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Well, good morning.
Glad that you guys are here with us.
If you have Bible, and I hope you do, I want to invite you to join me in first Thessalonians chapter two.
As we turn there, we do have our holiday kind of calendar cards spread out on every row and every aisle here.
I want to encourage you to grab this and join us.
There are a lot of things going on here in the month of December.
Our women's ministry just had their meeting this past Friday night and their favorite things party.
And that was a wonderful time.
I would just share with you all.
I heard that this speaker was absolutely phenomenal, and I think she's absolutely gorgeous as my wife came and shared with the ladies as well.
And just a wonderful, wonderful night.
And I know many of you ladies were part of that, but it's not stopping.
It's not ending there.
It's continuing on with a bunch of things.
And so want to make sure that you have this and make every effort to be a part of this with us.
Also, as Pastor Dave said, at the end of the service, we will be taking the Lord's supper together.
And so if you're visiting here and you don't call Willow Ridge church home and you would like to participate with us, that's fine.
This is for all believers.
It's how we practice communion here at our church.
And so at the very back here by the exit signs, that's where our communion cups are.
It's got the bread and it's got the juice right in there.
And so you can go and you can grab one of those, and it'll be the very last thing we do together as a church family.
Well, before we get into the message, I want to kind of share a little bit with you guys of some exciting things that are going on here in the life of our church.
As you know, if you've been around Willow Ridge church for a while, we are going into budget season.
And so every year we walk through a process.
Joel Van Hammond leads that with our staff, meeting with myself, meeting with other ministry leads, both paid and leads, and walking through piecing together the budget, then sits down with trustees and elders and lays out the plan of what we feel like God's calling us to do in the next calendar year.
And God's been wonderful and God's been faithful in what we've been able to come alongside and to do, we've been able to expand a lot of things and to see a lot of things grow, to see ministries take off and explode, to start new missions, partnerships.
In fact, we've got a team right now who's in New York, New York City.
They are the group from South Carolina that's ended up walking the streets of New York.
And so they're up there for coats for the city with Pastor Walter and his wife Veronica, and ministering to the people there.
Yesterday I got a report from the team that they saw four individuals come to faith in Jesus Christ through having conversations with them as they gave out coats, but then also as Brent was giving out hot chocolate.
If you've been around for any of our stuff, that's a whole ordeal.
So we celebrate the fact that we've seen that, and so we've seen a lot of things grow.
I want to encourage you to pray for them as they'll be traveling home later this evening.
But one of the things that you may not be aware of that I want to share with you is this.
And this is something to celebrate as we celebrate what God has done, but specifically what God has done in the life of men and women and families and individuals as they've been committed to give and to give sacrificially to the Lord.
I don't know if you know this or not, but most churches, I don't have a percentage of those, but most churches have church debt.
And when we talk about church debt, we're not talking about credit card debt.
Almost all churches have a credit card system that gets paid off each month so that ministry can happen and do, but also they have a mortgage to pay for the building or buildings that they occupy.
And over the course of the last several years, what we've done as a staff and as a leadership team of trustees and elders is we've determined to be very aggressive to attack the debt that we have.
And as we aggressively attack the debt, as you sacrificially give.
What we look for and what we long for is if we were to be a debt free church, what could God do with the offerings, with the tides, with the sacrifice, if you were debt free?
And so I don't know that I ever felt like I'd say this, but I can share with you that as of today, Willow Ridge Church is debt free.
And so I thank you.
I thank you for every offering that you give.
And you're entrusting us under the accountability and the guidance of the Lord of.
Our trustees of our elders, to do.
What you've called us to do, and that we can stand here today and say that seven years early that we've paid off our debt.
Right.
So as we go into budget season, I want to invite you, as you leave today, as you walk through these two sets of double doors, you'll notice on the map of the world that we have there, we have offering envelopes, and if you want to give through cash or check, want to encourage you to grab some of those.
But then also beside that, we have our proposed budget for the following year.
I'm not going to sit here this morning and go through every number.
We don't have the time, and you probably don't have the patience to hear me do that.
But as money was freed up, the total money, basically, for the mortgage that has been freed is $93,000.
