Life Center

Jesus is Lord of all of life, and that changes everything, including how we live as citizens in our community. This is the fourth and final talk in this series, The Other Six Days: How your relationship with Jesus changes Monday-Saturday. Being a Christian isn’t just about going to church; it’s about living [...]

Jesus is Lord of all life, and that changes everything, including our friendships. Alright, well, hey, we're going to get to our Bibles pretty quick here. So let's go ahead and start right now. Let's pass those Bibles down the aisles. You're going to want one. You're going to want to be near [...]

Jesus is Lord of all of life, and that changes everything, including our home and family. We’re in a series called, The Other Six Days: how your relationship with Jesus changes Monday-Saturday. Last week we looked at how Jesus changes our work—the way we see it and the way we do it. Besides [...]

Jesus is Lord of all of life, and that changes everything, including our work. When I ask someone if he/she is a Christian, often the first thing they’ll say is, “I don’t go to church.”  Have you heard this? Many people think of the Christian faith primarily in terms of Sunday: “I go [...]

We are going to look at Peter’s life to see what three things helped him become a person who powerfully helped people find and follow Jesus.

God never meant for us to receive the salvation blessing and have it end with us.

TRANSCRIPTION

Good morning. It’s good to see you again. My wife and I are 11 days away from having our third child, and I’m 11 days away from a breakdown. You can pray for us. We are excited. We don’t know what we’re having. We decided to be surprised. Hopefully, it’s not an alien. Hopefully, it’s a baby.

We are in the final week of our series called The Deeper Life where we’ve been exploring what the first Christians did to experience the deeper life that Jesus promised them. Jesus said, “I’ve come to give you life, life to the full, or life abundant,” and they really had that. I believe that’s possible for us too. So we’ve been exploring what they did to experience that deeper life. We talked about how they met together, how they were seeking Jesus daily, how they were sharing, how they are giving, or meeting together, seeking, giving, sharing, and we’re going to talk about that sharing portion today.

Jesus, when he came, he said he came to seek and to save the people who are sitting in church. No, he said he came to seek and to save those are who are on a Hawaiian vacation. No, but they’re already saved, man. They got the good life. He came to seek and to save the…

Lost.

Lost. He came to seek and to save people who are far from God. And then, Jesus gave that same mission to his disciples. He gave it to fishermen and tax collectors, and now he continues to give that mission to you and to me. He gives it to stay-at-home moms and dads. He gives it to a customer service reps, and financial agents, and bankers, and all of us, people who are working every sort of job in every sort of area. He gives it to every single one of us the mission to seek and to save the lost.

We rephrase that and say our mission is to help people find and follow Jesus. It’s really simple. We’re to help people find and follow Jesus. That’s what he’s given to us. We’re supposed to share Jesus with others. But have you ever wondered why he gave that mission to us? Why did he give it to the disciples then? Why did he give it to us now? Because it seems like there could be a more uniform method of communication.

We’re pretty unreliable at times. We tend to bungle things up and yet Jesus could have done it in a lot easier and simple and cleaner way. He could have had great Instagram posts. It would have been really easy to share that way. He could have done hilarious TikTok videos and everybody would have loved it, or he could have done an annual Superbowl commercial and that would have been the best commercial in the Superbowl, right? But he didn’t do that. For some reason, he gave you and I the mission. Why did he do that? Why did he give you and I mission? Well, I think it’s because of this. He wanted to include us in what he’s still doing.

Our God is still seeking and saving the lost, and he wanted to include his people, his children, in what he’s doing. One of my favorite things to do is to include my kids in what I’m doing. I love it when they get to show up at work and see what I do. I love it when we get to play games together. I love including my kids because I like being with them. And do you know that Jesus actually likes being with you? That he wants to include you in what he’s doing. He’s still seeking and saving the lost, so he’s included us to do it as well.

But how do we do this? How do we help people find and follow Jesus? I’m reading a book right now by J.D. Greear, Pastor J. D. Greear, and it’s called Gaining By Losing. It’s a book about church planting. And maybe you didn’t know this, but we as a church are a church-planting c

How do we as Christians buck the cultural trend and instead of being

directed by fear, greed, scarcity, go deeper into God’s grace and generosity?

