We Are Rock Point | Part 3

I've gotten old, but at least God you gave me a good sermon illustration. Thank you. Thank you. I'll get something out of this. That's what got me through the pain was the idea that trying to stretch in two different directions at the same time is not very effective. It's not very effective. It's frustrating.

And the reality is that's what many of us wrestle with each and every day when in our lives. Some of us are really struggling with that right now. Is that we are trying to stretch our lives in multiple directions. I had someone come up after last service I go, man your idea about stretching in two, get it. He goes, I feel like I'm trying to stretch in six.

Some of you feel like every muscle in your body and your whole life is needing to be stretched. And it's hard and it's complicated. But what I want to talk about today is as we've been in this series called we are Rock Point talking about what is the church.

Because the reality is there's a false dichotomy that there's Christians and then there's churches. The the the we are the church. And so what God calls us to be as the people of God is what we're called to be as Christians.

So we've been talking about what does it mean to be the church and many of us struggle with with trying to go after what God has called us to because we're trying to stretch in two different directions at once.

We're trying to stretch our lives towards what God has for us. We're trying to stretch our faith. We're trying to lean into that. But at the same time we're also trying to stretch other directions too. We're trying to do them both at the same time and it's just not gonna work.

And as we've learned in the first week that that that's the idea of what does it mean to be the church where Rock Point is. We're a Rock Point when we know Jesus. And and the reality is we learned in week one that that what that means is God wants us to know that life is about the journey not the destination.

And and we're not just God, get me to this next stopping point. Get me to this. It's life is a journey and that journey is to know Christ. And and and that's really the the point of our life is Christ. The point is the rock. The rock of Jesus.

That is the point. The rock is the point. Now you know why we're called Rock Point.

And and since the rock is the point, we're supposed to point people to the rock. And and that's really what it's about. And then last week, we learned that, okay, we are also rock point when we grow in community. In real biblical community. Oreo cookie community as I talked about. Because we realized we're not supposed to do this journey alone.

And we need to stretch into that and lean into that. But then today I wanna talk about the whole sum up is the last thing is we need to to go and live intentionally. We are Rock Point. We are being the church. We are being what God called us to be when we choose to go into our lives

and live out this calling God has given us with intentionality, and and and to wrap our lives around and lean into and stretch into what Jesus has called us to be. And that's really what I want to unpackage today, but I want to do it through a passage of scripture found in the book of Colossians.

It's about pretty far through your New Testament, and what this is the letter written from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by Apostle Paul to a church he started in Colossi.

It's it's a city, a town, it's this local church. And and as I read through this, I'm gonna set up a little bit more, but as I read through it, this message is a little bit it's a different I'm gonna teach through these verses. But as we hear Paul's heart of what he's called to do, and in by extension you're gonna see he's not just saying here's what I do for you. He's saying this is what we need to be. He's calling this church to be the church. And and and what he's doing is is is he starts off this church in Colossi has the same struggles we have. Getting pulled to stretch in other directions. They they were facing a Roman Empire. The outside world was very anti their faith. Many of us feel that today that the world's getting a little bit more hostile towards believing in Jesus.

But he also had struggles internally. Was there fighting about nitpicking about what you should wear, what you should eat, what you should all these dumb little things rather than leaning into Jesus. So he opens the letter like Paul always does with the first chapter is who is Jesus? Reminding him the point is

the rock of Jesus. And then in we're gonna be in chapter one near the end in the first part of chapter two as he kind of transitions goes okay because once we know who Jesus is, here's the point of what we're supposed to be about. We need to go live intentionally

together going after this. But as I teach through it, I'll explain what's going on, but there's five things I noticed. There's five questions that I think come out of these verses that I intend for us to ask ourselves as a heart check. It's a heart check for living intentionally.

This is not really the how to live intentionally. These are these five questions are where is my heart on these things? Because if if my heart's not in the right place on these things I'm gonna struggle with living intentionally. I'm gonna stretch towards a lot of things that aren't where God wants me to go.

So I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna stop, and when we talk about each of these questions, I'm just gonna challenge you to ask yourself, where am I at on this? What's my thought on this? Okay. So here we go. In in chapter one starting in verse 24, we find the first question comes out of this first verse. He says, I'm glad

when I suffer for you in my body.

For I am participating in the sufferings of Christ that continue for his body, the church. You're like, great. First verse, suffering was twice already right in there. That that he's talking about how he suffered for them. And and and and and the question I think we need to ask out of this with where are we at in our heart towards living intentionally

is what is my attitude towards suffering? How do I view suffering in general? We're gonna see what Paul's attitude was right there. We'll take it apart in that verse, but ask yourself what how do I view suffering? What I mean by that is is is there's basically three ways to view suffering,

And and Paul's the the the third one. I think it's the biblical one. But but a lot of us we have to understand if I'm gonna go live intentionally, stretch into what God has for me, I give got to have the right view of what does it mean to go through something painful, to go through something sacrificial,

to be willing to suffer for a cause. And and the problem is what is your attitude? Now there's some people that their attitude towards suffering is the masochist. The masochist. They insist on suffering. Everything has to be suffering. Know they're they're Seahawks fans and cat owners. Those people just insist

on being miserable. I mean I'm just telling them. I'm just joking. Actually if you are a masochist Christian you probably are mad that I tell jokes. Some of you are saying you tell jokes? I haven't heard any.

