Identity Crisis | Week 5 | Bill Bush

The things that have happened to us, the things that have been done to us, you know, the the the the the things we've done to ourselves, and and and out of control circumstances that have brought pain or grief to us, the things in our past

often will stop us from really living out the identity that God gave us. We won't live a recovered identity, or we'll actually find our identity in those things. We don't think of it that way. We rarely do I say, I am what has happened to me. But we do.

We live as if what has happened to me is who I am. And the problem, if that's who you are, how can you ever get past it? That's you're like, I I can't get past who I am. Right? And so that's what we're gonna look at in this this last section. And the big idea today is simply this, a recovered identity redeems your past.

See, the the whole thing, this whole series started a few weeks ago, and what we looked at is this idea of the first question I asked when I walked out here is, we all say, who am I? It seems like the human condition is we spend our life saying, who am I? And trying to discover who we are, trying to discover identity.

And and and I felt like the the Bible is very clear that I think we all make a mistake with the idea of even saying I have to go discover who I am.

Because I think what we take this route road that says there's the good way to discover and the right things, and then there's the evil wrong things to discover. And the bible's really clear. You don't discover your identity. You recover it. We were given an identity. Every human being has been given an identity.

And and and then Adam and Eve fell for some lies, and and it it fractured that relationship with God, and it distorted that identity. And now we go about trying to find it in other things. The truth is every human being, your identity is either in Christ or in Adam.

You're either trying to find your identity in the broken, distorted things of this world, anything created, and that's the lie. You need to find who you are in something other than God and how he made you. Or

you've come back to Christ and you found your identity through him, which is what he originally designed us for, and all of us he designed, he meant for us to be made in his image, which is mean we were meant to be a mirror. We were to reflect the attributes of who God is. That's who we all are supposed to be.

And you're like, well, that sounds very non unique. I've also said we are very unique in our frames. God has designed us all with different personalities,

different interests, different things we we go after, different missions we have in our lives, different jobs, different things. And those aren't bad. Those are those are the mission, but they're not the definition. That's the frame, but not what we are. Our identity is to be the mirror, and we've been unpacking that.

And this last thing I thought that so many of us get stuck on, we get hung up on is we can't get past our past. And if you can't get past your past, it's gonna paralyze your present and it's gonna give you no future. And so we have to look at this.

We have to look at this. Matter of fact, Paul said it best. He was talking about past and looking at the future in Philippians chapter three verses 12 through 14. He says, I don't mean to say that I've already achieved these things. Talking about maturity of being all that God

meant for him to be, or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus possessed me. I press on towards living out the identity of who he made me to be. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing,

forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead. I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us. This one thing I do, I forget the past and I press on to the forward. I mean, you're a a a Cardinals fan, you need to have that ability.

Otherwise, you're gonna be depressed.

But he's saying, hey, if you look at Paul's past, he did some horrible things. He had some bad things happen to him. He went through a lot. There was a lot of issues. But he's learned that, hey, if I have if I know Christ, I'm in him. I need to learn to get past all that and move into the future on who God made me to be.

And I think this is one of the biggest issues we deal with as Christians, even coming to church all the time. Because I think there's there's three ways we tend to really stay stuck in our past. Three ways I tend to stay stuck in my past. I wanna throw that up here. Three ways. There we go.

Three ways I stay stuck in my past. One, I rehearse my resentments. All I I just

you all have that person or someone in your life, they've done something to you, and if you start describing you know you still rehearse it when as someone says, what happened? Ah, it's an old story story, and you start telling it, you get louder, you get angrier, you get more agitated

as you're telling it. You start to realize, I guess I'm not past this. It's your every time you think about it or describe it, you are right back in that moment. You're rehearsing it. You're going back through it again. The second thing is I'm paralyzed by my pain. The grief,

the hard things that have happened around us and to us, the loss that we've endured, and we get paralyzed by it. We're just stuck there. And then finally, I reinforce my remorse. Remorse is a word for a deep guilt. That's the things I've done, my own dumb things, the things I regret, sin,

You know, the things I realized that I've messed this up, and I reinforce that. I'll do that even with my relationship with God. Instead of living out the image, instead of embracing Christ, instead of looking to him, I will I will I will hold on to where I have failed.

