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What is up Rock Point? Welcome to Youth Takeover. We're gonna show you how we do things in Youth, so I wanna see every hand.
Welcome to youth takeover. My
name is Caitlin, and I love that we all get to be together this weekend. And I'm Carly. I'm the middle school director here. I get to serve on our amazing youth team. What's so cool is I have seen Caitlin
grow up over the years from being in middle school youth to now graduating high school youth, and she just embodies what it means to point others to Jesus.
Yes. I have had the blessing of being a part of Rock Point Youth for the past seven years, and I'm just so thankful for that time and the relationships I was able to build with the people around me and opportunity to make my faith my own. What you guys are seeing this weekend is just a glimpse of what we get to do in youth every single week. If you guys didn't know, our youth are on fire to know Jesus
personally. They are taking new steps in their faith, and our youth love doing life with their communities. We just wanted to thank you guys for your prayers and for your generosity to help us invest into this next generation.
I would like to personally thank anyone who has given us seats on the bus for the past two weeks. Camp for me, it was a time to get a sense of deep community and see Jesus in a new light that wouldn't have been possible without camp.
I've seen so much life change in myself and the people around me, and I just know God is going to continue to move. If you haven't given to seats on the bus yet, it is not too late. You can give all year long, and if you want more information about that, you can head to rockpointe.io.
But we just wanted to tell you guys we love you. We're so excited. We're with you today, and it is because of you that we get to make camp possible for our youth. We are so excited for the rest of this weekend and being here with you guys, but for now, let's hop back into worship. Let's worship.
I thank you cannot be enough. It's not lost on me what you save me from. I'm running something I know, but I'm coming
Yes, Jesus. We love you. Thank you for accepting us just as we are. We give you the glory forever and ever. It's in your name we pray. Amen. You guys can go ahead and take your seats.
Hey, Rock Point. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm Abby. And I'm Shane. And woah. What? What? Welcome to In Youth
case you haven't already noticed, our middle school and high school youth have taken over our weekend services. We have you serving all over the campus. They're in the booths, running cameras, greeting you on your way in, and bringing the energy everywhere. We hope you loved worshiping with us, and we can't wait for pastor Jeff's message. We have a few things we wanted to tell you about, so let's get into this weekend's announcements. If you are new to Rock Point, don't forget to stop by the New Here star here on the patio. It's the first step to learn about our church, find out how to get connected, and apparently, they have a gift for you as a thanks for choosing to be here today. Yeah. You for sure don't wanna miss out on the free stuff. We love free stuff. Because of your generosity to the Seats on the Bus campaign,
we get to go to camp at a lower cost. But your generosity allows us to do even more as a church. Thank you to all those who help us in our mission to point people to Jesus in our community and around the world through your financial giving. The best way to give at Rock Point is online at rockpoint.io
under the gift tab, but we also have offering boxes in the lobby and the exits of the worship center. Thank you again for your generosity. We thought we'd take this weekend to tell you about Rock Point Youth. If you're a youth or have a youth who has never been to our high school and our middle school services, you have to check this out. Every week, we get to be in worship, be in community with friends and leaders, and learn more about who Jesus is. If you wanna learn more about our middle school and our high school services, head to rockpoint.io
to learn more about how you can get involved.
Okay, Jaden. One of my favorite parts about our church is our coffee shop. They are open to the public every day of the week, and it's the best place for meetings, hanging out, friends, and even remote working. Next time you're looking for a place to hang out, we've got you. You can find ours and learn more about the coffee shop on rockpoint.io.
Let's hurry up and finish these announcements so we can go order some drinks. Okay. Now is the perfect time to pull out your phone and go to rockpoint.io
so you can follow along with our high school pastor, Jeff Sermon, today. This has been fun, but before we go, don't forget to follow us on our Rock Point social media to stay connected and see what's happening here at Rock Point.
Overwhelmed and stressed out right now. How do I manage it and move forward with my life? I think what you're looking for are some rhythms of peace.
