#1 Blessed are the Poor

 We started a new series on Sunday called “Red Letter City” and the first thing that I wanted to explain to you guys was that when I say “Red Letter City” I am not referencing our city. I am not referring to Detroit, per-say. Even though I love Detroit and I am praying for it to become a City that lives and functions according to the red letters… which are the words of Jesus in the bible. Most bibles separate the words of Jesus from the rest of the bible by making the letters red. And we are studying a section of the bible that is basically red the entire time, which is the sermon on the mount.

And this sermon is all about the message of the Kingdom of Heaven, which as we said on Sunday, is what we mean when we say “Red Letter City.”

Jesus really began his ministry, after John baptized him, by coming and preaching a message saying “Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” it is here, now. and when we say “Red Letter City” we are referring to the Kingdom of heaven, which has come to us right in the midst of the broken city we live in.

We said that it is “a city in a city.” 

Well, if the Red Letter City is a city in a city, then this section we are diving into for the next eight weeks here at Equip about the beatitudes would be “a series in a series.” 

Each week we are going to dive into one of the beatitudes at a time. 

So, typically, when I teach a sermon, I will, at the start, read a passage from the bible, and then basically the message will be me, relating that passage to you, in real life terms. I will try and give you context… I will try and explain where it came from or what was going on in that time, and then we try and always make it applicable to our real lives. 

That is essentially what Jesus does with the sermon on the mount. The beatitudes are his text. His begins with all of these radical thoughts that when you first read them, you are blown away by them. and then he takes the rest of this sermon to show us what this looks like in real life… what this looks like in our lives. And we are going to really explore that basically all the way through the summer in our series on the Sermon on the mount… but here, we are going to dive into specifically what he is saying on each of these eight beatitudes, the type of people he is describing… why it matters who he was talking to, and why these things matter in our lives.

On Tuesday at our monthly dinner that we have been hosting at our house, I asked Alyssa if her and Jace were going to make it tonight for this series and she said, “I will BE having a good ATTITUDE at work while I miss it.”

and I laughed… but there is something significant about realizing that these are things that we are all supposed to be. Its not just something that we put on a wall and read sometimes as we think about how other people are blessed. But the thing that is so complicated about the beatitudes is they are things we should be… but once you are actually trying to “Be” them… it is a pretty good sign that you are not.

We have to be them without working to be. We are not trying to attain poor in spirit. We are not trying to attain meekness. 

Today we are focusing on the first beatitude. Matthew’s gospel (5:3) records it like this, “Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.”

Luke’s gospel (6:20) says it a little differently. He says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”

Luke leaves out the in spirit part, and there is significance to that. 

He also couples the “blessed’s” with a series of woes… and he says (Luke 6:24) “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”

We kind of ended the sermon on Sunday on this point… that if you read back just a little ways in Matthew you realize that Jesus is with a giant crowd, and then he goes on the mountain with his disciples and he preaches the sermon, and the disciples have a front row seat but the masses are all within earshot of Jesus… and all of the people who had been following him were the types of people that Jesus was describing. They were the poor, they were the broken, they were the ones who mourned. 

So Jesus tells us in Luke “blessed are the poor” 

and he tells us in Matthew “blessed are the poor in Spirit.” 

and I believe there is significance to that. 

Because before you can really understand what it means to be poor in spirit, first you have to understand what it means to be poor.

What does it mean to be poor?

It means that the things the world holds dear, you do not possess. 

You don’t have it. You don’t have anything of value.

The things that people in Detroit value… you don’t have those things. Or you have very little of those things. It goes so far beyond just having money in the bank. 

But the bible speaks of being poor as an injustice. 

A problem that needs to be solved, by God’s people, because it sheds some light onto the injustice that is poverty.  

Look at what Solomon says. 

Proverbs 19:6-8 says “Many seek the favor of a generous man, 

and everyone is a friend to a man who gives gifts. 

    7     All a poor man’s brothers hate him; 

how much more do his friends go far from him! 

        He pursues them with words, but does not have them. 

Solomon in all of his wisdom is pointing out to us a never ending cycle of injustice. 

another way to translate poor in the old testament is the word “oppressed.” 

Because he is poor, people don't want to be around him… 

because he has nothing that is of benefit to them they distance themselves from him, and because they distance themselves from him he can never offer them anything. He can never contribute to society in a positive way. 

Again, in his brilliant wisdom Solomon says in Proverbs 13:23: “The fallow ground of the poor would yield much food, but it is swept away through injustice.”

Because he is poor, what little he does have is taken from him. 

Not because it is fair. and not because that is what Jesus wants… 

but because The broken systems of our world have set this person up to fail, and we marginalize him even more because of his failure. 

If you are poor… poor in the way the bible describes… maybe you have a little, but even what little you do have will be taken from you. At any moment the “powers that be” could strip you of all you have and there is nothing that you can do about it. 

Poor in our society is an injustice whether we believe it or not.

I am not saying that if one person refuses to work and has nothing because of it… that is not justice… that makes no sense. The bible has plenty to say about being lazy. It has plenty to say about getting off of your butt and working for a your wage and for taking care of your family. 

But has even more to say about about the people who have, not taking care of the poor. 

and its not just saying the rich should do it. Its not just a Robin Hood message. Jesus says to all of us, “to give to those who ask.”

Deuteronomy tells us that there will never cease to be poor people in the land… and that we should constantly be giving to them open handedly until their needs are met. 

Its one thing to do something… to give a little and contribute to being a part of a solution, and it is a different thing entirely to straight up just be the solution.

Taking care of the poor… It is something that we have to do. It is not really listed as an option. Its something that we have to do. and I wonder if maybe it has something to do with that fact that as we become compassionate toward other peoples brokenness, we begin to realize that their brokenness is not really all that different from our brokenness. 

Maybe to them it looks like dollars and cents, and maybe it doesn’t look like that to you… but when you put yourself in someone else's world and you begin to live your life in a compassionate way, its easy to see that the stories you are helping to make better are not all that much different from your own story. 

So the bible commands us… it commands us, all the way back to the very beginning, with the Torah, to be the solution to this problem. But of course, that task is so much bigger than our brokenness… 

so the prophets started coming along and they start prophesying of a Messiah who was coming. Isaiah calls him “the suffering servant.” and he tells us over and over and over again how this suffering servant is going to bring the justice that we have failed to bring in our world. 

And in one of the most known prophecies in all of the bible, Isaiah declares that this suffering servant is coming and will bring good news to the poor. (Isaiah 61)

and of course we know Jesus came, and unlike some of the prophecies that he kind of, “quietly fulfilled” - he made it obvious that he was the fulfilling of the suffering servant prophecy in Isaiah 61 because in Luke 4 he reads it. He reads the portion of the prophecy that he had fulfilled, he rolled the scroll back up, and he sat down.

and then he said “Today, I fulfilled this.” 

(JSV)

Jesus has come, and with Him has come an upside down Kingdom. there is good news for the poor… and what is the good news he brings to the poor? 

they are blessed. 

In fact, they are so blessed, that the Kingdom of heaven belongs to them. 

The least expectant people on the planet to ever be called blessed because everything that the world considered to be valuable they possessed non of. 

and the crowds he was drawing, they grew and they grew… because this guy was bringing hope to people who honestly and genuinely believed that they had none. 

Guys, the reason that the gospel tends to be received so well by the poor as opposed to the rich is because the poor doesn’t have the merit. 

They know enough to know that whatever they do have, it was a gift. 

The bible tells us it is harder for the wealthy to enter into the Kingdom of heaven, in fact, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a person who is rich to enter into the Kingdom of heaven… but why?

It all comes down to grace and works. 

Religious people love works because they think they have earned something. But if we live our lives thinking we can earn heaven, or earn the favor of God in our lives, then we will adopt a mindset that God owes us those things, or he owes us something else. because of how we performed. 

But because in all reality the bible tells us that apart from Jesus there is none righteous, not even one… SO we have to rely on grace. 

And because we are only saved by grace, it is flipped. 

God owes us nothing, but we owe him everything. 

And no, we are not saved by our performance or even necessarily by our obedience to giving God what we owe him… but because salvation is a gift of grace, it is us we owe God. 

and God wants our lives. He wants people who will serve him, who will love him. Who will be his vessels. Who will seek the gifts of the Spirit and make his name evident in our world through them… who will live their lives with an outflow of the fruit of the spirit…. 

There is an expectation that God can put on your life because of grace. 

Its a free gift. He didn’t owe us, we owe him! 

Don’t cheapen the grace of God in your life simply because you paid nothing for it. 

Being poor in Spirit means that we have nothing. And we owe God everything. 

We have nothing that is valuable… we have to rely on his riches, and his glory, and most importantly his grace. 

Being poor in Spirit is not just realizing how much you need God… if the whole deal was humility, then you would work to be more humble. And it can become the same type of snare. the closest way to describe what it is in one sentence would be something like that… something like 

“You are completely dependent on Jesus. You know how much you need him.”

but even that sentence if you are not careful, you can fall into this trap of being the kind of person who knows how much they depend on God for everything. and even that can become “works.” 

Jesus wants our lives. 

If a person is poor… monetarily poor… they are 3rd generation homeless… whatever the extreme circumstance may be… where whatever cycle they are a part of did not start with them but was dealt to them and they are having a really hard time getting out of it… because people just keep taking from them… taking their home.

taking their money.

taking their opportunities.

that person knows they are poor. They know that most likely they will die without beating the cycle that they so desperately want to change. But if someone else comes and does something radical that completely pulls that person would of that cycle and puts them in a world where they can take care of their family, and they can eat healthy food… 

would that person not be so thankful for what they were given that they would be willing to do anything for the person who did it for them?

As Americans we are blessed and we have it all… but I think about for my family, and the student loans that we have that it feels like they will just hang over our head for our entire lives… if someone made that go away, I would owe them.

Maybe they would be the kind of person who wouldn’t make me do a thing for them, but I would be willing to do just about anything. Because of my gratitude because they brought me out of a mess that I can’t see a way out of on my own.

When a person gives in to alcohol in such a way that it begins to control their entire lives, and it begins to ruin their families, their marriage, their relationships their kids… it gets them fired…

usually, not always, but usually, it takes a kind of, “I’ve hit the bottom” circumstance to really address it.

But when someone signs up for Alcoholics Anonymous… the first step that they are given on the path to recovery is this confession:

STEP ONE: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol— that our lives had become unmanageable.”

Its the first thing. The first thing they do… when they come to the end of themselves they make this confession, that the problem in their life is one that they can not solve on their own. 

Their first step is also Jesus’ first step.

Its the first step in the beatitudes. 

It is an end of yourself. A realization that you are powerless over your flesh, over your circumstances, over your world. You are poor. Without Jesus you have nothing. Nothing of value. Nothing worth anything at all. 

and it is when you come to Jesus like that, that he gives you the whole Kingdom of Heaven. 

I want to read you one more story from the gospel of Luke that really emphasizes this. and its found in Luke chapter 14, verse 12-24.

First we will read until verse 14. Then we will go on. 

12 He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. 13 But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”

The red letters here in Luke say, don’t invite the ones who can pay you back or the ones who have your back… invite the ones who will never repay you. Invite the poor, the lame and the blind. 

and you will be blessed. We always hear this. We see it as an “outreach text”

and then something happens that I think we kind of overlook. Because the context doesn’t happen in red. 

Verse 15:

15 When one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!”

This follower of Jesus… this person who was with Jesus all that time says this… he is saying, THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE IN! He tries to play the role of Jesus and tries to make up his own beatitude and he basically says “blessed are the people who are religious.. who do the things that they are supposed to do… who play by the book and who read the book.

but then Jesus replies to the follower and he corrects him… and says this: (verse 16)

But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. 17 And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ 18 But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ 19 And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ 20 And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ 21 So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ 22 And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ 23 And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. 24 For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’ ” 

Not everyone that was invited showed up. In fact, it says NONE of those men who were invited got to taste the banquet. 

