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"Here as in Heaven."
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You're listening to the GARDEN CHURCH Podcast. We're in a series called Church on Fire, a journey through the book of acts. This is the story of ordinary people filled with the spirit, carrying the presence of Jesus into every corner of the world. The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive and in us today. Join us as we step into the call to be people set on fire for his mission.
Darren Rouanzoin:What's up? 11:15. How are we doing? Come on. Come on.
Darren Rouanzoin:Caffeinated. Slow morning. Wandered into here ready for the gospel to be proclaimed. Yes? Alright.
Darren Rouanzoin:Let me see if my iPad will turn on. All right. Grab your Bibles. Let me see them. All right.
Darren Rouanzoin:Well done. Let's go to Acts chapter eight. All right. Acts eight verses one through eight. We're in a series.
Darren Rouanzoin:It's I don't know week 24 or something like that I need to count because I keep saying 20 something. Looking at the Book of Acts last week Pastor Ramin preached an amazing sermon the Gospel presented through Stephen's confrontation with the Sanhedrin. Today we continue so I got three points to give you but I am just gonna start by reading the text and we will see if God moves. I am so excited to be here like that 09:00 service was fire and if the 09:00 is fire man That means some good things are gonna happen. Unless unless you're resisting the word which I already see some of you are.
Darren Rouanzoin:I feel it. I feel the caution, the hesitation. You're already judging me. I see it. I get it.
Darren Rouanzoin:Come on, relax. We're gonna have fun. I just got back from the 10:00. It's crazy. There's like no room for anyone at the 10:00.
Darren Rouanzoin:I don't understand what's going on. It does we don't know how to coordinate or manage what the growth that God is giving us right now. So we're just praying like crazy. We had like, I don't know, overflow in the 10:00 service and there's overflow outside. So God's doing all this stuff and it's We don't We didn't anticipate this.
Darren Rouanzoin:We didn't plan for this. We're not that smart or good or creative or strategic. But we really do think God's doing something right now. So I just wanna say God does stuff you know. So there you go point number one God does stuff.
Darren Rouanzoin:Just kidding. Just kidding. All right. Let's just start because then it's gonna get good. For those of you that are new to church it says in verse one, And Saul approved of their killing him.
Darren Rouanzoin:It's verse one of chapter eight. Just gonna jump right in. On that day on that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him but Saul began to destroy the church going from house to house he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison. Alright let's stop right there.
Darren Rouanzoin:Alright. The story of Acts is now entering into a new season. It's Acts eight is the beginning of a new section. So as as a literary work Acts eight through 11 is about gospel expansion. For the first seven chapters so far the primary work of the church has been in Jerusalem.
Darren Rouanzoin:So how many of you remember twenty something weeks ago when we we were given our commission from Jesus in the book of Acts. He says, Wait in Jerusalem and you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you to be my witnesses. You remember this? The word witness is margarita. It means to represent.
Darren Rouanzoin:It means where it's where we get the word martyr from. It means someone whose life points to Jesus. And it but he says specifically that you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. So that's the framework of the entire book of Acts, it's how the gospel moves from Jerusalem all the way over but for seven chapters it's been in Jerusalem which if you read those seven chapters it's amazing there's all this fellowshipping going on. How many of you like community?
Darren Rouanzoin:Like yeah? All my friends like yeah they are doing you know they are eating meals together. They are sharing their lives around the dinner table. It says that they are so generous that there is no needs among them. How incredible would that be to have a local church expression where you could say there is no needy person among us.
Darren Rouanzoin:Oh what a testimony. Signs and wonders, demons are being are fleeing you know people are getting healed and the church just keeps growing and there is you know organizational issues they you know people are lying about what they are doing and they die and then the ushers take them out. That's my summary of the first seven chapters. And then we get to chapter eight. Stephen is proclaiming Jesus the resurrected Christ and he gets stoned to death and it says Saul approved of his killing.
