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Welcome to the first sermon in our new series, "Leveling Up Together: Why Our Gaming Community Needs Spiritual Support." In this episode, "Guilds and Grace: Why We Need Each Other," we explore the powerful role community plays in both our spiritual and gaming lives. Just like in guilds where teamwork and cooperation help us win, we also need each other to grow in faith. Discover how God’s grace strengthens us as a community and why no one should journey alone.
Join us for this deep dive into the importance of unity, grace, and fellowship in building a meaningful, faith-filled life. Whether you're a gamer, geek, or just looking for spiritual support, this message is for you!
Creators & Guests
What is Church Nerds United?
Welcome to Church Nerds United, the ultimate podcast where the sacred and the geeky collide! Dive deep into the Holy Scriptures with us as we explore sermons sprinkled with your favorite gaming quests, cosplay characters, and anime adventures. Whether you're a Paladin of Prayer, a Cosplay Crusader, or an Otaku of the Old Testament, this is your sanctuary.
Join our fellowship as we level up our faith through the lens of epic battles, legendary heroes, and fantastical worlds. From the wisdom of the Proverbs to the valor of the Apostles, we'll draw parallels between biblical narratives and the beloved realms of gaming, cosplay, and anime.
Tune in for:
Sermon Side Quests: Discover the deeper meaning behind Scripture with analogies from your favorite games and anime.
Cosplay Character Spotlight: Unveil the biblical virtues embodied by iconic characters and how they inspire our spiritual journey.
Anime Apologetics: Engage in lively discussions that bridge the gap between faith and fandom, unraveling the spiritual themes in popular series.
So, grab your controller, don your cosplay armor, and get ready to embark on an epic quest of faith and fandom. Church Nerds United is here to guide you on a heroic journey, one episode at a time. May the faith be with you!
Hey there, fellow church nerds. Welcome to another episode of Church Nerds United, the podcast where faith meets fandom and sermons are the new superhero stories. That's right. Today, we've got a sermon that's more epic than the Battle of Helm's Deep and more inspiring than Captain America's pep talks. But before we dive into this week's divine download, don't forget to hit that like button, subscribe, and ring the bell so you never miss an episode.
Guild Announcer:And, hey, if you love what we do and want to support the show, consider donating. Every little bit helps us keep the nerdy goodness coming your way. You can find the donation link in the show notes or head over to our website at greaterguild.org. Join the ranks of our greater guild army and help us spread the geeky gospel far and wide. Now without further ado, let's jump into this week's sermon.
Guild Announcer:Grab your bibles, light up your lightsabers, and get ready to dive deep into the word of God.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Well, welcome back, everyone. It is your host, pastor Brandon Holm here at the Greater Guild. I just wanna say thank you for joining us today. And we're gonna be discussing,
Pastor Brandon Holm:you know, why guilds and grace and why we need each other. You know, people think, well, you know, do I need to?
Pastor Brandon Holm:I can go solo. I can do all these things by myself.
Pastor Brandon Holm:And for
Pastor Brandon Holm:the most part, that's true. But let's really
Pastor Brandon Holm:get to the meat of the whole issue here, is that you go to work, and oddly enough you have co workers. Funny how that works.
Pastor Brandon Holm:And you just basically work with others, and your goal is to produce the amount of work the job requires you in a certain set of time, and you're gonna need a lot of people and a lot of communication goes on. Well, same thing for guilds. I mean, think about it. You know, a guild is really bit a bunch of people who have different talents, different, skills, different, backgrounds that come together and go out adventuring either solo or together. So doesn't matter if you're gonna do a solo quest or a dungeon.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Doesn't matter.
Pastor Brandon Holm:But the point is is that they're all together. And the
Pastor Brandon Holm:same thing is for us in life. We're not supposed to do life alone, you know, faith alone. That's not how this works. Church and gaming communities thrive when we support one another spiritually. Fellowship is essential for growth and spiritual strength, you know, especially when we're having major issues in our own lives.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Now if you look at Ecclesiastes, it says, 2 are better than 1 because they have a good reward for their toil. Or if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, and has not another to lift him up. And that really gets us into the first part of this whole thing is the power of the guild. You know, not just the greater guild as a, you know, as a church, but also guilds in general.
