TAKING GROUND | Week 2 | Sermon

So I was thinking about it this week. Again, we're gonna see today in Acts chapter nine, just this unbelievably powerful story of transformation and life change, arguably one of the most important conversion stories

in the entire Bible. The man recorded in Acts nine is a man named Saul of Tarsus and his life outside of Jesus, I would argue is the most important one for us to really understand

in the Bible. And as I was thinking about the transformation that he went through, the thing that started popping into my head and it's not a perfect illustration, but I was thinking about this house that my wife and I bought when we were in San Diego. That's where we're from and we were youth pastors in a city there for about a decade.

And for the first few years, we were living in like the small little duplex about thirty minutes away from the church.

As our ministry grew and we had more students that we wanted to be able to spend time with and hang out with like our student leaders and do things at our house, it just became almost impossible to do with how far away we lived. And so we started praying for God to open the door for us to move to the city that we were pastoring in. The hard part was is that city was a bit more expensive to live in than where we were. And so we really needed God to kind of open a door. And this really unlikely

opportunity happened. This house went on the market Sunday night and we went and looked at it early Monday morning. And this house was, when I say like it was ugly as sin, that's understating how bad this house was, right? Like the house when you showed up to it, the bushes were so overgrown,

you couldn't even see the the house from the street. The guy who bought it in the nineteen fifties was the original owner and basically hadn't touched the house since he bought it outside of doing some small updates throughout the time. But this thing was just almost falling apart. Once you got behind the bushes,

you could see the house and it was hunter green and chocolate brown. That was the paint color that he went with. And the funny part was is he actually spent more money painting it because he used the same, like our painter was explaining it to us that he used the same type of paint that they use when they spray like your truck bed liners, you know like that rhino lining.

He was like, yeah, it's in my truck, that's awesome. They put it on my house. I was like, what colors do you want? He's like, well, I like to hunt so do green and brown. And that was the house. Like it was the ugliest possible colors you could imagine and the exterior was the best part of this house, right? You walked inside and it only got worse from there. It had the original shag carpet throughout the entire house. It looked like it had not been cleaned in fifty years. The bedrooms, you would open the closets and literally there were spider webs in there that looked like they were out of some type of like a movie scene. Like they looked fake. They were so disgusting. I've never seen spider webs that had like spider webs with dust on them. Like they've just been there for so long. Like the whole place was just nasty.

And there was taxidermied animals all over every wall of this house, right? To which my like animal loving wife is just appalled at. And then I walk into the garage and this is where he has like, I don't know if you can call it that, but it's like a taxidermy studio kind of set up. He does taxidermy

in the garage. And so imagine the scene, right? Like these half taxidermied animals all over the garage. And so I like tell my wife like, just don't go in there. She's like, why? What's in there? I'm like, it's just so exciting. I don't wanna spoil it for you. I'll show you later.

Like this place was just disgusting yet for some reason it was perfect in its location. It was directly the school we were reaching was called Mission Hills High School. And this house was if you went out of the staff parking lot, you would go down this ramp and hit a street and literally this house was directly across the street and had this amazing backyard which in San Diego, you basically don't get yards, right? Because everything is a million dollars. And so it had this backyard and all I could see was, man, we could do things with like after a Friday night football game, we could just host things at our house which we used to do. Every Friday, our house would be filled with like hundreds of kids that would just hang out and sometimes do drugs in the bathroom. I'd have to try to stop them doing that. But

we bought this house, we put in an offer and this guy actually accepted our offer over others, even though it wasn't the highest offer because he wanted a family to be there like he raised his family there. And we slowly started the process of renovating this house. Well, the renovations started with obviously the best part of renovating, which is demo day, right? And so I took a bunch of my high school boys and I said, look, guys, we're gonna go in and just rip everything out of this house. Now I should have clarified to them a couple of things. The two best parts about this house is it had a brand new roof and it had all brand new windows. Okay? So when I tell them to tear everything out, I assume that they know what I'm talking about. Well, a couple minutes into

us tearing out this house,

I hear glass breaking. And I'm like, there shouldn't be glass breaking. And I walk in and they're in the kitchen and they're taking hammers and throwing them into the windows all around the house. So I was like, all right, I should have clarified, leave the windows, right? But after we started to replace everything over a couple of years, which renovating always takes longer and costs more than you thought it was going to, right? That's the story of renovation.