Darren Rouanzoin:So now in Jerusalem the worst day of the church is happening right now. And that the the church is being challenged because it says Paul was set Saul began to destroy the church and the word in Greek for destroy means to it means to mangle or ravage. And it's organizational. It's organized systemic destruction of the church. He's going house to house.
Darren Rouanzoin:He's systematically going after those who confess that Jesus is Lord. It is a moment of destruction but it says that the apostles were scattered and that word all but the apostles were scattered. That word scattered is a very intentional word. It's deeply theological. If you go to the Old Testament you see that phrase used for Israel.
Darren Rouanzoin:That when they were disobedient and exile takes place Israel is scattered among the nations and God used that scattering to spread the knowledge of Yahweh to the ends of the earth. That was kind of the framework that was used so that what Luke is doing is the storyline of of Israel is lining up with the church right now. They are kind of fulfilling this perspective of what's going on in the Old Testament. It's this New Testament reality. But what I wanna share with you is just this observation about how God works.
Darren Rouanzoin:I have three points. Point number one is God doesn't waste your worst moments. I wanna let this point minister to some of you because I've been carrying it all week thinking about the things that so many of us are going through but God doesn't waste your worst moments. You see they the church was comfortable in Jerusalem but all of a sudden the gospel is finally moving outside of Jerusalem to what Jesus promised to the ends of the earth. It's moving to Judea and Samaria and it doesn't happen because the committee decided that they're gonna do it.
Darren Rouanzoin:It happened because of persecution. The enemy tried to destroy the church but God will use what the enemy is doing to accomplish His assignment. Now stay with me for a moment. The enemy thought he was shutting you down but God was opening a door. Like Saul thought he was scattering the church but he was planting it.
Darren Rouanzoin:And if you know Paul's story Saul's story he becomes Paul. If you know his story he becomes the chief church planner into the Gentile world into the nations. The first introduction of him is being somebody, all the all the people are stoning Stephen lay their cloaks at Saul's feet. And he approves of the murdering of Stephen. And the next encounter is him getting knocked out by God and being commissioned as an instrument of Jesus.
Darren Rouanzoin:You see this is something that's really fascinating. The devil thought he was writing the last chapter of the church but it was just the foreword. Thanks for the endorsement. We'll take it from here. Right?
Darren Rouanzoin:And this is true throughout the Church history. Tertullian, early Church father in the second century in North Africa theologian he watched the Roman Empire for generations try to exterminate Christianity. And he observed with every execution and every imprisonment and every burning of the church he had a Latin phrase he said, The blood of Christians is seed. Which reminded me as I was studying of the the Mexican proverb that says, They tried to bury us they didn't know we were seeds. I know this is gonna preach so stay here for a moment.
Darren Rouanzoin:Somebody needs to hear this. The very thing that was meant to end your life is the thing God's gonna use to send you. Right and God doesn't waste wounds. Right He doesn't dismiss suffering as like an, as an obstacle to His purposes He actually uses everything. I don't know what happened in your life in the last season maybe it fell apart.
Darren Rouanzoin:Maybe a door was closed that you were hoping to stay open. Maybe a relationship ended. Maybe the dream that you had didn't survive. But I know this that God has a long history of using broken things in your life as the building material for your future. There is a long history of this Joseph did not sin his way into a pit.
Darren Rouanzoin:He was faithful, he was favored, he was walking in his assignment and his brother sold him to strangers and God let it happen. And then he used every piece of his story. The pit became the path. The prison became preparation and the betrayal became the bridge to restoration. Moses was 80 years old stuttering.
Darren Rouanzoin:Wanted by the law hiding on the backside of the wilderness tending somebody else's sheep and God said, Go back. Go back to the place that broke you. Go back with nothing but a stick and my name and a nation walked out of slavery on dry ground. Rahab a woman with a past would not qualify she would have been disqualified for every respectable church in The in in The US lived in a wall of a condemned city. God put a scarlet thread in her window and wrote her name in the lineage of Jesus.