Pastor Brandon Holm:You know, you go in in MMOs like war World of Warcraft, they've got guilds all over the place. And you can find people to help you tackle a dungeon. Not in the Leroy Jenkins, aspect I hope, or many of you, but that's there available to you. Now everybody has a role in that situation, and if you look at the Leroy Jenkins clip, you have people, you know, one's per calculating your chances of survival, and very low as they were. But if you look at how they're played out, they've got healers.
Pastor Brandon Holm:They've got damage dealers. You know? They've got tanks. You know? They've got support characters.
Pastor Brandon Holm:The whole 9 yards. And just like a guild needs every player to survive and succeed, we do need that in life too. It's not an alone thing. Now many of us go home alone. It's fine.
Pastor Brandon Holm:That happens. You know, we haven't found the right person to share life with permanently. And during that time, we're still you know, we go out with friends. We go to the bars, we go drinking. We go to the karaoke club, start singing.
Pastor Brandon Holm:We go to Comic Cons to get together. Those are things that we do as groups and do but how is it that we can't translate those type of activities into what we need to do in life? Is that be together and go through it? Now, God designed us not to be static, not to be alone. It's really funny how people think that way.
Pastor Brandon Holm:It's, like, I can tackle this alone. I can do this on my own. But it's funny, if you go and go to the gym, every so often somebody will come up and help you out. A gym partner, or a gym bro, or a gym lass, that I like to call the female version. And they'll help you out.
Pastor Brandon Holm:They'll help you get strength. You know, if you have questions, sometimes you can find them, sometimes you don't. Or you can always ask somebody. You know, how do I do this? How do you know, what's more effective?
Pastor Brandon Holm:How do you get those gains? You know, those type of questions. And then you go to church, it's the same thing. Can you pray for me? Can you do this for me?
Pastor Brandon Holm:But you go to, you
Pastor Brandon Holm:know and then you go to Comic Cons. It's like you go as a group, you're going as friends if you were in a group, and it's like you you're playing as a group, you know, cosplaying as a group. God didn't build us to be solo. In fact, he built us to thrive in a community. That's why we have cities, nations, you know, ideally people who live together, who have similar social mores that work together to build up a better society.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Pretty much what any nation is, pretty much what every city is, town, county, state. It's really what it is. And we don't see that sometimes because we basically have been told, you know, you you know, for the for the feminine movement, I don't need no man. For men we've always pretty much done it alone, that's not a bad thing, but, you know, as one of the songs from way back in the day says, a woman needs a man, a man must have his mate. That's kind of what we're playing here, and it's very dangerous going solo half the time.
Pastor Brandon Holm:You know there are games built for the single player and those are great. Aren't they? But sometimes if you're playing those games don't you ask yourself, man can't I just have somebody to help me out? You know go through this game with me? You know I wish I had multiplayer where we can co op the single player missions.
Pastor Brandon Holm:I don't you know I don't know about you but I have. And that's when it's like you're getting killed. I mean Dark Souls is really the best option here in in Elder Ring. Any soul or any really souls like game. And it's funny many of the souls like games do have a partner program built into it.
Pastor Brandon Holm:A co op. Not all of them, but some of them do. And funny enough with those it's like it still is gonna beat the living crap out of you, but it's a lot easier. You're not dying as much sometimes. So when you have that lack of support in life, what do you think you're gonna do?
Pastor Brandon Holm:Are you gonna succeed a 100%
Pastor Brandon Holm:of the time? No. And I'm
Pastor Brandon Holm:not saying that you have a partner or friends and stuff like that that you can, you know, do life together spiritually, mentally, physically. But it's a lot easier, isn't it? I mean, I go and see a therapist weekly. You know, I I I don't see any other way because that gets my mental health totally back on track. I go to the gym.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Yes. I do. You may not see it now, but I have lost a lot of weight as many of you've known, and hopefully have noticed since way back in the day. I go to the gym, and sometimes I'm just like, you know what? I don't know know if I'm doing something right.
