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Jesus always has more life for you than you have known. How do we follow him and discover what it is to flourish and thrive in today's complex, challenging world? How do we have the intimate relationship with God our hearts long for? Troy Marshall Kennedy responds to these all-important questions as a veteran pastor, teacher, and author. Join us as we explore rhythms of life and practice to help us love Jesus, become like Jesus, and share Jesus in our everyday lives. Season one episodes will accompany Troy's new book, "Hero Worship: A 12 Week Journey to Become More Like Jesus."
You can find the book "Hero Worship" on Amazon or christianbook.com to purchase.
Troy Kennedy: Well, welcome everybody.
My name is Troy Kennedy,
and this is Hero Worship.
This is a podcast that is meant to be a
companion to my book, uh, Hero Worship,
a 12 week journey to become more.
And that really is indeed the
heart of this whole thing.
It's to help you find the life that
your heart longs for to help you
discover everything that you were
made for by becoming closer to Jesus,
to walking in intimacy with Jesus
and learning to become more like him
every day in the most practical ways.
And so I hope that you already have the
book and perhaps you've already begun your
journey through the book, this 12 week
journey that we're doing together in each
episode of this podcast is meant to be.
to be worked in parallel with the
companion chapter of the book.
So last week we talked about the
introduction of the book and we
walked through that framework
that Jesus is indeed the one
person worthy of our worship,
worthy as a hero above all heroes.
Worthy of our imitation and
worthy of our adoration.
And so we're seeking to follow after Him.
We're seeking to know Him.
We're seeking to walk with Him in
the most practical ways every day.
Because in the Gospels we observe this
rhythm in the life of Jesus that He is
doing things in the mundane that we can
actually imitate and follow Him in so
that perhaps we can respond like Him.
In the challenge, so if you don't have
that book yet, you can get that on amazon.
You can get it on christianbook.
com And actually it just recently
got released in the digital format in
kindle So if you like to look at your
books digitally like I do I like to be
able to mark them and highlight them
and search Through them as kind of
reference material that is there for you.
And in case you didn't know too.
I also have A website and a newsletter
that I would love you to be able to get,
uh, every week on Fridays in your inbox.
So you can go to Troy M as
in Marshall, troymkennedy.
com and you can sign up for
the One Small Thing newsletter.
In the One Small Thing newsletter you
get, uh, one quote from me, one idea
or quote from someone else, and one
small thing that you can think about or
that you can practice during the week.
In your relationship with Jesus
to help you draw closer to him and
maybe find some healthier rhythms
in your own life as you navigate the
complexity of our world here together.
So last week we went through that
framework in the introduction
of the book and this week we're
doing our very first practice.
So on the first day of the week, you
read the short chapter in the book.
It's very accessible.
It's not a, not a ton of reading,
but it does give you a framework
for the following six days.
And in those six days, there's
going to be a verse to memorize.
There's going to be some focus questions
to help you process the verse of focus for
the day and a place where you can write
down what it is you're learning every day.
Some people get intimidated by the
idea of writing down what's going on.
Just, just to let you off the
hook, Jesus didn't journal.
We're not saying that you have to journal
to grow in your spiritual maturity.
What we are saying is that journaling can
be a really helpful way of processing what
you're learning and kind of neurologically
affirming what's going on in your mind.
So maybe just write one sentence a day.
I'm not a big journal,
uh, journaling person.
So I actually just write one
sentence a day in my journal.
About what God is teaching me,
what I'm grateful for, what I
observed in the time I spent in
scripture for that particular day.
And you'll find if you do that for a
while, not only will you accumulate
a ton of things that you're learning
and experiencing in your relationship
with God, but you will also...
discover that you want to write more.
Sometimes the idea is bigger than
you can contain in one sentence
or on one line of your journal.
So really wonderful, uh, practice to kind
of get into your rhythm of life and it
will help you practice and process this
12 week journey that we have together.
So this week.
The practice is Jesus prayed.
We see Jesus praying throughout
the Gospels and, uh, the disciples
would observe him praying and
for some reason they thought
maybe they're not doing it right.
So they asked him, you know,
Master, teach us how to pray.
It's very interesting.
Jesus didn't teach him how to preach.
He didn't teach him how to study.
He didn't teach him.
