and during the night the mystery was revealed to daniel in a vision then daniel praised the god of heaven so this is a turning point in their relationship they go in this moment from walking together as friends to warring together as brothers just imagine with me the scene in the living room daniel shows up he says guys guys guys i got really bad news the king's gone nuts he's gonna kill us all just because we can't tell him what his dream means we need to pray god needs to intervene right now they're on their way here to cut off our heads can we all get on our knees and pray and the the four of them they just gather and they hold hands and they get on their knees and there they are in the living room and it wasn't like lord thank you for this day you know it wasn't that that bird it was like god right it was like we need you now i would imagine they were weeping i would imagine they were sweating their palms sweaty their knees knocking oh god if you don't do something now we are in trouble we're all gonna die god we believe that you called us we believe you have a purpose for us but it looks like that purpose is about to end so can you please intervene right now i wonder if you had a moment like that in your life if you had a situation like that where everything needed to stop because you needed god to move now do you have anybody that you would call do you have a community of believers that would stand with you weep with you fight with you war with you pray with you until god moved i hope you do because if you don't you are missing something tragic something so critical to the family of god i can think back of so many times in my life when one of my friends was in the hospital in a car accident me and three or four others of us got into that hospital room at bridgeport hospital got down on our knees and cried out for god to move for hours upon hours while he was in surgery and the holy spirit was moving and working through the doctors as we prayed and we saw miracle after miracle or the times my wife was battling intense anxiety years ago to the point where she could hardly function and we had friends come around us and pray stand with her until that bondage broke in her life and she began to see consistent freedom i could look back over my life and see so many times where these friends stood with me and daniel twice in that text uses that word friends but what's interesting is he doesn't use the normal word for friends in the hebrew language instead he uses a word that nowhere else is translated friends in the bible but here in the book of daniel he uses this unique word for friends and it comes from the root word which is the verb to bind together and it's a word described in the new in the old testament where two or three or four kings would come together and their their army would become one another time it's used in the temple where the curtains of the temple are sewn together with these clamps and now it's one large curtain that's been brought together from various pieces of cloth and so it's describing this bond that unites we're not just friends like we don't like hang out and play xbox together like we don't just go out to dinner and get a nice meal together no no no no we we stand together we trust god together we hold on to one another we carry each other because we are bound together through shared battles so his burden is my burden my burden is her burden we stand as one see shallow relationships can form from common interests and tragically that's what many of us know oh yeah he's my best friend really what do you have in common fortnite oh she's my best friend in the world really what do you guys do together we talk about grey's anatomy as we do really that's that's like the that's that's what that's it like that's your i mean that's not terrible i get i mean we both like ping pong okay great that's it see shallow relationships can form through common interests but deep community forms through common conviction these individuals had a common conviction that there was a god in heaven who had revealed himself through abraham isaac and jacob who was the savior of the world and who had a purpose and a plan for them see they knew what they lived for and they knew what they were willing to die for and that knit their hearts together in such a bond such a community that it transcended any friendship it became family and see something happens when people of common convictions start to share in each other's battles and that's what god's called the family of god to do share in one another's battles to such a degree that now i begin to carry you you begin to carry me one to another we share in life together and what happens is the strength of one is transferred to another and the strength of another is transferred to the next to such a degree that now the weak are made strong the strong are made weak but together we rise and stand together in the strength of god what a mystery you might have heard of stories let's try to make it physical right a physical illustration in uh world war ii the uh the nazis bombed germany for eight straight excuse me they didn't bomb germany that would be unproductive they bond london for eight straight months bombed london and london was just reduced to a pile of rubble and yet there's all these stories that when everyone expected the british people to crumble and collapse the bombing of london changed them where every day shopkeepers would wake up they would check on their neighbors out of their bomb shelter to make sure that they were still alive they would walk through the rubble and get to their shops and open their stores and go about business as usual day after day after day see the bombing of london didn't break them but because they stood together they shared the burden it actually made them unbreakable they became strong i think that some of us have misunderstood what church is all about see in our individualized conception of the world some of us have seen church as an institution you need rules and regulations it's a it's an organization i mean there's an organizational aspect to church but if you think that's what church is you've missed it some of us we think of church just as like spiritual encouragement it's here to kind of get me through and that's that's okay i suppose but but is that all it is like spiritual entertainment for my week some of us that's all we've allowed church to be not realizing that it's god's intention through the shared history of the cross that we share in the battles of life together so that we can hold one another up and experience a strength beyond ourselves and i can guarantee you that if you consider being active in that endeavor you will be disappointed at times it will be messy people will fail you there will be offense and it will be inconvenient and when we look back you know on this past year i think we could all say that it has been a tough year individually for us and a tough year collectively for us and the truth is you know some people have looked at church looked at vox and said i can't go there anymore because they did this or they didn't do that because it doesn't meet my need or i disagree with this because of a political persuasion or an offense and so they've disconnected they've distanced themselves you know our world teaches hey if it's messy you should leave hey if it's inconvenient just don't do it hey if it's uncomfortable