Its so fascinating because Jesus is saying that everyone that you would expect to see at the banquet, they didn’t show up. They didn’t get in. 

But its not because they weren't invited!

Jesus has prepared a way for everyone. He prepared it for all of those in the story… it was their excuses that kept them from the banquet. It was their activities. It was their busyness.

It was the things that they did to fulfill themselves in this life.

It was the things that made them rich.

But its the poor who enter the Kingdom.

You can’t make up your own beatitudes. 

Because nothing about our minds and nothing about our earthly Kingdom makes sense according to the way that Jesus does things. 

So Jesus responds to this follower by telling a story with the same conclusion that he has been giving the whole time… blessed are the poor in Spirit… for theirs is the Kingdom on heaven.

This is the gospel. It is the message. The kingdom of heaven is here and its for everyone who stops trying to get it on their own and instead just loves Jesus. 

The sermon on the mount is recorded in Matthew, and a similar sermon is recorded in Luke, but they are different. One sermon Jesus is standing on a mountain, another he is standing on a plain.

But the messages are so similar.

And woven through every parable in the bible… the same message. The radical gospel of a world on its head. Its the most constant message Jesus preached.

Blessed are the poor. 

So then the question is HOW?

How do I actually know that I am poor in Spirit?

Because its not really something that you strive for… its something that you should just be becoming. and like meekness, I think in a lot of ways, if a person thinks that they are poor in spirit, its probably a good clue that they aren’t. 

How can you be humble and know you are humble? 

as if you have “attained” humbleness. Or you have reached it. How do you reach “poorness” - NO! its just something that you are. 

So in that way, I guess you never really know you are there.

But maybe that is okay. 

Because to say “I am this.” that means that someone else is that. 

Because that would put you here… while others are here (someplace different.)

When really, you just are. You are poor. But its when you stop doing what you do for what it will get you… thats a good place to be. 

and you have to stop thinking that anything about your life sets you apart. 

Comparison must die if you want to enter the Kingdom of heaven. 

That is the how.

Guys, we know what the bible says. We know… I know, without a doubt, there is one way to heaven and one way alone and that is Jesus Christ. It is the grace and the power that is only found in Christ… but the moment that I start comparing where I am going to where other people are, that is when it should be obvious… I am not poor in Spirit. 

Let God handle that stuff. As for you, you are broken. You are a broken person living in a broken world with problems that are much bigger than yourself… a person who God has every right to cast you away… to send you wherever he wants to send you because you are just that broken. 

That is poor in Spirit. 

Its the realization, like we said Sunday… that we are all sick. 

You are not better than anyone else. 

That would make you rich in Spirit. To be better than someone else. To have something that is valuable. Comparison is an attribute of the rich in spirit. If you think that you are in and someone else is out then warning warning warning. 

and honestly, that may have been true, BEFORE YOU STARTED THINKING IT… but if that is the way you think, you are not poor in Spirit. 

What makes the gospel so upside down is all the people who thought they were in are out.. until they can come to the realization that they are out… then suddenly, Jesus has something to work with. 

Its a broken world with broken people. 

And so Jesus shows up in the middle of all of that brokenness and he makes his incredible announcement of hope to a group of people who had no idea what hope even looked like before this moment… he says: 

“Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Pray for Wisdom

 It is pretty exciting that we are almost done with our fast. Only a couple of days left… 

I hope that you guys have really pushed through… I hope that you have created space for Jesus to speak to your heart and to your mind and I hope that you have been able to carve out some time to diligently seek Jesus in prayers.

Often times, one habit that I fall into is I will fast… but I will only take on the martyr-side of fasting. I will let myself suffer and convince myself that I am doing it for the Lord… but I won’t really press into him much during that time. Instead, I kind of just pout my way through the misery, committed to finish for sake of my pride but in the end it feels like I never actually met with God. 

and when that happens, it kind of defeats the whole purpose.

Because remember, you don't fast to get God to act. 

You don't fast to get heaven to move… its already moving. Its moving whether you move or not, it is moving whether you fast or not. Fasting creates space… it clears room in your life so that WHEN you pray, there is a margin in your life and in your mind… an empty room for God to set up shop in your heart and give you the wisdom that it will take to do his will. 

But what good is fasting, and clearing our minds, and opening our hearts, if we do not let those areas be filled with what God wants to do in our lives?

Paul prays an incredible prayer in the beginning of his letter to the Colossians (1:9-10):

“we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”

Today we are praying this prayer… that we would be filled with knowledge OF his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. 

King David had this dream… to build the temple of the Lord. He was really disturbed by the fact that he lived in a castle, and that God lived in a tent. The tabernacle at that time was a tent. There was never a permanent home for it. 

So David said “lets change that.”

but God spoke to him and He told David that he was not going to be the one who would see that dream through, but rather, that dream, 

that huge, God sized dream, would be fulfilled through his son, Solomon. 

Near the time of his death, King David prays this prayer in front of the whole assembly and (1 Chronicles 29:19) in it he asks God to give Solomon “a perfect heart.” Obviously, the man who was going to carry on David’s dream had to have a heart like his. 

and When King David was on his death bed, at the end of his life, one of the final things that he teaches to his son in that final moment is this: 

1 Kings 2:6:

“Act with wisdom.” 

Rewind even further… When a young David is anointed by Samuel… Samuel is looking over the options of who this future king could possibly be, and David of course seems the least likely to be King, but God tells Samuel:

“Man looks on the exterior. But God searches the heart of man.” 

From the time he was very young, God recognized something in David. 

King David is the only person in the bible who is called “A man after God’s own heart” which means that when God searched the heart of King David, despite the exterior baggage that we all know was there, God saw something beautiful. 

And so now King David, in trying to impart something to his son, he gives him this nugget…

Act with wisdom. and in fact King David, in essentially the very last line recorded that he spoke to Solomon, he tells him: 

“You are a wise man.” 

King David sees this in his son, and he begins to speak it into his life… You are wise. You are wise. You are wise.

“And son, there is great value in that!”

So now Solomon is King. And he feels totally in over his head. 

andthe Lord appears to him at Gibeon him in the very next chapter (1 Kings 3:1-15) and says to him: 

“Ask what I shall give you”

What do you want, Solomon? Ask anything.

Solomon asks for wisdom. He basically tells God, “I am just a kid, I have no idea what I am doing. I don’t know how to navigate this incredibly important job that you have given me. 

He basically acknowledges from the beginning the same thing that we all need to acknowledge in our own lives with whatever mission God has placed before us…

“I am not adequate. I don’t know how on earth I am going to do this…”

“God, show me how to do this.” 

He asks for an understanding mind to govern God’s people, and ability to discern right from wrong. 

And God tells him, “because you asked for this, I will give you everything! I will give you everything you have asked, and everything that you didn't ask for. 

You didn't ask for money, I will give you money. 

You didn't ask for long life, I will give you long life. 

And what you did ask for, I will give you more than I have ever given anyone. In fact, I will give you EVERYTHING, more than I have ever given to anyone.

That, my friends, is the best way to get your prayers answered. 

That, is exceedingly abundantly more than we could hope or even imagine. 

No prayer has ever been answered in a more extravagant way. 

And then the very next passage tells us a bit about the wisdom that King Solomon now had.

As two prostitutes come to him with a baby… 

and one of them says to him that the other stole her baby. The explanation that she gave was that they both were pregnant, and they both gave birth basically at the same time, in the same house, and nobody else was there. 

And one of the babies died in the night, when the mother lay on him… so she stole the other baby and put the dead baby with the other Mother while she was sleeping..

So they are arguing back and forth about who the baby belongs too and so Solomon calls for someone to bring him a sword, and he says “we will cut the baby in half, and the two of you can split him.... Since you can't agree on who the mother is."

and right away one screams out “NO! Give the child to her.” 

Don't kill the child on account of this student argument.

but the other woman said “He shall be neither mine or yours; divide him” 

What an evil lady. 

and of course, Solomon saw at that moment a very clear picture of who the mother was, and so he gave the child to the woman who was willing to give the child to the other mother in order to save his life. 

and the bible says (1 Kings 3:28) “All Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered, and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to do justice.” 

Wisdom is not information. But wisdom does know that you must seek information:

Proverbs 18:15 says “the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.” 

so if you have wisdom, you know enough to know that you have to keep learning. You have to keep growing. 

But learning is not wisdom. 

Wisdom is the ability to perceive. It is the ability to take information and piece it together with discernment. 

to separate what is of God from what is of man… to know in your heart, “This is going to be good… or this is going to be chaos!”

It is the ability to look past what is visible and into the heart of the matter. Into the heart of what is really going on. 

Wisdom lets what is in your mind get to your heart. 

Great leaders are not people who have a doctorate degree in information, a great leader has the innate ability to maneuver difficult circumstances. To find solutions that you cannot look up on google. 

And there is no better prayer to pray during a time of fasting, when your life is open and ready to receive, than the prayer for wisdom. 

Than the prayer that your heart understand.

Wisdom is not merely mental, it is spiritual and it is in your heart. 

1 Kings 4:29says “Now all of the earth sought the presence of Solomon to hear his wisdom, which God put in his heart.”

Everybody is seeking out this guy because he doesn’t respond the way they expected him too… 

he doesn’t handle situations the way that they taught him in college he was supposed to respond to things. He doesn’t act based on circumstances and his decisions are not based in common sense…

He sees in his heart, what nobody else sees because none of them even know what it means to open their hearts like that.

Psalm 90:12 - “teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

Wisdom is not just in your head. The bible references it over and over again as being something that is in your heart. 

Proverbs 2:10 says that “Wisdom will enter your heart.” 

and I don’t find it a co-incidence, that King David made it such a point in his final moments of his life to affirm this...

the man after God’s own heart affirmed Solomon’s wisdom and told him to keep seeking it… 

and then when God asks Solomon what he wants… basically God asks Solomon, “What is important to you…”

Solomon essentially answers: my heart. 

My heart is important to me. 

Everything that Solomon writes about wisdom in Proverbs and elsewhere, just about every time, he draws the connection that it rests in his heart. 

"What is important to me is my heart."

God will you please fill it with everything that is needed to do your will? To do this job that I am totally inadequate and way too young for… 

Can we pray that prayer over our own lives? 

God give me the heart. 

The heart that can look at a situation, and know what you would do.

That can look at a situation and know how to meet the need. Know how to “do justice” as the people said about Solomon. 

Know how to do the right thing. 

Solomon prayed this prayer of wisdom, and suddenly the pieces just started making sense. His dads dream of a physical temple came to pass because the bible says that Solomon had the wisdom that it took to know who the right people were to build it. The bible says that God sent wisdom, understanding, AND THE SKILL to see it get done. 

His wisdom drew other wise men who wanted to be involved in the process (1 Kings 7:14)… 

He says this in Proverbs 24:3, “By wisdom a house is built” 

and by wisdom he built the house of the Lord. 

Wisdom attracts. It draws people. 

Nobody could reason the way that Solomon did. He knew how to handle circumstances, and he knew how to handle people. All types of people. 

Do you want that?

the bible tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The reverence for Jesus… that humble adoration that quickly acknowledges we are but a vapor… dust from the ground who will return to the ground, 

and he is the only. wise. God… 

who knows everything. Who knows our sicknesses before we feel them in our body. Who knows our weaknesses and our strengths.

Solomon knew the secret to answered prayers.

Psalm 25:4 - The secret of the Lord is with those who fear him, and he will show them His covenant.

The secret to answered prayers is to pray for what God has.

God can do anything, but God has wisdom. And he has a covenant that he wants to make with those who fear him. And 1 Corinthians 2 tells us that God’s wisdom is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit. And it tells us that we have not received the spirit of the world, with all the wisdom that the world thinks that it has…

We have received the Spirit of the living God. The only spirit that knows what is in the heart of God. 