He didn't teach him a lot of things, but
he specifically taught them how to pray.
See, in the life of Jesus, we observe
this coming and going rhythm where
Jesus would have these discreet,
intimate times with his heavenly father.
And as you read in the chapter,
it comes before and after a number
of different kinds of occasions.
It's very, very relational.
And he gives the apostles this model
for prayer that you and I both know
and may be overly familiar with.
We call it the Lord's Prayer
from Matthew chapter 6.
So what I want to do is I want
to walk you through that, but I
want to start off with one idea.
Sometimes these things like the Lord's
Prayer, where it says, Our Father in
heaven, hallowed be your name, your
kingdom come, your will be done.
These things can be so familiar
with us that they lose their soul.
It's kind of like, a hymn that
you've heard a thousand times.
Maybe you grew up in church and you heard
Amazing Grace a thousand times, or I
Surrender All, you heard it a thousand
times, and you can kind of go through
the motions without being really truly
connected to the heart of that song.
And sometimes it takes maybe
a different arrangement.
a different way of singing the song, maybe
seeing the text in a new way for that to
be refreshed in your mind so that it has
got some soul and some meaning for you.
So what we're going to try to do here
with the Lord's Prayer is to give you
some ways during the course of the six
days of the practice to help you maybe
recontextualize it and think about it
in a little bit of a different way.
So, to break it down just really
briefly, our Father in Heaven, we
talk about identity and gratitude.
Who is He?
Who am I?
And what has He done?
If God is a Father, then
I must be His child.
And man, just sit there and let
that sink in just for a bit.
If God is a father, I am his child.
Now some of you, the thinking of
God like a father is a challenge.
It's maybe your earthly father was absent.
Maybe your earthly father was abusive.
Maybe, uh, your parents in
general weren't very present.
We all carry some kind of baggage
with us into these things.
But just to say this, if you
want to think of God as a
good, perfect, Heavenly parent.
And I want to challenge you to let
Jesus redefine fatherhood for you.
Whatever we carry into this relationship
with God and we project onto God
as a father, our experiences with
our earthly parents, I understand
that I've done the same thing.
I grew up largely without a father.
I had a stepfather for a while.
It was, um, He wasn't awful or
anything, but he didn't really
care a whole lot about me.
So for a lot of years, I walked
into the future thinking, you
know, older men don't like me.
And I didn't even realize I had
that kind of in the back of my mind.
You probably have something different
and acknowledging that we are projecting
our experience with earthly fathers
unto God is a really healthy thing.
Let Jesus reframe fatherhood for
you and come to him and say, our
father in heaven, he is a heavenly
father, not an earthly father.
He's.
Different.
He's better.
He's more perfect.
And he is for you.
And he wants to see you thrive.
And wants to see you flourish in this
life that he has gifted you with.
And above all things, he wants
to hear from you, his child.
He wants to know you.
Our father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
He has made his name known to us.
He has revealed himself to us.
I like to say in the classes I teach
here, uh, our local church that Um,
if you've read Shakespeare, you know,
you've read maybe Hamlet or Romeo and
Juliet or Macbeth in the play of Macbeth,
if Macbeth is running around and he's,
he's experiencing this plot, you know,
the only way Macbeth is going to know
that there is a Shakespeare is if
Shakespeare writes himself into the play.
And that's exactly what
God has done for us.
You and I are running around playing our
roles in this, in this earthly milieu
and God injects himself into our human
experience and he makes himself known.
He gives us his name.
And then ultimately in the incarnation,
he reveals himself in Jesus, hallowed
be your name, the name of the living
God that we can know because he
told us his name and it embodies the
fullness of who he is as the creator.
Your kingdom come, your will be done.
God, let up there come down here.
Let us be submitted to your purposes,
to your will, to your desires.
Above our own and let that come down
here, not just in my life, but in the
life of people around me on earth as it
is in heaven, let your kingdom come, let
your goodness and wholeness and fullness
come down for the people that I care
about, that I know for my community,
for my nation, give us this day, our
daily bread, help us to learn to be
dependent on you today and to be content
in what you have given to us today and
then learn to do that again tomorrow.