But but the reality is this, is is you're the person that your faith is it's always somber, it's always serious, it's always about suffering. To follow Jesus means it's horrible, it's terrible, but at least you go to heaven in the end. That's pretty much the masochist. You You insist on the drama. You always look for the pain. It's always about the suffering. Now now my theory is there's not too many of us in the room that that's our problem.

Most of us, or at least I do, maybe I'm just reflecting myself on everybody is, I tend to want to struggle with the other view, which is the escapist view. And that is, I resist all suffering. My goal of life is to find the easy way. Right? I

I I'm like you know, water. I follow the path of least resistance. You know, it's like that's where I want to go. I don't like to do hard things. You know, your kids are all born that way. If you're right, your kids never wanna do hard things. And and and they want you to do hard things so they can do easy things. And and and so the problem is I kinda deal with that. That's like you you resist it at all times. Meaning you you and if you apply that attitude towards your walk with Christ, you become the person that goes to a church that says, I wanna be spiritual. I wanna feel good. I wanna worship Jesus. I wanna I wanna know these things. But I don't once it gets uncomfortable,

I think something's wrong. There's something wrong. Because I think following Jesus means I should always be happy. And so what that means is I'll go to a church,

but say it gets tough. Say say it gets to that point of like, alright. Okay. I I need to to to you know they're telling me I should serve or I should give. I'm like, I'll do it if I have extra time. I'll do it I'll give if I have extra money. As long as I have extra.

If you're an escapist Christian, the person that if it's gonna cost me anything, if it's gonna hurt, I will not do it. And we have that escapist mentality that we think faith is about avoiding all pain. And the problem is what happens is we have an escapist mentality. We cannot differentiate between bad suffering

and suffering that maybe isn't bad. And Paul describes exactly the third person is the realist. It doesn't mean you go look for suffering. It doesn't mean all suffering should be avoided at all cost, but he knows there's certain things that we will suffer for if we're gonna lean into and go live intentional.

And he shares it right there. The realist is you can rejoice in the right kind of suffering. You learn how to rejoice. And he gives us the right kind of suffering. It's right there. You catch on the up on the clue. He says, I'm glad when I suffer. Now if that was a period and that was where it stopped,

we'd be like Paul's messed up. But but it doesn't. It says I'm glad when I suffer for what? For you. And then he says for I am participating in the sufferings of Christ that continue for the church. What he's saying is the suffering you can rejoice for. The suffering we're called to. If I'm gonna live intentionally

and stretch into what God has for me, I'm gonna have to choose to get uncomfortable for the cause of Christ for the sake of his church. I'm gonna have to get uncomfortable for for for the body of Christ, Which means I'm gonna have to be willing to maybe suffer

with with with with with doing things with my time and my money and and my life. I go okay that's gonna cost me. That's gonna be painful. What Paul's saying is I willingly sacrificed

for you. And you know why he was willing to do that? He got that at the straight from scripture, straight from Jesus. We're supposed to become like Jesus.

Matter of fact, the point, the mission of our church here, which is right out of the Bible, but it's the way we word it is to point people to Jesus by loving them like Jesus. So what he's saying is I suffered to point you to Jesus,

and the reason I suffered is because I chose to love you like Jesus. And how did Jesus love us? He sacrificed. He suffered. He got uncomfortable.

Now you're going back to that first one was my view of suffering. And if you're an escapist, you will refuse to ever do that for the body of Christ. And if I'm not willing, I'm not going to go and live intentionally and lean into what God's called me to, what He built us for, what He's called and designed us to be. So

what is my attitude towards suffering? What's yours? Now let's look at the next couple verses. We get the next question. Because you gotta land that one. Am I willing to suffer for the right cause? Am I willing to get uncomfortable?

But verse 25 says, God has given me the responsibility of serving his church by proclaiming his entire message to you.

This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to God's people. Like oh, a great mystery. Says for God wanted them to know that the riches and the glory of Christ are for you Gentiles as well. The mystery was Jesus came to save the world and it wasn't just for the Jews.

We don't think of that as a mystery now. We read it all the time. And he says, and this is the secret. Christ lives in you. And this gives you assurance of sharing his glory. So so first is what's my attitude towards suffering? But what does Paul share about himself? He begs the question, what is my reason for serving?

What's my reason for serving God? Or another way of putting it, not just serving is what's my reason for showing up? Why do I even come to church? What's my reason for being here? Because because he kinda he kinda answers it here. When he he he shares how he was given a responsibility of serving his church.

