Family Traits Week 5 • Community

Show Notes

Sunday, September 13th • Beau Bradberry

"Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor." — Romans 12:10

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Host

Beau Bradberry

Senior Pastor

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Thanks for listening.

Good morning.

Glad you guys are here with us.

If you've got your Bibles, go ahead and open up to Romans chapter 12.

We're going to wrap up our series on family traits this morning.

So what we've been doing over the last several weeks, and it'll really culminate and pull

everything together, is we've been looking at Acts chapter 2 and Acts chapter 4, because

something very unique happens in those two chapters.

And it's where you and I can really look and see the genealogy of faith of what we know

as the local church being passed down to us today.

So at the end of chapter 2 and the end of chapter 4 are descriptions of the early church.

You know, it's a unique thing of what had happened during this time where there had been the waiting

on the Messiah to come, right?

That's what we see in the Old Testament.

We see the fall and brokenness, the promise of the Messiah, the anticipation for the Messiah

to come.

And then the Messiah comes as Christ, like God in flesh.

So Jesus comes, He lives, does His ministry, dies on the cross, is resurrected, and then He

ascends to heaven.

And after that ascension is largely where we see the book of Acts pick up.

But there was something unique that happened right before Jesus ascended.

He looked at His followers that were with Him and He promised them something.

He promised them the Holy Spirit.

And so that the Holy Spirit, when Jesus left, would come and fall on all of the believers,

would indwell inside of them, and the formation of the early church would happen.

Now, we see some phenomenal things take place throughout the book of Acts, which is really mind-boggling

when you think about it, that the spread of Christianity, that the believers of Christ,

when you see that explosion of this momentum of God begin to happen, it didn't happen while

Jesus was here.

Like, you would think, well, the Messiah is here.

We can come see Him.

We can sit under His teaching.

We can touch Him.

He can heal.

We can do all of these things.

And He did.

And there was a momentum that came while Jesus lived His earthly life here.

But what we see from Scripture is that when the explosion of Christianity took place,

it was actually after Christ ascended.

It was when the people of God were filled by the Spirit of God

and then began to fulfill God's mission in their life and where they went,

that we see this happen and take place.

And so what we've been looking at over the last five weeks are, you know, there's a lot of stuff has changed.

A lot of stuff has changed from first century Jerusalem until now.

And what you and I are drawing from this, though, is what are those characteristics,

what are those pieces that are so important and then so vital to the spread of God's gospel

and people coming to saving faith in Jesus Christ?

What do we see there that we can see now and then honestly kind of taking a moment to evaluate

and to look at not only ourselves as individuals but to look at the body of believers that we have here

and to wrestle with this are the family traits that are exhibited in Acts 2 and Acts 4 in the early church.

Is that the same things that we see in the spread of the gospel today?

Do I see it in myself and do I see it in us?

And so the first thing that we looked at that was key was the concept of truth

and that God's word is our standard.

In Acts chapter 2, it says that they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching

and in Acts chapter 4, it says that the apostles were sharing their testimony of the power of the resurrection.

In both of those, the message that they were carrying, right, is not, man, we're a great church, come hang out with us.

The message they were carrying is that, hey, not, come, wasn't come look at us and what we've done and what we can do.

But the message of the early church, what they had devoted themselves to was God's word.

So we want to dig in, we want to understand, we want to draw from this, and then the truth that we share, right,

is the power of the resurrection in me.

That as Christ has saved me, this is now what my life looks like.

We saw that missions was a part.

And there wasn't a missions team, there wasn't a missions committee, there weren't missions trips.

But missions was about what they were doing.

At the end of Acts 2 and at the end of Acts 4, it says, and God added to their number daily those who were getting saved.

And when I say God was adding to their number daily, we're talking about thousands of people are getting saved,

walking out of darkness and into light, walking out of death into light,

and into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.

And so we begin to talk about and see that while it is the work of God,

that God began to add to their numbers daily what was happening, what was taking place.

It was the obedience of the people who would go out and carry the message.

And so we talked about missions, the work of God, done by the people of God.

And this is important.

This is so important as you're here, and for some of you, hopefully you're taking our missions class starting next week,

that missions is the work of God, yes, done by the people of God, absolutely, for a purpose and for a reason.

