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A Modern Expression of a Timeless Tradition. A local church in the Glastonbury Neighbourhood of West Edmonton. Sr Pastor Brett Esslinger.
My name is Pasadillandre, youth pastor, and I've got the privilege to speak, so hope you don't have lunch plans, because we're gonna be here for a at least till three in Jesus' name. Just kidding, pasadillandre said I got my sweat rag here, so we're taking it way back, we're taking it back and black, hello, hello, hello, ha ha ha. Oh, man, it's good, it's good to be here. I have to speak and God is good. Okay, so, really quickly, I wanted to turn our attention to the screen. I need help reading this and so, basically, when I pause, this is your chance to say the word. You know what I mean. Right, okay, awesome, hold on to the screen. Okay, I am the true, and my father is the. He cuts down every branch in me that bears. No, okay, every branch that does bear, he prunes so that it may be even more. Hold on, awesome, you guys are doing great. I mean I'm gonna lead a little more off, okay, I know where it's in the morning. Like, really, really, really, own it, really. You know what I mean. So you are already clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Come on, people, man, like, give me more. Okay, one more time In me and I will well, sorry, thank you. Remaining to you, okay, no, branch that bears by itself. It must re. Oh, sorry, I should have practiced this a little more. Okay, remain in the vine, neither can you. No, no, sorry, no, okay can you bear, unless you in me? I am the and you are the branches. If you in me and I in you, you will bear much. Oh, you guys already know, didn't you Come on the screen? You guys already know, okay, apart from me, you can do okay. If you do not, oh, sorry, if you do not in me, you will be like a branch that is thrown away and withers. Such a branch will be picked up and thrown into the fire. Okay, so quick pause. Right, I made HD, so just bear with me. What I was going to do, I was thinking about it was get a branch you know what I mean and get like a lighter and be like if you don't listen to what I say, this is gonna be you Just kidding. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, but I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. That's not true. That's not actually true. Okay, burned.
Okay, if you in me and my words in you. Ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you, for this is my Father. It's to my Father's glory that you bear much. Show yourselves to be my disciples. Just as the Lord has loved me, so I loved you Now in my love, so that you may keep my awesome and you will in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commands and you guys are tired, or what? Come on now, remain in my love, okay? I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. Come on, come on.
My command is this each other as I, you no greater love. There's no greater love than this to one that lays down his own life for his friends. Whoo, that's a good one. Eh yeah, it's a real good one. So I have this question for you guys. Rhetorical question, but think about it in your mind, okay.
What is the difference between a life, a person's life, that feels fulfilled, and another person's life that doesn't? What's the main key difference? Think about it, don't say it, just think about it. So a fulfilled life right is like a person that has healthy relationships, that they have time for what is important, that they are generous with both their money and, as Moose said, with their time, with their generous and kind and gentle, that they're confident in most situations. What's the difference between a life that's fulfilled and everybody else in the world? What's the main difference? I'll tell you what it's not. How about that?
It's not intelligence. No, sir, it's not looks. Sadly, I'm just kidding. It's not talents, because we know a lot of intelligent people that are miserable. We know a lot of attractive people that can't keep a relationship and we know a lot of talented people that can't hold a job. So what is the difference? What is it? If I could boil it down to one thing, it would be our decisions, our decisions. That's the difference. I would even go as far to say that the quality of our decisions determine the quality of our lives. Hello, and this is true. But the problem is we're not so good at making decisions, just me, just me and myself, I guess. Let me tell you how bad I am at making decisions. So me and my lovely wife shout out to my wife I'm not going to make you stand.