Well, Well, morning. How are we doing? If we haven't had the chance to meet, my name is Jeff Reinhart. I'm the high school pastor here on staff and this has been an extremely special week for me. Been on staff for a little over three and a half years, and the graduating class
was my first class that I had as freshmen that I was able to take all the way through their high school experience. And so, yes, it's been fun. And, this is one of my favorite weekends of the year because you all get to experience what I get to experience on a weekly basis. I mean, are you having fun yet? We
have youth that are on fire for Jesus that are using their gifts to glorify him all over this church. Can we just make some noise for all the ways that God is using our youth?
Well, if you're just joining us, we've been in a series called rhythms of peace and talking through how we can develop these spiritual habits and practices to be able to experience God's presence in our lives. And we've heard some amazing messages from Bill and Ron and others about some of those things and how we can accomplish that. And I think up until this point,
I believe that we would agree all agree that, yeah, if I do those things, I'll experience God's peace in our life. Like if I read my Bible or I pray, yeah, I would agree that I'm gonna experience the peace of God in my life.
Well, the topic today, I believe is the most counter cultural way to experience peace and that's through community.
Few years ago, my wife and I, we signed up to go on this medical mission trip. My wife's a pediatric ER nurse and so, we thought this would be a good trip for us to get involved because they also had a spiritual counseling segment of the medical clinic that I could serve in as a pastor.
And so we signed up for this trip to go to Tanzania. Now, if you're bad with geography, Tanzania is in Africa. Okay? I had to look that up. But super beautiful country and we we took off on our journey over there. Well, how many of you know when you travel, things never go as planned?
And so we got delayed and half our team was gonna arrive a day later. So, we came up with the plan in the moment to go, okay, the first group that gets there, they're actually gonna start on day one seeing patients. But the only problem was, is the second grouping of our medical team had the medication.
And so we created this plan where we were gonna go, okay, you you guys start seeing patients, we'll bring the meds a day later and you can tell the patients that you saw that first day to come back and receive their meds on day two. So we came up with this great plan.
Day two, we get into it and we realized pretty quickly that pharmacy was getting inundated because we were We had all the patients that were going through on that second day that we had to get their meds to. And then we had a huge grouping of patients from the day before that were lining up to receive their meds.
Now, it got so crazy that they eventually pulled me from spiritual counseling to go help out in pharmacy.
You're putting the pastor in a medical area. That's a little scary. That means times are desperate, right? And so I'm just trying my best to be as helpful as possible and do what I can. Well, things just got out of hand and they got out of hand fast. The group that was there
from the day before, they started getting frustrated and impatient because they weren't getting their meds on time. And so, they started kind of yelling at us. And in Tanzania, they have these walking sticks that they bring everywhere.
And what ended up happening is they started using their walking sticks to start poking our ankles, to get our attention so that we could help them out. So finally, I just had enough. I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna handle this. I'm gonna take some leadership around this place.
And so I put on my best pastor voice and I said, hey, listen up. If you want your medication, I need a single file line and I need you to stop poking us with your sticks. To which they just started poking our feet again.
It didn't work. So finally I just, I gave up, I got overwhelmed. And so I told the team in pharmacy, I just need a break. I need a restroom break. So I started walking over to the restroom, which was a mud hut off in the distance.
As I was walking over to the bathroom, I looked out into the Tanzanian wilderness and we have a picture of it. There it is. Okay. So I looked out into the distance and I had this thought, what would happen if I just kept walking and I never came back?
Like at least then I would experience some sort of peace away from the chaos that I was experiencing. I think when it comes to life, I think a lot of us have this same thought is the only way to truly find peace and relaxation is away from everyone and everything going on.
I think the world tells us, right, to find true lasting peace is only when you get into isolation away from everyone and their problems. But this is exactly what the enemy wants from us. From the beginning of time, in the garden, before sin entered the world, God said, it is not good for man to be alone.
And ever since, the enemy has been trying to attack us in that way, trying to get us into isolation and trap us in his lies so that he can ultimately destroy us, keep us from God and from the people that God's placed in our lives. And so what we have to learn today, and this is my big idea that I wanna give you,
is that if we're actually gonna experience true lasting peace,
it's by choosing the people in our lives. And so peace chooses we over me. That's what it looks like to experience true lasting peace in Jesus, is when we choose we over me.
I love the earliest believers in the book of Acts actually give us a framework of what this looks like in our own lives, how we can choose we over me and what happens as a result of it. If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Acts two forty two.