And what happens a lot of times when we do this, we get like my wife was. We beat ourselves up so much that it doesn't seem like we have remorse because if anyone says something to us, we lash out at them in anger. This

is how we get stuck, and the problem is when you get stuck in this, this starts to become who you are. This is where you start to find your identity. It's why I can't do that because I can't if this didn't happen or that So what do we do with that?

What do we do with that? There's three things we need to do. Three ways to move past our past, and they're really just deal with those three things. We gotta do something. What does the Lord say to do? The first thing, instead of rehearsing my resentments, I need to release my resentments.

I need to let it go. You know, let it go. You know the song, Let It Go, the cold never bothered me anyway? Yeah. Physical cold never bothered her, but she went off and Elsa isolated herself because the people's coldness bothered her a whole heck of a lot. Think about it.

It's a defense mechanism. Release my resentments. What does that look like? Ephesians four thirty one and thirty two says this. Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well of all types of evil behavior. Instead

so you wanna get rid of the bitterness. You wanna get rid of the the the resentment and all that. You wanna get rid of it. You don't just sit there and say, I want it to go away. I want it to go away. How you get rid of it is instead, you gotta replace it. You gotta do these things.

Be kind to each other, tender hearted, forgiving one another. That's the one for resentment. If you wanna deal with resentment, you gotta have forgiveness. You have to offer forgiveness. You gotta forgive those people that hurt you. Just as God through Christ has forgiven you. And and and so it says you gotta forgive them.

And I know is when you say that, it's like, so that person that's hurt you, that person that's that that that marriage that fell apart, that person was unfair to you, that job where you just got canned, that that that that deeper that parent that just was horrible,

That person that maybe even abused you. Maybe there was rape involved. Maybe I'm talking about terrible, terrible things. How you get past it is you just forgive them. But here's why that's so hard, and some of you in the room might go, I can't believe you just said that. You just triggered me. Here's why.

Because there's a lie you're believing or a misunderstanding you have. It might not be full lie level, but it's a misunderstanding, and that is you equate forgiveness to reconciliation. Forgiveness does not equal reconciliation. See, you hear forgive me, you think that means I gotta go back

into a relationship with him, I gotta reengage, I gotta I gotta do something about it. I gotta act like it's no big no. No. No. No. No. No. No. That's not forgiveness is not reconcile. Reconciliation takes two. To reconcile,

the other person would have to want the forgiveness and seek the forgiveness, and then be willing to go through the change that it takes to rebuild trust. See that? And a lot of people that have probably hurt you, especially I see a lot of marriages, a lot of the ones that are good manipulators,

they want you to forgive them. You say, I forgive you. But if you try to put up any boundary,

they throw that back in your face. But you forgave me. Because they're equating forgiveness as I said, okay, I forgive you. Let's go right back to where we were. You could forgive someone and say, hey, I really don't need you in my life. And

it's not because I don't choose to forgive. It's because you're not gonna live in that forgiveness. You're not even seeking that forgiveness. You're not does that make sense? In other words, it takes two to reconcile. It only takes one to forgive. It takes two to reconcile, only one to forgive.

Then why do we hold on to it? Why won't you forgive that person that hurt you? Because the second lie. If I forgive them, I'm letting them off the hook. Really? How is your deep resentment letting them off the hook? It's letting you off the hook.

It lets you to stop getting your blood pressure up, feeling so hurt. It stops you from from letting it affect your relationships now. Come telling you, have you ever been around resentful people? You don't you don't see it in yourself very often, but you'll notice it in someone else.

When someone else is full of resentment, they are not fun to be around. And you know why? They'll be snappy at you. Because everything that happens that even remotely feels like that situation, they're gonna lash out immediately. It's like that tender spot.

You know, you you if you ever have like a a strawberry, you know, you've you ever scraped really bad, like, on your shoulder or something. I used to dive at baseball, get tore up, you know, or slide, you know, you get a big strawberry on your hip, and the baseball guys will, like, slap you in the butt when you hit a home run,

and and and and stuff like that. And and I remember that wherever you were heard, it's like, normally, that's a good thing. Pat on the back. I've had a a messed up show, somebody goes, good job, and hits you on the back. That's actually a good thing, but how am I gonna react? Oh, man. What the heck, dude? That hurt.

I don't know why I said it that way. That's weird.