TRANSCRIPTION

We’ve been in a series called The Deeper Life, and we’ve been talking about five things that the earliest Christians, the first Christians, did to experience the deeper life that God promised them, that Jesus promised. And so, we’ve been talking about meeting together and seeking God daily through prayer, Bible, and journal. We’ve been talking about serving and how when you serve, you enter the deeper purpose that God has made you for in your life. Today we’re going to be talking about giving, that when we give, we enter deeper into God’s grace and generosity for us.

I just want to take a poll in the room, just to get a feeling for where we’re at on this issue. How many of you would say you would love to experience more of God’s goodness, generosity, favor, blessing and goodness and kindness in your life? Okay. Right, I think that’s everybody. We would all love to experience more of that in our lives.

There’s a fantastic story in the Bible where this huge crowd, far bigger than this, this huge crowd comes to Jesus while he’s out on this flat place. They want the same thing. They want to know how they can experience more of God’s goodness, more of God’s favor, more of God’s blessing in their life. They come to Jesus expecting that he’s going to teach them something amazing.

They come to Jesus thinking that he’s going to say something like, “All right, guys, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to get our swords, we’re going to get our torches, and we’re going to kick these Romans out. We’re going to take back the land that God gave us. This is our land. This is our land.” Then everyone’s going to go, “This is our land. This is … ,” this weird chant sort of thing.

This is what they were expecting, that Jesus was going to talk to them about how they could get back their land, how they could get back control, how they could become a nation again. This was the deeper life that they were expecting Jesus to talk about, to kick out the Romans.

And instead Jesus said, “Hey, if you want to experience the kingdom of God, if you want to experience this deeper life that God has promised to you, love your enemies.” At that point, I’m sure there was a few, “Boo! That’s not what we came here for.” That’s not what they were expecting. They wanted something different.

Jesus even went so far as to say, in that section about loving your enemies, he went so far as to say, “If anyone asks anything of you, just give it to them.” This was a people who were oppressed by the Romans, who a Roman soldier could come up and ask for your shoes, for the cloak off your back, and you’d have to give it to them. And Jesus is affirming that and saying, “Yeah, just give it to them.”

They’re thinking, “No, this is not how we experience the deeper life. It’s not by just giving it. We want to get something from God.” Very much like us. We want to get something from God. And yet Jesus tells them something they’re not expecting to hear.

Jesus, in Luke 6:38, in this very scene, tells them this. To the people who want to experience this deeper life, who want to have more of God’s blessing and favor in their life, he says this very unexpected thing. He says, “Give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

They’re thinking, “Wait, timeout, Jesus. You’re supposed to say ‘get’, ‘take’, ‘get the land back’,” and yet Jesus is saying

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, “What are you doing for others?” -MLK 1957

I’m saved by his service. I’m saved for his service!

TRANSCRIPTION

Good morning again, Life Center family. I am very excited to share the Word of God with you this morning. We are continuing our series called The Deeper Life, and today, we’re talking about one of the ways that the early Church, the first Christians and Christians through all centuries have experienced the deeper life, the full life that Jesus came to bring us, and we’re going to talk about that in just a moment. I first want to start with a verse, it’s 2 Corinthians 5:17. It says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come, the old has gone, and the new is here.”

If you’re in Christ, if you’ve believed in Jesus, if you put your life in Jesus’ hands, you are a new creation. The old you is gone, and a new you is here. God calls you a new creation in Jesus. God never calls believers normal in the Bible, and if you’ve ever met very many Christians, you’re like, “That’s pretty accurate, not very normal.” Like God does call us lots of things in the Bible.

He calls us salt and light, chosen, elected, selected, anointed, beloved, and His masterpieces. All of these terms that scripture uses are used to depict our difference from the world around us. God has made us into new creations. Dr. Dharius Daniels says that, “To be different from the world is to be normal as a Christian.” We are new creations in Jesus, which means that we are different in nature than what we used to be.