And as you're turning there, I'm just gonna give you a little bit of a backstory of what's happening. Acts two forty two.
So this is at the point this is right after Jesus had come, He'd lived a perfect life, and then He'd gone to the cross to die for the sins of the world. And then after three days later, He rose from the grave to give us life
in Him, proving that He is who He says He is, that He is the way, the truth, and the life, and he's the only way to salvation.
But here's the cool thing is after Jesus rose from the grave, he actually walked this earth for forty days and he appeared to different groups of people while he was here, including his closest followers. But after this forty days, it was time for him to ascend into his rightful position at the right hand of the father.
And so, as he's ascending into heaven, like he's iron man or something, He tells his earliest followers
that the it reminds them of the plan. He said, hey, guys, I'm leaving, but I want you to go to Jerusalem and wait there until you receive the promised Holy Spirit. God's spirit is actually gonna dwell on the inside of you and and continue to live in and through you moving forward.
And so he tells us the plan, and and the earliest believers go to Jerusalem. They're in this upper room. There's about a 120 of them, and the Holy Spirit comes upon them and it fills them in dramatic fashion. Like there's pillars of fire that were resting on them. It's wild. They started to speak in foreign languages,
which at the time there was this huge Jewish festival going on and there was people that came from all over and they started hearing their native language being spoken. They were shocked, they were amazed. But then there was another group that heard them talking in foreign languages
and they're the skeptical ones. They go, Don't be too impressed. They're just drunk.
So Peter, the same guy that denied Jesus two weeks earlier is now filled with the Holy Spirit and he goes, he stands up and he addresses the skeptics and gives probably one of the best sermon jokes that I've ever heard. He gets up and the first thing that he says is he goes, hey guys, we're not drunk
because it's only 9AM. Like, love that. He's like, I wish he was like, if it was 9PM,
you'd have a different case. Right? But he addresses them and he actually explains what this looks like, the holy spirit filling them. He said, this is all part of God's plan and how he's gonna use us to change the world. Because of when you place your faith in Jesus as Lord and savior, you too can be filled with God's
spirit. And as a result, 3,000 people gave their lives to Jesus that day. Now, Bill is a decent preacher, but I don't think he's ever had 3,000 people come to know Jesus in one service. Like absolute revival breaks out, absolute move of God takes place, but what I love about the earliest church
is that they didn't just accept Jesus as Lord and savior and walk right back into isolation. They didn't just accept Jesus and buy into the me and Jesus movement. No, what it led them to do next was actually form
a life changing community where they were in relationship with one another. And I believe they give us the best picture of what we over me looks like. We're gonna pick up in verse 42 here.
It says this, All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship and to sharing in meals, including the Lord's Supper, which is communion, and to prayer. So that's the framework when they devoted themselves to those things, look what happened.
A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. All the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. They worshiped together at the temple each day,
met in homes for the Lord's Supper and shared their meals with great joy and generosity, all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day, the Lord added to their fellowship, those that were being saved. Now, I love the group of guys that I play basketball with on Friday mornings.
And I'm sure your pickleball crew is pretty amazing. But when the storms of life hit, I'm calling that community. I'm calling
that group of people to surround me as I'm working through some of the things that I'm struggling with, because they give us a picture of what it looks like to chase after Jesus with everything in them, and then live lives that are generous, that are supportive, that are loving to the people around them.
And so I think all of us, we would agree and we would say, yes, I wanna be a part of a community that does this. But I think a lot of us sit where we sit going, that's not my church experience. How come my church experience looks so much different than theirs? Well, I think it really
comes down to this idea of either being devoted or casually committed. The earliest believers weren't satisfied with just coming to an hour service once a week or once a month and then walking out and not living life in connection with one another. They weren't just satisfied with just checking the box
of their faith checklist every once in a while, and then going out and doing life on their own from there on out, no. They came, they were devoted,
they took that extra step of faith into community and lived life with one another. I think all of us want this, but what we have to realize is that a community like that doesn't just happen by default,
it happens by design. It takes us actually taking that step forward and choosing
we over me, because when we do that, I believe that God changes our lives with the people that He's placed in our lives. And so how do we do that? What does that look like practically for you and I? How do we choose we over me? Well, I think the first way, and this is We've kind of landed on these four principles at Rock Point as we search the scriptures, but the first way is we've got to be known.