1 Corinthians 2 even tells us that a person who has the spirit can make judgments about all things. 

What is stopping us from living our lives in line with the Spirit? What is stopping us from relying on the spirit for the wisdom we so desperately need? 

The bible says “ask and it shall be given to you”

and I believe that God wants us to ask for wisdom. 

There is no prayer in the bible that he answered in a more radical, over the top way than he did this prayer by Solomon. 

I believe that He wants us to ask that the Holy Spirit fill us with all of the wisdom that is in heaven so that we can know how to move with it, here on earth, in this Kingdom. 

When Paul writes the Colossian church he tells them that they are praying that the church would know what it means to walk in a manner that is worthy of the Lord. He prays that they will increase their knowledge, that they will keep learning…

but the key here is that he prays that they be FILLED with the knowledge of HIS WILL in SPIRITUAL wisdom and understanding. 

Wisdom will always stand the test of time. It is how a house is built, and it is how the temple was built. It is how you will know right from wrong… Wisdom will tell you when to be generous, and where to plant seeds.

And it will tell you when to walk away. 

Wisdom told one man to build his house on the rock when his neighbor was building it on the sand.

Wisdom told Isaac to sow in a time of terrible famine… and in the same year he saw a 100 fold return (Gen 26:12) THE SAME YEAR!

Wisdom told him to invest in the land when everybody was saying to sell… it told him to dig wells when the Philistines were coming behind him plugging them. 

Wisdom saw something that others don't see. 

If you are here in this place and you are wondering… “God, where am I going?” 

What is even happening?

What should I do differently?

Do I buy this house? Do I move into this neighborhood? Do I start this ministry? Do I do this program?

Do I go to college? Do I go into ministry? 

Seek wisdom. Ask the Holy Spirit to give this too you. It will launch you to new levels in your life. You will learn how to treat people, and how to manage people, and how to handle people. 

It will help us... 

to know if we should buy the intern house the first year or rent it… it will help us to know what buildings will get us in over our heads too soon and what projects we can manage. It will help us see what others don't see. 

It will show us where our faith can take us and it help us discern what a closed door truly looks like. 

Spiritual understanding will help you discern peoples motives. 

It will help you discern peoples hearts and it will help you cultivate yours in such a way that you can best and most effectively serve the people that Jesus has given you to serve. 

Lastly, 

James 3:17 describes what Godly wisdom actually looks like, and its amazing. “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.”

All matters of the heart. 

if that doesn’t sound like a heart shift, then I don’t know what is. 

Wisdom is what we are missing when we don't treat people right, when we fly off the cuff… wisdom is what we are missing when we wage war or show favoritism. 

It is impossible to say someone has true wisdom if they don’t have these attributes:

Pure.

Peaceable. 

Gentle.

Open to reason.

Full of mercy.

Full of good fruits.

Impartial.

And sincerity.

We must earnestly seek these things. 

and with our minds already more clear from fasting… and with our hearts hopefully more focused than ever, lets pray this prayer over our lives and over our families and over our church today.

“Give us wisdom to discern right from wrong, and an understanding mind as we move into what you have for us for 2016.” 

The Lord's Prayer

 There is the moment in the scriptures, in the gospel of Luke (chapter 11) when the disciples of Jesus see him praying in a “certain place” and so they ask him, “Lord, teach us how to pray.” 

“John the baptist taught his disciples to pray, will you teach us?”

Which is telling in and of itself, 

to the truth that prayer is not necessarily EASY for people…is not necessarily something that comes naturally to people. 

Even Jesus’ own disciples, who spent every waking moment with Jesus, walking with him, talking with him, watching him, gleaning off of him.

I mean, They must have heard him pray a thousand times. 

How many moments were there before this in which they had watched him pray and had the opportunity to ask and learn from him… But when it came time for them to do it, they still felt inadequate, 

so they ask Jesus a very human question. 

A timeless question that is still just as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago. 

“How do you pray?”

and so Jesus gives us what we know now as “The Lord’s Prayer.”

Its the same prayer that we read about in the sermon on the mount, when he first directs us that when we pray, it should be in secret. 

It should be in a quiet place where nobody else can hear you - Jesus says “Don’t be like the hypocrites who love to stand in the synagogues and pray loud prayers on street corners so that the public can see them… 

and pat them on the back. 

Jesus says that when you pray, you should go into your room, shut your door, and pray to your Father. 

The Lord’s prayer, unlike the prayer of faith that we learned about last week, is a private prayer. 

But not only is it a private prayer. It is a very specific prayer. 

It is not a long prayer. 

It is not a prayer filled with empty phrases that don’t mean anything to God. It is a prayer of a very few words, and those words are:

Our Father who art in heaven

Hallowed by thy name

Thy kingdom come

Thy will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread

and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. 

First of all, 

this prayer seems like a distant prayer to distant God who is off in some far away place… 

And for many who hear the term “Father,” all you want to do is run as far away as you can. 

Because if this Father is anything like your Father, then you want nothing to do with him… 

Some of us have had great dads, and if that is you there is probably nobody you would rather be your personal image of the face of God than your father.

but a lot of peoples image of a Father is, at best, 

a distant one. 

A person who was never around, or who didn’t take care of them. 

But Fathers like that are Fathers who did not do their job. A Father’s job is take care of his children. The word Father means supplier. It means the one who will provide everything that you have need of. 

And I always loved how the language was plural. Our Father. 

This is a private prayer but it is a petition on behalf of a community as much as it is on behalf of yourself. 

“God. TAKE CARE OF US. God TAKE CARE OF ME. I know that it is in your nature because that is the nature of a Father.” 

and in those days even moreso than today, the Father’s job is to provide for the whole family. 

Jesus is making a very clear distinction here… His Father will provide. 

and when it comes to his Father… you can go him with anything. 

and then it says who art in heaven… 

and we have talked about this a couple of times on Sunday’s. But at first glance —- “our Father who art in heaven” sounds, at best, like a deadbeat dad who lives in a trailer park in the South somewhere, hardly ever visits, and sends a child support check once in a while when he gets his SSI. 

He is there. 

We are here. 

We get some of him, sometimes. 

But are always left wishing for more.

But the word for heaven is actually the Greek word ouranos (uw ron ase) and it can actually be translated as “air.” 

The most valuable commodity in all of the world… the one thing that we all rely on every single day… the one thing that has never not come through for planet earth.

The thing that is in every room with you, every moment you are alive. 

“Our supplier, who is as close to me as the air that I breathe.”

Hallowed by thy name. 

Hallowed is the Greek word “hagiazō” (hag-e-ots-o) and means to render or acknowledge something. 

Philippians 2:9 says that “He is the name above all names” and when you hallow his name you acknowledge his power. 

You acknowledge, “God, there is no other name above yours. and you are all that I need.” 

Now, the Greek word for name is “onoma” (on-a-ma) and this word is powerful. Pastor Brad in New York taught me this. Essentially, the word means “power of attorney.” 

It means that everything God is, you have access too. 

Which becomes the most powerful statement in the world when you realize that God literally holds the entire world in his hands.

Are there needs in this place? Are any of you sick? Are any of you going through something emotionally right now that you can’t seem to manage?

Are any of you uncertain of the future? Of what is next? 

Certainty is in the name. 

No, we do not know what tomorrow holds but we do know that God holds it. 

and that is powerful. 

There is healing in the name. 

Acts 3:16 tells us that healing comes in the name of Jesus, and faith in that name. 

You have “the power of attorney” - and it is in God’s name.

“Our supplier, who is as close to me as the air that I breathe.

We acknowledge that you are the name above all names, and that you have given us all power in your name.”

Your Kingdom come your will be done.

This line speaks of something, of infinite importance. 

Something that we will do a series on one day, and that is the Kingdom of God. 

A lot of people minimize salvation down to a “get out of jail free” card… a one time decision that flips the switch from darkness to light and that changes the course of your eternity forever…

and it does. If you give your heart to Jesus, he will do those things for you. 

He wants to share eternity with you. 

But if you minimize your salvation to an experience then you will miss the bigger picture of all of your life and of God’s mission for the church. 

And of your roll in that mission.

Everything about what Jesus came to do was for the purpose of establishing a Kingdom. 

A Kingdom right here and now, that is different from the one that we are experiencing when we aren’t walking with him. 

This prayer re-centers us on our purpose by taking our minds off of the cares of this earthly kingdom, like our relationship problems and our financial problems and the things that we can’t solve in our own strength or with our physical paycheck. 

It reminds us that we truly are citizens of a different kingdom, with a different currency. 

“Bring that Kingdom to earth through me today, God.”

And then he says:

“On earth as it is in heaven.”

and this is powerful.

You see, there is already a Kingdom established, and its beautiful. And it functions at the highest capacity imaginable and it is good. 

What we are saying when we saying “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN” is we are saying:

“God, let our lives be the image of the invisible here on earth.”

Let our daily lives be a reflection of what your Kingdom looks like already.

Its an amazing concept of self-evaluation. 

You look at your life, and your schedule, and your routines and your habits and you ask yourself “Which of these things are as they should be?” 

“What areas of my life truly reflect the God that I claim to serve?”

Or am I living in my own kingdom, and abiding by my own rules, and hoping to glean the benefits of the Kingdom of God?

If you want the benefits, then you have to accept the citizenship… and if you accept the citizenship, then you have to follow the constitution. 

“Our supplier, who is as close to me as the air that I breathe.

We acknowledge that you are the name above all names, and that you have given us all power in your name. Let my life on this earth be a reflection of your perfect and eternal Kingdom.”

“Give us this day our daily bread…”

Now remember, everyone in that culture knew the Torah. 

They knew all about daily bread, because Moses wrote about it. 

When the Israelites were wandering for 40 years, each and every day God gave them daily bread, and it was exactly what they needed for that day. 

but every time they tried to store up more, it went bad… 

Because God was trying to teach them something. 

“I will take care of you.” 

and the moment that they tried to take care of themselves and take matters into their own hands, the process became cursed, the bread went bad, and they wasted all that time and effort trying to do something in their own strength that God promised to do in his. 

You can’t depend on God and depend on yourself all at the same time, and if you constantly are trying to get to a higher and higher place then you are showing God all of the reasons that you don’t need him, and making yourself impossible to work through. 

Its like what Proverbs 30:8 says:

“Give me neither poverty nor riches; lest I be full and deny you and say “Who is the Lord?”

Give us this day our daily bread is literally saying, 

“God, we trust you to take care of us, lest we fall into the lie of our own strength.”

“Our supplier, who is as close to me as the air that I breathe.

We acknowledge that you are the name above all names, and that you have given us all power in your name. Let my life on this earth be a reflection of your perfect and eternal Kingdom. We trust you to take care of us, lest we fall into the lie of our own strength.”

“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

Grace matters when you are praying.

There is a moment in Hebrews (4:16) when the writer tells us that “with confidence we should boldly approach the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy.” 

We should be able to go the God in prayer confidently expecting the grace that we do not deserve, because of two things. 

1. The first reason is simply because it is part of the nature and character of God to forgive. To be gracious. To grant us new mercies every single day. But it is impossible to boldly approach the throne of grace if you have not done the second thing… 
2. and that is show grace. 

Grace is the apex of the Christian faith. 

Without it we are nothing and because of it, nothing in our lives should ever be the same again. 

Including our character. 

If we truly are becoming more and more like Jesus every single day, then we should be becoming more gracious. 

and I can’t speak for everybody, but I would have a really hard time boldly approaching the throne of grace if I didn’t work my hardest to live graciously toward others… offering grace at every opportunity… erring on the side of grace in all circumstances. 