And several years ago, when Joel shared with me, like, hey, Bo, this is what we're trending toward.
This is what we're doing.
We need to think of a plan.
And so he and I and our staff, trustees, elders, we all began to pray.
Like, what would we do with this?
And so our church budget is broken down into four categories.
The first category that we have is our operations budget.
Right.
And that's paying for the fact that we've got lights on and that we have air conditioning that some of you think is too cold.
And we have air conditioning that some of you think is too hot.
And there's, like, one person in here that's satisfied with the temperature right now.
All right?
And so that's where our operations comes from.
That's where our mortgage was placed before.
We have personnel.
Right.
We have staff members.
Right?
And we're so grateful to be able to say that not only do I have the privilege to be a part of Willard's church, not only do I have the privilege to serve at Willard's church, but you and your kindness and goddess and his goodness allows me to receive a salary and allows our staff to receive and to get paid.
So we literally get paid to be a part of what God is doing here.
And we don't hold that lightly.
But I told him, we have two other areas.
And I said, man, when we go into this, this is what I would love to see us emphasize as we go forward and all of these numbers are shared as you go back and you grab one of those budgets.
But I said, I would love to see in the other two an emphasis in missions and in ministry.
So here's how we define those two missions is anything that happens outside of the walls of this church and sometimes happens inside the walls of this church so that we can find men, women, and children who do not know Jesus Christ as their lord and savior and.
Introduce him to them.
So our ministry partners, both locally and globally, our missions outreach, all of those things that we do, they come out of our missions.
But then our other one is ministry that we believe that God calls us to minister to one another, to disciple one another, and that costs money.
That takes time and talents to do this.
And so we wanted to emphasize and put those forward.
And you can go and you can look at all the numbers.
But I want to share.
I'm just going to share the increases, okay?
I'm just going to share the increases this morning and in our ministry increase this year through the faithfulness of you guys giving, we were able to increase our ministry budget $40,780.
In our missions.
We were able to increase our missions budget $65,900.
Right?
Yeah.
Clap.
Yeah.
And so if you're visiting today and you're like, man, this is, all this guy talks about is just money.
Like, we're done with the money.
And we're not talking about money.
We're talking about God, and we're celebrating.
All that God has done.
And so on behalf of all of.
You, I'll say this.
I don't know what any of you.
Give, not a one, but I know.
That you give sacrificially.
And we've seen the hand and work of God, and we celebrate that.
So we continue forward.
So here's our budget schedule that we have for our church.
Our budget is made available this Sunday.
And the Sunday of the 10th.
Next Sunday.
That's what we're required to do by our bylaws.
And so you can go, you can.
Pick up a copy.
If you forget to pick up a copy, let us know.
We'll get you a copy on December.
The 13th at 07:00 p.m.
That's a Wednesday night.
The budget will be open for discussion.
We'll host a crew here.
Joel and I will be there, and it's where you can come.
We'll go over the budget in more.
Detail and give you an opportunity to ask questions.
If you have questions already and you don't want to wait till the 13th, we invite you to ask us those questions and ask Joel.
Joel is going to be the one that knows the most about all of it.
But if you've got a specific area and you're curious about any of us as staff, I'm sure we can answer your question or get you to the person that can answer those questions.
And then lastly, on December 17, the budget will be voted on without discussion.
That's a Sunday morning.
At the end of the service, we'll dismiss all of our guests and those who aren't members, and we will do.
A budget without discussion on that Sunday morning.
All right.
And so we're just excited to see.
We've kind of never lived in this spot before in my ministry.
I've never been a part of church that's debt free and just excited to.
See all that God is going to do with this.
Amen.
All right, well, this morning we are going to get started on our series.
We're looking at a message series called the gifts of grace.
As we enter into this Christmas season, I thought this would be an appropriate place for us to look at and acknowledge that in our walk with Christ we get things and then we're called to give things.
And so we looked at John 316 through 17.
It's kind of our focus of this verse.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
So God gives us Jesus with a point and with a purpose, right?
That people, men, women and children, would come to the saving grace of Jesus Christ as their lord and savior, but not only that of Jesus.
You and I are given many gifts.
Last week, we talked about forgiveness and that in Christ that we are forgiven.
