We Are Rock Point | Week 3 | Bill Bush | Full Service

This is where she found biblical community. It's where she found the relationships that allowed her faith to really keep going in her life actually to turn a corner.

And that's what we're gonna talk about today. Today's big idea about what does it mean to be a follower of Christ. Who we are as Christians as a church is we grow in biblical community.

We grow in biblical community. That is what we do. If you are a follower of Christ, this is what we need to be about. It says we desperately need it, and we're called to do it. We need to be in circles, not just roses we're talking about. Now what is biblical community? Because you've heard the word community. There's lots of things we think about. But what does biblical community really mean? It means relationship

in the context of a mission. Relationships in the context of a mission. Meaning,

it is a relationship. It is having friendship. It is having connections in this way, but there's actually a purpose. There's a place we're supposed to go together. We're supposed to get some place. It's not just having friends to be about whatever we wanna do.

That's what scripture talks about real community is about. And a matter of fact, it's a lot like when you think about it, it's like God gives us examples in the animal kingdom. It's like geese. That's what you probably sit at home thinking about. You know, my life needs to be like a goose.

What I mean by that, have you guys noticed you ever studied that or heard about, you know, when geese when they migrate, they fly in that big flying v. You ever see that? You know you know about that? Well, there's some reasons. When they when they fly that way, they naturally fly together. They're connected and they're community, but they have a purpose. They need to get thousands of miles,

and and a goose by itself, it would take forever if it could ever make it by itself. Probably not. But when they fly in that v, that's on purpose. I'm actually military

copied the goose because they figured out when they fly that way, what's happening from below, you don't realize it. But if you're up there next to them, it's the lead one, and then each layer, they're slightly higher than the ones in front of them. And that creates a a, you know, aerodynamic

kinda thing that means every goose, the whole group can fly further faster with less effort. You get further, you get faster, you get somewhere you could not get by yourself. And and and so that's why they do it. Also, you know why the the one one side of the line is longer than the other?

It's because there's more geese in that line. So that's

just the dad joke. Get it out of the way there. Get out of my system. No. But they they do that. It helps it. And but then also you notice they honk a lot when they're flying. If you've ever been around, they're like, honk honk honk honk, you know, geese make that that aggressive honk sound. Why are they doing that? I mean, I know why I honk. The only time I'm honking is road rage.

And most of us in a church setting, the most time we start honking is when we're mad about something. But that's not why they're honking. They're honking towards the lead leader because the one goose that's actually working harder is the one at the tip of the spear, the point.

And and so when they honk, that's to encourage the leader. That's to encourage them. So when you honk at me, are you encouraging me? But they also know they share that leadership. They rotate around. They don't expect one to do most of the work the whole time. They rotate

and they take point and they honk. And the honking also communicates cadence and encouragement for the whole group. So they are encouraging one another. They're in a formation that helps them go where they couldn't go. And then even more than that, if one of the geese gets injured or sick and has to go land while they're traveling,

two more automatically break off and go and land with it. And they will not leave that injured or sick goose till it's either well enough to fly or it dies. And the reason they go too is they can form a mini v to try to get there.

Most likely, if they can get back in the air before the season is over, they will fly up together and hook up with another group to get there. That's pretty powerful how smart geese are. How how they understand that community is relationship in the context of a mission.

But we need to understand that that's the same thing for us when it comes to biblical community. If we're gonna be a part of a church, we have

got to stop buying one of the lies that the enemy has sold us, that church is really just a personal matter, and I go to a church and I think of it like a cafeteria thing. I come to get the music I like, the teaching I like. Yeah, I wanna meet a few people that I can hang out with, but other than that, it's all about me.

And the truth is that's not what it's about. You see faith is personal, but it's not private. Faith is personal, but not private. I'll say that again for those of you in the back row.

Faith is personal. We're supposed to have a personal relationship with God. It is a very personal thing. But according to scripture, our faith was never meant to be lived in in isolation. It was never meant to be a private thing. We are meant to be a part of a church, a part of a body of Christ. That lie that he says all I need is Jesus and a bible and myself, not true.

That's not what God intended our life for. A matter of fact, most of the New Testament is how we need one another. That God actually by his great wisdom said, you know what? You're gonna become like me and in many instances, my plan a for how to grow you and help you is gonna be people. My plan a is each other

Because we get to be Jesus for each other in many moments that we're gonna see. And we can't do that without pursuing intentionally these relationships in the context of a mission called biblical community.