If you carry on resentment, you're gonna do that. And you're not even gonna realize how it affects all of your relationships now. You're not getting justice by holding on to that anger. You're not getting back at them by holding on that anger. You're letting yourself get away from it.

Sometimes I've done this before. There was someone who hurt me deeply before and I was like, I said it out loud. One time, I just wrote it down and threw it in a fireplace. I forgive this person.

Kind of representing, I know they don't care. I know they probably won't ever try to track me down and say I'm sorry. So it means I'm not going to have a relationship with them. But I took that moment and I did that. You've got to do that. Release the resentments. Otherwise, you're just it's it's only hurting you.

I mean, love history. There's a guy named Ignacio Comenfort. He was the president of Mexico in the nineteenth century. He followed Santa Ana, and he was kind of his party was kinda one way. He was a moderate in his direction. Helped rewrite a constitution for Mexico

in the in this in this this other way, kind of they call it the liberal, but it's not the same as liberal in conservatives today this way. Well, then after he was president for a while, the more radical wing of his guys started taking over and doing stuff way way too far, and he didn't like it. And he's like, I don't know how to do this. So he started secretly meeting with all the conservatives, the people that were against him, and he literally

led a coup against himself. And he thought that'll bring it back to normal. Instead, it caused an axe a civil war in Mexico. He had to flee for his life and lost the presidency, and the country went into chaos. When you try to hold on to a resentment, thinking somehow you're teaching that person something,

you are doing a rebellion against yourself, and you're only gonna have a civil war in your heart. It's not going to fix anything. It's not gonna fix the problem. Release it. You know what? There's a practical step for some of these. Some of you, like, if you're struggling with that that hurt, you're just hung up on it.

We have a program here called CR, celebrate recovery. It meets on Friday nights. Yeah. There you go. It's always the loud ones. They were already loud. It's

for people you think that's just for drugs and alcohol. It's for hurts, habits, hang ups. Yep. It's a place to go through a scriptural program with other people that'll holler for you to walk it out. Don't let their weirdness make you not go.

Because you know why they're there? Is they know you can't do it without the Lord and without other people and without truth, without reality. Reality is always your friend. I would encourage some of you that just can't get past it, check out a Friday night. Give it a chance. See what happens. Release your resentments.

Second thing is, instead of being paralyzed in your pain, I need to relearn I need to learn to repurpose my pain. Or a better way to say is let God repurpose my pain.

But how do I do that? How do I let God repurpose my pain? Because look, it says in second Corinthians chapter one verse four and five.

Second Corinthians chapter one. There we go. They've been having so as not to act like are you stupid for the people in back, we've been having an issue. The computer's been kinda freezing up, so it's not them. Okay? So I'm just letting you know. Or maybe it is. I don't know. But no. No. It has been freezing up.

Why did I say that? That's like saying do you feel stupid. I just did it again, didn't I? Man, it's a letter rebellion against myself. He comforts us in all of our troubles. Now look, he comforts us in all of our troubles, our pain, our grief, so that we can move on with life feeling good and ignoring the people around us.

No. So so so means there's a reason he'll do this. The reason is I comfort you through the pain so that we can comfort others. Now it goes even deeper than that. It's not just, hey, you go through the pain, I bring comfort, but I wanna use that pain. I want you to repurpose it for my glory.

I will use that in any God never wastes a hurt. He never wastes anything. He will use it if you let him. But it goes deeper. He goes, why? There here's the benefit. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God given has given us. For

the more we suffer for Christ, the more we allow the suffering we go to. And here's the problem you gotta realize. Getting through pain is not just avoiding it. Some of the most painful things you're gonna experience is by being faithful to what God asked you to do. But as we do that, the more we go through that and let him repurpose the pain, the more God will shower us with his comfort through Christ.

In in in regular everyday ling English, you know what that means is? Part of God's plan to heal you from that grief is for you to use it for his glory.

That's actually part of the healing plan. It's not just, okay, sucks. It was painful, but get over yourself and help others. At least you got that going for you. It's actually saying there is something about how God wired us and what he does in those moments that when you let him use it, when you repurpose it, you don't just get paralyzed by it. You serve others in it. You serve others through it. You use it.

He actually that's how he brings the comfort and healing. So when you say, well, I'm just this is just too painful. You gotta understand. It's just it's painful. And I say, no. You need to get involved.