And we talked about what it means to be forgiven.
But then also within that, that you and I are called to be people of forgiveness.
Like, at least three times that we looked at in the New Testament.
It says to forgive as you have been forgiven.
Right?
So there's a pretty good standard of what we're given that we are supposed to do.
And now, while you and I, we cannot forgive someone's sins the way that Jesus does, right?
Like, we can't say you were forgiven.
Eternal life, all that kind of stuff.
That's not who we are.
That's not what we're capable of.
We are called to forgive individuals who sin against us.
And so someone hurts us, someone brings calamity into our lives, someone persecutes us.
The Bible is very clear that we are called to forgive them.
And that's what we looked at last week.
The gift that we're going to look at this morning is the gift of community.
The gift of community.
And so what is community?
Well, biblical community at its most basic and broadest levels is the community of the followers of Jesus, the global church.
So we span out across denominational lines.
We span out across nations and borders.
We span out across languages that other fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, all believers everywhere, right, are our brothers and sisters the community of God.
But then what we see in scripture is this narrowing down of what we see as we look at the global church.
And then we become more forward.
So we begin with all believers everywhere.
But even in scripture, we narrow that down to all believers denominationally.
And so what's, what we see in the book of acts is where different individuals, they partner together for the mission and the spreading of the gospel, but not everybody partners together.
And so largely within our denomination, we use this phrase called cooperation.
And that's what we do.
We're looking to cooperate with one another, not to make sure we have the same worship style, not to make sure that the pastor wears the same type of clothes on Sundays, not any of those things.
But we cooperate together so that men, women and children can have the opportunity to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.
So, like right now in coats for the city, there's dozens of South Carolina Baptist churches who left South Carolina to go up to New York so that we could partner with each other, but partner with New York Metro Baptist association churches for the work of the gospel.
And so the individuals that came to faith in Christ yesterday may never darken the door of our church.
But not only is that okay, but we celebrate that because we're partnered with other churches that are there.
And so we look at denominationally, we look at all believers locally.
All believers locally.
So we understand that it's not competition.
We understand that we're working together.
We understand.
And we stop trying to steal other church members from other churches just to make sure that we can have more people here.
Now, does God work and does God move people?
Absolutely.
But we understand that locally that we've come together for a purpose and for a reason, to pray for and to see that we're reaching this unique area of where God has placed us.
And so thousands upon thousands of believers here in the Lexington area, we understand.
That we partner that, all believers in partnerships.
So we begin to narrow that down.
Right.
That's part of what we looked at when we looked at our missions night.
And I hope you had the opportunity to be part of that.
But a wonderful gathering of.
We are forming official partnerships with organizations like Black Mountain children's Home.
We're forming partnerships with individuals like Sam John, like Walter Valencia, like Daryl Cheek.
We're partnering within one another.
So while we may be scattered here locally or we're partnered all over the globe, that we're working for a commonality and we're working for the good of that.
And when you look through the budget, you'll see a greater emphasis has been placed on these partnerships.
But we also look at all believers congregationally, all right?
And that's community.
And that's us.
That's us, right?
We are that weird group of people that have partnered together for the work.
Of the gospel with all of our.
Bumps and bruises and warts and scars, of how God wants to use us.
For his name and his glory.
And so we invest into one another.
We get to know one another, we.
Love one another, and this is why.
We call this particular church home.
But then we look at all believers.
And this is the last part.
All believers, relationally, that we understand that even gathered in this room, right, like.
We can't form the depth of relationship that we need.
And so we focus in on small groups, we focus in on studies.
We do things like the women's ministry gatherings and the men's ministry gatherings in.
These times so that we can deep.
Down in and dive into relationship with one another.
So, like, for me, I've got a group of men, there's eight of us that meet together on Thursdays for lunch at the old mill, the Creekside restaurant.
That's what it's called.
Creekside restaurant.
Right?
And we're working through experiencing God together and eating fried chicken at the same time.
And it's just wonderful, right?
And God's in both of those fried chicken and experiencing God.
And so we do these things and.
We invest into one another's lives.
And so we see this depth of community in first Thessalonians.
Chapter two, verse.