It is like when Jesus tells the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18 (21-35)

His disciples ask him, how many times should we forgive our brother who has sinned against me? Up to seven times? 

and Jesus tells them, “not seven times, but seventy times seven, and all on the same day.” 

and then he compares the Kingdom of heaven, that same kingdom that we are told to pray daily that it will come to earth… he compares the Kingdom of heaven to a king who wished to settle all of his accounts… 

and one of the ones that he wanted to settle up with pleaded with him because there was no way that he could ever pay the amount that he was owed so instead the King graciously forgave him of that debt after the man fell on his knees and begged. 

But then that servant went out and found one of his servants who owed him far less, and he had the man thrown in prison because he could not pay. 

of course, when the King found out about what had happened, he was furious, and he too had the first man thrown into prison until he could pay back every penny. 

but what is chilling about this is that Jesus ends this parable by saying this: 

“So also will my heavenly Father do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” 

We should have a heart that can approach the throne of grace boldly knowing that we have modeled the same grace that we are expecting. 

Jesus doesn’t ask us to be perfect, but he absolutely demands that we be gracious toward one another. 

Being gracious toward each other, and bolding approaching the throne of grace, are the only two things standing between us and God. 

Forgive each other. 

In fact when Jesus gives the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 (5-13), he ends it by saying “If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

It all rides on this one. 

Forgive each other.

Every single time. 

Don’t harbor it or hold it in your heart. 

Bitterness truly is one thing that could cost you eternity and I know that sounds harsh but its completely biblical. 

it is worst than most things. 

and it will certainly hinder your prayers here on earth. 

“Our supplier, who is as close to me as the air that I breathe.

We acknowledge that you are the name above all names, and that you have given us all power in your name. Let my life on this earth be a reflection of your perfect and eternal Kingdom. We trust you to take care of us, lest we fall into the lie of our own strength. Forgive us of the times that we have wronged you, as we forgive others for every wrong thing that they have done against us.”

“lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”

You are simply saying - “Guide my steps Jesus.” 

“God you know everything. Every right turn and every wrong turn. Give me the wisdom to know right from wrong, help me to steer clear of the problem areas of my life… 

“and deliver me from my sinful nature.”

What this is saying is “Lord, give me “self control,” that my flesh would not have dominion over me.” 

We all know what our struggles are… and this part of the prayer is asking God to help us overcome the problem areas in our lives… the areas we struggle in… deliver us from those areas. 

“Our supplier, who is as close to me as the air that I breathe.

We acknowledge that you are the name above all names, and that you have given us all power in your name. Let my life on this earth be a reflection of your perfect and eternal Kingdom. We trust you to take care of us, lest we fall into the lie of our own strength. Forgive us of the times that we have wronged you, as we forgive others for every wrong thing that they have done against us. Guide my steps, that I may walk in the light, and deliver me from my sinful nature and my sinful desires.”

That is the Jacob translation. 

pieced together from things that I have been taught and have read over the years by people who are far smarter than I am. 

Now…

The thing that is so incredible about this prayer, is it teaches us a lot about what it means to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God.

And its so simple.

We rely on God, trusting that he is totally dependable, that there is more power in his name than any power on in this broken world… 

We live our lives outwardly, 

looking out for others and trusting that God will take care of us. 

We don’t seek to climb ladders and rankings and gain power, instead, we trust that we have all the power that we need in Jesus name… 

and we trust he gives us what is right for us. 

We don’t desire wealth, nor do we desire poverty. Instead, we desire God’s best for us so that we can move the gospel forward without getting distracted by our stuff.

Wealth can be an asset until it becomes an obsession. 

“God, give me only as much as will further your mission without distracting me from it.” 

But its important, even with money, to trust, “God gave me all of this. Its all his. I didn’t do anything.”

And then grace. 

We show it. 

We get it. 

and it is the currency of the Kingdom of God. 

It is what keeps us from evil, and from falling into bitterness, and other very dark places in life. 

This prayer truly does show us the best way to live, 

by showing us to ask God to give us a simple, kingdom minded life. 

The Prayer of Faith

 We are in a time of prayer and fasting. 21 days of creating space for God to speak to us. 21 days of clarity in hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit. 21 days that I believe will equip us for the rest of this year. If you haven’t begun to fast, I encourage you all to pray about it and to really do it. I promise you that when you come out of it, you will be better than you are when you started. 

We also want to remind you guys to be keeping your dream journals. As you are praying, write down the things you are praying for, write down the what God is speaking to you. This is not about naming it and claiming it or anything weird like that. This is about convincing yourself of the truth that these things are within your grasp. I am praying for a building of some sort that we can initially house a group of interns going through a discipleship process with us for… knowing that something like that would be the first piece of a much bigger picture. And so I visualize that in my journal, not because pasting a house into a notebook means that I am going to get that house, but because it shows me that this is actually tangible. And if God is big enough to give whoever owned the house before us the house, then he is big enough to give it to us now so we can use it for his kingdom. 

Margie has this absolutely incredible dream for a community soccer field and community garden right around the corner from here. Its such a beautiful dream and she has been not only taking pictures and praying about it, but she is crunching numbers, she is figuring out what it is going to take to do this… That is what dream journaling does for me. It motivates me. I see the things that I am praying for, and it reminds me that as impossible and far away as these things seem, they are not to big for God and they are things that other people have done, so why on earth could I not do it? 

I just felt like I needed to clarify that as we are all working together towards a better Detroit, where the gospel is more evident than it ever has been. The bible says to write the vision down and to make it known.. so that he who reads it may run! if it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay. (Hab. 2:2)

But I don’t know what is harder. Fasting, or prayer? Fasting obviously takes a much larger toll on your body and takes an incredible amount of self-discipline… but truthfully, for me, I think prayer takes even more self discipline. I can deprive myself of anything. I can go several days without eating… even if I am not fasting, if I am driven enough in a moment for something, I get irritated if I have to stop to eat. I do love food, but I also like to focus. But its very hard for me to focus on prayer. Probably because I prefer to be doing things, tangible things, that I can see the immediate result of. 

But I have seen the long term effects of my prayers, and I have seen the long term effects of my “lack of” praying. 

One is beautiful, and the other is very dark. 

I think that for a lot of us, even though we come to Equip, and we pray for an hour in this reverent place, there is something in the back of our minds that wonders, “Does this actually work?” 

I know I am guilty of that. There is a couple in Lansing that when Dawn and I first got married, they really reached out to us and in several ways mentored us and helped us learn about production and tech and all of the things that we really did for the last 8 years almost full time. I remember before we moved to California, they bought us a new laptop to take with us. I remember the day they gave it to us, the smiles on their faces to be doing something so kind for a couple of just married kids who had absolutely nothing. 

Their names are Jeremy and Val. And Val had her entire life battled cystic fibrosis. Her brother and her both had it, and her brother ended up passing away in 2011 when he was 25 years old… and we said so many prayers for this kid, and for their family. 

And for the last ten years Dawn and I have joined with their family praying for Val, for a miracle. We have attended prayer meetings essentially called around healing for Val. I remember time after time, with everyone gathered around her, putting their hands on her, praying and praying for this miracle that only Jesus can provide. I remember conversations we had with them about how they wanted kids, but the doctors said there was no way she could handle it. But they were so optimistic that they would one day have kids. I think Dawn at one point even told me, “I would be willing to carry a baby for them if it meant they could have one.” That was just how much they meant to us. 

A few years ago, her lungs basically completely gave out, and so everyone prayed and rallied, and she got put on a list for a lung transplant but it was very uncertain if she would get it. But by the grace of God she did. I remember that day well. Hearing that they were on their way to the hospital, and praying for the transplant because her body was so frail from the disease that it was very risky but everything went amazing. And they added an unknown amount of years to her life because of it. It was one of the biggest answers to prayer I have ever seen. 

Over Christmas, their family went down South for a vacation and when they were in Georgia they got into a car accident. All of them walked away from the accident shook up, but Val had to go to the hospital because her body was already more frail so the damages were much greater to her body. Right away, the word got out, and people began to pray for her like all the other times that she was in the hospital. It had kind of been her second home her whole life, every couple of months she was in the hospital for a month or so, so I didn’t think too much of it.

But on Tuesday, while we were roasting coffee, I got a text that Val had died. From complications of a mix of her cystic fibrosis coupled with the car accident that their family had been in. 

Man that news just crushed me. I told Zach and Chris, “I don't know how I am going to tell Dawn this” - it was just a big blow. 

You pray for someone for years and years and years and years and years and then suddenly something like this happens and you start to wonder “God were you hearing any of this?” “Does any of this actually do anything?”

and you forget about how your prayers guided Val to live more than 20 years past the life expectancy of someone with her condition. And you forget about how your prayers saw her through hospital visit after hospital visit… you forget how your prayers saw her through a lung transplant that added even more years to her life. 

And it is easy to not see the way that God is working through our prayers because he is not working the way that we think that he should be.  As if there is a formula for the way that God has to respond to our every wish in exactly our timing and in exactly the way that we think it should be. 

So… For each of these three weeks, we are going to look at prayers in the bible. Today we are going to look at “The Prayer of Faith” found in James 5:13-16.

“Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”

First of all, notice what it says at the beginning. “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.”

Prayer is so much more than requests. Its first and foremost an acknowledge of the glory of God. It praises right off the bat… “You are God, and I am not.” So many of us get into this routine where prayer becomes our battlecry and praise gets left out of the equation entirely. We go to God when we need something. When we need more money or we need healing or we need a circumstance to get better. But more than any of those things it is the utmost sign that you are in relationship with Jesus. You go to him when you are hurting, and you delight in him when you are happy. 

There is a time for everything, and Jesus wants to go with you through all of those times. 

Next, this passage couples prayer with repentance. Because they go hand in hand. It says that if you are sick, confess your sins, and you will be healed. 

Here is another thing that I love about this prayer. It is about praying for each other. Its a community effort, its about coming together and the power of people coming together… coming to the church and letting the elders pray for that person. The prayer of faith will save the one who is sick. Pray for one another. 

Prayer matters. 

Timothy Keller wrote this amazing book on prayer, and I love what it says right on the back of the book. Its powerful. It says: 

“Prayer is the only entry way into genuine self-knowledge. It is also the main way we experience deep change - the reordering of our loves. Prayer is how God gives us so many of the unimaginable things he has for us. Indeed, prayer makes it safe for God to give us many of the things we most desire. It is the way we know God, the way we finally treat God as God. Prayer is simply the key to everything we need to do and be in life.

We must learn to pray. We have to.” 

My favorite line in this quote just emphasis’s what I just said… “the way we finally treat God as God.” If you pray for something and it happens, you aren’t going to think “I did that!” 

No! You know that God did that. You asked for it and it happened.  But what about when it doesn’t happen? 

Because James calls this prayer that he gives us, a “prayer of faith” - 

Faith is a very tricky word, one that we have been dealing with in the series we have been doing on Sundays. 

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” 

But a lot of people teach this, and its very hard to fathom. This flawed idea is that if you pray for someone, then there is no room for doubt. And that even the slightest shadow of doubt cast in your conscience of your prayer, will hinder it. 

And if you pray for something, and it doesn’t happen, then it must be because you don’t have faith.

But that myth is completely shattered by what Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:11-13:

“The saying is trustworthy, for: 

        If we have died with him, we will also live with him; 

    12     if we endure, we will also reign with him; 

        if we deny him, he also will deny us; 

    13     if we are faithless, he remains faithful— 

for he cannot deny himself.”

Catch this. If we deny him, he deny’s us. Because that is the justice side of God. He can’t accept someone who has denied him until they accept him. But if we don’t have faith, he still does… because that is the mercy side of God. He can’t not be faithful. 