We've gotta be known. We gotta be known by God and we gotta be known by his people in biblical community. And what this looks like for us is that we choose truth over lies. I love the earliest community because they were committed to the apostles' teaching. What's the apostles' teaching? That's the truth of the gospel,
that we can actually have a relationship with God that saves us, that changes us from the inside out. Through the person of Jesus, we are reconciled back to God the Father, but not only did he come to repair our vertical relationship with God, he actually came to repair our horizontal relationships with one another,
to where we can actually be our real selves. We can actually let others in on what we're going through, what we're wrestling with. I think one of the greatest benefits of biblical community is helping each other identify the lies that we're believing about ourselves and replacing it with God's truth.
What lies have you walked in here with today? What lies are you battling in isolation? Some of us have walked in here today thinking that we failed as a parent because our kid isn't acting the way we want them to act. And if you would have just done X, Y, and Z differently, that your kid wouldn't be in this position.
Others, maybe you've gone through a recent divorce, and you've convinced yourself that there's no way that God can love you after what's happened, that you're feeling worthless, you're feeling alone, you're feeling too far gone for God's love for you. Others, maybe you've run back to the addiction
and you're feeling worthless and you feel hopeless, like there's no way that you're gonna get through this, that there's no light at the end of the tunnel for you, that you're always gonna just struggle with what you struggle with.
Maybe for others, you've blown up on your coworkers this week and you've gotten angry and frustrated with them, and you've convinced yourself that this is just what I do. This is just who I am. I'm always gonna be an angry person in life.
Who do you have in those moments that are helping you combat the lies of the enemy, that are telling you that you are more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus, that there is no condemnation for those of us who are in him. Who's telling you that you are a masterpiece in Christ Jesus,
that you are loved, that you are chosen, that you are forgiven, that you have purpose on this earth, that God loves you more than you will ever know, even in your worst moments. Who do you have in your corner that is reminding you of the truth of the gospel and who you are in Christ? Think a lot of us,
we don't let others in because we're scared of getting rejected. We don't let others in and then we just choose to live these lives of quiet desperation where no one knows the real us. No one's there to help us in our time of need because no one knows us. I have conversations with people
as a pastor on the staff all the time, where they get They go through a tough time or a storm and they get frustrated with the church and they'll go, Man, no one stepped in from the church when I needed them the most. No one was there for me in my deepest struggle. And a lot of times I'll ask them,
I'll go, Wait, your life group didn't step up? They didn't pray for you or encourage you? And they'll go, Well, I'm not in a life group. I'll go, Okay. What about your serving team? Do you serve? Do they come around you? Do they pray for you, encourage you, point you to who you are in Jesus? Well, I don't serve.
And I have this conversation where I go, I think the problem that no one's helping you, I don't think anyone's helping you because no one knows you. You're not known by anyone. You're not living life in community with anyone else, and so, yeah, you're getting upset,
but at the same time, you're not allowing anyone in on your real self, Because what you realize when you actually open up about the struggles that you're going through, when you let people into the real you, what you find in biblical community is that you are accepted.
That's the next thing in choosing we over me, is we realize
that we're accepted. We're not just accepted by God at our worst moment, but we're actually accepted by one another at our worst. I think this is one of the most freeing things to think about when we embrace community, is that at your worst,
you are not only loved, but you are accepted. I love what scripture says, it says, While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. AKA, while we were still failing, while we were stuck in our brokenness, that's when Jesus went to the cross for you because you were worth it.
He came after you in love. He accepted you at your worst point. And so, if we know we're accepted by God, we can accept each other. And when we're accepted by others, we can choose confession over perfection. We don't have to hide our real selves, we can actually open up about the real us. I love the earliest believers,
they were devoted to fellowship. Now, I don't love the word fellowship, if I'm being honest. Like it does not do the Greek word justice. Okay? Fellowship to me sounds like one of those Christianese kind of lame words. You know what I'm talking about? What's worse is when I hear people use fellowship as a verb. Oh, people
have said this to me before, Hey bro, you wanna come over and fellowship? No.
