Sower Church

hope you guys are doing well. My name is dan. If I haven’t met you, one of the elders here, as you should be aware of by now, um still thankful for the church and the gifts and the letters man, what a joy it is to be a part of the body of christ. Amen. Well this morning we are going to kick off a new series. Looking at paul’s letter to the colossians and we’re gonna look at chapter one verses one through 14, so go ahead and turn there and while you’re turning there, I I got a couple of questions I want to pose to you guys first. I wanna, I wanna ask the parents in the room, there’s a few of you in, in the room this morning and um, I just want to ask you, you know, could you imagine what it felt like for you when your child went off on his or her own for the first time? Can you imagine the feelings you felt at that time, the burden you had for your child, wondering if that child would indeed be successful and whatever it is they were going off to pursue, wondering if that child would surround him or herself with the right people, the right folks to be in their life to help them, that they could be a blessing to as well, wondering if your child might encounter the wrong kind of company that might try to lead them away. People meaning to do harm to them, people, meaning to lead them him down a path that that wouldn’t lead to blessing and God, do you remember what that feels like now for some of you in here who have younger Children, you may be saying yourself, well, I don’t really know what that’s like when my kid leaves my sight for a few minutes. I am concerned that he’s gonna do something to himself or my house. Okay. I know what that’s like having young kids. But you can still relate, you can still relate because if you can think back to the first time you left home or the first time you took on a new venture or the first time you stepped into something that was completely new that you’ve never done before. The feelings you felt at that time, The insecurity that you had at that time? The questions you had about whether or not you might meet the right kind of people to help you to be a blessing to you, that you could be a blessing to or if you might meet the kind of people that might cause you harm or lead you away or lead you astray now, wouldn’t it be helpful for you? Young people and parents if the child or in the case of the young people, if you were reminded of the fact that it’s not your job to please everybody, wouldn’t that be a comfort to you? Wouldn’t that be something you’d want as a parent for your child going out into this world, that there’s some people that are gonna be difficult to please. There are some people that are gonna mean to do you harm, and then there are gonna be some good people, but ultimately, you need to know you have the freedom that it is not your responsibility to try to please everyone. And as a young person, that would simply be something I would want to be reminded of to be encouraging. And the fact that man, it’s not my job to try to please everybody. So this morning, the title of my sermon is you can’t please everybody logically, you can’t, but spiritually as it relates to our relationship with God, that should not be your goal, That shouldn’t be your goal to try to please everyone. But and I’m drawing this from The passage this morning in verse 10, that it would be your goal to please God, to pursue the things that pleases God, that that would be your goal. So, the title This Morning, you can’t please everybody. The main point I want you to get this morning is that it is your desire. It should be your goal to please God and to pursue the things that pleases your God. And so, we’re gonna look at this letter, verses one through 14, and we’re gonna see very early on in this letter, Paul, havin…

week in our rooted series. And we’re looking at the final rhythm of rooted, um, we’re gonna be talking about worship and this may be the final rhythm of the series, but it’s arguably the most important rhythm to get worship. And I was thinking about this from the context of my own family and experiences. This thing is kind of doing a little, little dance on me. Um, it’s distracting me a bit, but hold on to it by the grace of the Lord, I’ll hold on to anyway, thinking about this from the context of just short example illustration with my own family. Um, when I travel and I’m away from my wife and kids, one of the things we like to do is to facetime each other, you know, facetime, my wife, facetime, the kids talk to them, ask them how their day is going. Let them tell me what their other sibling did wrong in my absence. All that good stuff, right. Um, but just to kind of let them know that I love them. I’m thinking about them though. We’re, you know, geographically separated from one another and I’m so thankful for the technology to be able to do something like that. But it would be foolish. It would be crazy to think that I am no, I’m now no longer needed in the house and with my family because I can simply just facetime them, I don’t need to live there anymore. I don’t need to, um, wake up, be around them, deal with them in present in person daily because we have this technology now and I think that’s relevant because in recent years, uh, a lot of people have been wondering whether or