Darren Rouanzoin:Ruth was a widow, a foreigner with no status and no family and no future and no reason to stay. But she stayed anyway. And God rewrote her entire story into a with a single harvest season. Jeremiah preached for forty years and saw almost no fruit watched Jerusalem burn sat in the rubble and wept and God called that ministry. David was an adulterer a murderer a man after God's heart who broke that heart spent years in a cave running from his own consequences and out of that cave comes the Psalms.
Darren Rouanzoin:The most honest prayers ever written it's the one that you reach for when you can't find words for your own pain. And Peter denied him three times and sat by a fire and then he went back into fishing because he did not think he was there was anything left for him and the risen Jesus showed up back on the beach gave him back the thing shame tried to steal from him. Paul spent years hunting the church. Held the coats of the men who murdered Stephen. The last person anyone thought who would have been chosen and God knocked him off a horse and said, You of all people, you will be my instrument.
Darren Rouanzoin:And then there's the Cross. The most violent humiliating catastrophic event in human history designed to maximize shame reserved for the worst criminals the moment when heaven went silent and everything looked like it was over God used that to purchase the salvation of the world. The cross was not a plan B. It's always been God's plan. And your pain is not plan B.
Darren Rouanzoin:God will use it for his purposes. So stop interpreting your suffering as abandonment because you might be in the middle of an Acts eight moment. Suffering is the primary crucible, the primary environment that God uses to produce the most fruit and transformation. Can I sit on this for a second? I'm gonna do it.
Darren Rouanzoin:Thank you for the 12 of you that said yes. I agree. I I I've walked through seasons of suffering like really hard things walking with a lot a lot of you who have suffered well but personally I've walked through a lot of suffering I'm walking through things now that's really hard and last year was hard and I, I was meeting with I still meet with Bill regularly Pastor Bill it's his birthday today so make sure you text him. And I am not, this conversation changed everything he is like, Darren you, the problem in your suffering is how you pray. He's like, You're praying about the suffering.
Darren Rouanzoin:Okay. He's like, Pray the suffering. It took me about nine months to figure this out. Well I realized what we do is in our Christian consumer culture is we try to pray the problems away. Right?
Darren Rouanzoin:You got a problem. Prayer is, Alright, here Jesus, here's my problem. Fix it. And through suffering this last season I've learned that actually suffering becomes a catalyst for intimacy. On the other side of suffering is intimacy with Jesus.
Darren Rouanzoin:If you suffer well, He'll share His secrets with you. So I had to learn how to take the depression and pray the depression. I had to learn how to take the circumstances that were out of my control and not ask God to fix and resolve them but to God be with me and let these things be the prayer. Let the failed marriage be the prayer. Let the failure of the past life be the prayer.
Darren Rouanzoin:Let the disappointment of the business going under be the prayer. Don't come to Jesus wanting solutions come to Jesus. That's how you don't waste suffering and most of us waste the opportunity God has for us when things aren't going the way we want. We think that with Jesus things will go up and to the right but what I have seen now is when things don't go your way that's when He is closest. And for so many of you have been walking in pain and suffering You're praying about the problems not through the problems.
Darren Rouanzoin:And you're wondering, well where are you Jesus? What you're blind to see because you don't have a vocabulary yet for intimacy is that he's walking next to you weeping with you. He's collecting the tears. He is holding you when you can't stand. When you feel crushed by the world he is next to you because he knows how that feels.
Darren Rouanzoin:And what happens when you learn to pray the suffering when you learn to pray the things and bring Jesus in is you share in His sufferings which Paul writes about. It's like he is looking for friends that will stay up all night in Gethsemane the night before the worst day of his life. And he's saying, Will you stay up with me? And so many of you I can hear the sniffles. It's not discerning of the Spirit.
Darren Rouanzoin:This is what happens when the word of God touches the human experience. It names what you're experiencing. My invitation is to just be okay with where you are knowing that the circumstances is not what produces joy it's His presence that will produce the greatest joy and let Him walk with you in it and through that you will experience transformation. The circumstances might not change at all but you will dramatically change. You keep saying Well it's her problem.
Darren Rouanzoin:She did this. She is to blame. Why not become the solution as a person who stands in prayer and looks more like Jesus along the way. Yeah? That's point one I don't know I don't know if I can get to the other points now.