So what does that look like? Well, we're gonna go to a passage in Galatians chapter six. No. We just finished Galatians a few weeks ago, and pastor Clayton preached through Galatians six. I wanna go back to it and teach it right this time. Okay? So no. No. He did a fantastic job. Covered the whole chapter,

and and what he talked about was community matters, if you were here and remember that. He said it's important, and he landed the importance of it. He even landed a lot of the fears and the reasons why we don't do it. Well, I wanna go back and look at these first five verses and primary verse one,

and and and dive deeper into what does it even look like. So this is the what. That was the it's necessary and why we're afraid. This is gonna be a little bit of a deeper dive into

what is biblical community. And here's what I want. I want you to ask yourself, do you actually have this? You might be in church every week, but do you have this with a few people that when you see the level of what it's supposed to be, you can't have this with everybody.

Matter of fact, even if you're in a home group, you probably won't even have this with everybody in that group. You just need a couple people in your life that you can have this level of connectedness.

Matter of fact, a lot of times getting into a group isn't even trying to make everybody at the same level. It's like, can we get people mixed where you find a couple people you can connect to in this way?

So as we walk through, we're gonna see four elements that really define what biblical community is as we walk through this. Here's what I wanna challenge you. Do you have it? If not, what's the step you can take to find it? But this is also encouragement for all of you that are in a group.

You're in some kind of bible study, one of our home groups, maybe you gather with a few of your friends and you call it, hey, this is our discipleship time. We call it our community. I want you to take this these four elements we're gonna talk about and evaluate. Okay. You might be in a group, but is this happening?

For those of you that are small group leaders, home group leaders in our church, I challenge you this week when you meet in your group, take these four things and actually have a very open conversation with your whole group. And say, how are we doing on these four things?

And if there's some like, hey, I don't see us doing that. Start throwing some ideas out about how maybe you can develop that and work towards it. Because it's not just being in a room. Matter of fact, I said we gotta get in circles not just rows. You can sit in a circle and still not be having biblical community.

And the encouraging thing is this is what we need. What we want is this level of connectedness. It's not so much about go to a program, it's find some people that you can actually connect in this way with. Make sense? So here we go. Let's read these five verses and then talk about it.

So here we go. Verse one, dear brothers and sisters. Paul is talking. He's now at this point of the book of to these churches in Galatia. He's talking about, hey, you need to live as the church and you're gonna harvest what you plant. And it comes down to it's about people

connecting and trusting God. He says, dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back on the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. Share each other's burdens.

And in this way, obey the law of Christ. If you think you're too important to help someone, you're only fooling yourself. You're not that important. That's a really big throw punch right there. I don't think too many people are gonna put Galatians six three on their wall or their mugs at home.

Yeah. So pay careful attention to your own work.

For then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done and you won't need to compare yourself to anyone else. For we are each responsible for our own conduct. So there you go. Talks about how we're responsible for our conduct, but he talks about how we need to be there for one another, which is interesting. It seems like the last couple verses is almost contradicting verse one.

It's like, hey, we need to help people. Hey, you need to be responsible for yourself. And we'll see by the end is they're not contradicting. They're actually complimenting each other when we talk about what real community is.

So where are these four elements I talked about? They're all found in chapter verse one. I wanna put verse one up here and highlight a few words here that we're gonna look at. Because it really does define, and these words are seen all through scripture.

And it really describes what it means to have community. It says we're supposed to help each other if someone's overcome, then you have gently and humbly, then you have help, and then you have the right path. So those four things really define

what community is. So what do we mean by that? How how do we word these? What are the four words I'm gonna give you here that actually defines this of what it means for us? The things that the the elements that we need to have and experience and we need to be in somebody else's life as well. The first one is if someone's overcome. Well, if someone's overcome,

if you're gonna go find someone who's overcome by a sin or struggling with a problem, how do you know to help them? It's implying very clearly that you have to be known. If you're not known, no one can help you if you're overcome by something. Another word for overcome is overwhelmed. How would someone know

if you're not known? So in in real community, biblical community is we choose to really be known, and we allow people to really be known.

And what I mean by known is not just I know of you, I know your name, and a lot of our community is like, I know the people. But this is known to the level of I know that they are actually overwhelmed by sin in their There is something going on in their heart. There is something going on in their life that is beyond normal, and it is overwhelming them. You have got to be at a deeper level of communication and sharing

to know that. This is this kinda known means that, like, you you to really be known that and some of you have had these types of friends and connections where you could be saying everything's okay, but they know you're full of it. They could just tell there's something off. They know when something's not right.