He said I served because I was given this responsibility.

And and that word for responsibility means he was given a commission, a calling. And he says his calling is to point people to Jesus. That's why he's willing to suffer. I have this call from God that I'm supposed to share the faith. I'm supposed to point people to a relationship with Jesus, and that's what I've been called to do. Now we miss this because you read that and you think well Paul was the apostle. He's like the preacher guy. So that's what Bill does.

You assume that okay that's what the the people called into the ministry do. But that's not true. The commission and the calling Paul got, Jesus gave to all of us that know Jesus. You realize you have been called by God and commissioned by God to go point people to Jesus. By choosing to love them like Jesus.

Which means I have to intentionally, intentionally live my life around that.

You have the same call. We have this life from the pit of hell in our culture. Matter of fact, yeah I didn't even like this the thing when I first went to seminary and stuff is is I'd always get this question, when did you get your call to ministry? And that's dumb.

That they act like it's just pastors and people that work at churches that get a call to ministry. That's not true. So I might you know my answer was? Every time a church interviewed me or anytime, when do you get your call to ministry? I go, right after I I I I declare Jesus as Lord. And you know what? So did you.

You might not have known that. Maybe you've been conditioned to just be the people that sit in the rows and listen to to the sermon, and maybe give a little and serve a little, but that's it. You're you're it's like we are all called and commissioned to share this incredible message that Jesus loves you.

And here's the thing, if I don't understand that, if I don't buy into that, if I don't own that,

I'm gonna very often start stretching in multiple directions in my life. I'm gonna turn into this person that says, I come to church because I want to be a better person. I want to know Jesus. I want to love him. I want to worship. I want to have a break for my kids for an hour. I want

spiritual person. I want to have the honor to feel good, but I'm gonna live like everyone else does. I'm gonna live like the world does. I'm gonna run after the same thing my non Christian neighbors do. I'm just gonna do it without as much cussing and drinking and and and stuff like that, but I really just want a good marriage. I want this. I want all the things everybody else wants with just a little bit of spiritual Jesus sprinkled on top.

But that's not what we're called to. That's not this wonderful, exciting, incredible commissioning God has given every one of us, and that is to share the love of Christ. And and and so that's we have that. We have that. Let's read the next couple verses. Verse twenty eight and twenty nine says this.

Now watch how he brilliantly transitions from talking about himself and here's why we know he's saying this to everyone, including us. So we He went from he to we. Didn't he? Didn't he catch that? So we tell others about Christ.

Warning everyone and teaching everyone with all the wisdom God has given us. We want to present them to God perfect in the relationship to Christ. And that's why I work and struggle so hard. He says we should be working and struggling so hard depending on Christ's mighty power that works within me. So he says we do what? We go and we work hard and we want to point people to Jesus by loving and like Jesus. But but here's the key for this question. Is if if I'm gonna do that,

you gotta ask yourself this question. What is my heart for people? What is my heart for people?

We live in a world we get there's so many people and we have so many issues and we so struggle that sometimes we can we can lose our heart for people. Matter of fact that's part of our brokenness before God. Our fallenness is we naturally like to get selfish. Even as Christians we like to get selfish. Churches get selfish. We like to turn inward. We like to make the church our own little club. Yeah we'll let you in if you want to come in, but but don't don't make us get uncomfortable.

You can join the club if you want, but the club is for the club.

And and we act that way, and we don't realize we should have a heart for people. God has a heart for people. Paul has heart for people. When he says here's what we should do, should go share. Did you realize there's two words in there that shows you God's heart for people? He said we go and we share with who? Everyone.

Every. Do you know what everyone means? All people. And last I checked, all means all. And that's all all means. He means we're not done ever

with sharing our faith. We never go, alright, we've grown enough. We're done. Put a sign in the door. Full. Go down the street. Get out of here. You're never done. He goes, we our goal is to reach everyone. The other word is perfect.

Now that word for perfect doesn't mean Paul's goal. Our goal is to go. We go get everyone, get to know Jesus, we make them perfect people. What he means is that perfect relationship with Jesus. That perfect you're you're fully engaged. He's talking about we we we want to point everyone to Jesus, we want to disciple them. We don't want to just say, hey, you're believing Jesus, come sit in church. We want everybody to know, to grow, and to go. That's what he's saying. Is our goal is to go love people until they become like Jesus.

And and and that's what we should do. And he says we should all do that. But if I don't have a heart for people, I am not gonna intentionally guide my life around that. I'm not gonna point my time, my talents, my treasure, and my testimony towards that goal because I don't care. I don't care about people.

But but we need to. I mean that that that God's call to love people is is why I'm willing to make us uncomfortable. I like to be the good guy. I don't like to a jerk but that's why I push us.

I mean some of you guys are in this service because you loved going to when we had the 10:45 and you might have went to ten but we had to add a service.

And I said please for the love of all that is holy and pure, don't go to the 10:00 service because it's gonna fill up again. And so many of you get what I'm saying. I said get uncomfortable. But I like 10:00. I wanna be done. I wanna but we need room for people.