Starting in verse one, we see this depth of community that Paul is going to communicate to the church at Thessalica.
Chapter two, verse one.
For you yourselves.
Know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain.
Now, I'm not going to go through and read through all of the things, but there's some things that Paul speaks through over the course of first Thessalonians that point to Paul's loving relationship with this church and their loving relationship with him.
Number one, Paul writes them.
All right?
Paul writes them.
I don't know if you've written a letter.
I've written letters before now.
I think we just send text messages.
But I've written a letter before, but.
My letter ain't like this, and it.
Wasn'T dropped in the mailbox.
So we see the depth of what Paul, as he writes them.
Chapter one solely talks about his thankfulness.
For him, for them.
They know his story and he knows theirs.
Paul has been with them.
There's a level of relational intimacy that is shared, and Paul refers to them as affectionately as brothers.
And this word brother means the one born of the same womb.
Obviously, all of these men and women did not share the same earthly mother that Paul had, but the womb of the gospel and the commonality that we find there.
So here's what I want to ask you.
As we look at this, we talk.
About community and that we've been given.
The gift of community received.
When it comes to your walk with Jesus, do you have those in your life who are spiritual brothers and spiritual sisters?
Do you have spiritual brothers and spiritual sisters, or do you have a bunch of casual acquaintances?
Paul writes in Romans twelve nine through 13.
He says, let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love another with brotherly affection.
Outdo one another and showing honor.
Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord, rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer, contribute to the needs.
Of the saints, and seek to show hospitality.
Paul writes to the church at Rome and challenges this within the body of believers who were there, that this is the level of relationship that you have.
And here's what I want to impress on you is this, you cannot live in the fullness of what God has for you.
If, spiritually speaking, romans twelve nine through 13 is not seen in your life, you have to have a group of men and women and others who invest in you, and it's a gift from God that you have this and you.
So desperately need it.
Four questions.
If you're like, I think I have that.
I think I have that.
I want to ask you four questions.
And these four questions are not going to be, are you part of a.
Study or part of a small group?
They're not going to be a part of that.
Because while I want you to get connected in a study or a small group, this message is not a push.
To get you to do more things.
Number one is this, do you have fellowship with christians in your life who ask you the hard questions and who you're honest with?
You and I have a lot of people that ask us how our week was and have a lot of people that our answer is fine.
Good.
Okay.
That's not what I'm talking about.
Do you have a group of fellow christians in your life who know you to the depth that they do, and they ask you the hard questions, and then more so, and this is the answer that only you can answer.
Are you honest with them?
And if you're not honest with them, you don't have community.
Number two.
Do you have fellow christians.
In your life who feel what you feel?
Who feel what you feel?
The Bible calls us to weep with those who weep, to rejoice with those who rejoice, that we feel what they feel as a parent, feels the hurt of their child, as a spouse, feels the hurt of the other spouse, as we share in the joy that one experiences.
Do you have individuals in your life who feel what you feel?
Number three, do you have fellow christians in your life who delight in your growth in the Lord?
They delight in your growth with the Lord.
I've got a group of pastors and.
We meet once a month together here at our church.
And they're all local.
They're all part of our association with us.
And one of the things that I think has been interesting is we all know about the growing pains of church.
We know that sometimes we walk through difficult seasons.
But what's been really encouraging to see over the last three, four, five months is in us.
When someone comes in and says, man, I had a great Sunday.
Let me tell you what happened.
And to watch the expressions of the faces, not be like, man, I wish I had that.
But be smiles of rejoicing with our brother in Christ.
Do you have fellow Christians in your life who delight in your growth in the Lord?
And number four, do you have fellow Christians in your life who consistently pray for you?
They pray for you.
I'm not talking about like when you.
Give your prayer request, and so they make note of that.
I'm talking about when they have their quiet time.
You're on their list.
They might not even know what to pray, but they trust in the guidance.
Of the spirit to pray for you.
They're praying for you.
Folks, if I could strip biblical community down to its base level, it would.
Be that it's men and women who.
Are willing to ask each other hard.
Questions and be honest with.
It's men and women who share and rejoice and they partner in the pain.
Of life with one another.