not the Church is essential and the Church is essential. It is the most essential institution in the sense that it is the only eternal institution. I mean, family is the building block of a society and a church is made up of families and individuals. But when time is over, when christ returns, when he comes back, the one institution that is going to remain is the church, the body of christ the people of God. That doesn’t mean that we neglect our families or that we neglect all the other institutions. It’s simply just illustrates the point that Church is essential. It’s essential. It’s important. And not only is church essential and important, the regular gathering of the Church together is important. That is very important to God. That is something that whether we recognize it or not, it’s something that primarily defines a church. The fact that we assemble and meet together. It’s not the only thing that the Church does, but it primarily defines the Church. The Church is a an assembly of people, a meeting together. And when a church stopped assembling, stops meeting together, it ceases to be a people. Some of you are like, yeah, I don’t know about that one. Just stick with me here. The assembly. The meeting together. Regular gathering of the people of God in the presence of God together is essential. It’s important. It’s a rhythm. We want to be established and it’s a rhythm. We want to walk in for all of our days, including our eternal days. Turn with me to hebrews, Chapter 10 We’re gonna read verses 19 through 25. We’re gonna look at what the passage has to say regarding some of the things I’ve laid out for you in terms of worship Beginning in Verse 19. Since therefore brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain that is through his flesh. And since we have a great priest over the House of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith. With our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast. The confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together …

well, good morning. Once again I want you to think about this almost everyone as someone they know or maybe someone in their family who is I mean pretty much crazy or insane, right? Um Maybe it’s the crazy uncle, maybe it’s the wacko mother in law. Um But these are the these are the people that when you gather at a family gathering, you’re just like oh no they’re here, right? And uh and you know they kind of make everybody on edge and you you’re not sure what they’re gonna say or do um maybe you’re in a situation where you hope, oh no, I just I hope they don’t start drinking heavily because then it’s I mean it’s over, you know that kind of thing, but you know they’re the kind of people that like ruin your holiday, family kind of gatherings. So do you have somebody in mind? I heard some laughs. I know some people have somebody in mind already, if you don’t have somebody in mind. Well then think of this guy uh from you know Crazy Eddie from family vacation. Um But now I want you to think of uh having that kind of person but 1000 times worse and because they’re being influenced by thousands of demons. Alright? It’s scary, right? So imagine that at your next holiday gathering, it wouldn’t be safe for your Children. Um You know probably that person would destroy the christmas tree, right? Because you’re gathering to celebrate christ it just wouldn’t work, right? So so imagine that, but but then imagine that that same person crazy crazy crazy uh going through incredible life change, becoming a new and transformed person instead of being crazy and hurtful and filled with demons. Instead they were filled with joy, they were calm, they were saying you’d have great conversations that a whole new demeanor, they’re filled with laughter. What kind of impact do you think that would have on your family? Right. I mean it would just be undeniable, be incredible. And today we’re working through a passage in Mark five which describes that kind of situation. It’s the passage of the wild, the maniac who is transformed by Jesus. So turn your bibles to page 4 90 if you’re using one of these or Mark chapter five and we’re going to pray and then read this together, page 4 90 or Mark chapter five or we could do come to you this morning, we pray that you would speak to us, We pray that you’d open up the eyes of our hearts to this passage, to your word Lord use this to challenge us, encourage us to give us hope in jesus name. Amen. So as you’re turning there were in the middle of a series called rooted and there are seven rhythms to root it. The phrase rooted comes from uh from timothy where paul is talking to timothy into all of us that you know, let your roots go down deep into christ, you may grow become full mature, that that thing and there are seven things that were kind of talking through that are very important in helping us as believers to set our roots down deep into christ and those are reading scripture daily. We talked through that, talked about the importance of prayer and communicating with God, where there’s the very important part of repentance from sin, uh sacrificial generosity serving other people worship. And then today we’re talking about sharing your story, these are all foundational and help you as a believer to put your roots down deep with christ and to grow and to mature. And so today we’re looking at this rhythm of sharing your story and we’re working through this man, Mark five passage which is a powerful story of a man who has changed and transformed by jesus and as he shared his story with his friends and family and the people in the area had a great impact on many. Now before we read, it’s also important for us to remember the context of this passage. Uh we’re we’re always working through passages as a church and we have to l…

