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Play Episode Listen Later Nov 2, 2025

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week. TranscriptWell, good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We are working our way through our membership commitment. It's different for us. We're normally working our way through books of the Bible, but we've taken the fall to just kind of go, hey, we collectively are following Jesus together as a church family. And what are the things that we've committed to? What are the things that we believe? And then kind of, what, how have we designed how we're going to live life together? So we, we are on commitment number 11 out of 14. It's just a one sheet piece of paper that we say, yes, this is what we're trying to do here. It's kind of our outline for discipleship. I want to begin by showing you this tweet that kind of made the rounds a while back. I think it's a good intro to what we're talking about today. It says, nobody talks about Jesus. Miracle of having 12 close friends in his 30s. The point of that tweet is it's hard to have relationships. Being friends with people is difficult. You're doing well if you've got one. But this idea that you'd have a lot and that they would stay together and you'd be able to keep working things out. And the reality is in the church, Jesus says that they'll know you're my disciples by the way, you love one another. So that it is supposed to look different for us, that the church is supposed to put this picture of what love and relationships are, are meant to look like and be able to walk things out together. So this is actually a miracle that we're all supposed to get to participate in as Christians. But it is difficult to do. We understand that. So that's what number 11, our commitment is for us. I want to read it as we begin. It says, I expect relational difficulty as I seek genuine relationships with other sinners saved by grace. I will actively fight against gossip, drama, bitterness and relational weirdness. I will work toward reconciliation in all conflict, seeking always to live at peace, unified with others in the mill city family. So we're going to take that line by line. We're going to show you where that comes from in the scriptures, what we're talking about, what we're committing to. Let's pray. Lord, we ask for your help. We ask for your grace. We ask in the name of Jesus that this would be true for us, that we would work towards reconciliation and all conflict, seeking always to live at peace and be unified as your people. In Jesus name, Amen.All right, so that first line, if you're going to commit to membership here, and if you have committed to membership here, you have announced, I expect this to be difficult. You're like, I looked around, I saw you guys. And I'm pretty sure this is going to be hard. Yeah, that's how it works. I expect relational difficulty as I seek genuine relationships with other sinners saved by grace. And in some ways, this is commitment. 9, 10, and 11 follow a logical flow. 9 is, I'm going to pursue deep, genuine relationships. I'm going to do that by being here on Sundays and by committing to belong to a community group and that we're going to pursue these types of relationships. And then 10 says, and I'm well aware that I'm a sinner, so I won't be surprised if someone comes to me and says that I've sinned, I'm aware of that. I'll walk through that with them. And then 11 says, and I'm also well aware that they're sinners. And so this is going to be hard. What we're saying is that we expect. It makes sense that if what brought us here is sin and the need for forgiveness, Christianity is the people who raised their hand and said, I need help. The people who said, if the Lord doesn't have mercy, I'm in trouble. If he doesn't forgive sin, I'm in trouble. I want this to be about Christ. I want it to be about his goodness. I want my hope to be in Him. And if we all get together, the assumption that we would somehow not have conflict, that we're coming from different backgrounds, different economic places, we speak different languages at times, that we're coming from all these different places and we sinful. The idea that that wouldn't cause conflict is crazy. So we're saying, no, I expect that I'm a sinner who needs grace, and I expect that you're a sinner who needs grace. And I'm pretty sure if we try to have a real relationship, that's gonna. There's gonna be some problems. A lot of times we don't have conflict with people because we don't have relationships with people. The reason there's no frustration, the reason there's no difficulty, the reason there's no conflict is because you're not around each other enough for that to have even come up. We're saying, we want to be around each other enough to grow in these deep, genuine relationships, which means we expect there's going to be Some difficulty. So we say, I will actively fight against gossip, drama, bitterness, and relational weirdness. So we're saying, okay, it makes sense that we would have some problems, but I'm going to commit to fighting against these things. And this isn't just I won't participate. It's I'm going to try to stop them. I'm going to fight against it in myself and in others. We're going to. We're going to police this. We're going to defend something that is good together. Okay? Gossip. It's listed several