It's men and women who desire not only to see their personal growth in the Lord, but they desire to see others growth in the Lord as well.
And it's men and women who, even though they don't know what the request.
Is, they pray for one another diligently and consistently.
Do you have that?
One of the most selfish positions we.
Can say as a Christian is this statement, I don't need community.
I don't need community, because we've misunderstood it.
We've thought it's just for us.
But the next thing that we're going to look at in Thessalonians is the.
Gift of community given.
When you're invited into a study, when you're invited into community, when somebody says, let's do life together, what they're saying to you is, I've received this.
I want to give this away.
And we are entering into a relationship that's beyond, like, master, teacher, and student, that we're entering into a relationship between a brother in Christ or between a sister in Christ, where we are investing in one another.
And I don't know about you, but to have a relationship where it's just one person is not a relationship.
That's a crazy person talking to themselves.
And we need one another back and forth.
Let's look at what Paul says.
We're going to start in verse two and read through verse twelve.
But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we have boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict.
For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive.
But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak not to please man, but to please God, who test our hearts.
For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed.
God is witness.
Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ.
But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.
So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us.
For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil, we work night and day that you might not be a burden to any of you.
While we proclaim to you the gospel of God, you are witnesses and God also.
How holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers.
For you know how like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy.
Of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.
And this is what it looks like.
To invest in others in biblical community.
My group that meets on Thursdays, all right, we talk sports.
All of us are okay, because none of our teams won or lost yesterday, right?
They didn't play.
We talk about our lives.
We talk about our families.
We talk about our hobbies.
We have time of real life, impactful things.
But we're not a good old boys club.
We're not an Oprah Winfrey book club, and we're not a Dr.
Phil.
Here's just how to feel better about who you are, because that's not what biblical community is.
When we look down in what we see, Paul says, let's don't confuse the.
Gathering of individuals who say that they're.
Believers but who don't deal with the things of the Lord as primary.
As primary.
Right.
Things that we see from this passage of scripture that Paul shares in community with this church is Paul's community is gospel centered.
It's gospel centered.
He's like, look, look, and I'm gonna paraphrase a lot of these quotes from this.
He says, look, we're not here to.
Please man, but here to please God.
So we're not going to tickle your.
Ears with what you want to say.
We're going to be here to be a gospel centered community because it's our.
Hope that if you don't know Jesus.
Christ as your Lord and savior, that today would be the day that you.
Take that step of faith.
But if you do, if you do that, you understand that God loves you.
Too much to save you and then leave you right where you are.
And so we want to walk alongside that.
It's gospel centered.
Number two, Paul's community is truth centered.
It's truth centered.
I love his words.
We never came with words of flattery.
Paul's like, look, I'm not here to give you a sales pitch.
I'm not here to be inauthentic with you, and here's the deal.
And I don't want you to be that way with me.
We're here to deal with the truth of God's word, the truth of our lives, the truth of scripture.
And we're not here for simple words of Flattery.
We're here for the truth.
Third, Paul's community was authentic and sacrificial.
Paul says, we do not seek glory.
From people or from you.
Look, this is who we are.
We're not trying to sell ourselves to.
Something better than we are.
And then he says, and we desired.
To not only share the gospel, but ourselves.
So Paul says, it's not only just the gospel that we share, but it's our life.
It's our life.
It's our investment, not for Paul, but for us.
It's a phone call, a text message, a visit.
It's a burden that we share.
Number four.
Paul's community was spiritually sensitive.
I love the illustration.
Paul says, but we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her children.
All right, that to me is not.
A verse that says, let me beat.
You upside the head with the gospel.
That's a picture that says to me that there's some of us who are babes in Christ.
And what we need to do is care for you, like a nursing mother cares for her children.
The beautiful picture of what God gives us as we see a mother loving a child to the point where his or her life, their growth, is dependent on what she can give.
Do we say hard things?
Sure.
Do we confront?
Absolutely.
But it's not done with an attitude.
And I've been there, done that, watched.
It and been a part of it, of we got you.
It's not that.
It's here's what the Lord has for you.
Number five.
Paul's community was led by example.
This is a bold statement that Paul says.
He says, how righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you.