you should run away and what we have to see here friends is that is the exact opposite of god's purpose for his people that he has a higher calling for you that if you bail when it's hard you'll miss out on that sacred storge love that really does knit family together that if you bail when it's difficult you'll never see the transfer of strength one to another that god has a purpose for his people but it requires that you stay when it's difficult it requires that you dig in when you're offended it requires that you lean in when you're confused or frustrated it requires that you make it priority when other things try to grab priority in front of it it says that when this thing becomes the center of my life a relationship with god in the family of god there is a life and a vibrancy that comes forth that can actually become a city on a hill oh i pray that you would see it today the holy spirit has something for you and i've looked back at our church and you know one of my big prayers all through 2020 was lord in this refining time where people do fall away and my heart breaks every time someone does when people do disconnect from the family of god god i pray that you would somehow make us stronger in the midst of it god i pray that you would somehow strengthen your people and you know in reflection upon 2020 i don't know what narrative you've been believing but let me just give you a couple of quick facts 2020 at box church was far and away the most generous year in our church's history that our church actually gave nearly 3 million more than the previous year 2019. and that incredible and then beyond that we out gave every one of our ministry efforts that we've ever done wrote ten thousand letters to first responders twenty thousand cans in our jesus can drive gave away more resources served our community more aggressively and touched the world through foreign missions more consistently with more resources than any previous year in our church's history 2020 was that year and then beyond that it's crazy our online and in-person attendance from one year over the next just last week if you look at the numbers is double than it was 12 months ago and so somehow in the midst of trial and difficulty the people of god are responding in such a way that's making us more effective more impactful a larger uh community that is more generous see there's a secret and it's that when you share in the burden of another you actually become stronger in the process these aren't just friends this is family we're bound together and you might say well i don't feel that way you're sitting here you're on the outside well then hear me today come on in come on in it's a little messy it's a little sloppy somebody is sure to offend you in a short period of time something in you will be exposed someone might change the tv show on you the temperature of the house might be different you might not get to sit in your favorite chair but i can promise you if you embrace the mess of family you'll experience the blessing of family because god put a sacred gift in this community called the church i want to show it to you today go back with me to verse 48 it says this king plays daniel in a high position i want to tell you today that's what he's called you to that no matter how small it might look in your eyes or in the world's eyes that god has called you to a high position it might be the high position of daddy it might be the high position of mom it might be the high position of employee or brother or friend or neighbor but he has certainly called you to a high position and he lavished many gifts on him that's always god's heart for you he made him ruler over the entire province of babylon and placed him in charge of all its wise men but look at verse 49 so daniel gets exalted he gets promoted and daniel never again saw shadrach meshach and abednego and forgot their names in the midst of his fame wait is that what it says it's a weird translation no it says moreover at daniel's request the king appointed shadrach meshach and abednego administrators over the province of babylon while daniel himself remained in the royal court at daniel's request at daniel's request in other words the first thing daniel does in his promotion is he promotes his brothers we rise together this is a truth that i think has avoided our individualized way of seeing the world our privatized way of viewing life i got my thing i got my business i got my family i got my purpose i come to church i get a spiritual blessing i go out do my thing last week we talked about this idea of purpose that god has a purpose for you and it is in fact true that god has made you unique he has a unique call for your life a sphere of influence that only you have and he has called you to that unique purpose which is to glorify god in your sphere of influence and by glorifying god you will find the most fulfilling exhilarating life because he has a unique purpose in calling and gifting for you but there's another layer to that truth that you cannot miss today and it is that you can't fulfill god's call for your life alone you can't look how ephesians 4 says it says it like this it says there is one body and one spirit one body one spirit just if you as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future in other words he's making a connection here that the calling of your life and your connection to community go together that there is this invisible link between you and your brothers that if you are faithful to your calling in his community it actually releases and empowers your brother to be faithful to their calling in his community that together we are connected by a divine link as each one trusts the lord individually and does it in the context of his church we now see god releasing his favor and his blessing and his life in a compound way throughout the church let me try to explain this to you in a really practical way right i look at my story my journey in jesus and i see this invisible bond this link and it has to do with you go ahead and put that first picture up there on the screen you may have never met these two you may never know their name or who they are that is todd and leslie foster might not be familiar with them in the late 1980s early 1990s todd foster felt a call from god to leave his career in management of the southern new england telephone company and take a position as a pastor of a church to preach it was a big step of faith it was a big challenge of faith for him but he stepped out in faith his wife likewise felt the call to leave a career in education and join him in ministry and the two stepped out in faith trusting god and you probably don't know them maybe some of you do but i'm so glad that they did because as a teenage kid in the middle of the 1990s i walked into their church and i heard pastor todd foster speak about jesus in the gospel for the first time and my heart was opened and i placed my faith in christ as todd led me in a prayer of surrender and god used his life to bring me into the kingdom of god and to open my eyes to jesus go ahead and put the second picture up there you might not know these guys this is rick and lisa rocco rick and lisa right around the same time felt a clear call from the holy spirit to leave their home in florida and move to connecticut they did it by faith i mean it was just a strange call from god that they would abandon their business their