Pastor Brandon Holm:I'll find somebody who's doing pretty much the same exact workout that I'm doing, or close to it, and I'm, like, hey, you know? And I have done this. Hey, you know, am I missing something? You know? What I'm not feeling what it's supposed
Guild Announcer:to be.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Am I missing? What's my technique? And a person usually very nicely always helps me out. And that's the same with our spiritual. We can't do anything by ourselves spiritually.
Pastor Brandon Holm:I mean, let's go all the way back to Genesis that God had built us, and you saw the flash up earlier, because I
Pastor Brandon Holm:hit the wrong button. But seriously,
Pastor Brandon Holm:even God says that we can't be alone. Then the Lord God said, it is not good for that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Isn't that true of life? I mean, we try to find you know, that's what our friends are for.
Pastor Brandon Holm:That's what our work colleagues are for. That's what our gym bros and gym lasses are for. That's what our therapists are for. They're not there to just be there. They're help they're there to help you get through the things that you need help on, and church does that too.
Pastor Brandon Holm:I've been to churches where that's a great thing. Everybody's there to help you. And I've been to churches where it's, like, they have their own little clicks, and you can't be part of that click because you don't fit into their mindset. I've been to both types,
Pastor Brandon Holm:and it sucks. The reason
Pastor Brandon Holm:why I say playing playing solo is very dangerous in life, and in many of the aspects of of physical, spiritual, and mental, is because you get the enemy to target you a lot better, and you'll listen to the words a little bit more because you don't have somebody to talk to. You don't have somebody saying, hey, you know, why are you doing that? You know, it's what is known as objective morality and that's one of the cases for God. But also, it's not somebody else to say, hold on. Why are you doing that?
Pastor Brandon Holm:Are you are you gonna be doing something stupid? You know, it's that a little check and balance there. That's why you can't do life solo. It is the checks and balances that keep us mindful, but that doesn't mean anything if you're doing stuff alone. I mean, yeah, you can survive alone.
Pastor Brandon Holm:I mean, a lot of people do. That's great. But if you noticed in the last couple of years, many females are in their forties now. They were told, you know, be the powerful woman that you are. You don't need a man.
Pastor Brandon Holm:You can go on with life. And now they're trying to find husbands, and they're not connecting. They're dating constantly, but there's no connection. And if you notice what they're doing, they're make some of them are making really horrendous life choices. And this is not to pick on women as in general, but they're the most vociferous in this aspect.
Pastor Brandon Holm:And this is why I say, you know, the Annie is looks for people who are very isolated and will have them go do other things. Now that doesn't mean that, you know, they have to do it. It's just more of their choices lead to that, and that is on your level. That is on you. You're the one that makes the final choice in everything.
Pastor Brandon Holm:So when it comes to playing solid, you have to be mindful. You have to be sober minded. You have to be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour, and that's the main goal of the devil. Satan, the enemy, however you wanna take, they want to cut you off from society so you can be miserable, so you can go down dark paths, so that by the time you're done and everything's is said and done, you don't have a life to live.
Pastor Brandon Holm:And you're not gonna do life. And say you are in a real troublesome spot and you wanna help somebody. You're not gonna be doing that. Because either you have been shuffled off this mortal coil early through variety of means or you lived a long and fruitless life and you can't share on that wisdom. God will put people, places, things into our lives to make sure that we're not doing things alone, or to give you that kick in the in the rear end to say, hey, this is somebody important that you need to do life with.
Pastor Brandon Holm:And not just on a spiritual level. Sometimes it's a mental level. This is a good therapist. You 2 fit. It works.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Going and playing games. Hey, this team really works. They're gonna get together. Hey, you know, we wanna continue doing that. And that's why guilt in churches are do you'll find people to get into that groove and mindset that says, oh, wow.