That's the level we need. But you have to choose to be known. You have to allow yourself to be known.

And and what does that mean? It's like real community can't happen if I can't be real and honest. To really be known is I gotta be real, and to be honest, I can't be fake and I gotta tell the truth. I gotta be really open and honest about me. What do I mean by it? Real about myself.

Don't try to put on a show and act like you're one way when you're in group, but then really you're like this over here all the time, and be real and honest about yourself, and honest about where I am in my relationship with Jesus. When I go into real community, I need to be honest about where I'm at. But why do we

sometimes struggle with what I've said over and over again. It's been one of the soap boxes of the New Testament. We keep having to talk about law and legalism and all that versus grace,

and we're like, law? What's what does that have to do with real life? It has everything to do. Here it is showing itself again. If you have a law oriented, meaning I have to do, I perform, it's on me. You are gonna be someone that won't allow yourself to be known when you're with other believers.

Because because you don't want them to know that you're failing. You have a law orientation in your heart. Grace orientation says it's okay to not be okay, and that's okay. Now you don't want to stay there either. The world says just be not okay. Matter of fact, draw a circle around it and and call that a bull's eye.

But it's okay to be real about not being okay. You have to truly be known. Otherwise, no one's gonna help you.

There's no way to be helped when you're overcome. Matter of fact, I I see this all the One the biggest things I hear from people when they leave a church, they've left this church and said it, they've come to this church, they go, said my last church was there for five years and this thing happened in my life and no one reached out.

I'll be like, really? No one in your small group reach out? Well, I wasn't in one. No one on the team that you served on me. I I I didn't really serve. No. The pastor didn't even call me. I said, wasn't that church about a church of 3,000 people? Yeah. And I was like

so when you say your church didn't reach out, you just attended all the time. You sat in one of these chairs and that was it. Yeah. Why are you mad at them? Well, because they didn't reach out when I started. They didn't know you.

You didn't go into any of the you said, well, I don't have time to serve. Well, I don't really wanna be in this study. I can't find that. And then you get mad when you're not known? You have to choose. Being in community is work. Geese have to work to fly south for the winter.

But guess what? If they don't do the work, they die. And so will your faith. We have to choose to really be real and be known.

You know, it's funny. Even as I got into ministry and started preaching, one of the things I hear from most people, hey, you know what like about you, Bill? You don't try to be too fancy, and you're honest, man. You'll just say dumb things, and and and you'll share and then everything they like is like, you talk about how you're an idiot as well, and and

all of that. And I realized and then I actually had people that were old school ministry, and people in my team early on say, you gotta quit sharing how you were an idiot.

Why? Because no one's gonna follow you because you're an idiot. I go, well, two things. One, everyone's an idiot, so they'll respect the fact that at least I admit it, And and and and and two, everybody already knows the person up front's an idiot. So why don't you just admit it and say, I'm there with you guys. That's

what we need to do with each other.

I really believe when I'm standing up here, don't go, alright.

Get into the process mode to preach. I'm not in the back doing jumping jacks, push ups.

I'm just me. Take it or leave it. And I try to be real.

But I still have people in my life that's more one on one that I can get even, you know, if I got to that level, it'd be TMI.

But we need to be known in the big get real and to get honest. Do you have that? The second part was where it says, if you're gonna help to be gentle and humble, gently and humbly.

That implies the idea that if you are going to be helped and if someone's or if you're gonna help someone, you need to be accepted. We need to accept. If we're gonna go and and and we have to accept people. When they share and they really truly are known, we have to be accepting of them. We have to be gentle and humble.

You see, a matter of times if someone really tells you something that is brutal, it's going on in your life, and they're not gentle and they're not humble, usually if you're not humble, you won't be gentle. What I mean by that is pride says, I'm better than you.

Pride is self righteousness. Pride's back to law again. You hear their problem. You don't struggle with that problem. You think you got the list of the to dos and the to don'ts right, so you just think you're actually holier than they are. So when you hear their problem, you're either ugh, not gentle, like you wanna back away and stay away from them and not deal with it, or you wanna just be brutal. You know what you need to do?

And and and you're not gentle. You just wanna force and fight. It's it's why I say stop trying to help people on social media. They don't know who you are. You don't really know them. And when you just react with the answer, you come across like you know everything.

Some of the level of arguments you're having are meant to be a face to face conversation with somebody you already know. You're not going to win someone over.