You need to you need to use who you are to serve God. That's part of his plan. You need to step into community. You need to be in a circle with people. You need to share and use that pain to pour in other people's lives with it. And you're like, but it hurts too much. I can't do it. And you think that I'm just like, well, suck it up buttercup. That's just what you're supposed to do.

That's not. He's saying that's how the pain alleviates. That's part of the medicine.

But we fight it because we're like, why? It's just too hard. And you're not getting it to the other side. Let him repurpose your pain because when we do that, when we use our pain to help others, that's when we are truly being that restored mirror.

We are reflecting the attributes of Christ, because what did Jesus do? He came to a people that had done nothing but hurt him. We've rebelled against him. And then he took the physical pain, the emotional pain, the spiritual pain, and took our sin for us and died on the cross even though he had done no wrong. Why?

For our benefit. So when I take the pain that's happened to me, especially the pain that I had nothing to do with, and I use that to help others, in that moment you are being about the most Christ like you could ever be. You are reflecting who Jesus is to the absolute max,

and there is a power in that. There's a healing in that. There's something in that that God wants for you. You see, we just want it removed. I want the grief, the hurt, the pain to go away. God doesn't want it removed, he wants it repurposed.

And that's what we need to be willing to do. Matter of fact, I got a picture of my friend Malanga Malanga Chella. It's there we are. Him and I. That's at Victoria Falls. And and some of you remember him. He preached here last time. I think it's 2000 he's been here twice. 2013,

I think, was the first time he was here. It was right before we moved into our our our new building. We were still in the high school. And and I've talked about it. I was in Zambia just a month or two ago. I was with him. That's us in Zambia because

he's a pastor there. He has a church over a thousand. He's planted five daughter churches. Has four guys ready to go. He hosts a pastor's conference. I went to speak leadership to these 400 pastors.

He's got things just going on. He is really being used by God in a dynamic way. He's a great friend. He's an just an awesome guy. He's here actually visiting. He's staying in my house right now, and and and he's here because he just got his doctorate degree and finished it. So he's here for that and seeing us. He'll probably be out in the lobby if you remember and want to say hi to him. But he he's here, and as you stay in our house, it's like he has a powerful story. And you know what? He wrote a book about it. He was he was when he wanted to be a pastor when he was young, years ago, he wanted to go to ministry. He was in bible school. And long story short because he's gonna come preach in November, so I don't wanna steal his story. But long story short, he end up wrongfully imprisoned for two years in a Tanzanian prison. And it was there's 5,000 prisoners in a prison built for about 1,200.

And it was terrible. And the person and he was imprisoned with the person that got him wrongfully imprisoned, and the guy was terrible to him. And he ended up having to take care of that guy.

And he wanted to be a minute. He had every reason to have resentment and to be mad at God, and he suffered. He lost two years of his life in a mean, imagine prison. Imagine what a prison in Tanzania that's overcrowded would be like. 40 guys sleeping on like, crammed in a space that's meant for about 10.

And he had to deal with these very two points I said, deal with your resentment and your pain. As a matter of fact, he chose to deal with it. He wrote a book about it. Got his book. Some people asked last service. It's on Amazon. You can get his book. And it's basically the Call to Surrender, Discover How Surrendering,

Loving, and Forgiving Brought Good Out of Suffering. That's his whole story. But when he handed me a copy, because I realized I never had a copy of it, he said, I wanted to give you a copy. He goes, read page 66. I go, page 66. Order 66? Am I gonna start killing Jedi after I read this?

And in it, he shares about how when he came here, he had been out of prison. He was here for school. He was still training to be in ministry. He was younger in that. I mean, why he was in that prison, he led over a thousand or two of those inmates to Christ

in that moment, but then now he got back out, lost two years of life. What am I gonna do? I met him. I had him preach. And I told him, tell your story and share the gospel. And he did. And he writes about that experience in his book. And I'm gonna pick it up here. It says as he was preaching, he says this. To my surprise,

I told him, I go, and just go for the gospel. Invite people to surrender to Jesus. And he says, to my surprise, I saw over a 100 people respond to the call. That was just in one service. Between the two services back then, it was over 300 people

gave their lives to Jesus. Our church only had like 1,200 in attendance at the time. So either we were great at reaching people that didn't go to church very much, or I'm a horrible person that's never talked about Jesus in my church very often.