But afterwards, we had this place that really became a home. And as I think back over the seven or eight years that we lived in that house, I mean, I think about all

couples that my wife and I got to speak into their marriage sitting on our porch or sitting on our couch or sitting in the backyard around the fire pit. I think about the senior dinners that we did every year with our graduating classes of seniors where for three or four years we got to pass through these kids while they were in our ministry. And then at the end of their senior year with us, we would bring them into our house and pray over every single one of them. And I look at all the life that happened in this house that when we bought it was filled with nothing but just death.

And it's amazing to me what can happen with the power of restoration, the power of transformation, what it can do to take things that are dead and make them alive. The reason that I start there is I think it's kind of a perfect illustration for us in our lives.

I think that God wants to do some massive transformation and remodeling within each and every one of us. But I think sometimes we underestimate the amount of restoration that needs to happen.

There's a book that I would encourage you to read if you've never read it, it's called Mere Christianity by a guy named C. S. Lewis.

Just an absolutely amazing book. And he actually has a quote about this idea of you and I as these homes that God remodels. And he says in this book, he says, imagine yourself as a living house that God would use to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps you can understand what he's doing. He's getting the drains right and he's stopping the leaks in the roof and so on. You knew that those jobs needed doing and so you're not surprised.

But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominantly and it does not seem to make any sense. He says, what on earth is he up to? The explanation

is that he's building quite a different house from the one you thought of. Throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought that you were being made into a decent little cottage. But here it is, friends. He's building a palace

that he intends to come and live in himself.

I believe that the change, the transformation that God wants to do in you and I is so much bigger and greater than anything that we could ever imagine. We're going to see today in Acts chapter nine,

a story of transformation that I think we need to lean into. The book of Acts is written by a guy named Luke who's a physician. Okay. He's very detail oriented. He doesn't often repeat himself. But what is recorded three times in different places in the book of Acts is this conversion story.

It is this story which tells us there's something important for us to see. Now this story is not prescriptive

in that what happened to this guy named Saul is exactly what will happen to us but it is really descriptive and there are some descriptions of what happens to a life that's been regenerated to a person who's really met the resurrected Christ that I believe should be descriptions and descriptive of our life as well.

What I think we're gonna see today is a story of change that oftentimes stands in contrast to the message of change that we preach in churches inside of America. We preach a message that says, hey, come in here if you just want like some small problems adjusted and you want God to make you a better version of yourself.

Yeah, we're gonna see today a story of transformation that says God doesn't wanna make you a better version of yourself. God wants to make you an entirely new person. The house you built on your own, that house has to be leveled. But if you allow him through the power of the Holy Spirit,

God will build you a new house that will have purpose and meaning and significance and values that can only be found in him. Here's the mission, the big idea that I'm gonna try to convince us of today that we're going to see that I believe that Saul understood from the beginning. Here's why God wants to change us.

Because God understands that changed people, we change people. This is God's plan to transform the world. He's going to use changed people to change people. So if you're here this morning and you find yourself as a changed person,

you better believe that God wants to use your life to be a change agent to the other people around you. Okay? Longest introduction ever, but that sets up Acts chapter 19.

I would encourage you this week, go read the whole chapter. I wish I had three hours to preach all of it to us but I wanna start reading in verse 19. The second part of verse 19.

It says that Saul stayed with the believers in Damascus for a few days and immediately he began preaching about Jesus in the synagogue saying, He is indeed the son of God. All who heard him were amazed.

Isn't this the same man who caused such devastation among Jesus followers in Jerusalem? They asked. And didn't he come here to arrest them and to take them in chains to the leading priests? Saul's preaching became more and more powerful and the Jews in Damascus couldn't refute his proof that Jesus was indeed the Messiah?