I have never seen someone say, you know what your problem is? It's this. And then put a bible verse where it's like, oh my gosh. Right now in this moment, I finally realized you're telling the truth, and I'm I confess before the whole world that you've changed my mind. It's

usually the reason we react is fear and anger. We're not being gentle. We're not being humble. But since we're behind a keyboard, it doesn't feel like that. We think we're the defenders of all that is true and faithful and all that. But do we have people in our lives that we can actually meet with, talk to, and truly

accept them, but also truly be accepted. You see, I need to receive the healing power of acceptance and display the humility to offer to others. So when I am in community, it's a it's a two way street. This idea of acceptance is something I desperately need. When someone accepts this is where we get to be Jesus to people.

When someone shares their deepest problem, like, hey, I'm here, but I'm barely hanging on. Don't even know if I believe this. I'm struggling. My marriage is a mess. I I I'm having a problem, and here's what I'm wrestling with. And they're honest with you, and you're like, okay, let's talk about that. I get it. You know what? I don't have that issue, but I've been like, this way, I get you're right. Let's how can we purge? When you are accepted, it's like where Jesus looked at the woman caught in adultery and says, hey,

I'm not gonna throw a rock at you either. You get to be Jesus to that person. That takes gentleness and humility. But you also have the moment where you get to be the woman.

And you get to physically see another believer tell you we can get past this. It's okay. Now the world would say acceptance is just tell them what they're doing is is we we it's affirmation. Acceptance of a person is not affirmation of where they're at.

Biblical community says, here's where I'm at. I accept you. I'll meet you where you are like Jesus did, but I'm not gonna leave you there. Either did Jesus, the woman in the world. We're in talks about, well, he didn't cast stones at her. Look at it. Yeah. Did you read the last sentence what he said to her? Now go and sin no more. What he basically said is that unhealthy relationship you're in, the adulterous relationship you're in, you need to go end that. That's

not good for you. I'm not gonna throw a rock at your head, but you need to walk away from what's destroying your life. But if you're not known, nobody can help you with that. And if you don't get accepted, you're probably not gonna be willing to share that.

So that's the being known, being accepted, being gentle and humble. But here's the deal, you can only be accepted to the level of which you're known. And that's why a lot of us, what we call community, isn't working for us. Because no one really allows themselves to truly be known.

So when everyone says, we're so accepting of each other. You are. We're all being accepting of what everybody's actually saying. And here's the reason that doesn't really work for us. Even the person that's hiding.

Because you know everyone's accepting you, but you know they're not really accepting you. They're accepting your version that you're giving of you. And they might not know who you really are, but you do. So that acceptance doesn't really help you. Because you weren't willing to risk it.

So yeah, we need to be known and accepted, but we not don't just need to stay there. We need to be real about where we're at. We need to be accepting and meet people where they're at. Be met where you're at and meet, but not stay there. So that's where that word help comes into place. It says you need to help,

and that's we need to support. We need to be supported. We need to be supportive, and we need to be supported.

And what do I mean by that? I need to be known and accepted at a deep enough level to be truly helped in bearing my physical, emotional, and spiritual burdens. Because he says to help people get on the right path, that's the last point we'll get to. But when he says to first help,

that what is he talking about? It's bear the burdens, because that's what he says in verse two through five. He starts to say, hey, we need to

share each other's burdens in order to obey the law of Christ. We need the kind of support. If we're struggling, we choose to be known. We don't run away from it. We accept you. Now we're gonna start helping you. We're gonna give you support for where you're at. But what does that support look like? What does it mean to have our

physical, emotional, and spiritual burdens met, and how do we go about doing that in each other's life? Because I think this is this is where a lot of people really disconnect from community.

Either you don't get it because you're afraid, or this is happening to you and it's why you run away, or you're being this person. A lot of times you get into community and what you end up with when it says to help each other, support each other, you end up with what I call those those emotional,

spiritual, physical vampires. They're gonna suck you dry. Some of you have a person in your group that's that way and someone needs to be honest with them.

But when we hear this, well, we're supposed to bear the burden. So why am I supposed to and what we end up inadvertently doing because we're trying to show the love of Christ and apply scripture to our life, we end up forming codependent relationships in our community.

But do you realize the next two verses actually take apart and provide exactly what modern counseling has figured out after it's already been written here about how to avoid codependency and have a proper boundary and to truly support someone and not codepend them.

It's why it says, bear each other's burdens. Marmite, that word for burdens is a Greek word that means a heavy weight, kinda like a boulder. So it means something extra. It's overwhelming.