But anyways, so that was in the one service. The first service he saw over a 100 people respond to the call. I saw the crowd of people crying and praying to God and surrender their lives to him because of the testimony they had heard.

When pastor Bush saw this, I forgot I even said this to him. It says, when pastor Bush saw this, he looked at me and said, this is why God led you into prison. If you did not obey God and surrender, all these people would not have responded to God. Your going into prison was worth it.

I didn't know if he was struggling with it. I didn't, I just said, you going to prison was worth it, my friend. And he said, when he said these words, Malinka says, I felt like breaking down and crying before the church.

I felt a deep sense of satisfaction and fulfillment as I saw a large crowd of these people surrendering their lives to God. I thank God that my going to prison was worth it. I am glad that God continues to use my story to draw many to Christ.

And he says here, whenever I'm given the opportunity to share my story, I feel like God has given me another opportunity to fulfill the purpose for which he sent me to prison. And I get fresh strength and passion to share it one more time for God's name to be glorified. He surrendered, my friend.

And you know what? This punched me in the throat because I'm like, I preached it. I told him it was worth it. And I thought to myself, I hope I never go to a Tanzanian prison. And and and and But I've done I've had to suffer. I've told my wife, do you feel stupid? So that's probably almost as dangerous.

But he had to deal with resentment, and he had to deal with that pain.

He forgave those who hurt him, and he let God repurpose the pain, the problem, the suffering. And how do you do it? You surrender. He says you got to surrender. Surrender to what? Surrender to Christ. Surrender to the thing. If you're struggling with pain, like grief, we have a thing called grief share in this church.

Check it out on our website. You can probably get the number of Craig, I guess, even if they don't have a class starting right now, I guarantee he would sit and talk to you. Deal with it. Do something about it. Don't let it become who you are. Don't let it paralyze you in the past,

preventing you from living the present that you need to be and giving you no future. Surrender,

which is what Malenga said, which is awesome because that's the third point. Instead of reinforcing my remorse, I need to remember the cross.

Instead of just going to the going to my own stupidity. Now I gotta deal with my own guilt, my own things I've done. And a lot of us reinforce it, reinforce and what I mean by reinforce is we feel bad, we feel dumb, and then we get mad when people tell us to do the right thing. And then sometimes, we start looking like, I'm supposed to fix this. I'm supposed to be better. We forget it was Jesus. We live from his love, not for it. Then we try to clean ourselves up and get it over. Can't. We fail. We fail. We fail. We get feeling like God himself is saying, what are you stupid? And then we get mad, and then we respond to that, and then we reinforce the very guilt. We finally go forget it, and we just lean into the sin. And we just go all in and say that's who I am,

And we're done. But what we're supposed to do is surrender. We're supposed to remember the cross. Look in Luke chapter 22. We're gonna take communion in minute. I'm gonna read the passage of the This in Luke 22

is the story of the last supper. Jesus knew he was gonna go die for our sins. He knew he was dying the next day. He gathered his disciples, did this last meal, and in it, he gave them something to do, a thing to remember him by. As he broke the bread, said is my body broken for you. He poured the cup, and he said this wine. This represents my blood spilt for you. You guys are the ones that I should be resentful towards. You're the ones that have sinned against me, but I am gonna die for you.

And I need you to remember that because that's where identity comes from. That is the plan. That's the bottom line. You're not gonna find it anywhere else but through Christ, and we need to remember the cross. Because if we don't,

we will either try to fix things ourself or we'll reinforce that sin, and we know won't know what to do with the remorse. We won't know what to do with the guilt. We'll either try to finally eventually say, I'm not guilty at all, and I'm gonna forget it, Or we'll just self condemn ourselves so badly that

we never turn to Jesus. Because look what happens this night. Starting in verse 14, the last supper's gonna happen. Jesus Judas has already agreed to betray Jesus. One of his disciples sells him out. And in verse 14, it says this, when the time came, Jesus and the apostles

sat down together at the table. Jesus said, I've been very eager to eat this Passover meal with you before my suffering begins. For I tell you now that I won't eat this meal again until its meaning is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. Then he took a cup of wine and gave thanks for it. He said, take this and share it among yourselves, for I will not drink wine again until the kingdom of God has come.