times in the New Testament as a sin. What it is, is me and you talking about someone else. Be true. Slander would be if it was untrue. We're not going to do that either. But gossip is like, hey, did you hear this? Hey, I got something to say. People will say, I don't know if I should say this. And I've practiced. If you say that to me, I'll go, then don't. I'll try to wet blanket that as fast as I can. Because I know if you say it, I'm probably going to like hearing it. Proverbs says they're delicious morsels. Whispering like, this is a delicious morsel. And it's like, you know, don't even open the donut box. Like, I don't want to have to choose whether I'm eating two or three. Like, I just get it out of here. So when you're like, I don't know if I should say this, then you probably shouldn't. Don't say it. I don't know if you're the right person to talk to. I'm probably not. Leave me out of this. But we're going to fight against the gossip Is me and you talking about someone else. Did you hear that this was going on? One of the things I found personally that I love doing is telling you why someone did something. I don't know, but I have good negative guesses. So I. For a long time ago, I can tell you why they said that. I can tell you exactly what they're trying to do. And I had to learn, no, I can't. And even if I was right, I should keep my mouth shut. But we're going to fight against that. This is not going to be something we're going to participate in, which means that it's not just you're not going to say these things, but you're going to be an unsafe person for someone else to say them to. We're not going to get together to spill the tea? No, we're going to keep it all well contained, Highly good contained tea in our church. Family. Drama, not a Bible word. The Bible word that most often is used is we're going to pursue peace and we're going to see that a lot. Drama would be the opposite of that, would be you making things worse, making things bigger than they are, overreacting to things. The Bible talks about stirring things up. So Romans 16:17 and Titus 3:10. We've on the screen together, it says,> I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them.>> As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him.There are obstacles to following Jesus. There shouldn't be other ones that we add in. There shouldn't be other things that we go, well, you know, this is a problem. And this is a problem. And this is. Have you noticed this? I've noticed this. This is a problem for me. Is it a problem for you? We're not supposed to do that and to stir up division. He says, avoid them. Watch out for that. That's bad for you. You know, there are people who can. Their joy is contagious, and there are people who. Their bitterness and frustration and dislike is contagious. I have. I have a friend who can make you dislike a movie. You watch it with him and he can talk you out of it. I'm a little bit like that. I have to watch. So I don't dislike it when he does that. I'm like, yeah, tell me how stupid this movie is. But I heard two other friends talking, and one of them, they're friends with that guy. And one of them said, yeah, I didn't like that movie. And the third friend said, did you actually not like that movie or did you just see it with this person? And later that friend said to me, I don't know. I don't know if I actually didn't like it or if they just so affected my ability. And it's like, y', all, you've got to be aware that that's a thing. Someone can come poison something for you, and they can poison your church family, they can poison your community group. They can poison things for you. They can get in your head and talk you out of joy and forgiveness and. And life and grace. And he says, watch out. You may have someone who comes and says, hey, you know, I need to talk to you about something. And all they're doing is this.Titus 3:10. For a person who stirs up division makes it worse. That's drama. It's stirring things up after warning him once and then twice have nothing more to do with him. Or as Proverbs 16:28 says,> A dishonest man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends.I love the way 26:20 says it, for the lack of wood, a fire goes out. And where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases. There's nobody actively stirring it up. A lot of times things will stop, we say drama, bitterness and relational weirdness. Bitterness is. You're not talking about it, you're just seething over it. It's internal. It's not gossip. It's just as something that you're working out internally. You're going, yeah, I know what they were doing. I know. No, that's fine. This is just be how. Okay, yeah, you're just working it out in your head. They were rude to me. I know they were rude to me, whatever. And it just starts changing your relationship. We're not going to do that. We're going to be on guard against that in our heart. Relational weirdness is not a Bible term. It's a catch all. We're trying to grab a concept when we talk about relational weirdness. It. It's one of those things where it's like, you know, it's developed where we used to be okay, or we had this thing and we talked about it, but now I just don't really know how to talk to him anymore. I don't really want to talk to him anymore. If I find out they're going somewhere, I don't want to be there. It's like, oh, well, that's