Sounds horrible. Sounds like a lame Christian party.
If If you were to ask me that same thing and say, Hey, bro, you wanna come over and hang out? I'm in, right? Like, why do we gotta throw fellowship in there? But this word doesn't do the Greek word justice. The Greek word means to contribute to a group of people. Or another definition that I absolutely love is that it's an intimate
sharing of oneself. And I believe that is what we are called to as believers, that we're called to have relationships that don't just stay surface level, where we talk about sports all day long. We talk about golf, we talk about the weather, which don't get me wrong, those things aren't bad, okay guys?
Like, I love talking with people about all those things, but I think we miss out on this deep biblical community that is life changing when we just keep our relationship surface level. In biblical community, we are called to go below the surface,
where we actually begin to open up about the things that we're wrestling with on the inside of us. We actually bring our habits and our hang ups and the things that we struggle with to the light, and when we do that, God actually uses one another to heal each other.
I think some of us in here, we get nervous when we hear a confession. And maybe you've been in biblical community before, where you've been burned, where you've opened up to someone and they've betrayed your trust. I just wanna say, I'm sorry, But don't let that one bad experience be your only experience.
Because I don't want you to miss out when you find that trusted group of people that you surround yourself. I don't want you to miss out on the healing that takes place when you're able to confess and bear your soul to another individual.
It's amazing and receive that acceptance and that love and that encouragement from another individual. It's the most freeing thing we can experience. Look what James says in James five sixteen, it says this, Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
I think it's so interesting that we receive forgiveness of sins vertically, but we actually receive healing in our horizontal relationships. It's mind blowing to me that God uses the people in our lives to heal us. It's crazy because I think some of our deepest wounds come from others,
but also in the same breath, our greatest healing comes from others as well. And so we've got to commit to this practice of confession, because that's how we start to fight the schemes of the enemy in our lives. I think one of the most powerful places that we can get in relationship to one another
is that when we have someone that we can trust, and we start opening up and confessing before we even commit the sin, when we have that lustful thought, and we can get on the phone, or we can text someone in our community and just say, Hey, could you pray for me? I'm experiencing this.
I believe that we start to take ground against the enemy to where he doesn't have power over our lives. I was meeting up with one of our senior guys
a couple weeks ago, and he was just breaking down the power that he felt when he finally confessed what was happening on the inside of him. He said that, he's like, Jeff, I had been wrestling with this thing on the inside of it. It had been eating me alive,
but I felt like I couldn't open up to the guys in my group because I thought they would judge me and reject me if they saw the real me. And so he said, I just kept praying. I just kept asking God, God, would you answer my prayer and take this away from me and help me through this struggle? He said, then I realized
that God's answer to my prayer was actually through the people in my group. He said that night, as scared as I was to open up, he said, I took that step of faith and I actually confessed what I was actually going through to the guys in my group.
He's like, it was the most amazing thing because I thought they were gonna judge me, but instead of rejecting me, they actually accepted me. Instead of the embarrassing feeling I felt, no, I felt peace. I felt God's peace in my life knowing that, man, He has surrounded me with guys that can help me fight this thing.
And you know what they did? They encouraged me. They reminded me of my worth and my value in Christ. And then they surrounded me and they prayed for me. He goes, I just wish that everyone could experience the feeling that I felt in that moment.
I wish everyone would experience that level of biblical community, because Jeff, it changed my life. I think this is a beautiful picture of how you and I can come around and support each other. And that's the next thing in choosing we over me, is that we allow ourselves to be supported. And we do this by choosing prayer
over performance. What I love about the earliest believers is that they were devoted
to prayer. Their faith wasn't a show. They didn't just act like they were supporting one another. No, they actually showed up in the weakest times in each other's lives. But how many times do we make our faith a show sometimes when it comes to supporting other people?
I mean, the earliest church, they didn't just act like they were gonna pray for people and then walk away and not do anything about it. I mean, have you ever been in one of those conversations before, Where you start to open up to someone else about some of the things that you're struggling with, and then
all of a sudden the person hits you with a, Yeah, I'll pray for you about that, as they're kind of like shuffling away. And you're like, I don't trust that they're gonna pray for me at all, right?