Can we shout out to my wife, married for four months now, hey, hello, and she's still here, amen. I remember back when we were dating, we were dating and it was getting pretty serious, getting pretty serious, and she actually invited me over to meet the parents. All right, big deal. You guys know about first impressions, it's very important. So I remember, I'm there and I'm knocking on the door. I'm wearing my Sunday best, I got the fresh cut and everything, and I'm ready to go, ready to meet the parents. And I walk in and I'm practicing my shake. I'm practicing. I don't want to be too firm, because that means something I don't know, but you don't want to be too soft either, you don't want to. So I'm practicing that in front of the door. Ken is her mom, it's her dad's name. So I'm like hey, ken, hey Ken, ken, nice to meet you, deandre. Hey, ken, deandre, yeah, dating your daughter. You know that already. So I'm practicing. Then, all of a sudden, the door opens and my hand's already out and my dad's name is.
Deandre.
And I'm like okay, I'm fine, I'm fine. And it's my lady. She's like what? Nothing?
So we walk in there, right, and we have dinner and it's nice and I'm cracking jokes and it's lovely, right, me and Ken we have very similar. What's the word, not personality Humor, thank you, thank you, right, same sense of humor. We love dad jokes and so I'm cracking dad jokes and stuff and I'm saying things like you know what's the problem with eating a clock? It's time consuming. So me and him are laughing at that, right, we think that's funny. And so we're at the dinner table and it's nice. And then all of a sudden they're like you know what? Y'all just having such a great time, let's play a board game. And so, if you know me, I'm very competitive, okay, and by very I mean really competitive.
So I made the decision. I said let's play Monopoly. And so, code names, I get competitive, these guys know. But Monopoly it's a different person. Okay, like it's BC, deandre, not after. Some of them don't get it Before Christ. I meant to say BC before Christ. And so we're starting to play, and so I got all the red. That's what I go for. Anything for the red, that Kentucky, illinois, that's my stuff. Okay, no one touched that, that's mine. So I got all the red and I start building up a vibe, building up my stuff you know what it is and all that sort of stuff. And so, as what happens in Monopoly with me is, I start making sounds. It's kind of like a, like a, like an engine for a motorcycle, that's kind of what it is. And so anytime you land on my property, I'm like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Pay up, give me that money, let's go. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, anytime, so it lands on my property. The whole world knows yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, let's go, and it gets annoying, and so I'm annoying the whole family, the whole family's plan. They're all getting annoyed because I'm very passionate, you know, I'm very, very passionate about it and it got so bad that my ladies told me to chill and, anyways, I won't get it to that part, I'll get in trouble. I'll get in trouble. But there was one time, okay, my lady is broke, okay, she got like two dollars. I've been taking all her money, taking all the money, monopoly, monopoly, monopoly, monopoly money, and so she lands on my property. And so you guys know that I'm saying yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, pay up, pay up, you know, pay up.
She looks at me, the nice green eyes that is sweet green eyes, and she's. And she said, godry, it's not that serious, she's like I haven't played in a really long time, I would like to keep playing. And so she said if you could just let this one stop? And so I looked at those pretty green eyes and I thought to myself what would Jesus do with this play? And I thought and I said there's grace. And I was like, but this is Monopoly. And I said, heck, no.
And ever since that day, emma's family, whenever we play any sort of board game, could be uno scatagories. They always look at me a little sideways. And so that was my decision. But sometimes there's other decisions. Right, sometimes we want to be, we want to eat right, let's say, but we end up eating more than we should. We want to be good at relationships, but then we end up saying things that we would regret, that we would later regret. We want to do right but end up doing wrong, and so these decisions that we make affect our lives in a big way or a small way.
Now, saying this, I think there's two decisions, two types of decisions. There's one that we get to make. So Romans 12 talks about we can either conform or be transformed. There's decisions that we get to make every day. We make decisions we get to make, but there are other decisions that we have to make. Am I making sense? There's decisions that we have to make. There's decisions that we don't necessarily want to make or we didn't have the choice to make, but now we have to make these decisions. Am I making sense?
And so usually in church, when we talk about making decisions, it's certain. There's a very certain word that we say certainty of God, which is like for I know that God is for me, for I know that he is good, I'm a child of God, for I know. But there is also some uncertainty with God. We like to call it the mystery of God, and so if we're not careful and we always preach the certainty, when the mystery comes, the stuff that we don't see, we think the certainty is not true. One time a parent came up to me and said God, I don't like your preaching.