Let me give you a little bit of context for this story to to make sense. The story of Saul can be confusing because most of the time in the New Testament, he's referred to as Paul. The apostle Paul. Right? The guy that wrote the majority of the New Testament.

Now a lot of times we go, well, God changed his name because God does change people's name often in the bible after

those people have a life altering moment with God. But this isn't one of those moments. Saul always had two names because Saul is a bit of an anomaly. He's a Hebrew, he's a Jew, but he lives in a Greco Roman society. So he has a Hebrew name that is Saul

and he has a Greek name named Paul. Now the majority of the New Testament, Paul's ministry is to the Romans, to the Greeks, to the Gentiles. So he goes by Paul, but his name was always Saul or Paul. Now Saul was a man that you have to understand was raised in a really prosperous family.

He came from a wealthy home that educated him with the greatest instructors in the world. He was a man that was just brilliant. One of the most intelligent legal scholars of his day.

The church at the time that the Jews were run by this high council called the Sanhedrin. It was a group of 75 men that made all decisions. It was like the high court for Judaism. Saul had become a part of the Sanhedrin. It is something that you would aspire to be at every juncture of your life as a young Jewish boy.

Saul is a man that had everything and he started to hear about this message of Jesus, this man who claimed to be the Messiah. Now again, we have to understand that Jesus claiming to be a God wasn't an abnormal thing. Obviously, Jesus did some abnormal things,

but they have heard of other people claiming to be the Messiah before and they've had to go and stop the spreading of that message. So Saul assumed that this was just another one of those things.

Again, remember the context of Saul's mind. Deuteronomy chapter 22 part of the old testament says that for a man to die to be hung on a tree, that is a cursed man. So Saul is going through his biblical understanding to go, the Bible is very clear for somebody to die on a tree, he's cursed. So how could he be the Messiah

and be a guy who died on a tree? How could he be dead in general? So Saul has come to the conclusion that this is without a doubt another one of those messages that I need to just stamp out. But Saul does something that no other Jewish leader has done before him.

He decides not just to jail the people spreading a message that is antithetical to Judaism. He decides he's actually gonna go to the length of murdering people. We see Saul first on the scene in Acts chapter six and seven when the first martyr of the New Testament shows up, a man named Stephen,

a man who runs the lunch program for the widows. He eventually gets brought before the high council and they say, Hey, you keep preaching this message of Jesus. You need to denounce him. And instead, Stephen preaches this brilliant sermon that's recorded in Acts chapter seven, basically walking through meticulously

all the old testament and showing exactly how it connects to Jesus and how he's the fulfillment of all of it. Telling them how we don't need the temple anymore. How we don't need a place because Jesus has opened the door for all people to worship. And the 75 men, the Sanhedrin,

they get so worked up, they take stones and they literally throw and kill this man named Stephen. And at the end of murdering a Christian, it says that all of these men take their coats and they lay them at the feet of Saul who was watching all of this with approval. Saul is a terrorist.

He's a man who has one goal, which is to murder anybody preaching the message of Jesus.

Well, the first half of Acts chapter nine is Saul on his way to a city called Damascus, a city that he knows he has to stop the message of Jesus from getting here because from Damascus, it can reach the rest of the world. And so he has orders from the high court to go and murder all of the Christians that are there yet on his way, the Bible says that he encounters this bright light at midday

that's so bright that it literally blinds him. And then as he's blinded, he hears a voice from heaven and say, Saul, why are you persecuting me? He says, who are you? And he says, it's me, Jesus. And Saul on the road to Damascus famously encounters

the resurrected Christ. He is taken to a city and told to wait there for a man to come from the way, a new Christian that will pray for him. This man prays for him and it says that these things fall from his eyes and Saul is born again. And then what we read is immediately following this,

Saul starts preaching the message of Jesus. This is, if you're a skeptic, a story that is incredibly perplexing. How does a man go from being the greatest, like challenger to the message of Jesus to in a couple days becoming the greatest evangelist of the message of Jesus?