You realize, you look around there's some chairs in here. 10 was pretty full. There wasn't any chairs. And we are in the lowest attendance period of the year. This summer, we are in the dead time. You know why it's dead? It's because a lot of us do not like suffering in the heat. That's one suffering we will run from and resist. So any chance we have to go to San Diego or to Flagstaff,

we go. And so the regulars with your kids out of school attendance drops a lot overall. But we are growing. We are growing. Because guess when new families go to a church if they move to a new area and they have kids? Summer. Because they wanna get there before their kids start school.

We've had over 70 new families in the last three, four weeks. 70 new families. That's like 300 people or more. And if they stay we had a problem even though we added a fifth service with closing down children's classrooms because we're getting too full. What's gonna happen when we all stop going to San Diego and Flagstaff

in about two weeks? We're gonna have a problem. But if we have a heart for people I'm gonna look at the people that we are Rock Point and say we got to get uncomfortable. We have to get uncomfortable. That's our calling.

But I get it. I know why we have a hard time with keeping that strong heart for people because I struggle with the same thing. And I think it's I think one of the reasons we struggle with that heart for people is because we live in a world that's so technologically advanced that we hear about everything.

We get requests for everything.

I mean every day it's like if I don't forward this to a 100 people in my things I don't love anybody. If I don't pour an ice bucket over my head I don't care about the world. If I don't go do this I don't care. We are constantly barraged with messages and we see about every problem in the world, and we stress over it. I mean, of you in here. How many are stressed over those those kids in in Thailand that are trapped in a cave right now? Doesn't that stress you out? I mean, not too many years ago, you'd have no idea that was going on, but now I'm reading about that. There's emotional and physical energy over something that that that not too long ago that's a world away. But we hear about it all. We're like Superman in the in the one movie Superman Returns when he takes Lois Lane up in the air and he goes do you hear that? She goes I don't hear anything. And what does he say? I hear everything.

He hears all the problems, that, and the stress. And we hear everything, but we're not Superman. And and and so it stresses us out. And we get so overwhelmed that we see everything that we can't do everything, so we choose to do nothing.

I'm reminded of this with my two daughters as they were growing up. They were just slobs. I mean they're my

son's just as bad, but when they they're like, did we lose a gene in our family or something? What has happened here? It's like you go into their room and it's like this is a set for the Road Warrior movies. What is how did they get this? They don't even own this much stuff. Are they shipping it in? Are they storing junk for their friends? I I don't get it. Matter of fact, we we we have all these plastic cups. We have like 60 in our house. I'll go to get a glass of water. There's not one plastic cup. I go to my daughter's room, There's like 70. I go there's 10 extra. Where did you get these? And and and it's just the worst. And every time we try to teach them when they were little to clean their room, they'd get really messy. And what I learned when we watch them is they got stressed out by the chaos too.

They didn't really like it. They like it when it's clean.

And but I would go with, alright. Well then clean it up. You gotta clean. And I throw them in the room. You're not coming out of here till it's clean. I come back an hour later. It's messier than it was before. Like they pulled the shades off the wall. I go, what is going on? And they sit there and they cry. And fortunately, they have their mother.

Because she went in and figured it out. They wanted to clean it. They weren't trying to be rebellious. They were so overwhelmed with all of the mess. They didn't even know how to start. Some of you feel that way don't you? I'm called to do what God wants me to do but I just do I start?

We need to start like my kids did. My wife would go okay, pick up all your books, let's put them there. Then we'll go with the clothes, then we'll go with the toys, then we'll go with the you know, and just you give them a pattern of like you can get it all done if you start with one thing at a time.

That's what we need to commit to. So what am I saying? Here's the easiest way to not get over blown out by everything that's out there,

is God put us together. He called the church to be the church, and he called together local churches. That's why we have the book of Colossians, and Philippians, and Ephesians. He called churches into local communities to say, hey, we want to reach everyone, but what you got to do is start with the people right by you. You got to start with your local body. You got to start right here, and we have been bought into a lie that so many people are spouting

out there, and it's this pseudo high sounding nonsense that will the last verse Paul talks about is in here is that I can love Jesus but not the church. You can't because the church is the body of Christ that God intended and he died for us. You can't say I'm a Christian that loves Jesus and ignore people. You can't.

And so that's a that's kind of a guise to get us to go okay I can stay spiritual

but then I'll go after whatever problems I want but then we get overwhelmed so nobody gets anything done. We're running around trying to accomplish things all on our own because we resist the church. And I think that's because it's a lie from the enemy that wants to disconnect us. Go the enemy wants to go ahead. Believe in Jesus. Be spiritual. Act all that way. But I want you to disconnect and isolate so then you can act all spiritual as you want, but not actually accomplish the mission and the calling that God has given you. So go act all Jesus y that you want and reject the church and don't get involved and say stuff like, well I'm not gonna serve there. I decide I wanna do this. I'm not gonna give there. I give to that. Or I'm gonna do that. Or any And we spread ourselves so thin we accomplish nothing.