I said oh wow, that's a great way to start a conversation. I said how come she says well, my kid thinks that depression, having depression, is OK. I don't like that. My Bible says to rejoice in the Lord always.
I said OK to have the joy of the Lord to know the joy of the Lord and to declare the joy of the Lord and still feel depressed from time to time is not hypocrisy, it's humanity, it's not contradiction, it's not a sin. And I told her, and I told her that if I just preach the certainty all the time and you go home to uncertainty, you'll take that uncertainty and think that the certainty is not true, which is not true. And so, if certainty is the promise and uncertainty is the process, we so often want to preach about the promise, right, preach about the promise, but there's actually a process and you can't get to the promise unless you go through the process. So we go and we preach about the process, the promise, yeah, you are the tail, not the head. You are more than enough. He is more than enough. We're all these things we are. What happens is we go home. We go home and see the process, which is marital issues, disobedient children, abused homes, mental health, bullying, families that don't like you, boss, that overlooks you. And so if we always preach about the promise, but we never preach about the promise, we would go home and think, well, I must be doing something, that I made a decision, and now that affects everything, but to you I would say that it's not punishment, but it's just the process that God is bringing you to for the promise. Amen, am I making sense? I like to.
Last Friday I spoke to the youth about this story in the Bible where there's a young king and Elijah tells him to take a bow and arrow and shoot the ground. And the thought is that how many times he shot the ground, the further he got in the battle. And so, very clearly, the synopsis of it is God doesn't make the shot for you, god doesn't take the shot for you, but he blesses you after and he does everything so you can win the war later. Make sense? But what I was kind of talking about was the thought of the arrow. And the more that you pull that arrow back and there's tension the more you pull it back is, the further you'll go. And so in my life, 25 years of my life, 10 being Christian Wow, thank you I have never seen someone of great significance that does great things without having great suffering. No, it's true, think of it Anybody, people that did significant things, they all had significant suffering. And the more that you pull that arrow back is, the further you'll fly.
And so I don't know if I'm speaking to anyone in this room, but I want to just let you know that if you feel like God is in senior, feel like God hasn't hurt, you feel like God is down and out, has forsaked you, that's not true. He's preparing you for the promise Amen, like he's preparing you for the promise. And even though you couldn't make that decision, you got to live with the decision of others. You got to live with now making a choice, that that choice isn't just something that's blocking you from your calling and your destiny and your purpose, but it's actually propelling you forward, because you can't go from zero to 100 without Jesus, but you can't help people get from that low moment if you weren't also there yourself, in my making sense. So there's decisions that we have to make and these decisions affect us, and so in these verses that we read, there's another decision that we need to make.
Jesus says our choice is to do nothing. Some of you guys are like, yeah, but doing nothing of significance, nothing of great value. Doing nothing is not doing something that brings effect long term. But you say you have the choice and a decision to do nothing or bear fruit. Nothing or bear fruit. And so what is this bearing fruit? Well, he says it to love each other. That's what bearing fruit is loving each other. So we have the choice we can either love others or do nothing. I, uh, someone asked me this summer the greatest question of all time. Oh, she's already oh, wow.
And uh, it was John Dre. How do I make a disciple? How do I disciple people? I said, well, discipleship is really just a relationship and relationship is a friendship. And so if you want to make disciples, befriend people and sometimes we take this word discipleship and we think it's some really big thing. It's just friendship.