I was spiritually dead, but now, I am fully alive in Jesus. We were slaves to sin, but we have been freed to serve Jesus joyfully. You, you, you were far from Jesus, but now you’re intimately connected to Him because of His work. You and I are different in nature now because of what Jesus has done, and whatever is different in nature is different in purpose. Whatever is different in nature is different in purpose.

I’ve got two things here. I’ve got an iPad and a cutting board. Now, they are very similar in form, are they not?

Yes.

They’re almost the same width, almost the same length, height. I mean, these are very similar in form, but they’re very different in function. I hope you know that. Like if you try to use your iPad as a cutting board, it’s going to work as a cutting board, but it won’t work as an iPad anymore. Now, if you look at this and you go, “Yeah, I think I’ll use this for a little bit as a cutting board,” you’re using it for the wrong thing because this is different in nature, which means it’s different in function, it’s different in purpose, and it’s different in capabilities.

The iPad can do a lot more than the cutting board, right, because it’s different on the inside. See, when you are made a new creation by Jesus, you become different on the inside. You are far different in capability, in function, in purpose than what you used to be, and what you used to be was something like this, that was one-dimensional, but because of Jesus, you’ve been made three-dimensional. You’ve been given far more capability, far more purpose because of Jesus. The old nature that we had was to serve ourselves.

That was the purpose of our sinful nature, was to serve ourselves, to make us great for our own happiness. Sinful nature always serves itself. We are like black holes, consuming everything for our own happiness, and pleasure, and greatness, but our new nature in Jesus, our purpose has been transformed because we are now different in nature. We are different in purpose because of what Jesus has done for us. Our nature is no longer to serve ourselves, to serve our own success or our own greatness, we now, and this is the big idea, we are now saved to serve Jesus and others. I am saved to serve Jes

Let’s grow close to God by seeking Him daily!

Let’s commit to being with Jesus by meeting with his church every week.

TRANSCRIPTION

So this last week, if you weren’t here last week, Pastor Joe started us in a new series called The Deeper Life. And he started with a talk that the deeper life is an unhurried life. Who is here to hear that talk? Was it so good or what? Man, it’s so challenging, and in just a minute, I’m going to share what really challenged me from that talk.

But the next five weeks, we’re continuing this series called The Deeper life. And we’re going over five things that will help us experience the deeper life, and these five things are all things that we find the earliest disciples of Jesus doing. These five things will help us enter just like those earliest disciples did into the life that Jesus wants for us, the deeper life.

So these five things are called meet, seek, serve, give, and share. Meet, seek, serve, give, and share. So meet together in church and in groups to meet with God. We seek God daily in prayer, Bible, and journal. We serve just like Jesus came to serve. We give our lives away just like Jesus gave his life away. And then we share the good news just like the first disciples did. They were always sharing the good news. So these five things will help us experience the deeper life that Jesus has for us.

When people come and ask about membership at Life Center, they say, “How? How do I become a member here at Life Center?” We say, “Well, we don’t have formal membership, but we have functional membership.” If you’re doing these five things, if you’re meeting, seeking, serving, giving, and sharing, you’re a functional member, a functional owner here at Life Center. But I want to challenge you.

You can do all of these things, all five of these things and still not experience the deeper life. You’re like, “Why did you waste your intro talking about them then?” Here’s why I think so often we’re focused on what we’re doing, but God is more focused on our being. We’re so focused on what we’re doing going from one thing to the next, we’re thinking about meeting and seeking and serving and giving and sharing. And we forget that God is more focused on who we’re becoming rather what we’re doing because what we’re doing is an overflow of who we are becoming.

See, out of the overflow of your heart, the mouth speaks. And we’re supposed to guard our heart. For everything we do flows from it. See, God is concerned, is most focused on who you are becoming, not what you’re doing because what you’re doing is an overflow of who you’re becoming.

So I have a question, who are you becoming? We can easily name what we’re doing, right? Oh, I’m doing these things today. But who are you becoming today? You can name what you’re doing this year. I’m doing these things this year. I’ve got this planned. It’s on my schedule. But who are you becoming this year? What is your being? Where are you moving towards?