All right, good morning everyone. Good morning. So good to be with you all this morning. My name is Alex. If I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you yet, I am on staff here at sewer. I serve as the co director of our college ministry christian challenge. So, so excited to be with you all this morning. I’m really looking forward to getting into the word together. If you would open up your bibles to mark 12 versus 41 through 44 that’s the passage we’ll be looking at this morning. If you don’t have a bible with you, we have plenty on the chairs around you. Maybe row in front or behind. Uh, if you need one ask someone, I’m sure someone can help you out. Uh those bibles are free for the taking. So if you don’t have one and you need one, you want a bible to read. We want you to take it and read it and study God’s word and get to know him more. So as you’re turning there, I want to open up this morning with a story. So my sophomore year of high school, I started playing baseball when I was young and my sophomore year of high school I made the varsity baseball team. But the issue was I was very overmatched offensively. I was very overmatched as a hitter. I was not a good enough hitter to uh to really compete and to play well. And so um often times my my coach would ask me to sacrifice bunt. And so if you, if you guys aren’t familiar with baseball, if you don’t know what that means, basically, it’s where the hitter goes up and instead of swinging he takes his bat and just kind of like holds it out in front of him. And then as the pitcher throws the ball, then the the objective is to kind of dead in the ball or just lightly tap the ball in front of the plate, kind of in the area where the pitcher catcher are. And so the point of doing that, the point of sacrifice bunting is to intentionally get yourself out in order for your teammates who are on base to advance. So you intentionally get yourself out to move your teammates up and I promise you there were plenty of times where I got up there in my youthfulness and my excitement and my arrogance and my coach gives me the sign to sacrifice bunt and I’m like coach, gosh coach, you’re really giving me the sign to bunt right now. Like coach, if I get up there and you let me swing you let me swing from my heels as hard as I can. I promise you I can hit the best single you’ve ever seen like a hard single right back up the middle. It would be awesome man. It would be so much better than a sacrifice bunt. And so I would be thinking that in my head, but through that through that process and through that year especially I had to learn that in baseball sometimes. What’s best is to sacrifice sometimes. What’s best was for me to sacrifice, to lay down my own preferences, my own desires, my own excitement in order to honor my coach and to help my teammates. And so this morning, as we talked today about sacrificial giving, that’s our topic for this morning. Being rooted in sacrificial giving. What’s best for you personally, is not always what’s best according to God. And in fact in the christian life, what’s most comfortable or easiest for you is almost never what God is most pleased by. It is actually better for us to sacrifice, to give of who we are and of what we have, even to the point of it costing us significantly. So let’s turn our attention to the passage, I’m gonna read it for us and then we will pray together. So beginning in verse 41, this is speaking of Jesus. And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to them truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are co…

All right, good morning, good morning everyone. My name is Shane and one of the pastors here, I haven’t had a chance to meet you welcome and hopefully I can meet you to talk to you and greet you afterwards. We are working through a series called rooted and if you’re familiar with that, there’s some workbooks, there’s a book back there. A lot of our community groups are working through that, but if not, uh, it’s no problem jumping right in today. We’ve been working through some of these, uh, they call them rhythms, different rhythms, seven different rhythms that kind of help us in our day to day lives. Be able to live out in obedience to christ our christian walk. And also just that benefit us on a day to day basis. Right? So there’s these rhythms that we want to implement as a believer and we’ve gone through three of them and so far we’ve looked at daily devotions. So looking at being in the word of God, being rooted in in the word of God. We’ve looked at prayer. So being rooted in our prayer life and then being rooted in the grace of repentance. And so if you think about those three, right, it’s pretty easy, you step back and you’re like, those would be considered religious in nature. Uh, so