And when I think about discipleship and I think about having a biblical friendship, there's someone on top, not necessarily above you, but someone that has more experience than you, that has been in one or two seasons, kind of more ahead of you. There's that kind of relationship. Then there's peer relationship, biblical friendship. Then there's someone below you that you're like man. I see myself in that person and I see what they're going through and I could, I could speak into that. And so if you don't have all three of these people, I would say that you're lacking spiritual and that you need to have these friendships, a mentor who you can go to and say, hey, I've, you've gone through this, you've seen what it's like. Help me Peers Levi Bluestine in the back, I remember I had a traumatic experience and he literally opened his home to me and let me sleep on the couch there. And you need disciples who you're discipling, investing, pouring into. Some of the greatest lessons I've learned was when I was discipling and we're like how, how do we do that? How do we have these sort of relationships? One is a choice you got to decide to. But two, I literally go up and I say, hey, you're a great leader, I want to be a great leader, mentor me. Hey, kid, I see myself in you, I'm your mentor. Now, moose, is that what happened? You know the our peers, people on the same level, used to say, hey, I don't want to do this Christian thing alone. Walk with me, matt. We had that conversation and so if you don't have that, god wants to give you that. And so literally come, come talk to me, the connections, and that's why we have these things. But I think it all starts with the decision and I also think we get afraid to have these sort of relationships because it actually is like a mirror that we don't want people to know what's going on. We don't want to actually let people in our world and in our hearts, because then we'll show them how poor of decision makers we actually are. And that's okay. That's okay Because God doesn't just leave us there. Amen, levi, can you put the picture on the screen. So the Bible talks about that.
There's different times, and times are kind of referred to as seasons, and he says there's a season for mourning, there's a season for weeping, rejoicing, all sorts of things, good and negative. And what happens is a lot of times we want to live our lives like that really cute monstera, right. We want a nice propped up for Pinterest, right, and it's all good. But that's only good for one season, summer. You put that in another season. Oh yeah, that's done Dead.
I know I killed some, but you're actually made to be a perennial which lasts entire season, entire year. Now, different seasons, it looks a little different. You're not as pretty like that in the winter, but you're still alive, amen, still kicking amen. And so I remember in the summer I would help my grandma with the garden and I remember hating it because she would get me in the spring and she would have me cut all these branches and twigs down and all that sort of stuff, and I would just be so frustrated because I'm like, why are we doing all this cutting it all down when in the summertime it's all just going to be all good anyways? It's because I didn't know that behind the scenes, my grandma was actually the one cutting down the dead leaves, cutting down, going down and cutting and making sure that everything's good and throwing out all the bad and all the dead stuff so the new growth can spring up and bear fruit.
And so often we don't want to get into these relationships, we don't want to get into these friendships because we don't want people to see all the dead leaves and all the dead things. But Jesus is saying here if you would just let me in, if you would just let me cut away the insecurity, if you would just let me cut, tear away the hurt, tear away the pain, cut away all of those things, you'll bear fruit. If I was just apart from you, you can do nothing but remain in me and I am you, and you'll bear much fruit. Maybe here you're like man y'all. I can't get that kind of love. I don't know that kind of love. And to you I'd say that God has a different plan, that if we just invite him in and by invite him I mean surrender our hearts that he will cut away all the bad, all the disgust, so you can bear fruit and love others the way you're called.
To that situation I was talking about. I had a roommate a couple of years ago and he basically assaulted me and began to fight with me. And at the time I was a youth the still the youth pastor and I thought to myself why can't fight back? And eventually the police got involved, but they didn't do anything. And I remember having to pastor and care for people while all this legal stuff was going on in my head and I remember asking God. I said God, why am I going through this? I've been Christian for so long. I'm leading a man, I'm doing good work, why are you making me go through this? And I remember I got nothing. So there I had the decision keep the faith, dig deep, let him cut or let it take me out.
And I remember a couple weeks ago a couple months ago actually, now it was in the fall I was speaking at a youth camp and I was speaking and whatever. And this girl ran up to me and she said Deondre, I believe you that I'm called, that I'm chosen and I want to follow Jesus right here, right now. But she was like back home, I'm getting assaulted. And I remember what do I do? And that moment Holy Spirit said to me. That's why I brought you through, that. That's why I took you through. That is so you can speak and help and love other people, and so she's still keeping it strong right now, which is awesome. But I believe that God wants to do something for this church. He wants to do a work in our hearts to love others better.