It's why Michael Hart who wrote a book about the 100 most influential people that have lived would put Saul of Tarsus as number six on that list. He is without a doubt one of the most important figures in the Bible. He's a man who admittingly,

if you fast forward to Acts 22, he talks about how he persecuted the church. He said that's all he did. He was a known terrorist. All he wanted to do was murder all of the Christians. He admits that. Yet immediately after following Jesus,

everything about him changes. Here's why this matters for you and I. Because I believe that when you and I, we really meet Jesus, when we really encounter the resurrected Christ, Jesus will fundamentally change your purpose for existing. I think that when you really meet Jesus,

when you really encounter him, you wave the white flag and say, I'm no longer Lord of my life. I'm handing it over to him. Jesus will change your purpose. Here's the question that I would encourage us to wrestle through this morning. How would the people in your life as they look at your life,

how would they say your purpose has been changed from following Jesus? Because I think sometimes my fear is, is that our lives don't really look that different after following Jesus than they did before following Jesus.

And as I look at these stories of conversion, I look at these stories of change in the New Testament, it's like this man had one mission before and now his entire purpose has changed. His profession doesn't change. He's still a preacher of God's word, but his purpose in it has changed.

It tells me that when we really meet Jesus, our purpose will change too. And my fear is, is that we, especially living in the culture that we live in, when we think through the question of like, what is our purpose? How do we know we're living with purpose? I think sometimes we confuse purpose with success.

And I think the danger is we we convince ourselves that success equates to in means purpose, especially in our culture where success for us is really defined as just excess, right? Somebody that's more successful than me, they have more things than me. That means that they're successful.

And my fear is it's not just people out there that don't know about God. I think there's a lot of people living in the church who've achieved some levels of success but are potentially living without purpose. What a tragedy for somebody to get to the end of their life, to achieve incredible success and yet miss their purpose.

And my fear is that a lot of us, man, we'll get to the end and we'll go, I have all this stuff, but did I really find purpose? And sometimes we can wonder, what is our purpose? How do we find purpose on this side of heaven? And the beautiful part for us is it's pretty simple. God will use change people to change people.

We are supposed to be change agents in this world. We're supposed to be a part of the restoration of this world as ambassadors from heaven, ambassadors representing a different kingdom. Our role is to whatever we do, whatever our occupation is to in there begin to

see people not as just people to live life with, but people to be able to influence for the kingdom of God. There's a commercial that I wish I could show you that I saw on the Internet a few years ago and I think it kind of illustrates this idea. But this daughter basically buys her elderly dad an iPad

and she calls him and she asks him like, Hey, how is the iPad going for you? Like, how do you like it? And he's like, Oh, I love it. This iPad's amazing. And then the camera pans over and it's her dad using the iPad as a cutting board and he's cutting vegetables on it. And in this picture, he's scraping the vegetables off the iPad into a bowl and then it like pans over and his dad, her dad's like rinsing the iPad off in the sink and he's putting it in the dishwasher.

And the daughter's like, that's not exactly what the iPad was meant for. Right? And for all of us, I think we look at that and we obviously we go, that's really silly. That doesn't make any sense. Why? Because we know what an iPad is built for. We know the real power that exists inside of that iPad.

And I wonder if God doesn't look at a lot of our lives and goes, you're missing what's really inside of you. You're missing the purpose for which I gave you the very spirit that rose Jesus from the grave in you. There's more power in you to do more than you realize. Friends, don't just settle for mere success

when what is offered to us on the other side of surrendering to Jesus is true purpose. I know I put as the point that Jesus changes our purpose, but I think what Jesus really does is he gives us purpose. I think our lives pre Jesus is just us kind of wandering around,

finding temporary things to fill the void that we feel somewhere inside of us. But only Jesus can satisfy that and give us true, real purpose. Saul goes from somebody that has an intellectual understanding of God to somebody who's met God face to face, and his entire purpose changes.

I wonder how our purpose has changed after following Jesus as well. And I also love this as immediately he starts preaching. He doesn't wait. He doesn't go to seminary for six years. He doesn't have to learn all the New Testament books. He just starts sharing his story.