This is an example in Mark 9, when Jesus heals the boy with an unclean spirit. This kid is foaming at the mouth and convulsing on the floor, and when Jesus asks the boy’s Father “how long has this been going on?” The man tells him that it has happened since the boy was very young. This kid would throw himself in bodies of water, he would throw himself in fires, it was a very destructive demon! And so the Father says to Jesus, (v22) “if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” And Jesus responds by saying “IF? Don’t you know that anything is possible for the one who believes?” He is asking this Father, “Do you have faith? Do you believe?” and its so interesting how the man responds. He says “I believe! Help me with my unbelief!” (v24)

Basically the man was saying, I do believe, but sometimes I doubt. We have been living in these dire circumstances for so long, my kid has almost killed himself time after time after time. sometimes I wonder! I want to believe that it will be different, but sometimes I doubt. Help me with that doubt!

That was enough for Jesus. This man who believed and unbelieved all at the same time was enough to get Jesus to move on his behalf. He healed the boy and then told his disciples that the type of demon they were dealing with can not be driven out by anything but prayer. 

Prayer matters. It can do anything. It is more powerful than your doubts. It is more powerful than anything we try and get control of. 

But it is not a get out of jail free card for anyone who asks for anything. Its not. At one point James even says, “you don’t get what you ask for because you ask selfishly.” 

The idea is, “we don’t really know how to ask.” That is why we do things like fast… so that we can have a clarity that we have lacked for so long because of the toxins in our bodies that cloud our minds, or the toxic garbage we put in our heads with our media when we let that junk tell us who we are instead of what the bible and the Holy Spirit tells us. 

That is why we are fasting so intensely for 21 days to start off the year. Because we want to have to best year we have ever had. A year filled with faith goals and God sized dreams. Don’t miss this next point: We don’t want to be grounded in reality when it comes to our prayer lives, but we do want to be grounded in truth. And the truth is, God hears our petitions, and he partners with our dreams, but he does it in his way, and he does it in his timing. Thats what Hab. 2:2 tells us.. make the dream known, but then have patience… because God’s timing is perfect. He sees the things that we don’t see, and he knows the things that we don’t know. 

I love how “The Prayer of Faith” ends, by saying:

“The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”

A righteous person understands the heart of God, and understands just like James 4:14 says, “we don’t know what tomorrow brings.”

Guys our lives are vapor. They are here today, and gone tomorrow. And there is literally no better way to live the fullest life than to pray to God with a clear conscience and a clear mind, and to hear from him so that you know the best way to spend those days.” 

I want to give you another Tim Keller quote as I begin to wrap this up… this one is from one of his sermons, he inspired a lot of these thoughts and its helped me a lot this week. He says this: “God will either give you what you ask, or he will give you what would have asked for if you knew everything he knows.” 

And though we will never be God and we will never fully know all that he knows, like we said Sunday, heaven is ALWAYS moving… and when we fast, we get clarity and space in our spirit where we are genuinely ready to hear from God about how he is moving… its almost like as we fast and pray, we begin to learn how we should pray, because we will understand the heart of God more and more. He knows what is best for Detroit. He knows what is best for Southwest Detroit, and our neighborhood, and for the field around the corner, and for the discipleship program we want to start. He knows what house we need, or what apartment we need… He knows what is best for Courage Church, and Mount Hope Church, and my family and your family and for the family that maybe feels like they have lost a lifelong spiritual battle as their final prayer seemed to go unanswered and they have to now bury a child for the second time. But like James 4:6 says, “God gives more grace.” 

I want to show you this post that Val’s mom posted on her Facebook timeline the day she died, because it is beautiful:

“The news is bittersweet. Val Masterson Leonard is dancing and rejoicing with Daniel Bat Masterson. I’m so going to miss her… But she is perfectly healed now. She is in my heart forever, and in my future. Eternity in heaven is a wonderful promise. We made it through this storm clothed in God’s peace. He is forever faithful.” 

And until you can position your life with the understanding that God is always faithful, you won’t understand everything that happens. You won’t understand why some things work out, and some things don’t. Why some prayers get answered so clearly, and others seem to be ignored. 

Prayer is about establishing a secure relationship with Jesus. It is what will now cover and comfort this family in its darkest hour. It is a shield of hope when your whole world feels lost, and its breathe into your dreams when it feels like they are dying. We need it in our world more than ever, and we need it in our church more than ever. 

And here is the last thought. We made the point earlier that this prayer is what is called “The Prayer of Faith,” and that one thing that makes it different from some of the others prayers in the bible, like “The Lord’s prayer” which we will study next week, is it is also specific for how we are supposed to pray for each other. For some, this comes naturally, for others, it comes a little harder. I resonated with what Tim Keller said at the very start of his book. 

He starts his book on prayer that I told you about in the first message, by telling a very revealing story and unfortunately it resonates with me greatly now. In fact, I have heard numerous stories from other pastors who struggle with the exact same thing that he talks about, and after first speaking this message had more pastors come up to me and share that they struggle with the exact same issue. He tells a story about how in 1999, which was TEN YEARS after they had founded Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City… so he was already lead pastor for ten years when this happened… His wife came to him and said to him, “We are not going to make it, if we don’t start praying together.” 

He records her saying this: “Imagine you were diagnosed with such a lethal condition that the doctor told you that you would die within hours unless you took a particular medicine - a pill every night before going to sleep. Imagine that you were told that you could never miss it or you would die. Would you forget? Would you not get around to it some nights? NO - it would be so crucial that you wouldn’t forget, you would never miss. Well, if we don’t pray together to God, we’re not going to make it because of all that we are facing. I’m certainly not. We have to pray, we can’t just let it slip our minds.” 

He had been a pastor for ten years and he didn’t pray regularly with his wife. He prayed for others, but they didn’t develop that time together until 1999. 

That is me… even now. Its easier to admit it when its a testimony, its harder to say when you are walking through it. 

Its very hard for me to pray with my wife. 

I pray for her in my quiet time, I pray for her throughout the day often… but we don’t really sit down and pray together. She asked me today, “Do you even pray for me? Because you don’t ever pray with me.” and I told her that praying with her is one of the hardest things in the whole world for me. I said that I feel like she would just “see right through me” because she knows all the reasons why I probably am not qualified to do anything like pray for her. She knows how much of a jerk I can be and she lives with my bad side more than anyone who sees me on a Sunday or who I pray with on a Sunday or at Equip. 

And I think that is a common problem with people.  A lot of people struggle praying with people who they live so much life with, for various reasons but I think that the biggest reason is that the people who see who you are when the door is closed, when you are under the most stress and pressure, and in your best and worst environments, know that you are just as screwed up as they are. And most people want people praying for them who aren’t as screwed up as they are. 

Well in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I am just as screwed up as any of you… But do you think that when life hits someone, like the way that the Leonard and the Masterson family got hit this week… 

that they are not going to accept your comfort and your love and your prayers of compassion because of what you did on Saturday night? 

No. People in those moments need your prayers.

Prayer is about connecting to God’s heart, and God’s heart is for people. And that makes the “Prayer of Faith” in James so special.

Because it tells us how we are supposed to do this, with each other. We are supposed to anoint one another. We are supposed to pray OVER each other… we are supposed to confess our sins to each other. 

So today, as you write in your dream journals and you pray, take some time to find someone else and pray together. Remember, the prayer of faith will save someone who is sick… We need each others prayers. And we need to be praying for each other. So we are going to take the rest of the time, and pray for our dreams, our families, our lives, and our church… but make sure you pray with someone else. 

Pray for someone else dreams, and family, and life. Do it all.

Worship and Work

My friend Landon is in town. Landon is one of my closest friends. I played in a band called “Hyperbole” with him for many many years traveling the country. We worked together at the Los Angeles Dream Center, and he was a part of what we were doing in New York City.

The first sermon I ever gave was a tag-team message with him. We were a couple of 17 year old punk kids (he was much more punk than I) teaching a message at a youth group Battle of the Bands, about how the hypocrisy of the church doesn’t lessen the perfection of Christ. I suppose in many ways, I am still saying the same thing today.

I will always be against four walls Christianity. I don’t mind gathering, I think gathering is important, but it has to go beyond that. I loved yesterday, we were able to go across the street to Neinas and give kids starting school a backpack full of school supplies. Some of them were really nice, Frozen, Despicable Me, Hello Kitty themes, it was awesome… and those were just left over backpacks from the huge giveaway we did this summer in Clark Park when hundreds of kids got backpacks and a few of them got bikes. I love that stuff. That was what lead Christopher and his son Gabriel to come to our church.

I told you a while back, during the Intentions series, that the word hypocrite was a word used in Jesus’ day to describe a theater actor. Someone who puts on a show. Its a stage actor. It is where we get the phrase “wearing a mask” from because that was theater back then…. they would have to wear different masks to put themselves in different characters. So when people say “you are a hypocrite!” if they know what they are talking about, they are not necessarily saying “you say one thing, and do another.” as much as they are saying “you are being theater.”

or, “You are pretending.”

Whether you are pretending in here, or you are pretending out there, that is hypocrisy.

It is not when you “Don’t do what the bible says” or when you “sin.”

The church should be filled with broken people who screw things up. That is what its all about, it should be a hospital. A gathering of saints around the message of grace serving people out of our own brokenness because Jesus has done such a mighty work in our jacked up lives.

Because nobody gets it perfect. We are all learning and growing and our hearts are wrapping around the gospel in new and radical ways each time we approach it from a different angle. Because that is what the living word does to people. So our attempts at consistency in our believes, in my opinion, sometimes can get in the way of growth.

It is when we try so hard to stay consistent to what we have thought that it said, that maybe we will miss what it really says.

So we read words like hypocrite and we feel convicted because we don’t keep the bible perfectly so we think we can’t tell anybody else about it. But if you are doing that, you are letting the entire message of grace separate itself from your life.

If you live your live out there, and then come in here once a week and try clean the slate, worship Jesus, fall on your face before Him, and repent, just to go out there and get it dirty again out there, I think you are missing it.

and that cycle stems from a misunderstanding of what it actually means to worship Jesus.

But what I think people tend to do, is they separate this life, from that life.

You come to church, and to equip, and that is spiritual. and it saves you from the mess you made of your life all week.

You come in here to worship.

But then you go to work, and that is practical. You pay your bills. You have your friends. You have your world.

Maybe when you go to the marketplace, or you go to your homes, or you are working on school or on a project, that is practical.

That is who you are, when you aren’t here.

But when you come here, you put on your “spiritual self.”

And that makes sense, for a stage actor.

Except it doesn’t work.

You see, In Hebrew, the word for work is the word Avad.

and in Hebrew, the word for worship is the word Avad.

Work and worship are the exact same word. In Exodus 8:1 when Moses tells Pharaoh “Let my people go, so that they can worship me!” He said, “let my people go, so they can avad.

Some translations say: So they can worship.

Some translations say: So they can serve.

But they both mean the same thing.

When it refers to the Israelites as slaves, it is a similar word. They need to stop working for Pharaoh, so they can worship God.

Colossians 3:23-24 puts it this way:

“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.”

Some people find it hard to find bible significance to their role in society throughout the week, when they should be approaching every day as worship to Jesus.

But what if you realized that the easiest and most sensible way to live a consistent life is to consistently make your life about worship. You are worshipping when you work. You are worshipping something. You don’t have to work at the church full time to make a full time impact for the gospel.

When we played in the band, we played in churches, and we played in clubs and bars. We played at festivals and we played at rally’s. Sometimes we shared the gospel, sometimes we just put on a concert and didn’t say a word about Jesus but man do all of us love him. And I think that showed in what we did. It was always about Jesus, even when it wasn’t.

What I mean by that, is He is why we did what we did, even if a specific song had nothing to do with Jesus necessarily, and what I know for a fact is that we had an impact on peoples lives whether or not we told them about Jesus personally.

I know that, because I know that the Jesus I worship with every facet of my life, holds the world in his hands. I know that, because Jesus has shown me, time and time again, that that He holds the world in his hands.