So that those who do not know God can come to know God.

That that's what we're working toward.

That's the end goal.

So that when you walk out of here today and you see those crosses on the map,

and you see those faces on the wall as you walk down, that that is the end goal.

If we just feed you and say, go away, you're good, right?

But we feed so that we can share the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And so then we started looking two weeks ago at this concept that we see of the they, not the some.

That in Acts 2 and Acts 4, when it describes the body of believers and the unity of the mission of God moving forward,

it didn't say some.

It didn't say some devoted themselves.

It didn't say some sold their property.

It didn't say that some came together.

It didn't say some broke bread in homes.

It said they.

And we begin to see that there was this full buy-in amongst the body of Christ that this is who we are.

And we begin to see the understanding of the physical body and what the physical body means for the spiritual body.

How each member of my body is important and it does what it does and it serves a purpose within the context of who I am.

And then we take that and we apply that to the spiritual body.

And we see that God brings and gives us every individual believer for a purpose and for a reason.

And if you're a part of the body of Christ and you're doing nothing, if you're not part of the they, then the body's not as healthy as it could be.

Then the body's not as effective as it is.

And so we're beginning to wrap our minds around like, Lord, what does it mean for us to be a part of the they in this so that it's not the some?

And we looked at accountability, meaning that you and I, we invest in each other so that we can grow in our relationship with the Lord.

That it is my responsibility to work toward my growth, but it is my responsibility to work toward your growth.

And here's the thing, it comes back, right?

So we work on this with each other, that that's what the body comes and does together.

That there's this mindset of accountability within the body of Christ, but that also we're servant-minded, right?

And servant-minded, and we're really going to harp on this today as we talk about some other aspects.

But servant-minded is not based in what we can do for each other, but being servant-minded is based in how we love each other, right?

That's where it's going to come from.

Because the truth is, like all of us in here, like we can fake it.

We can do things for each other to make each person's life easier.

And while we can stand and be recipients of that and say, I don't care if you like me or not, if you're willing to do good things for me, then sign me up.

But the body of Christ does it, not because what we want to manipulate or work toward or fake, but that the true body of Christ that comes together.

And we serve each other, not because we have to, not because we've been guilted into it, but because within the body there's a love that's there.

And we looked at how this is like family.

Like there is, my mom's here today.

There's not anything that my mom would not do for me as her child.

And there's not anything I wouldn't do for my son or my daughter or for my wife or for my mom.

Why? Because we're family.

And the breakdown in the church happens in this, because we don't view each other that way.

We view each other as members.

We view each other as acquaintances.

We view each other as friends.

But the Bible says that we're a part of the same body, and in that body we are family.

We are family.

So what I want us to talk about today is this concept of community.

And I want to talk about the culture of community.

True biblical community that we have seen in Acts 2, that we've seen in Acts 4, and is going to be described for us in Romans chapter 12.

Because in community, it's a word that's become really popular in church circles really over the last 30 years.

But we want to define what do we mean by true biblical community.

And I believe it's a lot of the summation of what we've been talking about.

So we're going to define community as this.

People who live in truth, carry the gospel to the lost, while investing and loving one another.

So it's truth, it's missions, it's accountability, it's serving, all wrapped up into one.

And that's where community is going to fall.

Now, if you've been tracking through this every single week with us, there may be aspects of this message as you go through.

You're like, man, I'm good.

Like, I'm a truth guy.

Like, I love truth.

I love opening God's word.

I know that God's word is—now, I may struggle sometimes in obeying it, right?

But that doesn't mean that I don't establish my life on this.

You have some of us in here, like, man, like—and I've met you, and I know those of you who are in here who are like this, right?

Like, you genuinely love everyone, right?

And some of you, you're so extreme with it that other people judge your heart because, like, there's no way.

And I'm like, no, trust me.

Hang out with Mike C for a moment, right?

I'll just throw his name out, right?

Like, he really does love everyone that he ever meets.

Like, I've seen it.

I don't know what this is encountered with.

But when we see this true biblical concept of community, what we will find is that it's all together.

It's all-encompassing.

It's truth.

It's accountability.

It's missions.

It's loving.

It's all of this in the early church body that comes together so that, like, if we're not running four out of four on this, then we're missing part of it.