It's either their own sin. It could be the boulder you brought down on yourself through sin. It could be all and what we're supposed to do is help lift that off of them. If it's sin, lifting it off is to help them get away from it. If it's if it's it's a crunch of a burden of something else overwhelming,

emotional bite, you help lift the rock. But then look what it says after verse two. As you go further on, it says now pay careful attention to verse four, to your own work.

Then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done. You won't need to compare yourself to anyone else. That's talking about the legalism. Like see when we try to worry about this and this and we all get into law, we're more like, I'm more worried about looking at them and looking at that and comparing it to my no. That's not what we're worried about. He says,

for we are each responsible for our own conduct. Now those words for work and conduct in there also basically mean a burden. So it says, help each other with their burdens. And we need help for our burdens. But then it says, hey, take care of your burdens.

Is it contradicting? No. That's why I love the NLT translation. Since it's a different Greek word, they changed the English word. It it it really means what it means. It it means a burden is like a boulder hitting you. The work and conduct, especially the word conduct, it implies not a boulder, but a backpack.

It's kind of used of the burden like a soldier. They had their their pack that they had to carry with them. They had their stuff, their rations, their supplies, and each soldier was responsible for carrying their own weight.

But soldiers also knew you bear each other's burdens. If you got attacked, you get literally got hit, someone launched a boulder and hit you, you're like, you help carry them. You move the boulder off, You help them. And for a short period of time, you might need to carry their backpack for and for a while. But the intent was to always get you back to putting your own backpack on and carrying your own weight and doing your own job. It was never meant to be like, hey, take my backpack. It was never meant carrying each other's burdens is not I'm gonna take on your responsibilities. I'm gonna do everything you're supposed to do. That's when it gets codependent.

That's where you're dysfunctional. If you're the one doing it, you're being codependent and you're dysfunctional. If you are in a group that's allowing it, you're allowing yourself to be sucked into codependency, and that's what's wearing you out.

To help and support is to let people know, we need to get you healthy. We need to get you back to a place. And you know what? I will relift the rock. You gotta carry your backpack. That's what it's saying. Let me give you an example of this how it works. When marriage counseling,

which I used to do, used to, don't call me, you don't wanna talk to me. I struggle with the gentle humble part.

But early on, and the reason I struggle is because early on I found out I got taken advantage of. It sucked me dry when we started this church. I'd meet with people.

And at first I couldn't figure out that what I didn't realize, I was getting sucked dry from two people. They didn't want help. They didn't want the burden really. Because you know what a burden to help someone, to support them with their burden is to lift the rock so they can pick up their backpack. Their responsible is to pick up your backpack. Do your part. What they wanted was for me to lift the rock off them and throw it at the other person in the room and tell them it's all their fault.

And so they weren't seeking help, they were seeking an ally. And so then I would talk, and then I'd sort it out, sort it out, get them calms, Okay. I understand that. You're right. Okay. Oh, breakthrough.

K. Here's what you guys need to work on. Try doing this or whatever. And I would say, and they'd call me back up. We'd be back together another couple weeks later. And now we're having a it's it's the same fight, the same problem. Just you know, second verse same as the first, a little bit longer, a little bit worse. And so then I started to learn, okay, this isn't working. So I said, you know what I need to do? I need to give them a homework assignment.

I need to give them something to do with this. So I'd say, here's what you need to do. Get alone, think about this, and then schedule a time and look at each other and talk about this particular thing after you've thought about it, and then we get together next time, we'll we'll talk about how that went

and see if you were able to apply this stuff. So then they come back, how that go? Well, we didn't really do that. So then I'm like, okay. Now I gotta do a third thing. I started going, alright. I call you the day before we're supposed to meet. Hey, did you do what I asked? No. But we'll we'll do it tonight. I go, no. No. No. This is the type of thing it takes a couple days to do. We'll meet in a couple weeks. That's when I started getting somewhere.

Because most people, I ended up canceling on them and pushing it off, and they would stop asking because they realized they're not gonna do what I said. They don't want to pick up their backpack. They want me to throw rocks with them. And so they just stopped bothering,

or they actually started doing what I said. And lo and behold, bam. It's amazing how fast a marriage can get fixed when two people stop throwing their rock at each other and you just start picking up your backpack. The way you fix something is you work on your what is your pack to carry? What is your pack to carry?

Both people pick up your pack. And when we support in community, that's what it means to help. Sometimes that's what you need to tell somebody. It's not do their job and do their life for them. It's a system when they're too wounded and hurt to do it, but get them back to health.