I mean being in God’s word, reading the bible prayer repentance tends to have a religious nature about them a feel to them. But then we look at today, we’re gonna talk about being rooted in service and yet this one seems to be a little different because inherently, most people would say, yeah, it’s we should serve one another. We should do kind acts for one another, right? Good works. We should we can collectively say that. So whether you are an atheist, you’re agnostic towards any different belief for your of a different religion. I think there’s a uniform kind of understanding that Yeah, this is good. We we collectively all say this is good. But obviously we look at it from the christian perspective and this is the only way to exercise it. That gives us true life and benefit. But today we’re gonna distinguish that because when it when we talk about acts of service, good works. We all understand what those are from helping those who are in need, whether it’s a great need or a small need, right? If some helping the poor, the under privilege refugee, the displaced those maybe who are being bound by the strongholds of addictions, there’s a lot of different ways we can step in, right? And help. It might be something even more simple than that storm comes through and your neighbor’s tree branch falls down and you go and help them. We have an older lady that lives next to us and our boys walker trash carts down to the curb, Right? So just ways that we can serve and we do it all the time. We see you guys in church do it all the time. And families have a baby or they’re in a crisis and you bring them a meal, you’re there, you’re doing whatever you can to help them out, different community service opportunities, there’s no shortage of acts of kindness and service and good works and we know what those things are and we know what it means to serve one another, but then we have to ask the question, what, what drives us to do that, especially as an unbeliever, what drives an unbeliever who want to serve, right? What is that motivation? Especially when it’s self sacrificial, when it costs that person something to serve one another? What’s the motivation behind that and right, Even even people who don’t have a background hindu or buddhist background, but they have like this karma like belief that, you know, there’s this uh repercussions afterwards that are gonna come back and haunt me essentially, if I don’t do enough good or you know, just that the world more of a general stance of the world, you know, it kind of works itself out, the university’s going …

Good morning, good morning, my name is dan. I’m one of the four elders here. If I haven’t met you, welcome to Sword Church, we’re glad you’re here. You hope that you connect with us and give us a chance to get to know you maybe hear your story, you learn a little bit about our story and we figure out how we can help you to know christ, more encourage you and your walk with christ and help you to become all that christ has made you to be, I’m excited for our time this morning, this is um Week three of the rhythms of rooted. The first week we looked at the rhythm of daily devotions and last week, pastor mike covered the rhythm of prayer and this week we’re gonna look at the rhythm of repentance and I’ve entitled this teaching rooted in the grace of repentance. I believe there is a grace that is deeply connected tied to and associated with the concept of repentance, so rooted in the grace of repentance. As I was thinking about how to intro this teaching, I was reminded of my experience as a college athlete. Um very early on, probably the first week of my experience into that experience, I was physically worn out, I was sore, I was hurting all over the place and there was the look on someone’s face who is physically tired, sore and beat up right and I remember after one of the team workouts and older teammate put his arms around me and he kinda smiled and chuckled a bit and he said coach is gonna get you right man, coach is gonna get you right, what he meant by that coach getting me right was that coach was going to, through this process of training was gonna help me to become stronger than I had ever been in my life, helped me to run faster than I’d ever ran in my life and helped me to be more agile as an athlete than I had ever been in my life. But it was a process and early on it was a painful process and I was thinking about that today as it relates to the subject of repentance. God the holy spirit, your coach, your teacher wants to get you right and early on in that process and at various times in that process, it may not feel good, it may seem hard, it may be challenging at times, but God’s gonna get you right and I think it’s our desire to be right with God to be right with him, to live right for him to grow in christ, to grow with christ and to make all of our lives about him glorifying him, honoring him in the various ways that we can, that’s why our vision here is to make authentic disciples who love and worship him and all that they do and guess what God’s gonna get you right, if you stay with the process, he’s gonna get you right. And so as I said, um the first week, we looked at daily devotions last week, Pastor mike covered prayer. And if you’re working through the rooted