And this true depth of community of what we are going to see, it is very foreign to us, if we're honest.

What we're going to look at in Romans chapter 12, starting in verse 9, in just a second, it is so foreign to us.

We're born broken.

Born into a broken world.

Sin has caused us, even as believers, to struggle with and have a jaded look at a lot of things that are going on.

And when we look at Romans chapter 12, when we see what this looks like, if we're honest with ourselves, it is so foreign at the core of our being, of who we were, that now even who we are in Christ struggles with it a little bit.

But we're also going to really look at that this is a process.

As I understand Christianity and as I understand my faith, that this is a process of what God is taking me to in my life.

So that God has gifted me with the Holy Spirit so that I can see these things, identify these things, repent of these things, and pursue obedience to Him.

So this becomes more and more common at the very fiber of who I am in my very being.

And so that's what we'll see here in just a moment in verse 9.

Based in what Paul charges us with.

All of Romans chapter 12 is written with like an introduction and then two messages.

But they all piece together, and it's very important that we get every single one.

So if you've got your Bibles open, and I'm sorry I do not have it on the screen, but look at verse 1 of chapter 12.

So what we see in this is that this is what we're calling ourselves to.

This is what we're identifying.

This is our response to salvation.

Okay?

God saved you.

God saved me.

I've got to respond to that.

Right?

I don't know, Joel, thank you.

But thank you for that song, man.

Like, if you're just kind of reading the words on the screen because it's a new song and you don't know it yet, go find it on however you listen to music.

And begin to put in your mindset that what God does is He turns graves into gardens.

Right?

Like, that is so foreign to us.

But God saved us.

He brought us back to life.

He redeemed us.

He took us from destined to hell, and He placed us in eternity in His hand.

That's where He has us.

And so you and I, we respond to salvation.

He says, Paul says, by the mercies of God, this is what we do.

Because we didn't deserve any of it.

Right?

We didn't do anything to deserve it.

God didn't look and say, well, Bo's worth this, and you're worth this, but you're not worth this.

No, no, no.

No, none of us are worth it.

And so He sent Jesus, and Jesus died for us, and we didn't deserve it.

And so for the mercies of God, because of that, but then we do something.

Right?

It's not just that we hear this and we go, oh, man, God loves me this much.

But then we do something.

He says we present our bodies as living sacrifice.

That you and I, in the day-to-day of who we are, we stop pursuing sin, and we start pursuing God's glory.

With it all, of who He has called us to be.

And so verse 9, right, it's going to get difficult.

This is going to get varsity level of what God is calling us to.

And in verse 9, he says this.

Paul says, let love be genuine.

Abhor what is evil and hold fast to what is good.

Let love be genuine.

Abhor, hate what is evil.

And in our lives, cling to what is the good, what is pure, what is of God.

And what we see in this is that if we're going to begin with love, is that you and I, we have to have love without hypocrisy.

Right?

When Paul writes, let love be genuine, there's two ways in the Greek to interpret that.

Right?

One way is how every single translation has translated it.

Right?

The ESV says, let love be genuine.

It's called the positive translation because it gives a positive word, right?

Let love be genuine.

So you walk away from that.

Well, that's what this means.

But closer in the Greek, when we really begin to understand it, it's not the positive translation that's there.

It's a negative translation, which means it's a little bit more difficult for us to kind of process through.

And really what he's saying here is he says, let love be not hypocritical.

Let love be not hypocritical.

So yes, that means genuine, but it puts a weight on it of what you and I are working against is hypocrisy.

Right?

The number one complaint of non-believers about the church.

The number one complaint of believers about the church.

Hypocrisy.

I'm not going to go to church.

That church is full of a bunch of hypocrites.

Right?

Oh, I don't feel comfortable here.

Right?

I'm going to go find me another church because I know what people do here.

And it's just a bunch of hypocrites.

The number one complaint of the church is that you and I are hypocrites.

And guess what?

We are.

And a lot of things we do doesn't match what we say.

There's a wrestle that is still within us.

So how can Paul come to us then and say, let love be without hypocrisy?

Well, you and I, we got to think about what it means to be a hypocrite differently.

Because until Jesus calls me home, until I'm with him for all of eternity, and you're right in this journey with me,

there's still sin struggles and sin issues in our life.