He took some bread and gave thanks to God for it. Then he broke it into pieces and gave it to disciples saying, this is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

How Jesus wants us to get to our real identities and live it out and and get past our past is to remember him. Don't remember your past. Don't even remember a process. Remember a person. Remember him.

And after supper, he took another cup of wine and said, this cup is the new covenant between God and his people. An agreement confirmed with my blood, is poured out as a sacrifice for you. But then he had to say this tough thing. But at this table, sitting amongst us as a friend, is a man who will betray me.

There's a man who will betray me. For it has been determined that the son of man must die, but what sorrow awaits the one who betrays him? So the disciples began to ask each other, which one of them would ever do such a thing?

You know what's crazy? If you look in the book of Matthew, it goes in a little bit more detail of them asking the question. They're like, is it me? Is it me? Judas looks at Jesus and says basically, it isn't me, is it? And you know what Jesus says to him? You said it. That's all he said to him.

You said it. Here's he'd been with him. He's seen him. He just experienced him explaining why he was gonna die. Explaining how he's gonna die for us. Explaining how he's gonna die for our guilt. Explaining that he was I'm gonna die for you betrayers.

I'm gonna die that you're a betrayer. And he sat there hearing that message and did it anyways. But you know what? I've seen on social media this little movement out there that says Judas eight two. Anybody hear that?

It's been people have been throwing it out there. Judas eight two. The the there's a good idea to that. The kind of idea is that Jesus didn't reject people. He let a guy that was betraying him sit at the table with him. True.

But they're trying to imply the idea that that's why we shouldn't judge. Jesus meets you where you're at. He'll let you at the table. Yeah. He'll meet you where you at, but he doesn't let you stay there. You gotta make a decision. You either confess and turn to him, or you're in trouble because Judas ate at that table. But then after he realized he went off and did the deed, then he felt incredible remorse and self condemnation.

But instead of returning to confess to Jesus, he wouldn't do it. He let it eat him up until he hung himself. So, yeah, Judas ate at the table, and then he died and went to hell Because he died in his sin, and he never saw the love of Christ.

We live in a world now that if you call something out, people are like, well, don't judge me. I go, I'm not, but God is because you're far from him, and you've betrayed him, and you need his love.

So the wrong way to deal with your guilt is self condemnation, because it'll either takes you down the road to death, or you will finally reject the guilt altogether and just say, I'm not guilty, because you can't handle the pain anymore. The other way is Peter sat at that dinner. He betrayed Jesus too. He denied him. He

felt terrible. He was filled with remorse. But he returned to the table. He confessed. He remembered the cross. He went back to Jesus.

This whole series has come full circle, guys. The only place you're gonna find who you really are is at the cross. The only place you're gonna find what life is meant to be is at the cross.

The only way you're gonna get anything out of that is to surrender to who Jesus is, and then learn that he loves you so much that you don't come to church to be a better person and yell at the bad people out there. What we learn here is I live from his love. I choose to now follow him. Do what the word of God says. If he says that sin in a bad way, I'll trust him. You You know why? Because he already died for me and he loves me. I'm gonna make that choice because he loves me already. I'm gonna live my life from his love, not for it.

That's where you find who you are.

I've been to England several times, spent some time in London, and I I knew this this illustration. I used it like fifteen years ago. I'd never been there. Didn't even understand the illustration. I understand it now because I've been there. There's there's a place in England called Charing Cross.

Now there is a cross there. There's a monument to someone there that has a cross, but that's really not why it's called Charing Cross. I think I got a picture of the area. It's an aerial shot. Charing Cross is a place where six major streets and interjunctions come through here, And and and they all come, and then there's stuff going on down there. And and and and and what's important about Charing Cross is since the nineteenth century, it is the geographical center of of London.

It's right in the middle. Matter of fact, they actually measure distances to different things in London from how far it is from the cross. And that's what they just call it, the cross. And what's interesting is I heard a story about a pastor talking about this in in in London,

And he said there was a Bobby, a policeman, who found a little boy that lived around there, but was lost. And he was crying and he couldn't find his way home.