curriculum, which if you are unfamiliar with that, none of what I said, that makes any sense. There’s a table out back after the service, you can pick up a rooted book or you can buy a pdf copy of the book for about $5 I think. What is it with $5? We’re like five below here, right, we’ve, we’ve taken over or something. Anyway, um you can pick up a copy of that and you’ll see um in the context of community groups, we go into the various applications of these rhythms to the rhythm of daily devotion, the rhythm of prayer and today the rhythm of repentance. Right. And so I like to say that faith, prayer and repentance all live in the same house. You cannot kick one of them out of the house, you cannot close the door on one of them. They live together in the same house. Repentance and faith are coupled together and prayer is the instrument by which both of those things pour forth from the heart of the believer. So we pray in faith, we pray prayers of repentance. They live in the same house. You cannot separate any of those graces that God has given us any o…

Good morning. Welcome. Welcome. Come on in. Hey, my name is mike, one of the pastors on staff here at, so a church, It’s great to be with you. We, uh, I’m excited about our content today, what we’re gonna look at, I like to open up a short story. So I have a wife and my wife makes me go to the doctor and I go to the doctor once a year and they take blood, they check my heart. I stand on a scale. The doctor talks to me about stuff. But this last couple of weeks I went in and they had a survey thing. Uh, and I took a photo as I was going through my paperwork. Um, and I asked the nurse is like, this seems different than last year and she said, well because of the reality of what’s happening in our society, they do mental health screens for people’s annual physicals, which, which makes sense. But you might have seen this piece of paper after your doctor. I even saw them on the football game I was watching yesterday a little bit, uh, NFL players were telling me it’s okay not to be okay talking about as we process life. The pains and stresses and anxiety and depression that’s part of the human experience. And so I’m excited to cover our topic today. Looking at what it means to be rooted in prayer because I know there’s answers and there’s hope and there’s healing found in the word of God. And so if you’re, if you’re far from God or you’re close to God of Christianity. Something you grew up in or, or if it’s something you’ve never experienced before. Uh, the word of God has a word for you this morning and it speaks to the human experience and human existence and how to cope and process life well. So if you take a moment and bow your heads with me as we uh, we jump into our passage this morning, let’s pray God. I thank you for, I think for today, I thank you for all the men and women you brought here today. You have a plan for their lives. You’re the, you have a purpose in their life and you’re doing work in their life. I prayed, you would just really draws closer to you as people, as individuals and as a collective church. I said, you just draw hearts together. Help knit our hearts to each other and to you help us to see you clearly in your heart and the word of God today as that you instruct us, convict us, encourage us in ways that only the word of God can speak to us in a way that convicts and changes us. Lord. Change the motivations of our heart and change uh, the actions of our lives because we love you God. Just use the word of God to do the work of God in our life. If you just and we pray this Amen. And so I was I was prepping for this week’s sermon and I was contemplating what prayer passage to pick in the bible and if you’ve ever seen your bible or open the bible, there’s a lot of different prayer passages in the bible and I was texting one of our pastors like late at night like I sometimes do and I was like, hey, I’m gonna spend a lot of time trying to find a passage, can you just tell me which passage I should I should do? And I woke up the next morning early and like I’m just gonna pick the one I wanted. So I picked the one I wanted and cause he doesn’t sleep with his phone and which is appropriate. So he texted me like at seven or eight a.m. Like a normal person, you know, I would do the Lord’s prayer and I’m like good 2.5 hours into my singer prep on the Lord’s prayer. If you’re looking for the Lord’s prayer, it’s on page 4 73 in the Blue House bible. If you don’t grab that bible, it’ll help you out. Um if you have your own personal bible and you’re a red letter bible snob like I am, it’s the part of Matthew chapter beginning in chapter five and it’s just several pages of red letters and that that symbolizes these aren’t just words, these are jesus words and so we’re gonna be looking at part of the sermon on the mount, loo…