I think a lot of us, we get into this mode where we wanna look like we're supporting each other, but when things get uncomfortable and weird and hard, we actually start to make excuses why we can't be there for the other person. We've got to fight that,
because those excuses are gonna continue to take us farther and farther away from the community that God has for us. Some of us in here, we're making excuses right now of why we can't be there for the people in our lives. Some of us were running with the idea that, Man, I'm just too busy.
I just don't have time to be there for that person and help that person out. Or maybe for others, like, I just don't have the capacity to deal with this person's issues. But basically, if we start making excuses like that of why we can't be there for other people,
what we're telling God is we're saying, God, I'm too important for you to use me, how you wanna use me in that person's life. And Paul actually warns us against that behavior in Galatians two:three. He says this, Share each other's burdens,
and in this way, obey the law of Christ. What's the law of Christ? It's to love God and to love others. And we do that by supporting them and helping them carry their burdens. It says this, If you think you're too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important. Whew.
I think some of us need to hear that in here. We're not too important to help the people in our lives. God has called us to step in in people's toughest moments, to actually be the hands and feet of Jesus to those people, to serve them. I think some of us, the reason why we don't help out is I think we get overwhelmed.
We're like, I just don't know my role in this person's life. I don't know how to help this person. I think that's valid, But one of the images that I love with community is that we're called to be the guardrails on a person's life,
to keep them on the right path. But if that person goes off of those guardrails and off the road, that's when we need our first responders to step in. And so what you're not called to, you're not called to be someone's savior, you're called to point them to the savior.
You're called to point them to the one who can actually do something about it, which is Jesus. And in the same breath, you can point them to the counseling they need, or the recovery program that they need. That's how we carry each other's burdens. We don't have to just be a walk on for everyone. No.
With healthy boundaries, we find out what we can do in that person's life and take that step toward them. But here's the reality for all of us, all of us have the responsibility as believers to pray for the other person. I think that's the most powerful thing that we can do when someone's struggling,
is continue to cover them with prayer, continue to lift them up in our daily lives. I love what scripture says. It says, The prayer of a righteous person, which basically just means someone who has given their life to Jesus, place their faith in Him, say that person's prayer is powerful and effective. Whew. Sometimes
when I don't know what to do, prayer kind of feels like I'm not helping that person, but that's the best thing that we can do for the other person. That's how we support them and love them like Jesus and point them to Him. And when we do that and we encourage each other to come around those people that are struggling,
this is how we live out our faith intentionally. We sharpen each other, we make each other better. And that's the last way that we choose we over me, is we allow ourselves to be developed by others. It's one thing I love about the earliest followers of Jesus is that they were committed to making each other better.
They didn't just allow someone to accept Jesus and then go back into isolation and sit on the sidelines. No, They challenged them to step up, to use their time, their talent, their treasure, and their testimony to live on mission for Jesus, to go reach the people in their community
that were broken and hurting and point them to the love of Christ. You and I have this mission to fulfill on this earth. We're not called to just sit back and say, you know what? I've already given my life to Jesus, so I'm just gonna wait until he comes back, until I pass. No,
God's called each of us to use our gifts and our abilities to glorify him in every way. So my question for you today, who do you have in your life that is making you more like Jesus? Who do you have in your life that's calling you out and calling you higher to live for him?
All of us need to come around each other and continue to sharpen each other, as it says in Proverbs. That's how we continue to make each other better, as we continue to encourage and challenge each other and speak the truth and love to one another, so that we can continue to become all that God has created us to be.
But man, that sharpening process, that's uncomfortable. Sharpening doesn't sound great, but it's needed. Those tough moments with the people in our community actually make us better. Those hard conversations that we step into with one another actually make us more like
Jesus. I'm a basketball player, and I remember this concept growing up is that if the coach stops talking to you,
that means he doesn't care about you anymore. It means he's given up on you. I
think we need to apply that into our lives too. If I truly care about you, I'm not just gonna sit back and people please you and tell you what you wanna hear. No, if I care about you enough and I truly love you, I'm gonna tell you what you need to hear.