The whole reason we know that is it says support them. Help them to what? Get back on the right path. That's the fourth word. The fourth one, the right path is this, developed. The ultimate destination of biblical community is we become more like Christ. We are developed. We are moved into the mission.

We are moved into being what a Christian is supposed to be. So if you're in a home group, you're in a small group, you're in a bible study, if all you do is talk about the bible and apply and try to solve all the world's problems, maybe share a few things. But at the end of the day, you're not being pushed towards what a fully engaged follower of Christ is, and you're not pushing each other. You're not agreeing that this is what we're supposed to be doing together.

It's like a team. I've never seen a sports team that's good that just gets together, talks about the sport, but doesn't apply it to themselves and hold each other accountable for actually playing their position.

If you just type, you know what? That game and you talk about other games and talk about other teams, and you sit in the team and then you go try to play your game without communicating and getting any better, that's stupid. Why are you getting together?

We're to get together to talk, to strategize, to plan, to practice, and then to go play.

And that's really what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to be developed. What does that mean? Biblical community happens in the context of a lovingly helping each other be developed in our shared mission. You know what that shared mission is? Point people to Jesus by loving them like Jesus. Well, we have to know Jesus too. We're supposed to be in a fully engaged relationship with Jesus. And as you look through a whole new testament

all over the place, there's all these one anothers. This is what we're supposed to be as a church. This is what we're supposed to do. He says overcome by a sin. The right path. What is the right path? The right path is to get back onto the path of growing as a disciple of Christ. And how we do that is around here, we say these three words, knowing, growing, and going.

Last week, we looked at knowing. We're supposed to know Jesus. First, you need to meet him, put your faith in him as a savior, but knowing is a lifelong term. It's to continue to get to know him, and what did we look at last week? The main way we get to know Jesus is

public worship private practices. Being committed to being in church where like I'm helping us know Jesus, the word, because I'm teaching it right now. But we also need to be in it on our own. We talked about that. We gotta be people of the word. So if you're in community,

if yours whatever you call your biblical community, if you're not pushing each other to say, have you been in the word together? And have you been in the word on your own?

What are you currently studying? What are you reading? Where are you going? Are you spending time with the Lord every day? If you're not challenging each other to that, you're not being biblical community.

And there's some creative ways to try to do that. One time I was in a group that I felt like, know, we've got to this level that we come together, we do the studies, and those are great at first, but now I'm like, hey, we all know we just need to be people of the word. Do you know what we did for a while? We just stopped picking a bible study.

Because also because we try to pick what to study, someone says, I'm really interested in this. I'm interested in that. I wanna do marriage again. I'm like, you need counseling. We don't need to talk about that in this group again. So

what we decided to do to encourage one another to get to know the word is what everyone did is, alright, when we come together, we're just gonna have these basic five questions we ask each other that are all about what did you learn in your time with the Lord this week?

And give us some things you're what are you being challenged by in that? How can we pray for you in that? So it was choose your own adventure. Yeah. But what does the person do if they didn't read their bible? They just get made fun of. No. You're gentle. Actually, I encourage them to share. Honestly, I didn't. How come?

And know sometimes when they talk to well this happened to my life, my kids did this. Oh, we need to pray for you on that.

Alright. I want to I go, how about I text you? Had one guy who's like, when do you when do you think you have well I try to make the time every morning at 7AM, but then something is like okay. What if I text you every morning at 06:30, are you getting ready to spend time with Jesus?

That's biblical community. You're agreeing to have iron sharpened iron. Growing is what I was talking about is growing in this community. This idea that we grow together. Do you ties talk about what it means to grow in community? Do you frequently take these four things and go are we doing this?

And one of the things about being known and being accepted that's hard, especially I had a group, there was you know, couples group. I discovered long ago that men do not like to really really really be known in the mixed company, and I'm pretty sure women are similar.

So what we did is we would do the bible study, whatever we discussed, even when we started doing what did you learn on your own, we would do the hangout time, have fun together, talk, you know, eat food, and then when it came time to discuss, if we're doing a bible study, all those written bible studies start off with a real generic question. Have no problem discussing what this means for everyone else, but they always have the last couple questions or get real about it with about yourself.

We would split the men and the women. We'd go to a different place, and we would do that, just men and women. Then when my group got to be like eight or nine of each, we actually would split even further and we get into little groups of three and talk about those last two questions and we use the answers to those questions to spark now what are we gonna pray about with each other.