Pastor Brandon Holm:You know, that's cool. Or, oh, you know, I'm having a hard time. Is there anybody that's gone through this? Oh, yes. I have.
Pastor Brandon Holm:That's the whole point. And when we do that we actually gain spiritual buffs from this type of fellowship. You know we we can you know in games we drink flasks to buff ourselves. We drink potions. We drink herbs.
Pastor Brandon Holm:We you know we drink herbs. We eat herbs. We all and we wear items of armor, jewelry, you know, hats, whatever, and they have certain buffs to us.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Well, that's what really finding people out there and fellowship really is. There are gonna be people some
Pastor Brandon Holm:of them, don't get me wrong, are going to weigh you down. But maybe that that person weighing you down is suffering from stuff that you have done in the past, and they just need somebody to help them out, where you can buff them up, where you can say to them, hey, what's going on? Oh, I've been there before. Here's how I tackled it. Do you need someone to help you through this?
Pastor Brandon Holm:We've become a society not just here in America but globally except for a few countries where isolation has become the big thing, and it never helped during the pandemic that this rose you know, that made that even greater. And the only thing I can say about that is is comes from Proverbs. And it says, iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. And I'm not saying man as, you know, the male species. I'm talking about man as in mankind.
Pastor Brandon Holm:That includes women. That includes children. I mean, if you've noticed from the past, you know, you go through elementary school, through all your schooling, up until college. And some of you have friends from you know I did until he passed away, but all the way from elementary school to high school. And we would actually talk, we'd you know joke around we'd have fun we do stupid stuff and thank goodness that we didn't have smartphones back then because you can't prove that I did some of the stuff that I I have done oh the power of Gen X But if you look at it at it from that mentality, we actually worked with each other built up.
Pastor Brandon Holm:So he would get depressed. I would cheer him up. I'd get depressed. He'd cheer me up. And we built ourselves up to have this great life.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Now some of us didn't have it, and unfortunately my friend did pass away from from cancer at the ripe old age of 40, 46. It sucked. Because now he's gone I'm just like, dude that sucked. I mean, we played off each other. Had fun.
Pastor Brandon Holm:We were great Disney nuts. I mean, talk about that. My wife knew that if we were just like, oh my gosh. They're crazy again. But, you know, she loved us.
Pastor Brandon Holm:That's the same. And that's how we do should do life. Now we go on to college. We make new friends. Some know their old friends go away.
Pastor Brandon Holm:That does happen. But it's the ones that stick with us throughout our lives. The ones who have gone through through the same things we've done it, through thick and thin, who who will be there when you are down on your luck. Those are not the fair weather friends where it's like you ask for help and they're gone. These are the people that stick with you and say, hey, is there anything I can do to help you out?
Pastor Brandon Holm:And it can't and and a lot of people say, well, that's financial. No. Financial is just maybe a portion of it. Sometimes the all the person needs is a kind word, a helping hand, a little support to lift them up. It doesn't have to be financial.
Pastor Brandon Holm:It could be just anything.
Pastor Brandon Holm:So how do we do that?
Pastor Brandon Holm:Well, Hebrews gives us a great aspect to that, and says, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, and we've talked about that word works. It doesn't say work, it says works, and later on in in the season we'll talk about that too. But not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. The day drawing near? Wow.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Where have we heard that before? We're not talking about a night and day cycle. In this passage we're talking about the end of life. You know when we die, when we pass away. So it is always good to consider that, and that's what I've been trying to illustrate here is it's about encouragement, accountability, prayer, wisdom.
Pastor Brandon Holm:It doesn't have to be financial, but that's the whole thing. You see somebody down the line, what are you gonna do?