We haven't perfected, and we won't be perfect until he perfects us with him.

So what does it mean, though, to be a hypocrite?

And how can our love be without hypocrisy?

Let's understand what biblical hypocrisy is.

Biblical hypocrisy is pretending to look a certain way when that's not really who you are at the core of your being.

Right?

Hypocrisy doesn't mean that we don't sin.

Hypocrisy doesn't mean that we have to live a perfect life.

What it means is we have to stop pretending.

That we have to be open and honest with who we are.

So when we're Christian hypocrites, here's what this really means.

That we pretend to intimately know Jesus when we don't.

That we pretend to walk with Jesus when we don't.

That we pretend to talk with Jesus when we don't.

That at our core, we know that I'm not close with the Lord, but I just want to pretend that I am.

And so when we pretend spiritually, we hide.

We hide our flaws, we hide our sins, we hide our weaknesses.

And what we hide them behind is a false sense of spirituality.

We hide it behind this Christian front when it's not who we are to begin with.

And so let love be genuine means this.

That I'm not, that I don't have everything perfect.

That I don't have everything figured out.

But genuine love means I'm honest.

Honest about who I am.

And so that you can be honest with who you are.

That being honest within this lets us and allows us to have community together.

So that we can do the things that Christians say we want to do.

So that yes, we can hate what is evil.

But we can't hate what is evil when we are pretending.

It means that we can pursue what is good and what is God's and we can do that together.

But we can't do it when we're pretending.

You see, the problem with so many of us is we're putting on these masks of false Christianity that we've got everything figured out.

And we're so petrified to let anyone around us know that I'm not good, that my prayer life isn't great, that I am struggling in God's word, that I am in conflict with my spouse, that I do struggle with greed and lust.

But I can't let you know any of that.

So no, I'm good, man.

You need me?

Sure, absolutely.

I've got all this crush in it.

And then what it says to the others is, you've got to be this way too.

You've got to be this way too.

Let love be genuine if we're going to have community.

Verse 10, Paul continues on.

And he says, love one another with brotherly affection.

Outdo one another in showing honor.

This is going to be a lot about what we looked at last week.

And we want to remind ourselves of this concept of feeling overdoing, right?

The idea of brotherly affection is that you and I not should just do things for each other, but that we should feel something for one another, right?

It doesn't say love one another with brotherly deeds or with brotherly actions.

It says love one another with brotherly affections.

So what it means is that within me, that it's how I feel that drives what I do, and not what I do is trying to transform how I feel.

So that when I do something for you, when this is who I am in the aspects of my life, what is it coming from?

Genuine love.

Genuine transformation of what has happened and what is taking place.

God wants to capture our heart before he captures our actions.

And our heart will always transform our actions.

I want to prove this to you.

My kids, I think I've got a pretty good relationship with my kids.

But when they were little, and I want you parents to go back to when your kids were little.

And I got a specific age I want you to think about.

I want you to think about three and four years old, all right?

Some of you may even have kids three or four years old now in the room.

And that is absolutely wonderful, right?

Here's what I remember about my kids being three or four years old.

When I would come home at the end of the day.

When Aaron would come home at the end of the day.

Here's what I knew that they had done.

They had destroyed their rooms, right?

They had made a mess in every room that they were a part of.

They had consumed electricity, water, right?

Like everything in the house, right?

They had eaten whatever they wanted to.

And in true four-year-old, three-year-old fashion, sometimes only a bite of an apple, right?

And then just placing it right back, you know?

Or let me lick all the salt off that cracker and then put it back in the pack, right?

Because that's what they do, right?

They had consumed stuff.

Now, this is going to sound harsh, but hear my heart.

What had they done good for me?

Nothing, right?

They consumed it all.

I was the one doing things for them.

Aaron was the one doing things for them.

But what happened?

When you'd pull up and you'd walk in the door, it didn't matter what TV show was on.

It didn't matter what they were doing.

They dropped everything that was there and would come running to us with Oreo stained teeth, right?

To pick them up and hug us because they loved us, right?

And they were so excited to be with us.

How would it have felt as a parent if I walked in and their rooms were clean?

How would it have felt as a parent if I walked in and all the food was still in the pantry?

How would it have felt as a parent if they had done all of the things that I would have wanted them to do to provide,

But when I walked in the room, there was nothing.