Friends, the greatest weapon you have to spread the message of Jesus is the story that God's given you. The situations and circumstances that he's walked you through, that is what uniquely qualifies you to reach the people in your world. You have a sphere of influence that you can use to expand the kingdom

of God. Here's how the story continues.

In verse 23, it says that after a while, some of the Jews plotted together to kill Saul. Okay? So Saul goes from being the the man that every little Jewish boy would have aspired to be. Within a few years, now the same Jews that borderline worshiped him and idolized him are now plotting together to kill him.

Verse 24 says, they were watching for him day and night at the city gate so that they could murder him. But Saul was told about their plot. So during the night, some of the other believers lowered him in a large basket through an opening

in the city wall. Notice this, it's such again, I wish I had four hours to walk through all of this with you. But Saul goes from being the one that's idolized and worshiped by the Jews to in a matter of moments, the same people that were singing his praises are now the ones trying to kill him.

And the people that he was persecuting, the people that he had harmed, the people that he had tortured, the people that he had done wrong to, those are now the people that are protecting him. It is such a powerful story of forgiveness and redemption and restoration.

And it also is a warning to the people that are in your life that sing your praises. You better be really careful because given a couple of circumstantial changes, those same people will be the ones running after trying to literally tear you down that were just a few moments before building you up.

If you live for the appraisal of men, you will die by their disapproval. Saul, as he walks in purpose, he begins to lose status and standing. He begins to lose some of his authority. Watch how it continues. It says in verse 26 that when Saul arrived in Jerusalem,

he tried to meet with the believers. Okay. Now he's trying to meet with the Christians, but they were all afraid of him. They didn't believe that he had truly become a believer. Then Barnabas brought him to the apostles and told them how Saul had seen the Lord on the way to Damascus and how the Lord has spoken to Saul.

He also told them that Saul had preached boldly in the name of Jesus in Damascus. So Saul stayed with the apostles and went all around Jerusalem with them preaching boldly in the name of the Lord. He debated with some Greek speaking Jews, but they too tried to murder him. When the believers heard about this, they took him down to Caesarea and they sent him away to Tarsus, his hometown.

Saul, after meeting Jesus, begins to discuss all of this with the Jews who are so hell bent on making sure the message of Jesus doesn't move forward that even now the guy that used to be their team captain, the main one, they're now going, all right, we got to kill him.

So he leaves, he has to flee the city. And it says that the people are waiting for him at the city gate. They know he's coming to this town. Once he walks through the gate, we'll take him and we'll kill him. So the Christians, they take a literal bread basket and they lower him down a wall in a bread basket.

So you have Saul who's now on the run from the Jews,

who's barely being accepted by the church. They don't like him either because they're like, look bro, you used to kill our friends. You're only allowed to hang out because Barnabas said you're cool and we like Barnabas. But if not for Barnabas, we wouldn't let you hang out here either.

So then Saul goes to the Greek speaking Jews, the Hellenistic Jews, he starts to talk to them about culture cause he's not just a Hebrew, he's also a Roman citizen. He's of Greek nature. So he starts to have some intellectual debates with the Hellenistic

Jews until they realize that he's no longer a Jew and he's now a part of the way as well. So they go, you know what? We should kill him. Here's the reason that I belabor the point a little bit. As you look at Saul's life post following Jesus, after meeting Jesus, I would argue that ostensibly, externally, circumstantially,

Saul's life gets worse, not better. His life becomes more difficult, not easier. He has less money, not more money. He has more challenges, not less challenges. And yet so often preached in American churches today is to follow Jesus so that he can make your problems go away.

And this is the danger if you're beginning with Jesus is based on the notion that all Jesus is to you is a genie that removes your problems. Friends, that's not the gospel. That's not the Jesus of the Bible. I'm not saying that following Jesus, your life is always gonna get worse.

But what I don't wanna try to convince you of is, hey, follow Jesus so that your problems will go away. What I see in here after meeting Jesus, what Jesus will do is he'll begin to change your problems. Right? He definitely changes Saul's problems. He doesn't remove them, but he gives them kind of better quality problems.