One day I was sitting in my pastors house in New York City. It was the first day with the new class of interns we had that year, and we were doing a meet and greet so the staff could meet all of the interns. We had I think it was 8 new students that year, and one of them came up to me said “Are you Jacob Bender?” and I said yes, I am.

Assuming that Jeremy, our intern director at the time, had told him to connect with me to work on creative stuff, videos, graphics, music, something like that.

But that was not why he was approaching me.

He shook my hand, and said to me, “My name is Greg. And I gave my life to Jesus at a Hyperbole concert in Flint, MI several years ago.”

I remembered that show. There was no altar call. There was no prayer. There was just a bunch of kids having a ton of fun dancing to pop punk music.

And the God that we were worshipping that day through fun music that didn’t really feel much like worship, Jesus, the God who holds the world in his hands, was orchestrating such an incredible moment where a teenager was coming to Jesus. A teenager that I did not know, but who would later come and do ministry along side me in New York City.

Because everything is spiritual.

Everything is worship.

That is just one story. I could tell you ten more. And I know in my heart their are hundreds more from our time together traveling that I will never hear. I never would have heard about Greg if he hadn’t come to New York. That one just came full circle in my life. Not every story will come full circle, but every moment matters. Because everything you do, is Avad.

God has placed you in specific places of influence that I will never be able to reach. God has specifically tailored all of our lives in unique ways to make an impact on the people who he knows need us.

That is what the Kingdom of God is all about. Its not about these walls. Its about the people we pass when we leave. Its about the people we bump into walking down the street. Its about the person who sits in the cubicle next to us every day in the office, and the people we have two minute conversations each morning as we begin our workday.

If we define ourselves by who we are because of what Jesus has done, not by what we do, then there will be a NATURAL consistency that goes from our hearts and minds and into our lives…

from our jobs

to our families

to our church community.

and they will see avad. They will see something different. They may not know what it is, but we do. It is worship.

And when we come to this place (the church), it should be a corporate continuation of our daily lives of worship. We should be walking with Jesus in everything we do.

Where is the space?

When I was living in New York City, last winter I gave a message there around Christmas time, and I will likely give a rendition of it sometime here… but one story I told to them was of my family having just moved to Brooklyn, and me asking Milly if she loved our new town. I told her, “its amazing here! There is a great school for you to go to… Its so close to the city… There are so many coffee shops for mommy and daddy… there are

so many toy stores and even more parks to play in!” and she responded, “yeah, and so many tiny rooms!”

Because she and her sisters together shared a bedroom the size of a walk in closet… really it was a closet off of Dawn and I’s room. The space in New York, it is just so limited. For Dawn and I especially, it was challenging… it was very hard to find separation from the kids… even most coffee shops were not really set up to study in. Our commutes were on packed subway cars… so we kind of had to “master” this art of creating through the chaos of our lives. I say master it, but we got no-where near mastering it. I would say, “we somewhat achieved the art of creating through the chaos that was our lives.” When I found myself on the train without kids (which was rare) I would right away, sitting or standing, get out my iPad and either start reading or writing. I would use evernote and I would write for my entire commute when I could, trying to drown out the noise. When I would get home, it would be the same thing… constant noise. Constant needs, and all in this semi-claustrophobic environment.
It made me start to question… I am living in New York, the creative epicenter of the universe… in fact I live in Brooklyn which is like, most writers top choice of anywhere in the world that they would prefer to write from… and I kept finding myself in the same, asking the same question:

Where is the space?

And at first I just figured, oh, “its in Detroit.”

And then I got here and rode the momentum for the first couple of months only to find myself still feeling a bit trapped at times. Still feeling so limited in what I can do even though I know what God wants to do in my life.

I realized that the same limitations that were put on my life in previous cities I have lived in have not been lifted merely because I moved into a place where physical space is cheaper and more attainable. There are real, genuine, super natural things that come against us, that try and eat away our time, eat away our lives.

Our flesh is naturally distracted and easily discouraged. Staying the course is difficult.

1 Timothy 4:14 tells us, “DON’T NEGLECT THE GIFTS THAT ARE INSIDE OF YOU! It says, rather (2 Tim 1:6), to stir them up, or to fan into flame the gift that God gave you.”

But how do you fan into flames your gifts and passions and the God given areas of your life when you have to get up every morning and be at work by 8am? You have to be in class all day, and work a night shift to pay the rent, get home in time to do your homework and get a half a nights sleep before doing it all over again?

How do you fan into flame your gifts when you life itself distracts you from life in Jesus Christ?

We are going to read a fascinating account in Genesis, of Isaac. Isaac is the son of Abraham, he is the one who Abraham at one point almost sacrificed… he put him on an altar before the Lord but then the Lord stopped him. Well, this account is much after all of that. And Abraham, his father, had gone before him and had dug all of these wells… but the Philistines were were jealous and wanted to destroy them, so they went around and they plugged up all of the wells so there would be no access to water.

Suddenly, people would be dying of thirst… of dehydration, because they couldn’t get to the water that was right beneath their feet only a few feet down.

How much of our lives are like that? Everything we need, it is right there. It is right in front of us, or right below us, and yet we don’t do what it takes to actually get it? All it takes is digging. The water is there.

And that is where we will pick up first, in Genesis 26:12-20:

“And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him, 13 and the man became rich, and gained more and more until he became very wealthy. 14 He had possessions of flocks and herds and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him. 15 (Now the Philistines had stopped and filled with earth all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father.) 16 And Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we.”

17 So Isaac departed from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar and settled there. 18 And Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham his father, which the Philistines had stopped after the death of Abraham. And he gave them the names that his father had given them. 19 But when Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of spring water, 20 the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours.” So he called the name of the well Esek, because they contended with him.

He named the well “Esek” because they contended with him… The word Esek literally means contention. They saw that there was something good… something that Isaacs men had worked for, and when they saw that it was good they fought for it.

As soon as a little success came, he felt pushback. He felt opposition. Isaac has to be thinking here, “man God, I am trying to do what you say. And as soon as it seems like there is a little fruit, I get attacked.” Here they are, taking away from me that which we have worked for.

Its never easy!

Genesis 26:21

“21 Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that also, so he called its name Sitnah.

The word “Sitnah” means enmity.

It means it will not connect. Everything he is trying to do is failing.

Everything that they were trying to do was not working.

Evelyn Underhill is quoted as saying:

“We mostly spend our lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do. Craving, clutching, and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual—even the religious—plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, not having and not doing, is the essence of a spiritual life.”

Perpetual Unrest as a result of us wanting, having, and doing.

You are a child of God. Who has an amazing and beautiful plan already written for you to walk in. And as you try and walk in that, you have to let God create the space for you that it will take to live that calling out. It all comes back to trust.

God has an amazing plan for our church. I believe he has an amazing plan for my family, and for your family, and for our relationships to grow and for our impact to be expanded in our city, but if we constantly try and grab onto the things that are within our reach, God will never make room for the things that are out of our reach.

Genesis 26:22 “And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth, saying, “For now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.”

He kept pushing. He kept moving on. he kept digging more wells! and at the first sign of a little success, came opposition… It looked like success, then it looked like failure. You think you are out of it, then you are right back in it.

He kept going, and digging more wells, and even after overcoming the the opposition, now there was this feeling of enmity… this feeling of rocks beating against each other but no progress being made… this feeling of, “everything I am doing is not working. There is no progress, there is no forward motion.”

But he keeps going. And then look what happens. They name the third well Rehoboth saying “NOW! The Lord has made room for us!”

The word Rehoboth means SPACE. That well represented God creating space in his world for his people, and them setting up shop right in the middle of it.

Genesis 26:23-25

23 From there he went up to Beersheba (well of the oath – founded by Abraham)… 24 And the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham’s sake.” 25 So he built an altar there and called upon the name of the Lord and pitched his tent there. And there Isaac’s servants dug a well.

This is pretty amazing.

Look at what Isaac did differently the last time, as you look over the progression.

There was opposition.

There was enmity.

Then suddenly, there was space.

and when he got up to Beersheba, the well of the oath from his Father… he did something different before digging a well.

This time, first, he built an altar. Then he dug a well.

The water was under him the whole time. The water was there everywhere they went, but at the well of the oath, he built an altar. He called upon the name of the Lord, and THAT IS WHERE he pitched his tent, and then built the well.

We are in a series on the fruit of the spirit, and we just finished “peace.” We talked about the word “shalom” – how it means wholeness, and about what we can learn from the Hebrew word picture because its just so incredibly fascinating. The letters are sheen, lamed, vav and mem and the picture you get for sheen is teeth, to consume or destroy the shepherds staff, lamed, symbolizing authority… vav is the hook that connects something to something or establishes something and mem is the crashing water and it represents chaos. In order to find wholeness, you have to destroy the authority that is establishing chaos in your life… The spiritual authority, we don’t wrestle with flesh and blood and we need to make that clear.

You will never, ever experience the shalom of God if you don’t make room for Jesus to fill you. You will never be complete if you are empty.

And if you are having trouble in your life making space or Jesus, or making space for your gifts and your calling and the things that you believe you were created in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:10) to accomplish, look what does Isaac finally does… He builds an altar.

And at an altar, there is a payment, being made on behalf of something else. Something has to be killed in order for something else to find life.

What is taking up the space in your mind? In your heart? In your life?

What is filling the space?

What needs to be laid on the altar to create space in your life for what Jesus wants to do? What has you bound and maybe you don’t even know it?

What is taking your time?

Psalm 31:10 says “my times are in your hand;”

We need to be like David, and place our times into the hands of Jesus. Time is a most valuable asset, and we will waste it if we remain distracted and never create space for the spirit to move in our lives.

There is water below you. What you need, its right here. The space you need in your life, its here. God knows what he is doing. He knows what is best, he gave us the amount of time we need to accomplish the work that he has created us for, and he is in the business of creating space… making room for the people who seek him.

Nine years ago, when I was interning in the youth department at //spyn where pastor Chilly is now the youth pastor… It’s kind of crazy, I was an intern there right as pastor Chilly and some of you guys really were just beginning this church in Detroit, and now he leads //spyn and Dawn and I are here. I worked alongside Johnny K, under the leadership of Pastor Ricardo.

Every morning at 8am we would come in, and for an hour, we would have what we called “No Agenda.” We just prayed. We came in with no tasks to talk about or specifics to pray about, we just prayed. And it was one of the most fruitful, creative seasons of my life. Every morning, before we dove into anything practical, we created space for it. And Jesus moved big time.

So that is what we are going to do tonight. We are going to create space, right now, for Jesus to work in our lives.

Community and Healing

Luke 5:17-26

“17 On one of those days, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him to heal. 18 And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus, 19 but finding no way to bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus. 20 And when he saw their faith, he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” 21 And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” 22 When Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answered them, “Why do you question in your hearts? 23 Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? 24 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the man who was paralyzed—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.” 25 And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God. 26 And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen extraordinary things today.”

We ended our series on Intentions, talking about Community. Talking about how much we need each other… about how no man is an island, and the reality is that there will come times in your life when you will need someone to lean on… you will need someone who is willing to carry your burdens… who will weep with you, who will mourn with you… Thats what (Romans 12:15) says… we rejoice with those who rejoice, but we also weep with those who weep… we mourn with those who mourn. We allow hard times to build us into a stronger community, one that can withstand the attacks of the enemy… one that can withstand the times that we feel numb… or we feel lost… or we feel like there is nothing that we can do.

This passage in Luke is one of my favorite passages in the whole bible. Its a beautiful moment in which Jesus heals a man who was paralyzed. Who had no where to turn. Who was numb. He couldn’t even move… but his friends, they could still move. And what did they do? They came alongside this man, and they fought! They knew, he needs Jesus, certainly Jesus can heal him… But the crowd was to large… to many people, and there was no way to get them in… so they went gangster.

