Rocky Messages

Imitating Jesus is remarkable

What would a PURPLE CHURCH look like?

What would make a church remarkable?

What would they look like?

What would their approach be?

A remarkable CHURCH would be:

• Committed to the Gathering

• Committed to deep friendships

• Committed to generosity

• Committed to prayer

• A growing church

I wanna tell you something. I did a couple of weeks ago. I don't know if it was a good idea or not, but if, if you have been part of our church for a while, you know, last year I, I got into the, the habits or really a discipline for me of, of running. And I don't know why because I hate running, but I made a personal goal during one of my coaching conversations with Sean, our lead passer was just up here and I think it's, cuz I, I didn't have one in the meeting. And so he was like, you know, what's a personal goal. And I was like running, you know? And so I, last year I did a 5k. Then I did a 10 K and so a couple of weeks ago, guys, it's crazy.

A couple weeks ago, I signed up for a half marathon. I'm gonna run this year and don't clap yet cuz you, I don't know if I'm gonna make it. Because the, the farthest I've ever run so far in my running career is 6.1 miles. That's the farthest I've ever run or, or 6.2 miles. And a half marathon is 13.1 miles, 13.1 miles. And so I'm gonna be running of that race in, in October. I'm excited, I'm nervous, but it's a good challenge for me physically. It's a good challenge mentally. It it's a good challenge. But you just know 13.1 is gonna be more difficult than 6.2. And running long distances. You just know it. I mean, it's just tough. It just, you know, running a long distance. Isn't the easiest thing to do. So I'm just curious, both campuses participate here.

How many of you have ever run a half marathon? How many? Okay. All right. So at Fred, let's just say there's 20 or 25 of you. That's probably more than what I thought. How many of you have ever run a full marathon? Okay. Wow. Way more than I thought here. Fred. Wow. Good job guys. Okay. Yeah. Well done. You statistically speaking in, in America only about a half percent, a half percent of our country has ever started and finished marathon. And, and the reason why that number is so low is because running 26 miles is tough. It's not easy. And here's one we think about, if I just said to you this morning, guys, I'm gonna be running a half, you know, in October. And I could really use your help. How many of you would be willing to come out and cheer me on at the race?

So I'm gonna need some of you at the start line. I'm gonna need some of you like halfway point. And then I want, I'm gonna need some of you like that last half mile. Some of you like me enough. And, and you've got some time, you'd be like, you know what? Yeah, we could do that. You know, and my race is gonna be from Fort Collins to Loveland. So you might be like, you know, okay, we could take 30 minutes, drive up there. We could cheer Matt on for 10 minutes, you know, and then get back in the car and get back with our day. Not, not too crazy, but what if I got up here and I was like, Hey guys, I'm gonna be running this half. And here's what I need from you. I need some of you to run it with me.

Now, all of a sudden you don't have free time. You're like, what's the date? And I'm like, October 1st, you're like book something for October 1st. You know, all of a sudden you're not quite as available. And the reason why, and come on, we get this kind of common sense because you know, the level of commitment is different from watching a half to running a half. You know, the pain is different from watching somebody else run a half and you running a half. And here's what I'd argue. And the context of your relationship with Jesus is very similar. Following Jesus is much different than just spectating him. Following him will be much more painful than just watching other people follow him. It's not always easy. I love what Jeff said. You know, the, it's not about the easy life. It's about the meaningful life. Really what we're saying is, you know, if it's not about easy, then it's a little bit more about being harder, more difficult, more strenuous.

There's something healthy though in that tension. So if you ever Bible's Matthew chapter five, we're gonna finish up our se

I'm convinced. I'm convinced that there are two kinds of people, uh, in this world I've been thinking about this week. There are two different kinds of people in this world. There's a group of people that enjoy eating hardball, eggs, that's one group. And then the other group, they love Jesus. All right. So there's two groups of people. I'm just kidding. No, there is a group of people that love hardball eggs, and then there's a group of people who don't. Now I would offer caution to those of you who like hardball eggs, cuz that's like a gateway to deviled eggs. see what I did there. Okay. So anyways, there's two groups of people and if you don't know what group that I'm in, I'm in the can't stand hard, boiled eggs. In fact, I just wanna offer you a different perspective for those of you who do like hard boiled eggs.