relational weirdness. And we just kind of sometimes will consign ourselves to that and go, yeah, I don't know, I don't like them, they don't like me. It's fine, we're fine. We're not in a group together anymore. So it's fine. I'm fine, we're fine, it's fine. I'm telling you a little bit something personal about myself. When I wake up in the morning, my left heel hurts so much that it's hard for me to walk. But I'm coming up on 40. So what I thought was, well, I'll just have that be true about me until I die. I'll limp around my house in the morning and then at some point it'll stop hurting and I'll move on because I have no intention of seeing a doctor about this. That's what relational weirdness is. It's just relationships. It's where you're going. This is fine. I'm fine. No, it's okay. No, this isn't a problem. I don't need to talk about it. I'm okay. And it's like, yeah, you have this. Like, something's painful, something's weird. You feel this twinge. You don't want to talk. I don't. Nah. And you just go, it's fine, though. As long as we ignore it, it's fine. And then someday I'll die. And it's like, no, we're going to fight against that. I'm allowed to do that with my heel. But you're not allowed to do that with your relationships. But I want you to see something first. 2 Corinthians 2:10-11 says this.> Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.He's talking about conflict. He's talking about forgiveness and unforgiveness. And he says, no, I forgive them if you're forgiving them, we're going to walk in forgiveness. And he says, so that Satan doesn't trick us. And one of the reasons we commit to fighting this stuff is because Satan wants us to walk in unforgiveness, wants us to walk in fractured relationships, wants us to have relational difficulty and drama all over the place, wants that to be true for us where we don't enjoy and participate in what Christ has purchased for us. And we just have all these little fractures and broken relationships and frustrations because we're trying to walk together. And if we're going to do that, it's going to be difficult. And he says, no, we're going to walk in forgiveness so that we won't be outwitted by Satan. This is one of the reasons we're fighting against it, because this stuff is cancer for a church. Most people who have church hurt, and they'll talk about it. It's them, this. So it's unacceptable here. It's unacceptable in any church. But we're. We're not going to practice it. We're going to sort things out. But how are we going to do that? And that's what we say. Next. I will work toward reconciliation in all conflict, seeking always to live at peace, unified with others. In the mill city family, reconciliation is. There's a broken relationship and we're going to fix that. There's something between us and we're going to get rid of it. We're not going to let it develop. We're not going to let it grow. We're not going to let it see. We're not going to talk about other people about it. We're not going to let bitterness develop. We're going to try to sort this out. We're going to get to where we can be at peace with one another. And this is commanded over and over again in the Scriptures. So we're about to look at a lot of verses together. 2 Corinthians 13:11 says,> Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.I said, I love that. That's a command. Agree. It's like something you'd say to your kids, hey, get along, be friends. That's what he's doing. He's saying, aim for restoration, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. Our God is a God of love and peace. We actually get to participate in that. We get to have love and peace. And that gets to define the relationships here. And so we aim for restoration. That's what we're seeking to do. That's what the whole point of this is. So that's what you're committing to is, I'm going to do that. I'm going to commit to aim for restoration when there's conflict, when there's frustration, when there's difficulty. Romans 14:19 and Hebrews 12:14 says,> So then let us pursue what makes for peace and mutual upbuilding.>> Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.I love these verses. The reason I have them next to each other. Pursue and strive. Pursue what makes for peace. Strive for peace. It means it takes work. This is something that's going to call out effort in us. You know, this is the reason this is all over the place in the New Testament is because they were like us. They became Christians and then found the other Christians kind of annoying. They had problems, they had difficulties, they had hurt feelings, they had sin. And he keeps going, y' all gotta work that out. You gotta work that out. You gotta pursue this stuff. I think sometimes we think about peace as, like, a byproduct. Like, it should just be there. It's just something you have or you don't have. When it's there, it's nice. When it's not there, it's, you know, whatever. And he's like, no, it takes work. We think of it as like a musical or something. Like they're in a barbershop and somebody's sweeping and somebody's cutting hair. Somebody's buzzing, and then they just start singing. It's magic. And that's what peace is like in a church. Imagine like we're monkeys in a Disney cartoon or something. That's not what it's like. That's not even what it's like in the thing you're watching. Where did that piano come from? Like, they've practiced this, obviously, and there's now instruments that aren't in this barbershop. But we act like that, and it's like, no, it's something that's going to take work. If you're going to be at peace with someone, it's going to take effort. It's going to take striving, it's going to take pursuit. And we're not going to want to do it. But it's worth it. And we're commanded to. So Romans 12:16-18 says,> Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.>> Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.>> If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.So this idea of living in harmony, living peaceably with all. And in the middle there, he says, do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. I've been a part of a community group in this church for 12 years. One of the things that I have found is part of the problem is that I'm right and good and they're stupid and bad. You ever feel that, you ever want to say, if they would just quit being wrong, then we wouldn't have a problem? Some of you married people know what I'm talking about. I've explained it to them twice. I don't know why they're so dumb. But you just feel that, you feel like I'm right. If you just see what I see, if you just know what I know. If you would just get on board now, you're like, yeah, and I got a Bible verse now, agree with me. Where is it at? It's like, that's not. There's a level of humility needed when we approach this and we're coming in and going, I'm aware of my own sin. I'm aware of my own self righteousness. I'm aware of my own haughtiness. I'm aware that I'm so wise in my own eyes constantly. I think I'm the smartest person who's ever existed. I just feel right about everything. My opinions feel like facts. And it's like that robs us of getting to do this. We're to live in harmony with one another. This isn't a solo. You have to work at it. Repay no one evil for evil. I want you to hear this. They actually did the thing that you're upset about most of the time. Sometimes we're like, yeah, but they really did sin. It's like, right? Yeah. Nobody's arguing that. We actually started with that we expected them to sin. They're a sinner who needs Jesus. We are not nobody's. We're not scandalized. Yeah, they really did it. They really. No, but they really. But it was really hurtful. It was really mean. No, they actually said it. No, they actually did. Yeah. Yeah, they did. And it's bad. Nobody's saying it's. It's not bad. Nobody's saying it's not sin. Nobody's saying it's okay. But we are saying we're not going to repay evil for evil. We've got to give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. Then verse 18, he says, if possible, and he's clarifying so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all meaning that there are some people that you can't be at peace with, but it has to be on their side, not yours. So you can't say, well, this person's just impossible to be at peace with. And it's like, only if it's on their side, not yours. You have to be holding out, going to be peaceable as far as it's up to me. All the parts that I can handle, I'm going to handle, and I'm going to live at peace.Okay, so what does pursuing reconciliation look like? We committing to do it? We're going to pursue reconciliation in all conflict. What does that look like? Well, first thing we can do is forbearance. Bearing with one another is just a way that you are going to absorb some of their sin in a way that you're going to offer forgiveness, offer love, and you don't have to have a conversation about it. Proverbs 10:12 says,> Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.Proverbs 17:9,> Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends.There's a way for us to just by love forgive one another. And I think those proverbs can apply to, you've had a conversation, you've sorted things out. But I also think it's just one of those things that we get to do. We get to delight in to do someone is rude to you in your group, or they planned a time to meet with you and then they showed up late, and that drives you particularly crazy. The most offensive thing someone could ever do, they should hang up the phone on their mom and come show up on time to meet you. It's unacceptable. But you have these different things where it's like this, no, it was really rude. It was really offensive. They said that and it really hurt my feelings. We celebrated this birthday and then they acted like I didn't exist. And I told them it was my birthday. This stuff happens and it hurts. There's times where you go, yeah, but I've offended other people. I've been rude before. And I'm just gonna offer grace and forgiveness and love so that we get to have it. If I offer you grace and forgiveness and love, then our relationship gets to have grace and forgiveness and love. I just get to pour it in. Some of you people who live, have roommates and are married or whatever, you need to learn some of this. Like some of your relationships, you get to just add grace and forgiveness and love to your house on your own, from your side, and then it gets to be there. I'm pretty sure my wife does this with me 75 times a week where she's just going to make sure there's Love and kindness in our house. I know for a fact that I do things that she's asked me not to do. I noticed it this week as I was thinking about this. She tells me all