And the day after that, and the day after
that, and that forgive us our sins as we
forgive those who sin against us, that we
learn to acknowledge our responsibility,
our culpability in the sins that we have
exercised, the rebellions, the little
white lies, the little deceptions, the
little ways that we turn our back on God
and we don't, for just a moment, want
Him to be God because we want to be God.
Forgive us our sins And then help us to
see how gracious and how fully you have
forgiven us so that we can then exercise
that with the people who have hurt us.
The people who we need to forgive.
Let us not walk in the irony of wanting
grace for ourselves, but justice
when it comes to everybody else.
Help us to forgive as
we have been forgiven.
And so, lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
Right?
We're looking for protection.
We're asking you, God, help us not to
follow a path that leads us in rebellion.
That leads us into trial, that leads us
into temptation, but that we'd follow you.
We would follow the good path,
the whole path, that the good
shepherd would lead us on.
And deliver us from the evil one who
wants to attack us, who wants to see
us hamstrung, wants to see us weakened
in our faith walk, wants to see us
complacent and, uh, ineffective.
In the world around us,
protect us from the evil one.
Let him have no toll hold in our lives.
So that's just like a brief breakdown of
the Lord's Prayer and you can, as you pray
that, you can stay in one of those ideas.
You can spend a long time
processing our Father in heaven.
You can spend a long time praying through
this idea, God, lead us not into trial
and temptation but deliver us from
the evil one because greater is he who
is in me than he who is in the world.
Help me walk in the victory that I
know you have purchased for me and
help me live into the fullness of
life that I know you desire for me.
And that you desire not just for
me, but for the people around me.
You know, when you
became a Christ follower.
Were you forgiven of your sins?
Absolutely.
Was your eternity in heaven secured?
Absolutely.
Were you gifted with gifts from the
Spirit that are unique to you to
serve within the body of Christ?
Absolutely.
But the bigger idea, not the bigger idea,
but amongst those things that we often
don't understand, we weren't just saved.
Into eternity, we were
saved into a family.
You were saved, you were injected into
and adopted into the family of God.
You are a part of the body of Christ.
We are privileged to be
part of an eternal family.
People who are filled with the Spirit
of God, that we are bonded together,
regardless of our ethnicity, our
history, our background, our...
Whatever baggage that we carry
along with us, we have been redeemed
by the good work of our Savior.
And it's through Him, and through
the Holy Spirit who is alive
in us, that we are a family.
You have a forever family.
You were bought with the blood of Jesus
and entered into His kingdom, and entered
into the church, into the body of Christ,
and you have a function in the body.
And you have gifts that you bring to
the table and you have a forever family.
That is another fringe benefit of the
salvation that was bought for you by
the blood of Jesus, by the work of Jesus
that we could not do for ourselves.
How beautiful and profound is that?
So whether you have just completed this
week of, uh, journeying with Jesus in
prayer, as he has modeled this for us,
I want you to understand this as well.
You are praying, not just for yourself.
You can pray for the people
in your circle of influence.
People in your, uh, close
kind of relationships.
That could be your gym, your
church, your neighborhood.
You could pray for your city.
You can pray for your nation.
You can pray for the world.
What is God doing?
What is the kingdom of
God doing in the world?
Let's join Jesus in his work.
So that's just some extra thought as
you work through this journey that
Jesus prayed and we're going to walk in
imitation of him in our prayer lives.
This next week, we're going to be
going through the, this part of our
journey called Jesus knew scripture.
And I know it sounds simple and
it sounds like, well, kind of duh.
Yeah, but Jesus was immersed in scripture.
He knew the old covenant backwards.
And forward he is because
he's the one who inspired it.
It is the spirit of Jesus spirit of
Christ that has inspired the scriptures
that led the old covenant, the old
Testament prophets to be looking
forward to the coming of the Messiah.
And next week, when we get into this,
this section of Jesus new scripture,
I'll unpack some other biblical
background to give you something
more robust and really beautiful.
As we learn to understand more
and more what it means to follow
Jesus, as we immerse ourselves in
this great revelation, this great
narrative, this great special love
letter that God has given to you
and I, so that we could know him.
Have a great week as you
follow Jesus in his imitation,
as you follow him in prayer.
Remember he is our hero.
Here is the one that we're
seeking to imitate and to follow.
God bless you on your journey
and I'll talk to you next time.