Darren Rouanzoin:Don't waste the opportunities God gives you when things don't go right. Just know that He never wastes moments. He can do a lot with dirt. Have you noticed that? Genesis chapter two.
Darren Rouanzoin:He takes He forms God out of the dirt and breathes it. Oh I get it now. Yes. He can he can do a lot with dirt. It's okay.
Darren Rouanzoin:We're all on a journey. Can I go to point two? Is that all right? I love I'm gonna just pause. I'm just talk about the sermon for a second.
Darren Rouanzoin:I love being a part of a local church. I I was at the 10AM last week. I just got to show up to church. Didn't do anything except attend church with my family. And I haven't I've been preaching every week since we launched the second service.
Darren Rouanzoin:It's a lot of work. I'm training for it now and trying to figure it out but I came to the 09:00 and I watched dad, I was sitting over here, I watched the dad explain communion to their like three year old daughter and I was like, This is it? Had someone come up before this church started. I haven't seen him in months. He he has been riddled with shame.
Darren Rouanzoin:He got out of jail. Feels all this shame. Ask me a theological question about baptism. And I just got to say, Brother nothing you can do can make you more loved by God. You can't do another baptism to receive what you've already received by grace.
Darren Rouanzoin:Come here and let me pray that shame away. This is why we're here. To be family and I just think so many of us are just coming in and out but we don't have that. So get plugged in and see the beauty that's within this community. Completely imperfect and that's what makes it the local church.
Darren Rouanzoin:Alright let's keep going. That was my commentary just to move on to the next. Point number two Acts eight verse five I love this one it's gonna get deep. Verse four Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went Philip went down to a city in Samaria proclaimed the Messiah there. When the crowds heard Philip and saw the signs performed they all paid close attention to what he said.
Darren Rouanzoin:Isn't that amazing? So the story starts with persecution and it moves to Philip remember who Philip is? Lover of ponies. He was a part of the church the church was growing and expanding the apostles were like Hey guys we need someone to pass out food to the widows. And so they say here's what we're gonna do.
Darren Rouanzoin:We're gonna take personality profiles. We're gonna look at all of you all who have passion for caring for the widows that see it as your life calling. That you have done spiritual gift inventory tests. You have mastered No. That's not what they did.
Darren Rouanzoin:They said we need men from among you and women who are full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom. And we will hand off the ministry to them. And so lover of ponies stands up with the other six. You know you got Lord's army, victorious army, the crown. You got Rocky on top.
Darren Rouanzoin:You all and then there is lover of ponies. And it's lover of ponies who goes to Samaria. So now I just This is so important because for seven chapters it's Jerusalem. But finally someone has the audacity. No.
Darren Rouanzoin:Someone has the courage to cross relational religious superstitious barriers to cross another culture that the Jewish community hated. This isn't The word to call someone a Samaritan in a Jewish context was a derogatory word. Jesus is called demon possessed and a Samaritan as a put down. Because hundreds of years before Jesus and Philip were around walking the earth. Jesus was always around.
Darren Rouanzoin:He's eternal. Let me let me rephrase that theology. Correcting my theology. You had the Assyrian army invade the Northern Kingdom Of Israel and they conquered that region and the Assyrians lived with the the Jewish community and they had marriages together and they created a new race called the Samaritans. They had their own belief systems.
Darren Rouanzoin:They had their own mountain where they had their own priests where they worshipped. They had the Pentateuch the first five books of the Bible but they didn't believe in the rest so they were practicing a form of Jewish belief and worship in the wrong place. So the Jews were like, You guys are the worst kind. You're heretics and you've intermarried. And so they hated them.
Darren Rouanzoin:So whenever you read like in the gospel you read Jesus went through Samaria you're like all the first century Jewish people would be like, I can't believe he went through Samaria because no one would go through Samaria. You go around Samaria. But this is exactly what Luke is saying. What was commissioned in Acts one verse eight to Judea and Samaria you are going to go to the places that you hate. You are going to go to the people that vote different than you.