family all these things that they had in florida to move by faith all the way up to cold connecticut and so they did it they moved up by faith rick became a pastor and he was the first person in my life to really teach me to read the bible teach me to pray he used to meet me at six o'clock in the morning at dunkin donuts when i was 15 years old and teach me what does it mean to understand god's truth week after week month after month year after year he was the first person to ever recognize god's call on my life and push me out to preach and follow that call and trust god and support me in it and i look back at my life and that's just two examples of many where would i be without either of those two men in my life where would i be i can i don't know but i can tell you one thing there's a 99.99999 chance that i wouldn't be standing here right now that i wouldn't be even maybe doing this right now that they were faithful to step out in faith one from his career another from his community step out in faith and obey the voice the holy spirit having no idea that decades later a church would be started by the person they led to christ and grew up in christ that you would be sitting in right now hearing about the importance of community as god unlocked the next step in your calling and so you've got to see that there's this sacred link this mysterious link that's somehow your call from god my call from god and their call from god are all part of the same chain we rise together see when one is faithful it unlocks another who is faithful that unlocks that you are in fact your brother's keeper that you are bound to each other and when we try to live like individual entities we forfeit the great blessing god prepare look how it's said in hebrews chapter 3 brothers and sisters you are holy partners in a heavenly calling i love that oh if that truth could become the story in which we view life through how different things would be you are holy partners in a heavenly calling holy partners do you see it we have a shared history you and i both saved by grace both reconciled to god through the cross both brought into the family of faith by trusting jesus and we have shared battles you and i that when we pray for one another the strength of one is transferred to another this is why paul said bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of christ because we have a shared calling you and i a calling where the right hand and the left where the foot and the knee where the ear and the eye all work together for god's glory in the world and here friends is the secret to that sermon on the mount y'all are a city on a hill y'all are the light of the world i've called you to be a part of a big family it's going to be messy your natural inclination is going to be to keep distance so that you can protect yourself treat it as an institution keep it at arm's length come for spiritual enrichment and then move on but we rise together that's what he's called us to do especially right now would you stand with me today because i think the holy spirit has been preparing you for a resurrection as i was praying this week in preparation to share this i just i just felt the spirit of jesus tell my heart i've prepared the people for a resurrection a resurrection i'm not exactly sure what that will look like for you but it might be a resurrection of your commitment to his family it might be a resurrection of your passion for your brother a resurrection of your zeal or your willingness to engage in community maybe you're here today and you really have internalized this narrative of individualism and the truth is you come in you come out you don't you don't really get messy with church relationship because it's complicated and maybe you've been hurt in the past you might even feel like pe farinkoff who says you know i can't make any significant connections in my life and a loneliness has started to rot your soul i want to urge you that god is knocking on the door of your heart today he's saying to you my son my daughter it's time for a resurrection you've been isolated too long you've been keeping to yourself too long it's going to mean you have to put yourself out there it's going to mean you're going to have to make some time for community it's going to mean that you need to say yes to some things it's time it's time some of us join in online you say well i just don't feel comfortable going somewhere we have we have virtual groups that meet every week we have groups that are in person meeting every week we have opportunities to serve in a hundred different ways now is the time to say i can't i can't just i can't just treat this like spiritual entertainment that's not what god intended for the people of god it's not what god intended for your life you'll notice at all of our locations in your welcome pack on your chair today there's a little card that says i'd like help getting connected to a vox community group if you fill that card out drop it in the bucket before you leave one of our leaders will call you kind of guide you through the process if you have questions we'd love to connect you to a group or if you're online all you have to do is text the word vox groups one word vox groups to 97 000 and in doing that one of our leaders will reach out to you soon we want to make it easy we want to put the cookies on the lower shelf but really it's about every one of us having a heart change we can't make excuses for our isolation any longer we need to engage you need to engage and the spirit of jesus is calling to even right now so i want to pray for a resurrection i want to pray for a resurrection for every one of us a new passion for community a new commitment to god's people a new love for my brother i want to pray for our resurrection because i believe that god has called you for such a time as this and the old story today needs to be over a new story needs to inform my view of life let's pray lord jesus i pray that you would do something in our hearts that changes us to our core god the air we breathe in this world is all about individualism and yet you've called us the body of christ so god changed the story inside change the story inside god it's a little scary because we don't want to lose control it's a little uncomfortable because we like controlling the environment but we know that family is your call for us and that we are more than friends or associates but in fact an eternal family knit one to another oh god teaches the secret of storge love the love that only grows when you stay long enough to deeply love those you wouldn't choose god i pray that even now a great conviction would come on your church and that you would bring resurrection in our hearts as we put our attention on jesus we welcome you today to do a great work in jesus name you

Channel: Vox Church

Views: 812

Rating: 4.6666665 out of 5

Keywords: city, church, city church, city church sermon, sermon, justin kendrick, Jesus, christian, bible, worship, god, music, pastor, preaching, city worship, new haven, north haven, Bridgeport, Hartford, Middletown, Springfield, Vox, voxchurch, Vox church, Vox city, Vox city church, christian church, Connecticut, Connecticut church, Massachusetts, Massachusetts church, new church, young church, vox church, Vox Church, new england, new england church

Id: nxGNIjwkjpw

Length: 51min 57sec (3117 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021