Do you see what begins to happen within this?

Is that the feeling of love of what's there.

And so what Paul's calling us to at the church is to say if we're going to let our love be genuine for one another,

then it has to generally happen with a heart transformation of who we are.

Verse 11, he continues on.

If we're going to have a community of believers, and he says,

Do not be slothful in zeal.

Be fervent in spirit.

Serve the Lord.

You and I have to get to a place and a reality that is a perspective in our life where there is genuine excitement about Jesus.

I want to tell you guys two stories.

One story, I was at a church.

We were actually visiting a church.

This was years and years ago.

I don't even think we had kids.

And I walked in, and this was a very formal church.

It was a very traditional church.

And if you've grown up in formal, traditional church, and I grew up there and have a heart for those churches,

you kind of understand and know the culture when you walk into the room.

All right?

And so I'm at this formal, traditional church, and I'm standing in the back,

and there's one of the leaders in the church is standing beside me.

And they begin to have their time of worship.

And I see, like, everybody's kind of, like, doing what they're supposed to do, right, in worship.

And then at the very front of the room, I see a guy who's breaking the culture norms of the church, right?

He's jumping around.

He's got both hands up in the air.

He is screaming, singing as loud as he can.

Now, you've got me.

I'm intrigued, all right?

And I looked at the leader of the church that was standing there beside me,

and I said, hey, man, what's that guy's story?

I'm dying to know.

Like, what's his story?

And here's what the answer was.

He said, oh, that guy?

Yeah, he's a new believer.

He doesn't know any different yet.

Somewhere in our world, right, there just has to be an excitement for Jesus.

And maturity, right, in quotes, maturity and faith shouldn't kill that, right?

But as a kid that runs to their dad because their dad just came home from work

and they haven't seen him in seven hours,

it should be the same response that we run to Jesus with.

Second story is a few years, well, I'm sorry, when I was in my early 20s,

I went on my first mission trip, went to Mexico.

Went to Mexico during the middle of the summer,

and we were going to build a basketball court.

And in between the two of the church and the pastor's house,

there was this little open lot, and that's where it was going to go.

And kind of tucked over in the back corner of the lot was this big concrete slab.

All right, and so the day one, we're there,

and we're figuring out who's going to do what.

And they said, okay, all we have is this sledgehammer.

Who's willing to go back there and break up this concrete pad?

We don't know how thick it is.

We don't know how old it is.

And they said the key words, we don't know what's underneath it.

So who would be willing to go back there and to break it up?

Now, I'm in, I think I'm 21 at the time, okay?

And I'm looking around, and it's a college mission trip.

I'm the only one there from my church.

And I want to be honest, this is what my mindset was.

There's a lot of cute girls here.

I want to be the guy that volunteers to do that hard work to kind of impress them, right?

Like, that is honestly where my heart was at the moment, okay?

And so I signed up for it.

I got the sledgehammer.

And for hours, here I am back here just wailing on this thing, right?

As hard as I can, putting every bit of force into it.

And finally, I start breaking it up.

And the concrete just goes farther down and farther down and farther down.

And I'm removing it as we go.

And it is the hottest I have ever been in my entire life.

And then finally, right, there was the last swing of the sledgehammer.

And I see that there's a hole there.

This is fantastic.

I've gotten to the bottom.

And so I began to reach in and pull more and more out.

And the light began to expose what was underneath.

And I'm sorry, this is right before lunch.

But what I found was a septic tank filled with rats and tarantulas, right?

And I'm standing there.

And I'll never forget one of our college leaders, this guy.

He's from Alabama.

He came up and he put his arm around me, looking down into the hole with me.

And he goes, don't you just love serving the Lord?

Not right now, buddy.

No, I don't.

But here's the thing.

He's right.

He's right.

That in the excitement, that in that, that's all there.

Don't be slothful.

Be fervent in spirit.

Why?

It doesn't say serve each other.

It says serve the Lord.

Serve the Lord.

So that in all that we do, our object of our serving is serving Christ.

And that's what we are pressing toward, the excitement for Jesus.

Jesus, you want me to get on the stage and preach?

I'll do it.

Jesus, you want me to swing a sledgehammer?

I'll do it.

But I'm not doing it for anybody, anybody other than you.