So what Paul is doing, what Paul is saying, paul's already established he's authentic.
But Paul in his walk with the Lord, is permanent and is in front of them in his hope is that what they see is a man maturing in Christ, and they see the righteousness of what Paul is doing because he walks in the power of the spirit.
But it's not just for him.
Paul's community was challenging.
He says, we exhorted each one of you and encourage you to walk in a manner worthy of God.
We walk in a manner worthy of God, all of us, the babes in Christ, the mature in Christ, and everyone in between.
And here's what's cool about community.
We get to join hands and do it together.
So we receive this gift, this gift of community received and this gift of community given.
What stops you from this?
If you're like, I don't know, I'm.
Going to share with you in my 20 plus years of ministry experience, very quickly, five excuses, not justifiable reasons, but five excuses that people give of why they don't need others like this in their life.
Excuse number one, the excuse of busy.
The excuse of busy.
All right.
It.
We're all busy.
I get that.
Some of us, at varying degrees of busyness, one of the most beautiful, expensive things that God's given me is for my kid to get driver's licenses.
It's expensive, but I ain't got car line.
You know, we find the excuse of busy.
Let me just say this.
Here's what I believe.
You're only as busy as you will allow yourself to be.
And if you need help finding some margin in your day, let's have a talk, and I'll help you, and you can help me walk away from the excuse of busy.
Number two is the excuse of privacy.
The excuse of privacy.
My relationship with the Lord is personal and private.
Okay.
Your relationship with the Lord is personal.
And number two, it's never been called to be private.
That's the journey we go on as believers.
That's why when we prayed for Kate, that her journey is not to sit back and say, well, now that I've done this, look what I've become, look at who I am.
But now that she's followed through with this and the testimony of public before others, it's, how can I go share my life with others so that they could come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior?
I'm not saying everybody at all times needs to know all your business, but.
You do have to have someone or some people in your life who can ask you the hard questions and who you're honest with.
Number three, the excuse of family.
The excuse of family.
All right.
It's no secret.
I love my wife.
I love my kids.
I'm so blessed with the family that we have.
We share things.
Aaron, I talked about one day a couple months ago.
We're like the level of transparency that.
Is happening between us and our kids.
Sometimes I'm uncomfortable with, but I love it.
I love it.
They tell us things.
We tell them things.
We talk.
But here's the deal, Aaron and my kids do not need to be the only individuals that carry my burden, and they do not need to be.
I do not need to be the only individual who carries theirs.
I need other men in my life that can speak the truth and the.
Hope of the gospel to me that confront me in the right context.
I need godly women in my life who can help me see and understand my wife from her perspective that I can't oftentimes, because I'm not her.
But when we use the excuse of our family, oftentimes, the gospel never goes past our front door.
Number four, the excuse of the past.
The excuse of the past.
If we were to show our hands.
In this room of those who have been hurt by a church, hurt by.
A bible study, hurt by Sunday school.
Class, hurt by a small group experience.
Or had a negative encounter with one of those, there would be a bunch.
Of hands up in the air.
And what we've done that we talked about last week is we've forgotten to forgive, and we've held on to a grudge.
We've held on to a grudge, and we're not living how God has for us.
And then the fifth, this is the last one, is the excuse of arrogance.
I was talking to a guy one day, he doesn't go here.
And we were talking about discipleship and.
Community, and he asked me how old I was.
I told him I was 44.
Is that right?
Said I was 44.
I said, I've been a believer for about 22 years, half my life.
And he said, bo, I've been a believer for about 60 years now.
Never a point in time in my life that I don't ever remember being a follower of Jesus.
And I've just come to tell you that I've sat through Sunday school classes and bible studies.
I've sat through small groups and men's studies and all the different ones that churches can come up with.
And I said, and not one time have I felt like I've walked away with anything that can help me grow in my walk with Jesus.
And I thought, what a sad and selfish statement.
What a sad and selfish statement that you think this is all about you, and so you're willing to walk away from them.
I want to challenge you to take a step.
New Year's is coming, right?
I hope you're putting on the pounds.
During the month of December so that.
We can all hit the gym in.
The month of January.
Right?
That's it.
We'll be running wind sprints every Monday.