What if you just started with this? I'm gonna go all in with my church. Well, I don't trust my church. Well, then you should find a new church. You're like, I can't trust that church with my money or my time as you drop your kids off into our children's ministry. That's always confused me.

What does that say you care about more? Take my kid. Stay away from my money. I don't trust you. Leave my wallet alone. Take my kid. You're getting that's what it sounds like. What if I just said I'm going to choose to engage here and go after things we've collectively felt God's called us to do. Start there.

Don't buy the lie. The lie is to stand alone, get overwhelmed, and don't really accomplish anything. That's the lie. So I get it. It's a stress. We're stressed even as believers. There's all these ideas to stretch us out there. What is our heart for people? And I know it can get tiring.

So so so that's where I think the next question comes out is the last part of verse 29 when Paul said, I can work and struggle so hard. How? He goes depending on Christ's mighty power that works within me.

See, that's where he gets. He gets he goes the next question is to to really live intentionally. I'm gonna have to go, what's my attitude towards suffering? Am I willing to suffer for the right thing? What's my reason for serving? Why am I involved? Do I do I understand why I'm even here?

And then how big is my heart for people? Do I have the heart for God the people that God has that I know that I need to love people? That's why I should get uncomfortable for them. But in doing so, we're gonna get worn out.

And the reason we get worn out is we need to know what is our source of strength. It's question number four. And what does Paul say? Where does he get his source of strength? Christ's mighty power. Christ's mighty power. Well, how do I tap into that? How do I tap into that? Well, it's actually simpler than you think.

If I'm trying to do my work in my way, I have to do it through my power. If I choose to do Jesus's work his way, I get his power. It's that simple.

So here's the thing. Whenever you hear a message like this of okay, I need to be about the kingdom. Gotta be the mistake we make is so many of us were trying to still stretch in two We go, okay. Well, if I'm gonna if I'm gonna live intentionally towards what God's called us to be as the church, well then I gotta figure out where am I gonna get the energy, the money, the time to add that. You're thinking how do I get more energy and more time and more power to do that as well? That's the wrong question.

You're never gonna win with that. You might force yourself. Like it's like an hobby that you've probably done this before. Pastor gets up. We need people to serve. And you're super stretched out and you're too busy. You're like, alright, I'm just gonna try to do it. I'm gonna add it. And it works for a little while. Then you get really tired. You burn out. You quit. Same thing with giving. Same thing with that. You just do it. Because we're trying to add. We're asking how do I get more power to do more. That's not the right question. The crucial question is simply this. You simply go, what does God want me to do? Period.

What is God calling me to do in my life? And if I go after what he's calling me to do, you have the power. Because where God guides, he provides. The reason we're so worn out is we're still trying to stretch in two directions. And so we say is well I don't want to stop doing that. I'll just add this.

And the problem is last on is usually first gone. You go back to what you used to be. So what I got to decide is what does God want me to do? And that's where this gets complicated.

Because I've had people go, well that's so hard. Someone asked me in last year, how do you do that? What are doing? And the problem is when you hear what does God want me to do? We get so mystical about it.

We sit there and we think well I gotta figure out what God wants me to do. So we start praying, Lord what do you what am I supposed to do? And you're like, oh a butterfly landed. And the sun shone through its wing and the translucent translucence

of the wing, it created a image of a cross onto this pamphlet that was on the ground that says get involved in this. I'm like, I think that's what God wants me to do.

And we have these weird little like you know that we think that figuring out what God wants to do is like is is like the spiritual version of grabbing that stick like a diviner rod. I'm gonna go find the water in the ground and we think that's that's not how.

Now God leads in some misery. Sometimes he speaks to us in some weird ways but that is such a small percentage

And even that percentage has to jive with his word. He will never lead you to contradict his word ever ever. If you think God told you to do something that's against the word of God that ain't God talking to you. But 99.99% of time you know I want know what God wants you to do?

Save you some time. It's right here. Right here. And you know what I can go on and on and on and do a whole series. I can preach for weeks on material through scripture on what God wants you to do. I'll tell you what he wants you to do to live intentionally. He wants you to point people to Jesus by loving them like Jesus.

And he wants you to intentionally

stretch your life towards that. And what does he mean to go live intentionally? There's four things. I've already kind of mentioned. There's four things that if I'm gonna that count as my life. That I gotta make a choice what to do with these things and be intentional about them. And scripture says over and over again, I gotta intentionally

focus my time, my spiritual gifts,

my money, my treasure, and my talents towards that mission. I should be all in with that. So I know that if I'm not spending my time using my talents to serve the body of Christ, even if it cost me, even if it's painful, that's what Paul was saying. I took my talents to serve the church. Do you realize in scripture over and over again the the church is called a body?