So Pastor Joe talked about the unhurried life, and I hope that as a church we’re becoming more unhurried. That we’re able to slow down and be with Jesus. But here’s the thing that really stuck out to me. So he talked about how you can slow down your life, you can even be laying on the couch doing nothing and still your internal RPMs are high. It’s like you’re revving your internal engine. Did anyone hear him when he said that?

When Pastor Joe said that, it’s like the holy spirit punched me in the face and was like, “Wake up, bro.” Because that was the reality for me. When he showed me that I’m almost always revving my internal RPMs, then I’m thinking about what I’m going to do, the next thing. I could be in a conversation with somebody, and I’m thinking about what I’d rather be

Hurry sickness is the great enemy of spiritual life. Hurry prevents us from receiving God’s love or giving it to others. That’s why Jesus never hurried.

TRANSCRIPTION

Have you ever skipped rocks at a lake? What makes the rock skip

across the surface of the water? The shape of the rock. The angle of the

throw. The velocity or speed of the throw. It takes speed to skip or skim

across the surface. Throw it slow and it won’t skip; it just sinks. It goes

deep.

The same is true of life. If you go too fast, you just skim across the surface. If you

want to go deep, you have to slow down. Today I want to talk with you about “The

unhurried life,” and share three practical steps you can take to slow down and go

deeper.

These steps are often called “spiritual disciplines” and have been practiced

by Christians for 2000 years as a means to growth and transformation. Don’t be

freaked out by the “d-word”—disciplines. Here’s the basic idea: each of these

disciplines or practices will help you get closer to God, which in turn will help you

change and grow.

ILL: Think of it this way. Let’s say you want to run a marathon—26.2

miles. How many of you could go out right now and run a marathon? Not

many! What would happen if you went out and tried today? Pain! You

wouldn’t be walking tomorrow.

If you want to run a marathon, what do you have to do? Train. You

start by getting out of your chair. Then you start walking, then you run a

couple blocks, and gradually build up to a mile. Then 2, then 3, and so on.

It takes most people months of training to be able to run a marathon. You

may not be able to run a marathon today, but if you train, you could. This is

the difference between trying and training.

Paul wrote to Timothy:

1 Timothy 4:7-8 (p. 1024) …train yourself to be godly. 8 For physical

training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding

promise for both the present life and the life to come.

Train yourself to be godly. If you’ve tried to be godly and failed, maybe you

should train to be godly. It’s like running the marathon; training works better than

just trying. To live The Deeper Life, you don’t just try harder, you train. You take

specific steps that will bring you closer to God and change you from the inside out.

We’re going to talk about some of those steps.

At the top of your outline it says: “To go deeper, you can’t be in a hurry.”

John Ortburg says, “Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. Hurry can

destroy our souls. Hurry can keep us from living well. We will just skim our lives

instead of actually living them.” Many of us suffer from “hurry sickness”. What is

hurry sickness? Faster, faster, more, more, go, go, go, faster, faster. We’re

skimming through life. Rather than a definition, maybe a description will help.

Here are a few symptoms of hurry sickness.

Constantly speeding up daily activities. We read faster, talk faster, and

when listening nod faster to encourage the other person to hurry. We eat faster.

Down on 3 rd Avenue, on Maalox Mile, you’ll find Arby’s, McDonald’s, Wendy’s,

and many other restaurants which are known not for “good food” or “cheap food”

but for “fast food.” And when we realized all the time we were wasting eating at a

table, they installed the drive-through so that we could eat our food in the car, as

God intended. Faster, faster! Do everything faster! I catch myself in the morning

showering fast, shaving fast, dressing fast—and I have to tell myself, “Slow down.

Take a deep breath. Relax.”

At the grocery store check-out, do you find yourself counting how many

people are in each line, and checking how many items are in each cart, so you can

pick the fastest line? Then after you choose a line, you keep track of the person in

the other line who would have been you had you had you chosen that line. You’re

sick!

Multi-tasking. Psychologists call this “polyphasic activity”. Hurry-sick

people while they’re driving, eat, drink coffee, listen to the radio, shave or a