there we go, got to flip that on, I was worried earlier that my breathing into the mic was causing that sensation of static that you guys heard it was either my breathing or my beard one of the two. Um but good morning, if I haven’t met you, my name is dan one of the elders here, four of us here and um so glad that you’re here, so good to be in the house of the Lord, so good to be with the saints worshiping God together um that is encouraging to my soul and I hope it’s encouraging for you as well. So today we are going to cover the first discipleship rhythm from are rooted teaching series. Our series highlights seven rhythms aimed at helping Christians become rooted in Christ and his mission and we want you to grow as authentic disciples of Jesus who love him and worship him and all that you do, that is the vision of this church. And so this rooted series is designed to help you to apply your faith in Christ as you seek to worship him and all that you do. And on that note, the last time I preached two weeks ago I said something that is heretical and I need to correct it and I need to correct it in the spirit of first timothy 4 16, that passage calls elders to watch over their doctrine and their lives very carefully. Um and so on that note, uh two weeks ago I said something and talking about abiding in christ and applying the faith to our lives, I said something along the lines of, in coordinating truth and that’s just something that we, as mere humans cannot do. Uh, the incarnation implies deity, meaning only God can do that. What I meant to say and what I should have said is that we are called to integrate the truth into our lives, faith and truth being integrated into our lives and that is the goal that we hope to accomplish through this rooted teaching series that you and I would become more skilled by God’s grace at applying and integrating his truth into our lives. So that our walk of Faith looks like that, which we see of christians in the bible, amen minute. So again, uh, this first rhythm is daily devotion and by daily devotion, we mean the spiritual activity of reading the bible and praying and doing it daily. Um, it’s tough to integrate the faith into your life. If you do not have a daily devotion that is non existent for you, then chances are you probably aren’t walking in the things that jesus commands us to walk in, the things that jesus calls us to walk in. So, um, we’re going to unpack what it means to have a daily devotion and we’re gonna talk about the very things that impact a daily devotion. Well, let me first say this. So this week, daily devotion, this is the first rhythm. There are seven rhythms that we will cover from the pulpit on a sunday morning, The rooted teaching series is 10 weeks long and we will go into more specifics and diving deeper into each rhythm in terms of how we integrate it into our lives. But this morning, daily devotion and why that’s so important. Let me ask you a question how many of you struggle with maintaining a daily devotion when you by show of hands, this is a place of grace, not gonna judge, you’re not gonna throw a stone at you or anything. Okay, okay, that’s a very real experience for a lot of christians. Somehow we know that we’re called to be in the word, know God’s word. And yet it is difficult to maintain the discipline of a daily devotion. I want to ask another question how many of you, you’re somewhat disciplined in your daily devotion, but you struggle, we’re getting something out of your daily devotion. I mean of you, that’s your experience. All right, okay. And some of you kind of overlaps, right? Kind of plays into one another, meaning you, because you struggled to get something out of the daily devotion, you don’t maintain it and others, you kinda, you kinda fight …

it’s great to spend the morning. A few I know we live in a world that lacks leaders with values. We live in a world where we are jobs might not have value, we have friendships that might not have value and purpose and worth and and we can struggle, we can struggle to find meaning in our life purpose to live for. There’s quiet quitting happening in our world of mental health on the rise speaking as uh one of the leaders of our church, speaking on the value, knowing that there’s such a deficit in value in our society right now. It’s a sobering thing, it’s a sobering thing. I’m thrilled to be able to look with you with the word of God at part two of our rooted series, looking at being rooted in a church, looking at our values as a church and it’s an honorable spend some time for you. I’m thrilled for this topic. There’s topics we get to preach on that I do it because it’s in the bible and it’s good for me and it’s good for you to hear. There’s other topics that I get to pick. And so this is like, candy for my soul, does that make sense? This passage I picked and when dan went last week, he did an excellent job on our vision, which is making authentic disciples of jesus christ who love and worship God and all they do. And I was holding my breath when I was listening to him because I was hoping he didn’t pick this passage and he picked a different passage, It was excellent and so I was like, I gotta do the passage I wanted to do on on on our values as a church. So we value ahead and pray with me as we move forward here. God, I thank you for thank you for the value and the purpose and the vision that you lay out a very robust, meaningful, all life encompassing pursuit laid out in the bible. I think that we can look at a part of that today. I thank you for how amazing and romantic and granted is Lord. The value and the vision you’ve given us as the people of God as to just really help our souls to get rooted in your word, rooted in you, jesus and what