And Wednesday here at the church after you do that.
But if you're not already, you're probably that group of people that's decided, man.
The first year, I'm going to do some things different.
I'm going to be better.
Less Netflix, more time in the word, less eating Krispy Kreme donuts, more eating.
Things that don't taste good.
Right?
Starting to think through things different.
I'll get there it won't last for.
The Krispy Kremes, right?
Manna from heaven.
But if this is you, and you look at that and you're like, hey.
I don't have that in my life.
I want to challenge you in one of four areas.
All right.
Number one, I want to challenge you for a relational, small group.
Whether you've been in one or not.
We've got them on Sunday morning, we've got them on different nights.
We've got them on Sunday nights.
We've got them on other days of the week.
I want to challenge you to be part of a relational, small group.
Number two, if you're like, man, that's jumping in the deep end for me.
I'm not ready for.
Cool, cool.
We've got church studies that pastor Dave's.
Going to be talking about.
We're already looking for our next semester of what comes forward and starts in.
January, and we're excited to see that all that God is going to do that.
Want to press into you to do that.
You're like, Manbo.
I don't even know about that.
Okay, well, cool.
Then there's number three.
Number three is we're going to have some more church events.
We want to invite you the opportunity to come alongside, rub shoulders, rub elbows.
Get to know one another.
Stop just being somebody that walks in.
Here on Sunday mornings and doesn't know anybody who's here.
Come to some of these things.
Like, we're busy, you're busy.
This is not put together to entertain you or to entertain us.
This is put together because we're a.
Family and we need to know each other, and we need to love one another.
And then this, when you come to this, don't just sit down with the same six people you sat with last week.
Take a step for what God has.
And number four, and this is the last one, you're like, bo, you talked about that big church, and I got neighbors, and I got coworkers, and I've got things here.
But what if I wanted to reach out there?
Here's what I want to challenge you with.
Maybe God is calling you to develop community right where you are.
Maybe right where you are.
This is going to seem weird.
Maybe instead of engaging in a small group here, maybe instead of engaging in a study here, what does fit in the busyness of your life is to engage with that there.
And then here's the deal.
If that's you, you don't need to do that on your own.
We want to do that with you and we want to celebrate you and we want to challenge you as you do that so you may feel led to start one right there in your cul de sac.
You may feel led to start one.
Right there during your lunch break.
How arrogant of us to think that community can only happen here.
So we want to help you.
Would you be willing to take that step?
In just a moment?
I'll pray.
After my time of prayer, the worship.
Team will come up on stage, lead.
Us in a song.
After that, we will partake in the Lord's Supper together as we close our time together.
As I said before, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, whether this is your church home or not, we invite.
You to take this with us as.
We enter into this time of worship.
What we would ask of you is, under the dependence of the Holy Spirit, you would evaluate your heart for the readiness to partake in the Lord's supper with us.
That you would check your heart for.
Any unrepentant sin that you may have.
And in that moment, confess those sins, repent of them before the Lord.
Secondly, that you would check your heart and relationships with other believers and ask yourself, do I need to forgive someone or is there someone that I need.
To seek forgiveness from?
And maybe today, as we take this together, is not the right time for you.
And that's okay.
There's no judgment.
We just want you to do as the Lord is calling you and is leading you.
Do you join me as we go to the Lord in prayer?
God, I thank you so much for today.
I thank you for this wonderful time and opportunity that we have here.
Lord, I pray for deep layers of.
Community.
That scan across small groups and studies into neighborhoods, into workplaces.
Lord, I pray that we would see that you give us community.
You call us into this.
It's a gift.
Lord, when I got saved, I went.
From having one earthly sister, one.
To brothers and sisters in Christ, to numerous.
Account and, Lord, I need them and they need me because we're family.
We're family.
God, under the calling and the guidance.
Of your spirit, pray that we'd be.
Obedient to take the step that you've called us to take.
Or may we lay down our excuses.
And may we seek to be obedient in all that we do.
It's in Jesus'name we pray.
Amen.
Thanks again for listening and be sure to check back next week for another episode.
In the meantime, you can visit us@willowridgechurch.org or by searching for Willow Ridge church on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.