Pastor Brandon Holm:I mean, what are you going to do? Are you gonna
Pastor Brandon Holm:give them encouragement? Or are they doing something bad that you're, like, you know, dude, don't do that accountability. Or they just need a prayer so that you're on their
Pastor Brandon Holm:mind, or they're on your mind too, and wisdom. Maybe you know something that they're going through, and it's, like, oh,
Pastor Brandon Holm:I've been there before. This is what works for me. Let's let me talk to him about that
Pastor Brandon Holm:or her, you know.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Again, sorry. Being the male that I am, I usually generally go for the male. Please excuse me. But the idea here is we have spiritual gifts that we have that can boost other people. Basically, it could be, you know, like the Bard giving us the charisma boost.
Pastor Brandon Holm:You know, We can do that too. We have that power to do it, and God has given us those spiritual gifts. And if you wanna read about them further, look at first Corinthians chapter 12, all of chapter 12. It talks about this. Not at length and not in a great detail, but it talks about our spiritual gifts in relation to how we are and in relation to others.
Pastor Brandon Holm:And this is why we can't do life because, again, as we talked about in Genesis earlier, we're not meant to be going at it alone. We're supposed to be together and there's reasons for this. We have different aspects, different idealisms, different ways we were brought up, and sometimes we're lacking something. We have a weakness that somebody else has a strength in, and we work together, and we build each other up, or vice versa. We have a strength in in us that somebody else may be lacking that you can help out in.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Works the same. And we see this in any MMO where everybody's working as a team,
Pastor Brandon Holm:and I do say that work as a team. I see a
Pastor Brandon Holm:lot of you out there going at it alone even when you're doing a dungeon as a group. So what happens? What should we do?
Pastor Brandon Holm:I mean we're gonna go through this game of life,
Pastor Brandon Holm:and sometimes we're gonna slip fall, and that's gonna suck. It could be spiritual. It could be mental.
Pastor Brandon Holm:It could be physical. It doesn't matter. So what is it?
Pastor Brandon Holm:You know we we are meant to revive the other person. I say that like it's a bat it's a it's a weird thing to think about. We lift each other, you know, you know, we revive the person. Revival doesn't mean just rise from the dead. You know, you know, we don't get the phoenix down to our Final Fantasy players.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Right? It's not what we're talking about. We revive them as in rebuild their spirit. That's what prayer does. We pray over people especially me when it comes to when somebody's just having a really crappy, you know, life for the moment.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Again, this is you know, crappy lives are seasonal and happy times are seasonal as well. We've seen that constantly
Pastor Brandon Holm:in the last about 5 years.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Now we don't leave I mean, there's a great idealism in the special forces that we don't leave a man behind. Well, we shouldn't be doing that to others. We shouldn't promote ourselves above somebody else's weakness. If they're part of your group, you should be with them to help them up. If they fall, let's say, in a task, you go, hey.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Is there anything I can do to help you out? Where's the problem? What's going on? In that case, as a team project, say, in a job business whatever, that works together. You build each other up.
Pastor Brandon Holm:You put the whole thing together. You can actually work faster and more efficiently. And James really puts this in perspective. My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death, and will recover a multitude of sins. Yeah.
Pastor Brandon Holm:We're sinful. I'm sinful. Everybody's sinful. I'm not, you know, I'm not sitting on a pedestal saying, you're I'm better than you. That's not it.
Pastor Brandon Holm:I'm just a beggar who found bread, and I'm willing to distribute that bread for others. It's really what I'm doing. And that's why I preach the way I do. That's why I preach to who I do. This isn't about an ego trip.
Pastor Brandon Holm:This isn't about fluffing me up. There are people out there that are wandering around so spiritually dead that, you know, God's calling them, and they're just like, I don't really care. I don't believe in God. I don't want that. And they go sinning, you know, through life.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Eventually, they're gonna be dead and we mean dead in the permanent aspect. Whereas, someone who follows Christ, their sins, yes, are remitted but here's the thing. That doesn't mean that we can just go around do whatever we want like some Christians reach or some Christians act. It really means that we have to be on constant vigilance because we have to be better than a sinner. Be like Jesus.