Um, and just raise your hand if that's you real quick. Okay. So I'm not sure what's happening at Fred at Nyah is 70% of the room, right? So church, we got some work to do today because I wanna offer you a perspective that maybe you don't know about because for those of us who don't enjoy hardball eggs, when you, okay, I'm gonna try not to gag while I say this. All right. But when you are peeling that egg and you take that first bite, like into the middle of the egg and, and it makes a sound, you can hear something that's happening. All I want to do is throw up in my mouth. That's it. I can't stand hardboiled eggs. And, and, and the reason why is, and this is a little bit of my story when I was growing up, my, my mom used to make, and she's watching this more.

Love you, mom. My mom used to make, um, this, this thing for dinner, you know, you know, meatloaf. Right. But she would make this thing that was ham loaf. Someone was like, Ew, I just saw something. Ew. Yeah. It's like ham loaf. And when she was making it, the house, it would have this smell. And it is the same. I, I had to get outta the house cause it smelled so bad. It smelled the same way that hardball eggs smell when you're cooking them. And so whenever I get around somebody, who's got, you know, eating hardball eggs. I immediately go back to growing up in a house where mom was cooking ham loaf and I couldn't stand it. And I just, man, I can't stand it. I'm just on that side. And what's interesting is even, you know, I've been talking about, you're like get on with the message.

I've been talking about hardball eggs for two minutes and already I divided us. I divided us up. There's about 70% of you that like hardball eggs, much higher than I thought. Then there's 30% of us that don't, and this is pretty common in the context of the culture, in which we live. In fact, we are really good at taking a topic and, and, and drawing a line right down the middle and saying, Hey, what side of the line are you on? Are you on the left side or the right side? And what also is true is that once you determine what side of the line you're on, don't you just tend to like the people that are on your side more, you do, you tend to go find information that backs up your point of view or your belief. And, and then you start finding people that believe the same thing that you believe.

And they're easier to find because they're already on your side of the line, church, people really good at ideas. We draw lines, we create division. And if you don't think that's true, you should just drive around town today and just start riding down all the different, you know, denomination of churches you drive by. I mean, there's thousands and thousands. Some studies say there's 40,000 different denominations all around the world. And yet in the book of acts, you know how many churches there are one we're really good at dividing things up and picking us aside. I mean, there's so many polarizing topics in the context of our culture today. I mean, you've got, we're just really like big dividing lines. There's Republicans on one side there's Democrats, there's religious. There's t

What's up church. How we doing? It's good to see all of you here. It Frederick. Good to see all of you at Nyah. Good to have all of you online. Just say this. I did one of those baptisms. That's the fastest changing I've ever done in my entire life. I it was, it was fun cuz I knew a couple of those kiddos and so I just wanted to be out there and see both of them get baptized and I cut it a little short on time, so. Alright. We're good. Everybody settle down or Sean settle down and we're ready to go. So I want you to get to Matthew chapter five. We've been there for six weeks. If you're just kind of showing up today, we've been there for six weeks and going through this series called Jesus manifesto where we've been kind of tracking through the beginning of the sermon on the Mount.

And so the beginning of the sermon on the Mount, it's called to be attitudes and there are eight of them and we're in number six and number six says this, Jesus just makes a statement. He says blessed or blessed. You could say, I've got my king James going on. Blessed are the pure in spirit are pure in heart for, they will see God blessed are the pure in heart for, they will see God. It's interesting. I think no matter if you're sitting at NIWA, you're sitting right here in the room at Fred or you're online. There's nobody that kind of says, what does it mean? Like pure, pure in heart or purity. When we talk about relationships, like we talk about relational purity. I think every single person gets it now guys, interesting thing this year is my 25th anniversary with my wife, Jen. Pretty cool.

Right? And it's all, all 25 years have been marital bliss. I mean, that's what, I don't know what she would say, but no marriages can be difficult. Can it, but, but I tell you this man, the commitment and being together for 25 years and the things that we've gone through and seen, and then just how sweet, you know, as you grow and you mature things just get better when you're working on things, man. It's good. But when we talk about relational purity in the context of those 25 years, I don't think anybody's confused what that looks like. Like when we sit here right now, we would say, okay, that means that Sean only has eyes for Jen. Right? We talk about the context of relational purity. It means she's the one I pursued. There's not other interests. Like my eyes, aren't wandering to other things.