Let's pray over what we just shared we're struggling with. You see there's ways you can do this, but you gotta be intentional about it. And then finally, going. You know, we're called to go. We're going to live intentional. We're supposed to be living intentional with our time, our talents, our treasure, our testimony.

We we we need have our time committed to what God's asked us to do. We need to serve one another. We're called the body of Christ. We all have spiritual gifts. We're supposed to be serving.

We're supposed to take our finances and and and spend it the way God and challenge us. Part of it he says, hey, I gave you all of it, but a certain percentage I want you to give it back. We're supposed to share our faith.

Do you ever challenge each other in what you call your community to do that? Or is all that we don't talk about that. That's a private matter. No. No, it's not. Faith is personal but it's not private.

We're supposed to challenge each other in that. I've had groups that said, hey, they've realized a bunch of them weren't baptized. And there wasn't a baptized schedule very soon. And they said, you know, we should probably honor God in that way. They called me up. Alright. What time does your baptism? We

we meet Wednesday nights. You got you got a hot tub there? Yeah. Alright. See you guys Wednesday night. I'll baptize your group. I'll take you up on it. You're in a group. You got a bunch of people not baptized. I'll show up and I'll baptize your

If it's hard to get them all together and they never seem to be able to get into the group thing, we'll take away the excuse. I'll show up where you're at and I'll hold you under extra long because you made me cum, but the other requirement is you have to have good food there or I'm not showing up.

No. We've had groups that said they realized none of them were serving. It's just hard whatever and then they all realize, you know what, we all go to the 9AM on Sunday service, let's all sign up for the same team that really needs people, and let's all serve together at eleven. They just make the day of it.

You ever talked about that? Doing it together? Finding ways to serve? We we do stuff that's also like once a month. We do you could talk to our outreach team. We we we host the senior center once a month in Queen Creek. We've had some home groups that rotate through and the whole home group volunteers the same same day.

They just go do it together. That's what real community is.

It's not just sitting around talking about the bible and what it means for everyone else and then complaining about how the world whole world's going to hell, and I think this means the mark of the beast is coming, and this means that, and that, and that. We wanna talk about what we think is gonna happen when really what the bible keeps saying is we should be acting like Jesus

and act like he's gonna come back any second all the time. Not just try to figure it out all the time. No accepted, supported, developed. And you realize this is how Jesus grew his disciples. He didn't grow them in a class, he growed them in a growed them. He growed them in a grammar class. No, in community.

He had a small group for three years. And he in that group, can see they were known. They were accepted. I mean, you know how many times Jesus could have face palmed, but he accepted them, met them, but he didn't leave them there. He supported them, and then he developed them

over and over again. He had a small group. Now one of our production people last night after I said that says, yeah, he was in a small group and look at how that turned out for him. True. One of them betrayed him and he died, but he also saved the world from sin by that.

But here's why we need all four of these. And I like to use the illustration of a Oreo cookie here. Someone gave me these because it's awesome. These are not just double stuffed. This is called most. The most high reverend stuffed of all Oreo cookies.

Why do you think people like more and more stuffing in there, especially kids? How do kids eat these? How do you like to eat these? Do you like to take the top off and eat the middle first? That's what most people like to do, right? Well, here, since you were so helpful, can have this one.

I could give you one I didn't touch as much, but my hands are clean. I only licked it twice.

Let me grab another one now. This one's all broke. I gave you the wrong one.

Kids and a lot of us adult kids, especially my kids, they like to eat these things and the reason they like the extra stuffed ones is what they really want is this the good stuff in the middle. Right?

I don't about you. My kids, I would go in there and I would find like the counter looked like a civil war battlefield. All these poor Oreos with their guts blown out. They left this stuff and they only wanted this stuff. Why? What's different about this stuff? It's fluffy, it's soft,

it's super sweet, it's got all the sugar. This is not very much sugar. This has a little bit more of a bitterness and a crunchiness. It's drier. It's dry and crunchy and not as sweet. Well, it's the same way with community. Community has a sweet fluffy middle,

but it also has the crunchy ends and you need it for the whole cookie. You see, what most of us run after, or you're running after the whole thing and you end up in a group that's committed to just the fluffy middle. What I mean by that, it's in the order. Known, accepted, supported, developed.

Most people really just want to be accepted and supported. I wanna be accepted without being known, and I wanna be supported without being developed. In other words, if you just go for the fluffy middle, what you're really saying is, I want you to accept what I tell you about myself.