Before his problem was all the Christians spreading the message of Jesus. Now his problem are the Jews that won't listen to him and still kind of the Christians. One of my fears as a pastor in America today is that we have sold a bill of goods to so many people

and that there are many of us who will get to the end of our life and realize, I don't know if we ever actually met the Jesus of the Bible. I think what we encountered is some type of like therapeutic moralistic deism.

Like something that's out there that has some therapeutic element to it that makes me feel better. There's some level of morality to it. And yeah, there's some idea of God in it but it's really a God of my understanding.

It's a God that makes me happy. And the premonition that I walk out of church with is that I want God ultimately to make me happy. And if that's how your relationship with Jesus starts, I promise you, you will walk away in a few years really frustrated that God doesn't just remove your problems.

Because what God really does is he begins to change who you are in spite of your problems. We don't follow God because we can get something from God. We follow God because we get God from following God. We get his revelation. We get his understanding. We get his perspective.

We get his vantage point. Do you notice that throughout the book of acts what the new church is referred to? It's not, hey, here's the Christians. They were called the way.

They didn't self identify as the way. The world, the culture looked at the new believers and they said, there's something different with the way they live. So they said maybe they must be the way. And I wonder if culture looks at us today and goes, there's something different about the way they live.

There's something different about the way that they carry themselves. There's something different about the way that they find meaning and purpose and significance and worth in this life. But I think so often my fear is that once we walk out of these doors, our lives are almost indistinguishable

from those of the rest of society, are almost indistinguishable from the rest of culture. Friends, we have always been called to be a chosen people who are set apart, not different in that we don't have problems, but different in we understand who our God is in the middle of problems.

And somehow we've gotten wrapped around the axle of going, no, we have to usher in politicians to change things. We have to usher in legislation to change things. And some of those things will help and we should do that.

But do not believe that your purpose, your meaning can be voted in. It is something that has to be found through surrendering your life to Jesus. And I promise you what will begin to happen is you become filled with purpose.

You will start to realize that the problems that you think are your biggest problems, they really aren't that bad of problems. The thing that you think right now, the relationship that you really want, the money that you're so desperate to get, the house that you so really want to buy,

I promise you a day will come where you will be there. You will have that thing. You will get through that issue. And on the other side of it, really understanding who you are in Christ, you will be just as purposeless as you were before. Things, status, promotions, they will only ever temporarily satisfy us.

But the invitation of faith, right, remember what Jesus said to his disciples. Don't be so busy trying to gain the whole world that in the process, you lose your soul. He said, pick up your cross, pick up your problems, pick up your struggles and follow me. Take heart because I have overcome this world. This,

you've got a few decades in. You have a few decades of existing in this thing, and there's going to be problems. Jesus said, in this world, you will know suffering. If you go read the beginning part of the book of Acts, in the conversion story of Saul, Jesus literally says, I want Saul to suffer for my cause.

And I look at that and I go, do we know when we sign up that there's potentially suffering involved? Or do we sign up because we think Jesus is some genie in a bottle that's going to make us rich and prosperous?

Again, I believe that God is a good father that wants to bless us and give us good things. That's who he is. Yes and amen. But if you start a relationship with God based on him making you happy, I promise you what will happen is you'll have some moments where you're not so happy.

And then you'll think the God thing didn't work for you. You tried that and it just didn't work. Because happiness is based on circumstances that change that come and go. But the real invitation of faith that I see

is one where you can have purpose and meaning and significance. And then you'll begin to see your problems different and realize the greatest problem that we face, for those of you who are in here who don't know Jesus, that's your greatest problem.

For those of us who've been changed by Jesus, our greatest problem today, it's not our money. It's not our kids that don't listen, though I wish they would. Our greatest problem is all the people in our sphere of influence that don't know Jesus. Because data tells us that a 180,000 people that are alive today,

they won't be alive tomorrow.