I'm gonna speak the truth in love, why? Because I wanna see you become all that God has created you to be on this earth. We have the greatest mission on earth. And so we should be challenging each other to live that out daily in our lives, to bring light into the dark spaces in our community,
to make each other better coworkers and husbands and wives and school teachers, right? Like this is what we're called to as believers. And this is what it looks like to live a life of intentionality. We're helping each other develop and turn into the image of Christ.
And I believe if we commit to those four things, being known, accepted, supported, developed, I believe God will use the people in our lives to change our lives. So my challenge for you today, before you walk out, how are you doing being known, accepted, supported, developed?
What step do you need to take today? For some of you, you've never been in a LifeGroup before, you're not in one. I challenge you to get into one today. I'm gonna go into a little bit of announcement mode. You can go to Rock Point.
Onto the next steps tab, and you can sign up for a group today before you leave this building. For others, you're in a life group. That's amazing. I love that, encourage that. My challenge for you is get with your LifeGroup this week and ask yourselves this question,
how as a group are we doing being known, accepted, supported, and developed? And which one do we need to work on as a community? So that we can continue to take those steps closer to Jesus and allow him to change our lives through the power of community. My family experienced
the power of community a few years ago when my dad had a stroke and overnight it flipped our world upside down. We stepped into a moment where we were experiencing so much fear, so much anxiety, so much uncertainty, not knowing what was gonna happen. And this stroke put my dad in the ICU at the hospital.
And I remember just getting there and just feeling the weight of the world on top of our shoulders as a family. But I'm so grateful that my parents chose we over me, that they decided to live in biblical community because it was in that dark space that our community showed up. They met us in our worst
moment. And I'll never forget, there was this couple and the husband was a pretty successful business guy, he owned car dealerships, and he was pretty busy,
but he went out of his way, made time in his schedule to be able to support and provide for our family during that time. He got us a private room at the hospital that we could come back to after visiting my dad, that we could be there together as a family and pray and support each other. But I remember there'd be times where I'd go to my dad's room and I'd come back.
And there that couple was providing dinner for us that night, so we didn't even have to think about it. And they were there to encourage us, pray for us, point us back to Jesus. And
then I remember after my dad got released from the hospital, there were new challenges because we didn't have a means to get him to and from therapy each day. And so there was new fear, there was new anxiety, there was new uncertainty of these new challenges that we were facing. But guess who showed up again?
It was this couple. And they used their resources to get my dad a utility van. And this bad boy was like a transformer. It was awesome. Dad loved it, rolling down the windows, cruising to therapy, it was amazing. But in a time where we were feeling the weight of the world and all that fear and anxiety,
we actually begin to experience God's peace and His presence and His goodness and His faithfulness on another level through these people. And I just remember thinking to myself, this is the picture of life changing community. And this couple, man, this is exactly who I wanna be for the people that are in my community.
In their worst moments that I don't run away, but I show up and I do everything that I can to make them feel the love of Christ in their lives. How about you? How can you take a step out of isolation today and into biblical community?
What does it look like today for you to choose we over me and experience the life change that God has for you in that context.
I challenge you this week, commit to the people in your lives and watch how God uses them to mold and shape you into his image. Would you join me in prayer? God, thank you so much for who you are. That God, that you don't abandon us, you come to us, God, in love, even in our worst moments.
God, I thank you for the gift of community that you have given us people to do life with, where we're known, accepted, supported, and developed. And God, we can literally experience your peace through the people in our lives. And so God, I just pray, would you give us courage to step out of isolation,
bring what we need to bring to the light, and trust that you're gonna move in ways that we can't even think. And so God, we trust you. We love you. And everyone said, amen. Let's worship.
Till every dark addiction starts to break. Declaring there is hope and there is freedom. I speak Jesus.
Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is life.
Jesus in the darkness over every enemy. And Jesus for my family, I speak the holy name.
Amen. Amen. Can we give it up one more time for the next generation? Our youth are on fire for the Lord. My name's Caleb McMains, and I'm our youth director here. And, man, just thank you for being here. Thank you for worshiping and being a part of a church that believes in what God is doing
in our young people. We cannot wait to see what continues to happen. Thank you for everything you've done as a church to come together and support what God is doing in the lives of our youth.
Hey, thanks for joining us for service online this weekend. Be sure to follow us on our Rock Point social media to stay connected throughout the week and see what's happening here at Rock Point.