We continue on in verse 12.

Paul writes, he says, rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer, contribute to the needs of the saints, and seek to show hospitality.

Paul's going to give us this beautiful formula in these two verses that point us toward the mindset of moving off of ourselves.

And it's hope, patience, prayer, others.

Hope, patient, prayer, others.

What do you think about this word hope?

Hope is a word we talk about in churches.

It's a positive word, right?

We put it on signs.

We put it on t-shirts.

It's the reminder of the hope that we have.

But when we really think about the word hope, hope comes from not a place of joy, all right?

Hope comes from a place of suffering.

Hope comes from a place of pain.

Hope comes and is rooted and is found in our life when we experience a sense of sorrow, when we're going through the battles.

And so here's when we use the word hope, when we cling to hope, when we pray for hope, right?

When we're going through a health battle, when we're going through a financial battle, when we're going through a relational battle, we need hope.

God, I've been diagnosed with cancer.

God, give me hope.

God, my finances are about to fall apart.

I've lost my job and I can't make my mortgage payment.

God, give me hope.

God, my husband or my wife has left me.

My kids are in rebellion.

My family and friends, they won't talk to me or give me hope.

You see, hope is always found in the heart of the believer.

Hope is birthed in the heart of the believer, not in the mountaintop, but in the valley.

When we're going through the pain and the suffering, and here's what hope is.

Hope does not mean that we know the outcome, but hope means that we trust the God who knows the outcome.

That's what hope is.

And so Paul says, like, look, and I don't know about you, but from March 15th to September 13th has been a hope season for me, all right?

It's been the hope of what's there and the difficulty of everything, and I'm not just blaming COVID, but on everything that's going on.

It's a desperate season for hope.

And then in this, what we're called to do, what we're called to be, is patient.

Paul says, be patient in the tribulation.

Simply put, wait.

Wait.

I don't know about you, but I hate that word.

I hate waiting.

I was talking to one of our elementary school kids after the nine o'clock service, and I was telling him how much I hated to wait.

And he said, I hate to wait, too.

And I said, well, Samuel, think about it this way, buddy.

Think about waiting at the doctor's office without a tablet, without a cell phone.

Imagine being seven years old and waiting at the doctor's office with nothing to look at other than a copy of Good Housekeeping, right?

Like, that's it.

Like, that's what I associate with waiting, right?

And some of you, you're nodding your head.

You know what it was like.

And as painful as that was for me, like all of you that had to take kids to the doctor, right, during that time of waiting.

And so when we think of waiting, that's what we think about.

We think about sitting there and doing nothing, but that is never, ever what God describes for a Christian to wait, that waiting for the Lord calls for action.

So be hope, have hope, be patient, and this patience requires an action.

And so what is that action?

It's in Romans 12, a prayer.

We pray.

We pray.

It says that prayer should be constant.

This is so important for Paul that in 1 Thessalonians, he challenged people to pray without ceasing.

That prayer is constantly what is filling us of what we are doing.

Now, I know for so many of you, for so many of us in here, prayer is a difficult thing, right?

Like I've had conversations with people, and I've thought this before too, that you hear someone pray, whether it be at a small group, whether it be at a funeral, whether it be at a wedding, whether it be at a worship service.

And you think, as they stand up there for 5, 10 minutes, and they have these beautiful words that we have to look up on a dictionary when we get done, right?

And it's so beautiful about what they're doing as they're crying out to the Lord in the positioning of this.

And that causes us as believers to go, no, I can't do that.

I can't do that.

Or we think of people, and I know I'm like this, and they're like, how was your prayer time this morning?

Oh, it was fantastic.

Like I woke up at 2.30, and I prayed from 2.31 until 7.45, right?

And you're going, nope, like if that's the standard, I'm out, right?

I can't do that.

But Paul says, be constant in prayer.

Paul says, pray without ceasing.

And I firmly believe that at the heart of prayer, it's not the building of eloquent words that we can stand there and recite before the Lord,

but it's a conversation that we just have back and forth with him, that we're speaking to him, and get this, he listens.

He listens.

Yesterday, I had a TV show on.

My wife was standing in the kitchen.

She told me something.

I said, uh-huh.

She said, what did I just say?

I said, I don't know, right?