That's how many people die every day. That's how many people don't get tomorrow given to them. Yet so often, we get wrapped around the axle of just trying to build a life, trying to find meaning in this rat race that we're in. And then the invitation of Jesus is to step outside of this thing, to go live for a kingdom that is not here, not from earth to heaven, but live from heaven

to earth and see your problems differently. Begin to walk with me, journey with me. And I promise what happens to the church in the book of acts is what will happen to us as well. Look at this last verse that happens in here. It says in verse 31, it says, the church then had peace

throughout Judea, throughout Galilee and Samaria. It became stronger as the believers lives in the fear of the Lord. And with the encouragement of the Holy Spirit, it also grew in numbers. What Luke, the author of the book of Acts goes to extensive lengths to articulate to you and I is that every time persecution

hits the church, peace is ushered in simultaneously. And that doesn't make sense to me intellectually. How can the church be filled with peace at the same time, for the very first time, they're being murdered and they have to live in fear of their life because of the message they've given their life to?

Because we believe that peace, it means an absence of bad things happening. Peace means an absence of problems, enough money that we're okay,

but not so big of a house that it becomes a nuisance to deal with. Right? We want a big enough house to impress our friends, but not so big that it becomes a pain to deal with. We believe that peace is ushered in when we finally arrive, when we have all these things dealt with and gone away with.

And maybe just maybe the invitation of faith is the opportunity to experience peace, not in the absence of your problems, but right in the middle of your problems. I look at this story and I go, how do you and I, how do we try to live a life like Paul where he says, the goal friends of this life is pretty simple.

To stand in front of God one day and to have him look at us and say, well done, good and faithful servant. Not good and prosperous, not good and educated, but good and faithful. How do we walk with faithfulness? How do we walk in faithfulness

to what God has asked us to do while we run this race on this side of heaven? How do we stop making happiness the goal? Because the problem with happiness is ultimately it will come into passing crossroads

with absolute truth. And what happens when the word of God tells you to do something that you don't feel like doing, when you don't think is going to lead to happiness? Those are the moments where we have to exercise this thing called faith, where we have to really walk this thing out.

I go, how do we do that? How do we practically today living in the world that we live in with the jobs that we have? How do we walk a faithful life? I think sometimes it's more simple than we realize. What we have to learn to do is to allow God to change the way that we see this world.

I think the greatest gift that God gave the apostle Paul is he changed his entire perspective. He changed the way that he looked at everything. He changed the way that he saw the world. He changed the way that he saw his problems. He changed the way that he aspired to purpose.

And you and I, I think for us to find real meaning in this life, sometimes it's as simple as asking God, Lord, would you change the way that I see this world? Would you help me see it the way that you see it? Would you help me walk with your eyes? But this is the challenge in here for all of us.

Every single one of you sitting here today because of the homes you grew up in, the towns, the cities, the countries you come from, the socioeconomic environments you were raised in, the education you do or don't have, all of us have a unique thing called a worldview.

I want to show you this graphic real quick to try to walk this out a little bit. But every single person, the way that we view this world, the way that we look at everything and filter the information that we see, that's called a worldview.

The worldview is what we dictate. This is what is real. Okay? For Saul, his worldview was that the message of Jesus was hostile. And then in a moment, God changed that and now his worldview is different because your worldview here's what's important. Your worldview is always what will lead to your belief system.

Your belief system will come out of your worldview and this will tell you what is true. What is good will come from what you believe is true. So our value system,

the things that we value come from what we believe is real, what we believe is true. And ultimately those are the things that lead to what we do. Here's the problem in church. So often what we focus on is this, what we do, our behavior.

And most of Christian teaching is just behavior modification and seven steps to overcome this thing. And I go, maybe just maybe what we really need is we need to understand that all of us who've given our life to Jesus, we should have the same worldview.

We might have had a worldview before we met Jesus, but now today, we have a different worldview. And as God changes our perspective, we'll start to see our problems differently. We'll begin to look and find purpose differently.

And maybe just maybe we'll become convinced of the same thing that I think Saul understood at the very beginning in Acts chapter nine, that God's plan to reach this world is a lot more simple than we realize. He wanted to change the church. So he changed the person. And God uses changed people to change people

and to change places, to change cities, to rewrite their stories.