Darren Rouanzoin:That have different lifestyle preferences than you. That have a different morality than you and that's exactly the point. And who does he use as this prophetic symbol as this new Elijah this new Moses to break those barriers? Lover of ponies. I love it so much.
Darren Rouanzoin:You can't write the story. You have incarnated in the Gospel I'm sorry, in the Book of Acts. You have someone like Moses. Remember in Deuteronomy chapter 34? No one has been like Moses at all.
Darren Rouanzoin:No one who's ever lived except lover of ponies is now fulfilling what was promised in Exodus 19 that they would be a light to the Gentile nations and he's finally bringing this to the Samaritans. Remember these are this is the same place in the gospel of John and Luke where where John and James and they they walk into the Samaritan towns and they reject the message when they were with Jesus. They reject And they go, hey Jesus can we call down fire and burn them up in judgment? Do you remember the story? And Jesus is like, Oh my gosh.
Darren Rouanzoin:And later in in this chapter we'll read James and John and Peter come back to that town in Samaria. Only now there's a revival. And they called down a different kind of fire as they lay hands in their field with the Holy Spirit. Isn't that beautiful? It's so amazing but how do you get there?
Darren Rouanzoin:Well you don't get there because you build a church on preference and passion. Can I say it? Because the American church is a joke when it comes to this stuff. You don't get there because you have built everything in your life around convenience. You don't get there because you build everything in your life to hold to a rhythm that keeps you rested.
Darren Rouanzoin:That rhythm of rest won't make you a martyr. It protects you from martyrdom only you've been commissioned to it. Oh I'm preaching. You're missing it right now. I mean this is the thing I see right?
Darren Rouanzoin:We've built a church. A way of building the church around your personality preferences protection of rhythms and calendar and ideas and we make it convenient and safe and we'll make it an app that you can subscribe in or not when based on your convenience. Only the early church didn't say what are you passionate about? They said we need some servants. And guess what?
Darren Rouanzoin:The church served. Why? Because the God always empowers empowers the surrendered servant. You wanna be used by God? You gotta surrender all of it.
Darren Rouanzoin:This is not, hey I'm a man of resource use my resource. This is what does what does the mission need for this moment? And Philip in the moment was used to wait on tables. And then he shows up to Samaria Samaria not with skills of exorcism. There's no class.
Darren Rouanzoin:He didn't go through an exorcism class. He didn't learn about how to you know preach on the go to a Samaritan and learn apologetics. He just said yes because he learned his first yes was to a God who gave everything for him. And then the next yes was to wait tables. And then the next yes was to show up to Samaria.
Darren Rouanzoin:In his mind it's like let's organize out of my strength. Right? This is what we do. Let's be used out of our strengths. I'm really good at helping widows.
Darren Rouanzoin:I've learned the art of the casserole dish. That's not what Samaria needed. They needed someone to proclaim the gospel. To heal the sick and to cast out demons. You up for it?
Darren Rouanzoin:Yeah. What else am I gonna do? Because God will fill the available. God will fill the surrendered. But when we're full of self protection, self preservation, he can't use it.
Darren Rouanzoin:You all right? I think about this a lot in how the American church has been organizing its growth strategies. I'm wondering if part of the problem is we've just reduced life in the church to be what you desire. What you wanna consume rather than what Jesus wants. Like you think about I grew up kind of out of the post seeker friendly model church so there's been waves of church movements you know.
Darren Rouanzoin:Coming out of the Billy Graham crusade where there was this moral awakening to the American church, the evangelical awakening of personal relationship with Jesus and then it came in Southern California. It went into the Jesus movement. So there's radical countercultural moment where there was this countercultural movement against tradition that came flooding back into the church. And that gave birth to the megachurch movement, the seeker friendly church movement which just was adopted by the church that planted us out which was Rock Harbor which was like the the gen x version of the mega church which was still come and see. And then we I planted the garden out of a missional church movement and then there was like a church movement and I'm like man everything keeps changing and I'm like I wonder if we forgot that the church is for not for you it's for God.