Pastor Brandon Holm:We're not gonna be perfect. We're gonna sin, we're gonna crash, we're gonna make mistakes, and we're gonna fall by the wayside. And that's where we come in as a group, is we come in and talk to that person saying, hey, why have you fallen? This isn't meant for you. You're meant to enjoy life, and granted life kicks you in the teeth.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Life gives you lemons. Well, we as a group will come together and build you a lemonade stand, make lemonade with the sugar, and everything else you need, and you can
Pastor Brandon Holm:sell it for a dollar. K? That's what
Pastor Brandon Holm:we're talking about here when we raise people up. And when I talk about it talk about when we fall and just, you know, having a bad time, and we're just saying, you know, God's not with me, or anything like that. That's different. In Galatians, we're taught how to do this. When it says, brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Keep watch on yourself, lest you be too temp you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. That's why we have the guild as a church. That's why we have guilds. That's why we have friends and parties and stuff like that.
Pastor Brandon Holm:That's what we're meant to do. So that when one of
Pastor Brandon Holm:us falls there's always gonna be somebody there to help them out. Whether it be through temptation, through a sin, or just being worn out on life. You know, we need each other. That's not that's not a, really difficult task. It could maybe just say, hey.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Is everything okay? And you probably you're gonna get somebody yes. It's every you know, everything is okay. I'm fine. But you know better.
Pastor Brandon Holm:You know when to push and when not to. That's the whole part about it. And when it comes to say don't be, you know, unless we're tempted. If we continue to pursue that person in gentleness, kindness, or any transgression that this person does, it doesn't matter. I've been insulted.
Pastor Brandon Holm:I've been called every name of the book. I've been told that God doesn't exist. Okay. Fine. Great.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Next. But it doesn't mean that I'm gonna ignore that person said, you know, God doesn't exist. It's just more of, okay, I'm gonna pray for you to find to have God enter into your life to have you figure out really how how God is. And if we talked about in the last series, there's a lot of truths that are being told out there that are not quite a 100% true, and that's what causes per people to go through church burnout. Is we're taught these things and it's like that's great.
Pastor Brandon Holm:When in when the reality is no, it's really about helping others and helping ourselves. It's bal it that's the balance. You know, that's how God wants us to be. We wanna be perfectly balanced in every way. Yeah.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Thanos, I got it. And, you know, as it should be. But we're here to restore people. That's what the church is about. And if you look at a good healthy gaming committee, that's what they do too.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Now they're not gonna condemn somebody for making a mistake. They're gonna go, okay. You made a mistake. What can we do to help you out next time that you don't we don't repeat the same mistake? Or why are we doing this?
Pastor Brandon Holm:They don't look at the one person. They don't project their problems on the others. They go, okay. We didn't do it this time. You know, how do we do you know, how are we gonna do this?
Pastor Brandon Holm:Okay. We found that this person's having this problem. How do we help them out? That's how we do the rest restoration.
Pastor Brandon Holm:So that's when it comes
Pastor Brandon Holm:down to roles and responsibilities. Okay? As we said, people have spiritual gifts. People have the ability to buff other people in different ways. We've talked about resurrecting people and talking about how we don't condemn people.
Pastor Brandon Holm:So as we talk about spiritual gifts, if you look at very successful guilds or if you're playing Eve online, the corporations there, everyone has a role when it comes to groups and parties, when it goes to dungeon ray
Pastor Brandon Holm:and raids and stuff like that. Think about it. Have you noticed that somebody takes the lead and says, okay we're going to do this. We see that
Pastor Brandon Holm:in the Leroy Jenkins video and then somebody doesn't and look what happened. You had somebody leading the whole group. It's going, okay. You're gonna heal us. You're gonna do this.
Pastor Brandon Holm:You're gonna do that. I find that the Leroy Jenkins clips has you know, and you have
Pastor Brandon Holm:to watch the full 9 minute clip including this stupid part where, you know,
Pastor Brandon Holm:at least I have chicken at
Pastor Brandon Holm:the end. But if you look at
Pastor Brandon Holm:it, one person is leading the whole thing asking questions saying, hey, you know, what is our chances? Look at the survival rate. Okay. This is what we need to do. You got that leader.