Don't dive any deeper. Don't wanna know. I want you to accept what I said and then give me what I'm asking for.

Accept me without knowing me. Support me without trying to grow me.

It'll happen a lot money wise. People come in and go, I've had this problem, I've had this, I want you know, can you just pay my bills and all that? Well, you know what? Let let me help. If you got this burden, this boulder, it's like, yeah, but we wanna help you pick up your backpack. And a lot of times what people need is they don't need money, they need money management. So we're like, okay, if we help you out, we need you to go to FPU to teach you how to manage money, and they're like, I don't want that, you guys are church, you're not helping church. Churches should love, they should help. It's because you wanted me to give you money when you really needed money management,

And then you move on. Now if you're trying to be all those, I think some of you get frustrated with people in your group because they might be. You attract people that most people want the middle of the Oreo. Be gentle. Be humble. Accept them where they're at. But don't leave them there. Try to lovingly encourage them

to get the whole cookie. Because community is best when you get the whole cookie with a nice cold glass of holy spirit.

And that's how it's supposed to work. Because you know why? Being known and accepted, it does make us vulnerable, which is a good thing. Because when we get vulnerable, then we can be supported and developed, and being supported and developed makes us unstoppable. But you can't get to unstoppable until you're vulnerable.

That's what biblical community is. That's why we need it. And that's what it's about. Do you have that? If not, we want to help you find it. We'll help you try to find community. We'll make it easy to find a spot. We can't make it easy to be in it. It is hard. It is a choice. It's relationship, but it has a missional context.

When you go into community, you're saying I am allowing other people to agree that we are going to partner together to grow towards something. That's why we're here. And that's the intent. And the problem is we're all sinners. We all have jagged parts of our lives. And we get close to each other, it

pokes each other. It can it can it can be uncomfortable. Matter of fact, there was a a a I think he's finished. We I don't his name is too hard to pronounce.

But he wrote this thing called the porcupine dilemma when he was talking about he was a philosopher. He was talking the problem the dilemma of mankind is the dilemma of the porcupine. Meaning, we crave and need desperately real community. But the problem is we are all prickly.

So as you get close, it's painful. Then So you don't wanna be close, but and he says that's the same problem with porcupine. When they get really, really cold, especially the cape porcupine in their dens when it gets really cold, that family, they need to gather closer together

for warmth or they'll die. The problem is if they get too close, they poke each other so hard and and and not the good kind of poke, the bad kind of poke. See, I regret saying that right now. Be gentle and humble with me. Okay? And

and it can be very, very, very painful, and so then it hurts too much, so then they pull apart, but if they get too far apart, they start to freeze to death. And so the dilemma is they have to figure out how they can get close enough that there's the warmth.

That's the healthy place. They're close it still hurts. They're still gonna bristle each other, but it's not to the point of pain beyond imagining and actually being unhealthy in its own right. It hurts, it's a little uncomfortable, but you live.

That's what biblical community is. That's what this passage describing. Since we are sinner, but we can't be dysfunctional or codependent where we get so close, we're piercing each other and destroying each other, but we do have to get uncomfortably

close enough that we can provide the warmth for the growth that we need. Otherwise, just like if the porcupine don't do this, they freeze to death. If we don't do this, your faith will freeze. It'll get stuck,

it'll be frozen in time. That's why some of you can come to church every week, and you've sat here for years and years and years, and you are no closer to Jesus than you were fifteen years ago.

You are actually still in your own heart, whether you talk to people or not going, I am repeating the same battle over and over and over and over again, and the difference is you need people. You need some porcupine y people in your life that you gotta get uncomfortably close with. Not dysfunctionally close with,

but close enough for the warmth of the mission, of the relationship in the context of a mission to transform you. Amen? Amen. Let's pray. Father God, I just thank you, Lord. I thank you that you love us, you care for us, and that, Lord, that you gave us the whole cookie.

God, pray for myself, anyone online, everyone in this room, that as we look at our lives and say, Hey. Do I have this kind of community in my life? Am I this kind of community for someone in my life, in their lives? And Lord, if the answer is no, give us the courage to go seek it out,

to choose to be it in our context, but to try to find it as well. Lord, that you'll open those doors that we will walk through and we will take that uncomfortable moments. We will just hang in there, and we will be vulnerable in order to become unstoppable

because that's what you've asked us to be. So I thank you, and I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Awesome. Hey. I love you guys. It's fun to be here.

Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on rockpoint.io for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.