Darren Rouanzoin:Like we're supposed to design church not for you but to worship God it's for His glory And I wonder if we've been focused on all the wrong things like we've been focusing on getting outsiders in but we want God here. And have we built churches that God wants to inhabit? Have we built a life that God wants to habit inhabit? And let me tell you if you want more the way is surrender. You give up.
Darren Rouanzoin:He says it right? I think Jesus said something like this He says Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves take up their cross daily and follow me. Whoever wants to save their life will lose it but whoever loses their life for me will save it. It's like we want the gifts without the cross. We want the anointing without obscurity.
Darren Rouanzoin:We want to be sent without first being broken. And Philip's story tells the sequence, death first then power. Table first then then Samaria. You see surrendered is how God will always move. He's moving through surrendered.
Darren Rouanzoin:So he keeps going but I love this phrase I just wanna focus real quick and then we'll get to point three. There's this great phrase and it's so important for me because remember this is the first sermon I ever preached publicly at Rock Harbor it was like this message of Acts six and eight and it was this line that changed everything for me because it was I learned of his name, lover of horses and like, I love I love Philip. He's the guy that doesn't fit in. He's the lover of ponies you know and then but then but then this this verse changes everything for me. It says Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah there.
Darren Rouanzoin:That phrase proclaimed is a title. So he's been trained to wait on tables and now it's saying no he's a herald of the Messiah. Oh this is so good. You see this is what happens. What Philip becomes in that moment is based on the need that Samaria has.
Darren Rouanzoin:They needed someone not to bring a bunch of conversations about ideas that fit in with Samaritan lifestyle. He is not trying to be relevant to Samaria. He's not trying to you know casually you know convince people of an idea about Jesus. Let me go a little further. He he has some friends in Samaria that have real needs.
Darren Rouanzoin:They're oppressed by demonic spirits. They're tormented by pain. And so he's not sending them Instagram memes. He's not sending them psychology quotes to encourage their spirits. He's proclaiming the resurrected Jesus Christ as the Messiah.
Darren Rouanzoin:You see the gospel is not advice or ideas next to other ideas. It's it's a proclamation about reality. You see what's what's happened in the church is we we just wanna convince people. We wanna be relevant with people. We wanna off offend people.
Darren Rouanzoin:Only what the people need is a proclamation of the Jesus Christ. We have forgotten that what we carry is a message of good news. And when it travels to different cities it says that great joy will be in that place. Because joy is what you receive when you receive Jesus. Only we're trying to convince them of an idea that we're not even full of.
Darren Rouanzoin:Remember I talked about what you give away is what you're filled with. What spills out of you is what's been in you. When people are in need, what comes out of you? I know it's a bunch of Instagram stuff. It's so casual.
Darren Rouanzoin:I know it's a slight encouragement. Do you carry the faith to say God won't waste this moment. Let me contend with you. Cool. I'll pray for you.
Darren Rouanzoin:Thumbs up. Jesus will take ordinary people who are fully surrendered and do miraculous things through their lives. He'll he'll throw you off course. He'll use the brokenness to become the very thing that mends the wounds of the masses. That's the business we're in.
Darren Rouanzoin:Point number three is real simple. It says, So there was great joy in that city. The Gospel always produces joy. That's my third point. The Gospel always produces joy.
Darren Rouanzoin:One thing I have seen in the story is that it starts with a massacre, a church is bleeding and a deacon is on the run and now the arc of the text goes from the worst day of the Jerusalem church that they've ever seen to the Samaritan city celebrating in joy. That does not make sense unless there's resurrection logic. What happens is servants are scattered because and they carry the gospel into the dark places and Samaria had already been claimed by other counterfeit powers. We'll read about Simon the sorcerer who had the poor and the powerful in his presence. And they were wowed.
Darren Rouanzoin:They paid attention to him. But now Philip comes in with no stage, no budget, no endorsement, just full of the spirit of God and the news of a risen king Jesus. And he heals the sick, he sets captives free and the city erupts because joy is always the sound of chains breaking. Joy is always the sound of captives being set free. Joy doesn't happen when you hand someone a religious system.