And he said the Bobby kept he kept asking him, well, do you live? Can you describe Marian? He's like, well, I just I don't know. He was just totally upset. Like, he just wanted to be home. He goes, I couldn't find my own home. And he kept walking around. He kept going down different streets. He kept looking, maybe that's my street. That that just got him more lost.

Then finally, the boy looked at the police officer, the Bobby. He said, but you know what? Through his tears, he finally just said, if you take me to the cross, I can find my way home from there. If you take me to the cross, I can find my way home from there.

He You said, try to figure out who you are? Let's go back to the question I asked him. Who am I?

In the world's way, the way of Adam, even the way that many of us as Christians try to spiritualize this, we think that our job is to wander through the streets of this world, wander down the moments of my life, wander through the stories of my life, looking down this street and that street and going, maybe that's home. Maybe that's home. Maybe that's home. Maybe I'll live here. Maybe this is who I should be. Maybe that's what I was called to do. I like this house. It looks nice, but that's not a home.

You don't have to go find a home. You have one. You were created for one. You don't have to wander through life wondering where to live and make this by your own in that spot. All you gotta do is go to the cross and meet Jesus, and Jesus will take you home. That's how you solve the identity crisis.

That's where you find fulfillment in life. That's where you find life itself. It's where you find out who you really are. And who you really are, if you know Christ, is you are a child of the king of kings and the lord of lords.

You are dearly loved. You have been restored. You've been reconciled. You've been redeemed. You've been forgiven.

But that only comes from meeting him at the cross. Remember the cross. So we're gonna take communion. And that's the reason is Jesus asked us to do this to remember him. You know why? Because we forget and we wander away and we start wandering down streets wondering if this is who I am.

You gotta come back to this moment over and over and over again. But before we do it, I wanna pray because I think there's some people in this room and some people online that you've never been to the cross at all. You've never met Jesus.

And I want you to meet him now. I want you to say yes to him now. I want you to surrender

your life to him now. The rest of you that know Jesus, just start going, hey, where have I wandered away, Lord? Turning back to him right now. Deal with your stuff. Where have you let resentment take over? Where where are you letting pain define who you are?

Where have you become a victim of your pain and that's who you are? Where can you turn back to Jesus at the cross? But for some of you, I wanna pray with you. I don't care how many times you've been in church. Some of you have never surrendered and turned your life over to Jesus. Simple. You gotta confess and profess.

You gotta confess that you we do have sin, that we have tried to find our life out there in the creator. We've wandered the streets looking for things to make us happy, ignoring God. And then you profess that the only way back is through Jesus,

and you put your faith in him. I wanna pray with you. But as we pray, that's you pray with me. But it's not a magic indentation. It's more of the meaning of your heart. It means I am turning to Jesus. That's all that matters. And then we'll take communion, sing, go on with the glorious evening.

So let's pray. If that's you, it's room online, you've you've never just put your faith in Jesus, I want you to be able to take communion for real for the first time. Just pray something like this. God, I've been lost and I've been looking for home.

I've been trying to figure out who I am and all this stuff, good, bad, everything. But right now, I turn to you and confess that I have sinned. I cannot earn your love. I cannot be perfect enough, and nothing in this life is ever gonna satisfy what you actually designed for me. So I am sorry,

but I thank you that you forgave me. I thank you that you died for me. And I put my faith in you, Jesus. I come to the cross and I surrender my life to you. I turn to you as Lord. I turn to you as savior.

I believe that you came, you lived the perfect life, you died, but you came back to life and you rescued me.

I confess that and profess that only through you can I recover who I really am?

So help me in this moment as I put my faith in you to go from here and learn each and every day more of what it means to live from that love, from that relationship. I thank you. I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Hey, if you just prayed that with me or something like that, welcome to the family.

Welcome to the family. Because now you can take this and it means something. You're remembering what Jesus did for you. You remember that now you are a child of God. You are a child of God now. And that's what we do this for. Remember that we are children of God, and this is where we find who we are.

And that's why Jesus died for us. And that's why he said to do this in remembrance of him. And that's why he said he broke that bread and said, this is my body broken for you. Take and eat.

And that's why he took the cup and said, this is my blood spilt for you for the forgiveness sins.

This is so you can come home, take and drink.

God.

Amen. As we leave this place, church, remember that that is our identity, that we are sons and daughters of the living King. Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on rockpoint.io

prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.