They somehow get this man onto the top of the roof of this house… We all love the fact that they cut a whole in someones roof and lowered the man down to Jesus… but how did they raise him onto the roof? The whole thing would have taken an enormous amount of work. But just like James says (James 2:14-17) Faith without works is dead. We can have faith all day for the reconciliation of our City… for the reconciliation of Detroit back to Jesus, but if we aren’t working for it, its dead. It won’t happen. At least not on account of us.

These men, they could have had all the faith in the world that Jesus could heal their friend, but if they didn’t take action then that man would have died still paralyzed… never walking again. But no, they worked. They raised him up onto that roof, the cut a hole in the roof of the house large enough to lower the man through, and then lowered him.

But look at what it says…

When Jesus saw THEIR faith to said to THE MAN… “Man, your sins are forgiven.”

It doesn’t say that he saw the faith of the man who needed the healing… Jesus healed this man because of the faith of his friends.

Because he saw THEIR FAITH… he said to the paralyzed man… your sins are forgiven, and then he healed him.

This is why we put such an emphasis on community in our church. Because there are going to be moments when you won’t be able to carry yourself… but there are plenty of others who will be able to.

When I spoke two Sundays ago, I told the story of how there was a series of events that happened all one after another in the course of 24 hours…

The first one was Zach went to the hospital.

Then I found out about my friend David, that he was killed in New York.

Then the next morning I found out that my pastors father passed away.

and then that evening I got call from my mom, and I didn’t share the details of this during service because she wanted to wait until a few tests came back… but she called to tell me that she had been diagnosed with cancer. Again. 12 years ago she had cancer, and she fought it and she won. She had been clean of it for 12 years… but when she called to tell me that it was back, especially after having the day I had had so far… I just went numb. I literally said to her “Don’t tell me that. Not today.” I couldn’t even begin to tell you what I was feeling, I couldn’t even get to a point that day where I could process any of it. Dawn and I went to dinner, and I didn’t say a word. I just sat there, and acted all dumpy. 

Its easy to believe in the power of healing, when its all just a theory.

Its easy to believe in the sovereignty of God, when its all just a theory.
But when the day comes when your faith is really tested, it is hard to do what James says… its hard to count it all joy. Yet we know, because we have read it and been taught it over and over and over and over…

(James 1:2-4)

When your faith is tested… it will produce steadfastness

And when steadfastness has reached its full effect… you will be perfect.

Complete. 

Lacking nothing. 

Isn’t that what we all want? To be complete. To know that we are all that we are supposed to be… to know that we did all we can do, and that God used us in exactly the way that he wanted to? 

When I heard my mom tell me those words… I didn’t feel complete. I actually felt really alone. My kids were all in the house running around, yelling… I was telling them to be quiet so I could listen to the words that my mom was sharing with me… I was surrounded by children, on the phone with my mother, about to go and meet up with my wife, and I felt alone.

Because my faith was being tested, and i was shutting down to it. But when I began to talk about it, to work it out a little bit in the context of community, to open up to my family a little, to share my heart with other people in the church, even if they were nothing more than a listening ear I felt like they were carrying my burdens with me.

When I finally opened up to my wife about it, it just felt like suddenly she was carrying it with me. She was lightening my load… I realized, “man, if I need this, then other people need it too…” I text my sister who lives in Georgia, and i asked her “Are you okay?” – How can I help carry her load? She just responded to me “No. Not really. I hate that I am down here… I hate that we live here right now.” – and strangely, that inspired me… the next day I told Dawn, “after church Sunday we need to go to Lansing. For 8 years we didn’t live close to family, now we do… we can be there. And we went… and honestly, I didn’t really even think about making that trip until I got that text from my sister… about her saying “I can’t be with them right now, and its killing me.” So we went and just spent some time with my mom. Let her spend some time with her grandkids.

I was in New York this week and I was talking with my Pastor there. He was asking me “How nice is it that your parents are able to go to your church?” and I told him… “Man, I don’t even feel right telling you this with everything you have gone through in the last couple of weeks… but we aren’t sure how much longer they are going to be able to come… my moms cancer came back, and they may need to move down south for treatment, we aren’t sure yet.”

And I literally could feel him taking on that burden, right there with me. Maybe for him it just hit so close to home, he had just went through something horrible, and I could see him break a little for me… for my family.  It was community. It was someone weeping with me while I weep.
Community and healing, they go hand in hand. Jesus healed this man because of the faith of his friends…

faith that was not dead and without works… but the faith of his friends that took action and did the most unconventional thing possible to get that man close to Jesus.

Maybe you are here and you say “I don’t need anything right now” – but maybe someone else needs your faith, for their miracle. Maybe I need your faith, for my Mom’s miracle. 

Come alongside each other. 

We need your faith.

I need your faith.

Courage Church needs your faith.

Detroit needs your faith.

carry each other burdens.

Petitions

There is a moment in Pauls letter to the Romans, in chapter 15.. He is excited about visiting Rome… he just can’t wait, he had wanted to go to Rome and be with the church there for so long, and an opportunity was coming for him to do just that. But before he went to Rome, he would first go to Jerusalem.

We read about this in Acts 20, when Paul is talking to the elders in Ephesus, and he says this… “I am compelled by the Spirit… the Greek word he uses is “deo ho pneuma” which means to be wrapped up in the Spirit, to go to Jerusalem… things were going great in the church in Ephesus… there was fruit… people were changing, they were growing… but the Holy Spirit clear as day told him, go to Jerusalem.

But Jerusalem was not the most friendly place for a christian to go.

It is in this conversation with the elders, recorded in Acts that Paul says these words: “I am constrained by the Spirit, NOT KNOWING what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that IMPRISONMENT and AFFLICTION wait for me.”

then he says this:

“BUT… I do not count my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. It is the verse Pastor Chilly usedwhen he announced to the whole church that he would be transitioning out of the role of Pastor of Courage church.

So that is where his mind is, at the time of writing this letter to the Romans. He wants to visit them, he is planning to visit them, but first, he has been wrapped up by the Spirit and compelled to go to Jerusalem where he believes imprisonment and affliction await him… so he sends these words to the Romans… He says in Romans 15:30:

“I urge you, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me.” 

He knew that the people in Rome were not going to necessarily join him in Jerusalem. But he needed them. He needed to know they had his back, and so he says this… Join me in my struggle, by praying.

We join people in their struggle when we pray for them. We are locking arm in arm with the hurting, the broken, the lonely, the lost… we are locking arm in arm with the person waiting to hear back about that test result, or waiting to hear back about if they got the job they applied for. 

We are locking arm in arm with the other pastors and churches in our city… with the missionaries we are sending to other cities and other nations.

We are coming beside people, where they are, and fighting on their behalf.

The people of our city need people who will fight along side them. They need people who will lock, arm in arm with them and let them know, “you are not alone.”

I love what the new American commentary says about this moment. It says:

“The Roman Christians were one with Paul in their love for Christ. This provided the essential motive for their entering into the problem he faced. An additional motive was the love inspired by the Spirit. Awareness of a fellow believer’s difficult situation will move the authentic Christian to join that person in prayer.”

Are we one? Are we all members of one body, joined together by our love for Christ? Fighting for each other. Sharing in each others burdens and lightening each others loads?

Are we struggling with each other in prayer?

For me, its always about the tangible. About the practical. About how we meet the physical needs… if someone is hungry, you feed them. If they are thirsty, you give them something to drink. If they are in a fight, you stand next to them, or even in front of them. But the bible says so many times and in so many ways that even though there will be times to tangibly take action, this is how we fight for people. We do it by prayer.

Ole Hallesby says in his book, prayer: “As far as I can see, prayer has been ordained only for the helpless…. Prayer and helplessness are inseparable. Only he who is truly helpless can truly pray.” 

Prayer is a sign of utter and complete dependency on God. It should be an outflow of that. Of how lost we are on our own. Of how weak we are on our own.

Romans 12:15 says “you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”

Prayer is just that. It’s crying “Abba Father.” It’s a desperation for our Father. It’s complete dependency on Jesus for the things that we can never ever maneuver in our own selves. It’s the young child who is so dependent on his parents for everything… Who is completely lost without them. Jesus says that unless you turn and become like a child (Matthew 18:1-3), then you can’t even enter the kingdom of God. Children are dependent on God. And God says if you want to be strong… You have to be weak.

You have to know that without him you are nothing. But he can do anything. And he gave us the church because as a body, together, we can do so much more… He is saying, are you not strong enough? 

I am.

Are you not strong enough? Maybe by yourself you aren’t, but together you are. Together you are the church. My redemptive plan to save humanity. 

Together you are a body. Together you are my bride.

I know for me… If someone has a problem that is bigger than themself… and they come to me to help solve it… if it is bigger than them odds are it is bigger than me too.  yet Jesus says (Matthew 18:19) that when any two agree on earth and ask anything, it will be done for them.

And he starts by saying “Again I say to you…”
Again.

Jesus is saying this over and over and over. Because he works in settings like these. When people come together in his name. 

But they have to ask.

That’s why we come together. To ask. To take our petitions before God as a body.

I got a text message this morning from Zack. He had some swelling on his face so he went into an urgent care… If you know Zack, it must have been alarming him if he actually took himself in… But they sent him to the Emergency room and he is there now… He is always the most faithful guy, he’s always here, he’s always helping. He is our friend.  So want to make sure we are praying for him tonight. I want us to struggle on his behalf.

And like I said, I am all about the tangible. It’s been killing me all that I haven’t been able to get to Royal Oak yet to see him… And he has only been there a few hours.

Paul knew that the petitions of the Romans would only help him. They didn’t need to be in the same room or even in the same country… they just needed to agree on earth together.

Jesus Cleanses the Temple

John 2:13-20

13 The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. 15 And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16 And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

18 So the Jews said to him, “ What sign do you show us for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

—

Here we are right…right now, in this place. As I write this I am sitting in our sanctuary. A few hours from now, I will be joined by a handful of people who come together to pray.

Every time I walk into this sanctuary, I feel different. I feel the spirit moving. It’s like he is always here. I know that he is with us every day, in all our lives… But here… This place…. There is something different. I feel the weights of everything out there lifted off of me when I come into is place.

A lot of people struggle with this set of scriptures that I just read. Jesus throughout most instances in the gospel has been so peaceful… Almost to the point of a pacifist… Yet here he is making whips and driving people out of the temple… Something must have struck a nerve with him to suddenly make such a shift.

Here is what was happening in the temple.

The temple is the place that a person goes to be forgiven. The sin offering was usually a perfect goat or a lamb. And some people would travel long distances to get to the temple.

So imagine you have sinned… You need forgiveness.

But the temple is in Toronto. 

A far away place.

Also a place with a different form of currency from here.

And you don’t have a car…

You are like Dawn and I and you ride your bike everywhere… But how do you carry a lamb on your bike?

In a car that’s about a four hour drive… According to Google maps, walking, it would take approximately 3 days (and 2 hours) via the Bentpath line.

That’s without dragging a lamb with you.

It would be much more convenient to take your money with you and buy the sacrifice in Toronto, than it would be to take the lamb all the way from Detroit with you… That would slow you down terribly.

So people were doing that, they were traveling long distances, from other countries even, and taking money rather than sacrifice. And that’s ok, because at the temple, you could buy the sacrifice.

The only problem was, you couldn’t use your foreign currency. 

Say you are from Rome, and you want to use a Roman Denarii… Well this coin was unacceptable in the temple because it had pagan symbols and images of emperors…

But you could exchange your money, for money that was acceptable to buy the sacrifice… At the temple.

So not only had the church become a store… 

It had also become a bank.