And maybe just maybe what God is doing in your life is he's put you in the work environment that you're in, the school that you're in, the community that you're in, the school that your kids go to. You're a part of that community

because God is trying to get ahold of it and change it and rewrite the story. And the way that he does that is he uses you. He uses the changed person to now become a change agent to the other people around them. I I close by just telling you kind of a silly illustration that I think will bring this home hopefully.

For those of you who are over 40, it'll be easier for you to remember what I'm about to ask you, not because you're old. Okay? I'm closer to 40 than I am 30 now. But if I were to ask you ten years ago, okay? Transport back in time with me ten years ago. And I said, Hey, guys, I'm getting ready to go to the city of Waco,

Texas. Okay? When I say Waco, Texas ten years ago, what do you think of? Throw it out. Say it to me out loud. David Koresh, right? The Branch Davidians.

If you don't know what it is, go watch Netflix and go down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, right? Because David Koresh claimed to be the second coming of Christ. He built a cult in Waco, Texas. He got a bunch of people to follow him to believe that he was the Messiah, that only his interpretation of the Bible was real. And ultimately, they stockpiled a bunch of guns preparing for the end of the world and for this whole war that was happening. And then the FBI comes in, the ATF comes in, and it just goes horrendously wrong. Don't know exactly what happens, but at the end of the day, this house catches on fire and women, children,

men just die in this fire and this is horrible tragedy. For years and years and years, Waco, Texas was plagued by being the place that the Branch Davidians happened. It was this stain on the city.

People would drive away from Waco to be like, I don't know, man. There's some weird stuff that happened there. I just don't want to be a part of it. But here's what's crazy today. I just wanna ask, how many of you in the last five years have been

to Waco, Texas? Prove my point for me. Throw them up all over the room. K? Here's why. If you don't know why all these crazy people went to Waco, Texas, here's why. Because Waco, Texas today, what is it known for? Come on. Chip and Joanna Gaines, like Jesus on earth today. Right? Fixer upper.

A few years ago, two people, Chip and Joanna Gaines, who love Jesus or followers of Jesus, they started remodeling homes in Waco. And slowly over time, they got picked up by a TV show that went nuts and now you can't go through Target without seeing all of their stuff. And today, check this out. 20,000

people a week go to Waco, Texas. There are tour companies that drive people around Waco, Texas. Like that's mind blowing. If you had told somebody from Waco twenty years ago, you guys are going to be the tourist Mecca of America in a few years, they would have said you're nuts. But see it, go there with me if you can.

Two people understood the power of restoration. They understood the power of transformation.

They understood that we're not called to be God, but if we live in light of the calling that he's put on our life, if we understand that God's plan to change cities, to rewrite the stories of cities and towns and states is by changed people living into changing people.

It is amazing and inspiring to me to think that two people rewrote the entire story of a city.

And I wonder what would happen if the thousands of people that call this place home woke up tomorrow and said, you know what? Maybe just maybe we're crazy enough to believe that God could rewrite the story of our families. He could rewrite the story of our city through us realizing the power of transformed people walking in that transformation.

Friends, I believe this is the simple plan of how we change the world. Change people. If you're here, you have a calling on your life. It is to go out and change people. So, father, I ask, God, with eyes closed and heads bowed in this place, that, God, we can't do this on our own. It is absolutely impossible

through our striving and trying and attempting and working harder. But God, I love that all of this in Acts chapter nine is recorded after the Holy Spirit comes on the scene. The helper that you told the church would come to empower us to live this life that we can't live on our own. God, at best, all we can do is try.

But with the power of the Holy Spirit, Lord, we can live with purpose. And so, God, I pray with a room full of people that you would give them the courage, the boldness, and the audacity to believe that you can change the world through them.

God, give us conversations to have. Open doors for us to share the good news of Christ that we have found. For those of us in this room who've never encountered you and given our life to you, Lord, would we start there by wrestling through who you really are?

Because if it's true that you came back to life, it changes everything. Father, I ask that you would speak to us this week in the power of the Holy Spirit, all God's people said, amen.

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 the we are rock point app for prayer and everything happening here at rock point.