Pastor Brandon Holm:You have the people that are there to heal. And when person was calculated, they're talking about strategy. So you have all these people working together to make and then you have 1 person screw it up and go balls in into the into the dungeon itself and Well that didn't work. Right? See how playing solo can actually get you into more trouble and can bring down other people.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Really, it's it's really what that is. And we see that in 1st Corinthians 12. For just as the body is 1 and has many members, and all the members of the body through many are one body. So it is with Christ. For in one spirit we are all baptized into 1 body, Jews are Greeks, slaves are free, and all were made to drink of 1 spirit.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Is that great? Relating how our physical bodies are 1, but it has so many different parts, and each one is specialized. Our hands are meant to grasp, touch. Our tongue is meant to taste, and scoop ice cream off a spoon. Our teeth are there to mash mash all the food that comes in our mouths except for ice cream, that's that's kinda the tongues do doing.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Feet for walking, transportation. Legs for getting that mode to transfer to the ground through our feet. Every part has and then you have the brain which I always tell people is the most ironic part of the human body because it is the only organ in the entire human body that has named itself. I know. Real twist there.
Pastor Brandon Holm:But if you look at all
Pastor Brandon Holm:the diversity of roles that we just talked about, say in the Leroy Jenkins, or in Wow, or in any guild group that you watch going and doing raids, and just like the physical your physical body, each one has a unique skill, but each one is meant to help prosper the other, so that they remain healthy.
Pastor Brandon Holm:Right? Makes sense. And yet, we don't think that way.
Pastor Brandon Holm:We have a role in life, and that's where our spiritual gifts come in. We are there to support one another. Maybe there's a time when you are just down on like, and all of a sudden you have this only this one friend that talks to you, sympathizes with you, and helps you get out of a very dark place. Every time you go to the dark place, why is it always the same friend? Figure that part out.
Pastor Brandon Holm:That's their spiritual gift to you. That includes going
Pastor Brandon Holm:to the gym, working on on on on woodwork, you know forging metal, doing whatever you do, even at work. Each person is a cog in the entire machine, and that's how churches and and our our guild works. We're not just single focus single-minded. We're not focused on one thing. We're focused on a great deal of things because in the end it's all for God.
Pastor Brandon Holm:It's all for Christ to make us better people. Just because Jesus said you know, with Jesus' sacrifice we are saved, that's great, but we have to maintain that because we're always gonna revert back to sin because sin is the easy way out. We always have to work harder to do better. So what do we need to do? We need to unite the spirit for victory.
Pastor Brandon Holm:That's what Jesus is talking about. That's what God wants, and that's what we do here at the Guild. Now in gaming, teamwork is essential for for victory. Same thing in our spiritual walk. We need each other to win the battles of life.
Pastor Brandon Holm:So don't always play solo. You know, you gotta build your own personal spiritual guild. Trust the Holy Spirit. It's going to give you that ability to find the people you need,
Pastor Brandon Holm:and lean into the power of those people. Lean into the power of what a community does.
Pastor Brandon Holm:I mean we see that in Planet of the Apes.
Pastor Brandon Holm:You know?
Pastor Brandon Holm:Apes together are strong, and that's the greatest meme on the planet especially for ones of a church. We together are strong, And not just in a mental and physical way, but spiritually. That's the power of it. So that ends it here for today. Thank you for joining us, and we will all see you next week.
Guild Announcer:Wow. That was powerful. Pastor Brandon never fails to deliver a sermon that's both thought provoking and nerd tastic. We hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and donate if you want to keep the sermons and geeky discussions coming.
Guild Announcer:And remember, you can always connect with us on social media. Just search for the Greater Guild on all your favorite platforms. We'd love to hear your thoughts and geek out with you. Thanks for tuning in, Guild Nerds. Until next time, keep the faith and stay nerdy.