And what happens when body parts don't do what they should do? Like hamstrings and abdominals. The whole body suffers. The whole body suffers. And and

so the over and over says we are a body. That means every one of us has a part. And I am God wants me to find out what my gifts is, and he wants me to take my time and use it serving in the church. So I'm just telling you right now, I'll just be super blunt with you. If you are a Christian, you go to the church and you don't serve, you're not doing what God wants you to do. Simple. You don't have to pray about it. You don't have to go look. And if you go, well I don't want to do it here then go find another church. But you have to do it. That is what he's called you to be intentional about.

The second thing is the third thing is is our treasure. Our money. Now you're like, now I know about the suffering part. Here we go. He's gonna talk about money. Of course, I'm gonna talk about money. Be honest. Think of one thing in your life you're passionate about and love.

And I'm not talking just about things like hobbies, people, your kids, spouse, friends, family members. Tell me one thing you've ever passionately cared for that you didn't spend your money on.

You don't have one thing, except for many of you say you passionately love Jesus, but you won't give.

That's stupid. You're living a lie.

You don't really care about what God cares about. Now you're trapped probably thinking I can't afford to. Now you're back to how do I find more money? Well you know what you do? Stop

doing stuff so you can start doing what God's asked you to do. And you know what's funny is on the back end of that is thankfulness and awesomeness. I'm not saying that I'm not the masochist here. See some of you heard that oh it's masochist. I'm like no, you're gonna get to the place God wants you to get, which is beautiful.

And the bottom line, the fourth thing is we ought to choose it is our testimony. Our story. Do I want the story of my life be a story that I point people to the love of Jesus? Do I help lead people to Jesus? Because guess what? All the things that we Christians are gonna do in eternity,

scripturally all things we do will continue, will do all new eternity except for one thing. There's one thing God's asked us to live intentional about in our life right now that has a shelf life and an expiration date, and that is bring people to Jesus.

So I just saved you a lot of time. That's what God wants you to do. I've given you the whole mess. Paul says I came to give you the whole message. I'm giving you the whole message.

If you want this thing to work, if you want to really experience the mighty power of Christ and the beauty that comes along with it, you're gonna have to go all in and live it intentionally. Not for His love, it.

And the only way I'll be able to wrap all that together is this last question. Let me read the last

couple verses here. Chapter two,

he says, I want you to know how much I've agonized for you in the church at Laodicea and for many other believers who have never met me personally. I want them to be encouraged and knit together by strong ties of love, community. I want them to have complete confidence that they understand God's mysterious plan, which is Christ himself.

The rock is the point. In him lie hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I'm telling you this so no one will deceive you with well crafted arguments. For though I am far away from you, my heart is with you, and I rejoice that you are living as you should and that your faith in Christ is strong.

And now just as you accepted Christ as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. Let your roots grow down into him. Let your lives be built on him. That's living intentionally. Build your lives around Jesus.

Then your faith will grow strong in the truth that you were taught, and guess what? And you will overflow with suffering. You'll overflow with thankfulness. When you get to the other side, you'll be thankful you did. Right now all you see is well that's gonna hurt if I'm not doing it.

But he's saying you'll get to that side of thankfulness. And then verse eight, don't let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high sounding nonsense

that come from human thinking and from spiritual powers of this world rather than Christ. I already mentioned that. That high sounding nonsense is we live in a culture that says, gonna pick and choose what I do, and I'm gonna sprinkle some Jesus in there and a little bit of this humanism philosophy, little bit of that. They were doing that back then. They're still doing it now. You're grabbing your cafeteria plan of philosophy and trying to sprinkle together and Paul saying that will not work.

Keep the rock of Jesus the point. And go all in and intentionally live your life around that. And you'll get to the thankfulness. That's why you were given this card when you came in.

We are Rock Point. We're the church. And on the back it says, am I living intentionally with my my time, my talent, my treasure, my testimony? I'm gonna challenge you put this someplace. Put it on a refrigerator. Pray about it. Ask yourself am I doing that? Am I doing that?

And and and and let that be a reminder of hey am I gonna am I gonna go live intentionally and experience what God really has for me? But what I want to do is you can have that, but I want to close a little different because whenever you do a sermon like this if you're new around here I always talk about throat punches. Get a little spiritual throat punch. Good job you got your card awesome. But as

we talk about it sometimes it could come across like I just berated everybody and told you what a bunch of losers. Why don't you get together and do this job? It could sound kind of mean. Guess my wife told me that sometimes passion sounds like anger for me.

I don't see it. I think I'm like you know being super inspirational. But sometimes I get sound like hey guys come on. And if you're not doing it you really feel like I'm yelling at you because you're like he knows.

He knows. And my fleet of drones has told me so it's you and you know I'm just kidding. But it can come across kind of brutal but I want you to know that I'm not sharing this in an angry way. I'm not sharing this in a negative way. I'm not sharing this everybody better step up because that's why we're struggling. That's not what I'm saying. I am proud of this church.