Darren Rouanzoin:Joy happens when people who have experienced bondage realize the chains are gone. Tim Keller spent his entire ministry in Manhattan trying to make one argument a 100 different ways. And this was his argument. Everybody in the room is worshipping something. He said over and over again, there is no such thing as a secular person.
Darren Rouanzoin:Every human has organized their life around something they are counting on to tell them that they are enough, that makes them feel safe, that gives their life meaning and he names those things. He says a career has a promise that if you achieve enough, you will finally feel like you are enough. There is validation or approval. You get enough people to approve of you and you will know that you have finally made significance or you matter. Or relationships.
Darren Rouanzoin:The promise is if you find the right person they will completely complete you. And then there is this moral performance idea that if the promise is if you be good enough then God will owe you a good life. Only the problem with these things is that they are not evil in themselves. They are good things. And that's the trap.
Darren Rouanzoin:They're beautiful things worth having but we don't just want these things, we need them. They become our gods and the moment a good thing becomes an ultimate thing it stops serving you and starts owning you. And here's what happens with every idol, it fails. Either it gets taken away and the loss is unbearable or you achieve it and you stand at the top and you feel nothing because the promotion came through and something is still missing inside of you. The relationship finally felt secure but the ache inside of you is still there.
Darren Rouanzoin:Why? Because the ache is not asking for more. The ache is asking for God. And Tim Keller says, if we look to some creative thing to give us the meaning, hope and happiness that only God can give, it will eventually fail to deliver and break our hearts. Always without exception every time.
Darren Rouanzoin:The Gospel does not offer you a better idol. It doesn't say want less or manage better or try harder. It announces something other completely. It announces the thing your soul is aching for is actually Jesus. He's not an upgrade it's resurrection.
Darren Rouanzoin:And when that is experienced it's not something that you just when when you've spent a lifetime experiencing the counterfeit powers in the world you don't just sit back and politely nod when you come to Jesus. You shout for joy. And I would like to suggest the lack of joy we experience has to do with the idols that we worship. We'll talk about this in the next couple weeks. But if you've received the gospel, if you've really received Jesus, then he's gonna confront the idols that you're comfortable living with.
Darren Rouanzoin:And once those idols are confronted, joy is truly experienced. And I think it's fascinating that the story arc is wrapped terrible suffering and great joy. But what you have to understand in the journey if you really believe God doesn't waste your worst moments then you really will experience the joy that God wants to give you and that will become your strength. Does that make sense? And the invitation is to become the kinds of people that carry on the things that Jesus wants because God will always empower those who are surrendered.
Darren Rouanzoin:So three things I'll close for you all today. Number one. God doesn't waste your worst moments. He's using them to form you. Number two.
Darren Rouanzoin:God always empowers those who are surrendered. And if your life is number three, if your life has been caught up in counterfeit power, if you have been addicted or stuck in habits of sin and you are longing for healing and freedom, then my invitation for you is to really let Jesus come into your life and surrender those things because everywhere the gospel truly lands, joy breaks out. And the last thing is Acts eight says, those who had been scattered went everywhere preaching the word. These are people. It says the apostles stayed in Jerusalem and everyone everywhere else scattered preached the word.
Darren Rouanzoin:They were not famous, they were not trained, they were not ready, they were simply scattered, they were afraid, they were grieving but they were surrendered and they gave Jesus their yes. So my invitation for you is to give Jesus your yes because now is the time. There is such a hunger in this world right now. There is such a hunger with your coworkers, with your neighbors, with your friends. For whatever reason, God is moving in Southern California.
Darren Rouanzoin:And how is he gonna move? Is he gonna move because somebody saw it on Instagram? Or will it possibly be because you said yes? And that one person that you just so happened to invite gave their life to Jesus and everything changed. That one place that you went to trembling with fear.
Darren Rouanzoin:You didn't say, well my previous thing I did this. You said, whatever you need Lord, empower me. Let's go. Amen? Let's all stand.
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