There is speculation as to whether or not the rates were fair, or if the priests were ripping people off… And it is also questionable as to if the church should be offering these sacrifices in the first place… Essentially monetizing the forgiveness of sins when it was really only intended to be an altar for it.,, But Jesus came in and said… Nope. This can’t happen. This is my fathers house. It’s not a store. It’s not a bank. Stop now.

The 95 theses

Perhaps some of you have studied or are familiar with church history. But essentially, the Protestant reformation and the split from the Roman Catholic Church essentially happened over a very similar issue.

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed what is now known as the 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Guttenburg. This famous list was a slap in the face to the Catholic Church, and really a declaration of war against them… He went after the sacred cows…. He called them out on all the things they were doing that were not like Jesus… Possibly the most significant being the selling of indulgences.

People would come to the church to confess a sin, and then the church would place a price… An actually monetary amount, that it would cost for that sin to be “forgiven.”

They were monetizing forgiveness.

And everyone either accepted this, or turned a blind eye to it…. Until Martin Luther came along.

He said “this is wrong.”

You guys are robbing people. What does the bible say? If you confess your sins I am faithful to forgive you… Not if you pay for your sins with dollars and cents…

Jesus already paid for your sins.

But the Catholic Church had veered from that. They had gotten off track. It had become about something other than grace….

It had become about money.

And Martin Luther said no!

He almost sounds like Jesus.

When it says he made a whip of cords (v15)… A more accurate translation is “a rush”

A rush is a Reed… It’s completely harmless. It’s s plant. He made a whip out of a plant. He wasn’t hurting anybody. He was not intending to hurt anybody. Which actually makes for a fascinating point…. One that these people in the temple make clear in verse 18.

They ask him “what sign do you show us for doing these things?” But in verse 15 it says they were driven out by him. What were they asking him? Essentially, they were saying… What happened back there? Why did we feel like you had the authority to do what you did?

Because they couldn’t possibly have been afraid of being hurt by Jesus… No..

Yet they still left. They rushed out. And they didn’t know why.

They were convicted. So they asked for a sign… They ask him, where did you get this authority…

We felt it… 

But it doesn’t make sense to us. Why do you think you can take control of the temple… You aren’t the priest…

And that’s what makes Jesus response so fascinating.

He answers them….

“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”

What’s he saying? He’s saying i am the temple. 

Why do I make the rules in the temple?

Because I am the temple. You’ll see, when you’ve thought you destroyed me.

Malachi 3:2-3

“who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord.”

Who can stand in his presence, and not be refined by it?

Here is where it hits home.

Was Jesus upset because people had turned the church into a kind of market?

Yes. But that’s more just annoying than anything. We are talking about the savior of the world…

He knew he was going to die for all this junk… All this greed. For All these people who were only looking out for themselves….

And that… is… the point.

He was going to die. The sacrifices that were being made were mere symbols of what was to come…

What was to come ON HIM.

When he says “you have made it a house of trade” the Greek word he uses is the the enporion…. It literally means market or emporium. 

But think about it. Think about you when you are your worst. When you did the things that you would give anything to distance yourself from that sin… It was that moment that Christ died for… “He made him who knew NO sin” to be YOUR SIN….

He knew this was coming… He knew this was a big deal… And these people did too.

But they were cheapening it.

When the Israelites in the Old Testament would take a lamb to the altar… It was a real moment for them… It was a real exchange. There was reflection… There was thanksgiving.

Because it should be them on that altar. The wages of sin is death… And it’s their sin that cost the lamb it’s life.

And suddenly, in the temple of all places, it became a nonchalant thing.

Everything had a price tag. And that’s what they are thinking about. When you make a sacrifice like that… It should do something to you… Because it should be you on that altar. It should fill you with praise and adoration and thanksgiving toward God… Because nothing about this exchange is fair but God accepts it anyway..

But by monetizing the process… You have created a new system for forgiveness.

when you go into a market place, somewhere like the mall… You expect an even exchange… If you spend fifty dollars on a pair of shoes, you expect to get fifty dollars worth of life out of those shoes.

But that’s not the gospel.

Maybe you look for a sale… And you are hoping to get a one hundred dollar pair of shoes for fifty dollars….

Still not the gospel. The gospel is not a sale price or a great deal… And it’s certainly not an even exchange.

The gospel is more like you looking at a shoe that there is no way you will ever be able to afford, and someone else coming and buying the entire store now.

Now you own the store.

There was no sale price… In fact it cost him everything that he had..he had to empty all his accounts and liquidate his assets to get them for you… He held nothing back.

Wouldn’t you be thankful?

I am not trying to cheapen the gospel to shoes… It’s so much more than that.. But the point is that what takes place in a market is even exchange. But what the gospel gave us is “the great exchange.”

These people making these sacrifices should be reflecting… They should have reflected their whole journey to the temple.

This place is special. 

This place is Holy.

That’s why It says “Zeal for your house will consume me…” 

Jesus loves the temple. There is something about that place.

In Matthews gospel, he records Jesus saying this in the temple: (21:13)

“My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

Throughout the bible, we get plenty of clear direction for the church.. For what it is supposed to be as a body… 

A living organism.

An engine of change in our community.

A group of people who loves God with all our heart and soul and mind and loves our neighbors like ourselves…

Who makes discipled…. Who equips the saints for the work of the ministry…

But we don’t read much in there about the purpose of the church building.

But we read this: My house shall be called a house of prayer.

Prayer is about connecting to God.

And it’s a place we should come reverently too. And that’s why.

This Sunday, we are starting a new series, about intentions. About our motives. About what are we actually bringing to these altars. I may even tell this bit that I just gave you on one of the weeks, I am not sure yet…

But what I know for sure is that this Sunday we are going to call people to repentance. That’s out of my zone a little, I am a grace guy.

And we will do it gracefully. But one thing we are going to show is the difference in what 1 John 1:9 says, and what James 5:16 says.

See John says that if you confess you sins, God is faithful and just to forgive you… If you bring it before God, you will be forgiveness…

And he will forgive you! Psalms says he washes your transgressions as far as the east is from the west…

But James 5:16 says that we confess to each other… For healing.

And I just believe that God wants to heal our city, and it starts with us. 

Lazarus

This has been an incredibly difficult week for our world. For our family this week, we have been kind of scrambling to find a place to live, calling every number, looking at apartments and houses for rent and for sale, trying to figure it out. It seems like every place we loved and considered purchasing has had some kind of issue beyond repair. We have been so distracted with our little problems that we hardly noticed what was going on in Baltimore… Or what is going on in Nepal. It’s just absolutely tragic… The images of Baltimore, and the struggle for justice and equality and to me it’s just all such a clear image of how badly people need Jesus.

And our prayers. They need our prayers. I saw this image online this morning, the Baltimore Orioles vs. Chicago White Sox… They had to play the game before an empty stadium. And I know that there are much more disturbing and even symbolic images that I could show you about the state of things there, but this one messed with me.

Being someone who grew up on baseball, this is honestly a bit of a chilling image to me because Baseball is a game that brings the city together. And with all that is happening right now they decided it would not be safe to play the game in front of a crowd. They are doing whatever they can to avoid getting people together there right now.

And Nepal.

Thousands of people lost their lives in this earthquake. Many others are still missing, and it’s just tragic. They say millions of people were affected… Over 700,000 displaced from their homes. 

We need to help those people. Send money. Send supplies, send people. Whatever it is, we need to do something. All of us.

We need to pray for those people.

We need to weep for those people. Romans 12:15 says that we need to mourn with those who mourn.

There is a story in John chapter 11 about a man named Lazarus. And he is very sick, so his sisters send word to Jesus “Come!” But Jesus kind of takes his time getting there. Which doesn’t seem to make sense because the bible says that Jesus loved this family... Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.

He says to his disciples, “Lazarus is already asleep, but I am going to go and wake him”

And of course the disciples don’t understand what he means, they think Lazarus is asleep and so they still think Jesus needs to hurry it up a bit… So Jesus then just tells them boldly and clearly “Lazarus is dead. And for your sake I am glad that I wasn’t there, so that you may believe.. Let us go to him.”

And by the time that Jesus gets there, the bible says that Lazarus has already been dead for four days, and Martha says to Jesus “if you had been here, he would not have died” but what does Jesus say?

“Your brother will rise again” 

And she of course says to him, “yes, I know he will rise again on the last day.. In the resurrection”

But Jesus says… No no no. Martha…

“I am the resurrection.”

But then Mary comes up to Jesus, and she says the same thing as Martha… “Jesus, if you had been here… My brother would not have died.”

But when she said it, she was weeping. She fell at Jesus feet, and wept. And it moved Jesus.

Jesus already had told all his disciples, he was going to wake up Lazarus.

He already knew he was going to restore all things in a moments time. But he was so moved by Mary’s tears for her brother that he began to weep himself. The bible says “he was deeply moved in his spirit and deeply troubled.”

He weeped with his friends. Not even for their loss, but for their pain.

He wept knowing that he had complete control over the situation. He wept knowing that it was all going to be okay.

Isaiah 61 says that God will comfort those who mourn in Zion and that he will give them beauty for ashes. The oil of gladness instead of mourning. A garment of praise instead of a faint spirit. 

Jesus can make all things new for the people in Nepal. He can make all this new for the people in Baltimore, and the people in Detroit. Verse 4 says that they shall repair the ruined cities… There is so much hope in the midst of all of this chaos… Hope in Jesus!

My family and I lived in a town called Rockaway Park right between the

Atlantic Ocean and the Jamaica Bay at the time of Hurricane Sandy… We were right there, front lines. I told that story in New York a couple of weeks ago and you can watch it online, I’ll probably share it at some point here with you… But I will spare you of it now because even though it felt so bad to us… So real to us… It doesn’t come close to what happened in Nepal, and I don’t want to even pretend for a second that it does. But what I do want to share with you is this.

A few weeks after the storm, our family got a package in the mail. The package came from Japan, and it was filled with these amazing cards and letters, and a check for 100 dollars… A whole bunch of families, poor families, pulled together to raise 100 dollars and send it to help our family. The letters, written in Japanese and rough broken English, all said thank you.

Because a couple years before that, they had all been displaced by the huge Tsunami that hit Japan. And when they lost everything, it was the American church who stepped in, and rescued them. Who found them places to stay, who rebuilt their homes. Who sent money and supplies and men. And so when we got displaced from our American, first world house… They wanted to return the favor, in some way.

The church is the hope of the world. It is Gods biggest idea…  it’s his plan for redemption, restoration and reconciliation. It’s the hope of Nepal, it’s the hope of Baltimore. It’s the hope of Japan and New York City and Detroit. And people can rag on us all day for all the things we are not because sometimes we fall short of being like Jesus… But one thing we are, is a family. Even on the other side of the world. And families help each other, families pray for each other and families weep for each other.

Jesus wept with Mary. He wept for his friends that he loved, but then he acted… he rose Lazarus from the dead. And I’m sure that I will teach this in much more detail on a Sunday some time, but Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, it wasn’t just an act of pity that cost him nothing.

It was an act of compassion that cost him EVERYTHING.

Because if you read John, the miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead, was essentially the last miracle recorded. It was the one that set the Pharisees over the top. It was to much. Suddenly, they saw Jesus and they realized, “this guy has power!” We have to bring him down! And so the witnesses to that incredible miracle went and reported what they saw, and they conspired to kill him.

And he knew they were watching him when he raised Lazarus. He knew what it would cost… And he did it anyway.

I once heard Tim Keller put it this way:

“The only way to interrupt Lazarus’ funeral, was to cause his own.”

And that’s our example of love. That is our example of how we should respond to Baltimore.

Of how we should respond to Nepal.

Of how we should respond to our own city. Being a follower of Jesus is costly.. Because being Jesus was costly.

1 john 3:16 “this is how you know love. That Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers…” For our city. For our neighbors. For our family.