I am super thankful that God allowed me to come to start this church. And when I moved out here seventeen years ago, every category of what you say is good in life and successful, I went backwards on. It was scary. I suffered. Yesterday was my birthday.

My oldest daughter texted me, what are you doing on your birthday dad? She was out of town. I said sent her a gift that said work, work, work, work, work, work. And she goes, oh, yeah, that's right. Saturdays, you work. Bummer. I honestly wrote back, not bummer.

The best birthday gift I get is to preach the word of God to the people I love. It was beautiful. I am thankful. I am thankful. I'm not this bitter old pastor that's mad that everybody's not doing their job. I want you to know I am thankful and I think this church is excellent at living intentionally,

And I think we're really good. But what I'm trying to encourage us to be is like I'm a I was an athlete. I was raised by a sergeant who was an athlete. So sometimes I go take that hill. We can win this game. And I turn into locker room bill. And you might not realize that's what I'm trying to do. And really what I'm trying to do is we are really good. What would happen if all you guys are sitting on the bench got in the game?

What if in the second half we all got in the game? Because we're winning this game. We're a championship church, and we're in the championship game. But we got an enemy out there that has a lot of high flying nonsense that is trying to stop us, and we're gonna need everybody in the game to win it.

So what I wanna do to close is a little weird. But I'm weird. If you're new, you've already figured that out. Sorry. Get over it. But what I wanna do is I'm just gonna own the fact that I wanna give a locker room speech.

And so with your permission, which I'm gonna do anyways, I I want you to just humor me. It's my birthday weekend. I wanna close down by giving Bill coach Bills locker room halftime. We're halfway through the year. Can I give a halftime

locker room speech to us? That that that kind of talks to us. Are you ready for it? I mean, it's we're gonna play some goofy sports music from the movie Rudy while I'm doing this too. I mean, we're gonna we're gonna go all in. Okay? So so so hopefully, this will show my heart

as the leader of this church. My heart for for what we're doing around here. So here we go. I'm gonna give you coach Bill, without the language, although you know I can't promise that. I don't know coach Bill as well as I know pastor Bill. But anyways,

Here we go. We're gonna start. I'm gonna turn around and I'll be coach. Alright team. Rock Point, I'm proud of this church.

We are a great church. Guys we've spent this first half of this year, we've been fighting hard, We've been living intentionally. And we have seen wins and wins. And we are winning out there. The world is afraid. They're running back. We are winning right now. But it's a tough. It's a tough game. We still got the second half.

And I need everybody here that's been on the bench. I need you to get in the game. I need to become a part of what we're doing because we got a tough second half. We gotta build a building. We have to build a building. We gotta build it. We're gonna start talking about that next week.

Not building the building, talking about paying for the building. We're gonna talk about that next week. But the good news is this. We have all the money for the building already. Yeah.

The bad news is in all the pockets of you people that are clapping right now. But we can do this. You know why? Because we are Black lives. And I just wanna share some of the first half stats with you from some of our teams.

First of all, our missions team. They set out in the last year. We discovered we have found out that that foster care is a huge dilemma and a problem in our community.

And we discovered that they say that if just every bible believing, Jesus loving church had two families that got involved in foster care, that would solve the problem in the state of Arizona. Well, two families wasn't good enough for us. It wasn't. We currently have 64

families that are involved in foster care and adoption right now. Over

a 100 foster kids in this church right now. It's actually thrown off our children's ratios. It's one of the reasons we had to close down classrooms, but that's okay. You know why? Because we are My wife. We've gone after the the the least of these people that are hungry, like feed my starving children.

This year we packed five five hundred twenty one volunteers, packed 504 food boxes for a 108,864 meals, which will feed several 100 kids for over a year. And we did that because we are.

We did a homeless outreach where 50 of us actually went out and panhandled to raise the money to go feed a 100 homeless people and to give them 200 blessing bags to take care of their needs in the days to come. And then the most important thing is they sat with them at tables, and they treated them like human beings, and we pointed them to Jesus by loving them like Jesus because we are Blackboard.

We had a car care ministry that serviced 22 cars, and I love this one because it doesn't seem like a lot. But if you were one of those cars, it was because they were single moms and families that were poor, that they couldn't even afford to get their car fixed, which means they couldn't get to work, which means they'd be poor. And we took care of that need for them in our community, and we did it because we are Blackboard.

We did a food drive through Queen Creek where we had 503 food bags and over a 100 volunteers.

In Queen Creek, we also run the senior center for them. Twice a month, over a 100 seniors come, and over 20 of our team goes out there and shows them the love of Jesus because we care about him because we are Black Point. And we make the rock the point.

And that's why we are Black Point. We are involved in a network of churches called Vision Arizona where we plant other churches. And I have the privilege right now, through your generosity, I'm coaching a church plant for North Phoenix, Scottsdale area that desperately needs another church. He's already added three staff people and 70 people to his core group, and he hasn't even launched yet. Up in that area, our reach is extended to there. You know why?