We just moved in this new community or a new neighborhood north side of Firestone and it's got a pool and our kids go down the pool. We don't normally go down the pool hardly at all, but I'll go down and play with the kids a little bit, whatever, but let's say we did. Let's say Jen and I went down to the pool and we just kind of hung out on a couple lawn chairs. Kids are playing in the pool. We're having a good time. We're taking in some rays and let's say an attractive young female walks by. And let's say that I did this, took the sunglasses man. What would happen in that moment? Like my wife would probably, after she slapped the snot outta me, right? She would look at me and say, what are you looking at? Because when we talk about relational purity, ma'am relational purity starts with us having eyes for one person.

Right? And when, when we have wandering eyes, nothing good happens from that. Like you just know in the context of relationships, when somebody has wandering eyes just constantly and consistently, and there's always an issue of that, man, we alone relationally that can lead to all kinds of stuff. Even biblically. It talks about in relationships that wandering eyes lead to lust, wandering eyes lead to this one big word that we can talk about. We all know adultery, right? Purity and relationships means I have eyes for one. Now. It's interesting. When we talk about relational purity, we get it. But let's step back for a second. When we go into what Jesus is talking about, he says blessed of the pure and heart he's talking about spiritually there.

Amen. If you're in the room, you can have a seat. If you're at the Frederick campus, it's good to have you guys. You can have a seat and if you're online, you probably already have a seat sitting on the couch. So it's good to have you, um, with us and man. Good to see everybody. I know it's summer. It's a little crazy, but great things going on. We had a worship night this last week and uh, tons of people came. And one of the things, if you were there, uh, one of the things that was coolest to me is we sang nine songs and of those nine songs, eight songs were songs that our team has written about things flowing right out of this place. And it was just fantastic. So, um, man, every time you come in worship, just know this team, man, they are doing some great things.

Great guys, great ladies that are just leading us and uh, super thankful for that. Hey, one thing, there's a lot that you're doing this summer, but as we go through summer, we're gonna come ramping out into the fall and we wanna make sure that you're ready. And so I wanna give you an opportunity to just give you one announcement before we get in the message about something that's coming in September, that if you don't sign up for now, you're gonna miss out. And so if you've been around this place very long at all, you know that we do something every September calls, shine prom and it is one of the most awesome, wonderful, beautiful, most exciting joyous times of the year. It's one of the best days we have. And so our shine prom is this. We do a special needs prom for our special needs friends.

It's, it's teenagers all the way through adults. And uh, we just allow them to be the, the king or the queen of the prom for a night. And we've got hundreds of volunteers, literally from both campuses, um, that sign up to help out with this. And so what I wanna do today is just give you an opportunity to let you know that signups for volunteering are opening are open right now. And usually what happens is when I say that somebody, everybody gets out their phones or the people who've been around here, get out their phones because they know it will fill up like today and tomorrow. So if you want to sign up and help out with shine prom, there's all kinds of opportunities. Volunteer wise to do that. You should do that today at latest tomorrow because they will fill up fast and it'll be awesome.

It's September 16th. We're having at both campuses. And so the Nyah campus man sign up and help us out at Nyah Frederick campus, sign up, help us out at Fred. If you're online and you haven't been here, you should jump in for this one. It's gonna be a fantastic thing. And then if you have a special needs child or adult or a young adult, um, or if you know someone who does you'll want to get them registered fast because there are limited spots, um, available for that. All right. So jump in, do that today. It'll be great. I want you to get to Matthew chapter five. Um, we're gonna go to verse seven, the next B attitude in our series, Jesus manifesto. Would you believe me if I told you, would you believe me? If I told you that God will treat you the way you treat others, I'll say it again.

Would you believe me? If I told you that God will treat you the way you treat other people? Well, my oldest daughter, my oldest daughter, grace is 18 years old. Getting ready to be 19. She's got a sister Mattie who's 16 getting ready to turn 17. I'm getting old guys. It's him. And, uh, they're growing up and it's crazy watching 'em grow up. I was looking at some pictures the other day and uh, remembering when they were really young and a story came to mind. Um, my oldest, when she was four years old, she's always been like the most energetic, most active, just, I mean, the kid is crazy all the time, just always running and going. And when she was younger, um, there would be some emotion that would come out with that. And I remember you probably know this as is different. Your kids react differently to dif

Blessed are those who HUNGER and THIRST for righteousness,

for they will be filled.

"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

"Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."