you did for us on the gospel. And I pray you just really help, help me to speak as I should and help us to listen as we should as we go through this passage. God, I just thank you for a great grand vision. You gave us Lord as your people. I thank you for the guiding values you gave us to keep us on track. I purchased. Lead us and direct our time. Multiply this time. Multiply the word of God and the people of God’s hearts to do the work of God in their hearts. I pray people would do business with you today in your bible. Today I prayed they’d open their bible and look at it and study it and take notes in it and wonder if this is true, what happens with my life as a result of this passage. We just commit ourselves and our time to in jesus name amen. So vision is the destination values gets us there. If vision is the steering wheel values of the tires, but I propose to you, there’s a thing called culture which is the engine of that car, a metaphorical call car. I think there’s a quote out there on the internet somewhere that says culture will eat your vision for breakfast, your values for lunch and your mission statement for dinner, you can’t coach culture, Culture is in the air, it’s in the water, it just kind of seeps out of you as an organization and when you’re trying to think what passage helps capture the vision, the values in the culture that makes up a healthy, vibrant local church. What passage do you want to root our minds and theologically this morning as we look at it. So just a spoiler, Spoiler alert are three values as a church are gospel community and generosity with a vision spin, we have a culture spin on it, that we have a gospel culture, community, culture and generosity, culture and we really do think those are lived out and they really do make our church take along at a h…

well, good morning. So our church family, my name is dan if I haven’t met you and for those of you who know me so good to see you, it’s been three months Yeah, it’s good to be back with you guys, I was on a short sabbatical, some of you forgot who I was, I forgive you, still love you but my family and I blessed tremendously by that sabbatical break, really refreshing the Lord and also encouraged by your prayers. Uh some of you sent notes of encouragement and gift cards, just did little things to let us know that you were thinking about us and we certainly appreciate that we’re so blessed by that. So thankful for a church family like you all and my Children every saturday night would ask one of them would ask that why aren’t we going to our church and that also blessed me because they feel loved here and they love being here and so I’m thankful and I’m glad to be back with you. But anyway, that’s enough about me, Let’s get into the word of God, open your bibles to john chapter 15, The Gospel of john chapter 15 Today we’re kicking off a new series um we are doing a series called rooted and the first two weeks of this series mike and I will talk about being rooted in the vision of sewer church and rooted in the values of sewer church and then in the following weeks will unpack some of the rhythms that we think are necessary for disciples to grow in this rooted faith in christ and so um that’s just kind of a introduction of where we’re going with this series. Um so john chapter 15, beginning in verse one, I’m gonna read the passage all the way to verse 11 and then I’ll pray for you all. You need those prayers, somebody you’re like, what did I get myself into? He just got back, what you gonna do? The Lord is good, Let us read his word, I am the true vine and my father is divine dresser, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you abide in me and I in you as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches whoever abides in me and I in him, he, it is that bears much fruit for apart from me you can do nothing if anyone does not abide in me, he’s thrown away like a branch and withers and the branches are gathered thrown into the fire and burned if you abide in me and my words abide in you ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you by this, my father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples as the father has loved me, so have I loved you abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my father’s commandments and abide in his love these things, I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full as the word of God. Let us pray father in heaven, thank you, thank you for this day, thank you for the truth of your word, thank you for the reality that you are indeed gathering of people to yourself for your glory and God, we’re so thankful that the gospel invitation was presented to us that we might come to you and be called Children of God. We ask that Lord in this time that we have together as your people, God, that you would help us to understand exactly what it means to abide in christ that we might be more fruitful in christ that we might bring more glory to your name with our lives God, that is our desire. Work in this way. Holy Spirit move among us. We ask in jesus name. Amen, Amen. So as I said in the beginning that this is the beginning of a new series entitled rooted and today we’re gonna look at being rooted in the vision of sword church being rooted in what we believe God has…