That's not God.

Lord, I'm scared right now.

God, I'm confused.

I'm frustrated.

God, just help me get here today.

I think if we begin to think about prayer in the communication that oftentimes we have on our cell phones,

where we're in constant communication about what we're doing, but we're also sitting there waiting on the response back.

So we have hope, we're patient, we're prayer, and when this happens, Paul says, then is when we begin to move our focus off of ourselves and on the others, right?

The circumstances haven't changed.

We're still in a crisis where we need hope.

We're still patiently waiting on what the outcome is going to be and what God is going to do.

We're still crying out to him, but that in that, our mindset has moved off of us and has moved off onto others.

That now what we're about to read in verses 14 through 21, that my life can begin to live like these things because I have hope in the midst of the circumstances.

I have patience, even though that I have to wait with what's going on.

I'm crying out to God in a continual conversation with him, and so that my life is now no longer focused on me and on my problems, but on others and where they are,

regardless of what they've done or what they will do.

And so in closing, Paul writes, he says, this is what this looks like then in our life as we embrace this.

This is the shock to the system for us.

He says, bless those who persecute you.

Bless and do not curse them.

Rejoice with those who rejoice.

Weep with those who weep.

Live in harmony with one another.

Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.

Never wise in your own sight.

Repay no one evil for evil.

But give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.

If possible, right?

As far as it depends on you and me,

live peaceably with all.

Beloved, never avenge yourselves,

but leave it to the wrath of God.

For it is written, vengeance is mine.

I will repay, says the Lord.

To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him.

If he is thirsty, give him something to drink.

For by so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head.

Do not be overcome by evil,

but overcome evil with good.

How did you do with this this week?

Bless those who persecute you.

How are we doing with that?

I'm struggling.

I'm failing.

Are we working to live in harmony?

Or are we working to start fires?

Maybe we're not even working to start the fire,

but we're definitely not trying to be the one

to put the fire out.

Are we pursuing what God's called us to be

and what God's called us to do?

Do we want evil for evil?

Well, if you've done good for me, then you get good.

But if you do evil for me,

then you get my vengeance.

The heart of Romans 12, 14.

When you and I begin to understand

what it means to live in community,

we understand that what God's calling us to

is to respond in grace.

Responding in grace.

And here's what this simply is.

You and I deserve God's wrath,

and instead he sent Jesus.

You and I deserve to be wiped off the face of the earth,

and instead he gives us another breath.

And now what he calls us to do

is that you and I,

we simply respond in grace.

So how God responds to us,

how I want God to respond to me,

is how I live my life in pursuit

to respond to others.

No matter what they have or haven't done,

no matter if it's good or if it's evil,

it's never going to be what they deserve

because it's grace, it's grace, it's grace.

Would you pray with me?

God, I thank you so much for today.

Lord, I thank you for your word

as we've been able to go through this series.

Lord, my prayer, my heart

is an examination of ourselves

that each one of us in owning our own faith

would look at who we are

or would look at what we've done.

Lord, and it would bring us,

our lives right now in light of the cross

will bring us moment by moment

to brokenness and to repentance.

And you freely, time and time again,

Lord, you give that to us

and you give that to us.

And what we have with you

as a result of the work of the cross

is fellowship with you,

community with you,

that even though what we deserve is evil,

as evil as what we've done,

Lord, you pour out your blessing

and your grace upon us.

And so, Lord, if we're going to take that

and embody that as a group of believers,

Lord, if this is who we are

and what has transformed us,

Lord, there needs to be the pursuit

of our lives as well

because of who you are

and how you're transforming us.

So, Lord, I pray that this week

we can respond in grace

because of what you've done for us.

Every head bowed and every eye closed,

I want to pray a passage of Scripture over us.

Romans 12, 1.

God, I pray that you would empower us

to fulfill this,

to pursue this in our lives.

Church, I pray that we may present our bodies

as a living sacrifice,

holy and acceptable to God,

which is our spiritual worship.

Jesus, thank you for saving us.

Thank you for redeeming us.

Lord, may we live by the power

of the Holy Spirit that is within us

to glorify your name amongst all the earth.

And it's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Would you stand as we respond to worship?

Thanks again for listening

to the Willow Ridge Church Weekly Podcast.

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to this week's message.

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