Because we are God's way. And then God built a high school right next to us.

And instead of complaining about all the kids running around and throwing rocks and breaking our light bulbs out there and stuff, you know what we did? We said we're gonna point them to Jesus by loving them like Jesus. And so currently, we feed the whole staff over there. A 160 meals once a month, we feed them lunch just to say we love you. Just to say we love you.

And then when the teacher walkout happened,

the teacher walkout happened, we're like, what are we gonna do? We love the teachers. We love the parents. We love the students. We love the schools. What are we gonna do? And our team stepped up, and we hosted a walkout relief where we had 40 kids a day from families that couldn't afford any other options. They had to go to work. We watched them all day long. Our volunteers took their whole day for an entire week to watch them. And as a result of that, as a result of people getting the word out there that we love people that way, 26

new families joined our church because of that. Because we are you go into our kids ministry. Our current kids and preteen has a 360 volunteers. Our splashtacular

had 300 plus. Our midnight madness for preteens had a 100. 200 kids went to camp to learn about Jesus with 95 volunteers. Preteeners had 83 that went to camp with 16 volunteers, and we had 55 parent child dedications, and we baptized 45 kids this year already because we are Childhood.

Our middle school ministry has seen 96 kids already say yes to Jesus just this year because we are Isn't that awesome? High school has 34 adult leaders, 31 student leaders.

They have grown by 18% already this year. They're averaging six new high schoolers a week in a time when high schoolers seem to be sad and depressed and lonely, but they're finding hope in Christ because 88 of them have said yes to Jesus already this year. And we do that because we are

they say that 18 25 year olds, a young adult, they're a lost cause. That we get all these high scores, they graduate, and they go off to nothing. Most churches can't even figure out. There's nothing going on. They can't figure out what to do. Did we say, okay, we'll do nothing? No.

We brought in resources. We brought in pastor Daniel. He started his little group. We were hoping to have something for these graduating seniors of 18 to 25 year olds. They started in our middle school room over there. They've only been going five weeks. They've had to move back into this room, which is the high school has to meet in here too, which is why we need to leave this building and get another one because we need to get out of their way because they have already been averaging over a hundred and 50 18 to 25 year olds

in four weeks. And we did it because we are. And I am not even I still got more on my list.

And I'm gonna leave somebody out. Someone's gonna say, you forgot my ministry. I get it. And we do that too because we are Rock Point and that just happens. But the reality is we in our other ministries, just our adult ministries, we've seen thousands of people connected, thousands of lives changed through stuff like our men's ministry, our women's ministry, our mom's group, our salt senior adult ministry, our our recovery ministries like CR, our mending the soul, our premarital ministry,

and all of these ministries. Thousands. We can't you can't do anything around here during the week. We're using the building all the time, and we're doing that to point people to Jesus by loving them like Jesus because we have kept the rock, the point, and that is because we are Boggling.

Why do you think we were the fifteenth fastest growing church in The United States right now? Number one in Arizona. You know why we do that? Because we are Boggling. And do you think we're gonna stop? Are we gonna get to the point that, like, I've had enough. I wish Bill would stop challenging me. I wish he would stop telling me to get involved. I wish he would stop telling me to give and serve. Do you think I'm gonna do that? No.

I wanna put another word in front of no, but I won't say it. No. We're not gonna do that. We're not gonna stop. Cause you know why? We have kept the rock the point. And that means we point people to the rock because we are Rock. We are Rock. We are Rock. We are.

And as long as we remember that, we will stay in the thankfulness, in the glory, in the love, in the victory, and become more than conquerors as the Bible says. And the world will be afraid of us. We don't have to be afraid of it because we're the victors because we are. Amen. End of speech.

That's fine.

And now yay me. Yay Jesus. This is my birthday present. I get to be a part of a church that does this. I get to be a part of that. And so do you. And so do you. If you're new here, this is who we are. Little bit goofy. I'm willing to act really weird. Hopefully it worked.

Don't you want to be a part of that? That's the wonderful thing. Let's keep the rock the point. That's what it means to live intentionally.

Join us in that. Father God, thank you Lord. Oh man, I thank you that you kept my voice going because it was gone last night and I do not know how but miraculously I did what you wanted me to do and you gave me the strength to do it. I'm probably gonna have to mime the rest of the day but that's okay Lord.

But God I thank you. Man so many years ago all I saw was sacrifice and pain. But I knew it's what you wanted me to do to point people to you. God I just thank you personally from the bottom of my heart. I am so thankful that we just got to celebrate like that. And Lord there's even more stuff. That was the abridged version.

And Lord I thank you that we're able to do that because it's your power, your might, your word, your strength and it's about you, it's for you, it's by you, it's not us, it's not me, but you allow us to do this. So God, I thank you for that. And I pray that that all of us would continue to want to stretch towards you.

That we would be the church you called us to be. Because when we do that we are Rock Point. And I thank you and pray this all in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.