the time when we're on the phone, say bye. Yeah, seems pretty simple. I'm constantly like, sounds good. Click. Alright. Yeah. It works for me. Click. I did that a couple times this week and I thought, I wonder if she's on the other side of the phone being like, I'll get texts every once in a while that say say bye. Because it's become evident to her that I've already hung up. I don't know if she's still talking. I don't know. I hung up the phone, you guys. I don't know how she finds out that I'm not on the phone anymore because apparently I don't say bye. But there's times where I just do that. She's told me a thousand times. I know for a fact I hung up on her twice without saying bye this week. She didn't say a word about it. I don't know if she didn't notice or if she just is like, he can't help it, something wrong with him and just chooses to love me and covers an offense, something that legitimately offends her. It bothers her, but she's just showing grace and kindness so that our house just gets to have love and we get to do this because we belong to Jesus. We just get to love each other. And so there's a whole lot of things that you can just go, you know what? I'm just going to forget. I'm just going to love. This is just going to be okay and I'm not going to hold on to it. 1 Peter 4:8 says,> Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.This applies in situations where we have to have multiple conversations. This applies to situations where we're having to work some stuff out. This applies all the time that we're seeking to love one another earnestly. But I'm just letting you know that forbearance lets you do this sometimes where you just go, I'm just going to choose on my side to not be offended by that. To be offended, but then to just choose to forgive and move on. And you can do that until it starts to grow. Because sometimes I think people say that's what they're doing and they're really just avoiding conflict because they don't want to have to have the conversation that makes them Uncomfortable. So they go, I'll just forgive. They were rude to me. That's fine. They're just a rude person. And then you see them and you say in your head, well, hello, Rudy. And it's like, okay, if you're doing that, I don't know if you've done the forbearance thing where you're choosing to forgive and show love. Like you, something else is happening. And so it's like, you can choose to do that, but you also can't sit and seize and have resentment and bitterness and difficulty. And if you start realizing, I'm trying, and I've done this for a while, but now it's still growing and it's still happening, and they're still offending me, and I'm going to have to have a conversation, which is the next thing that happens. So we can bear with one another, we can forbear, we can forgive without conversations. But then there are times where Matthew 18:15 says,> If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.You're trying to aim for restoration. You're trying to gain your brother. There's something between us, and this is what I think we sometimes miss. There'd be something between us. And someone will go, just. Well, it's just what it is. And it's like, you don't care about your brother. You're okay with just losing a sister. If you're going to hold on to that, or you'll be like, well, I just don't want to. I don't want. Sometimes people have in their mind peace just means the absence of conflict. But if I know about the conflict and you don't, conflict is still there. That's not peace. That's like, we see a hole and we put a blanket over it that didn't fix the hole. It actually increases the likelihood someone will fall into it. And so sometimes we're doing that in our relationships where we're just going, well, I just. I'm not gonna say anything. And it's like, yeah, but you're gonna hold on to it. That's still there. It's gonna affect the relationship. They won't know exactly why, but they'll feel it. And so he says, now you go talk to him. Because we're trying to aim for restoration. We're trying to gain our brother. And there are some baseline assumptions. If you sin against me and I come to you and I tell you or if I sin against you and you come and tell me we're making some assumptions. I love you. I want good for you and for us. I believe the spirit's at work in you so that this can work, so that you can repent, I can forgive. Like, I'm assuming good things about you if I come and talk to you. You're assuming good things about me. Now you're telling me I've sinned. I don't like that part. But you're making some baseline assumptions that are like, but if someone sins and I just go, yeah, not worth talking to them. Well, all my baseline assumptions are bad. Don't really care that much about them. Or you'll say things like, yeah, but I would talk to them, but I know what they're gonna say. And it's like, okay, so you're just gonna condemn them from here. Judge and condemn them from here, Lock them in that. And even if you are right and that's what they say or that's how they act, still supposed to do that for their good. God has you in this position in this relationship to see this thing and to have this conversation for their good, for their joy, and for yah's restoration. And it goes the other way, too. Matthew 5:23-24 says,> So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.You say, they didn't sin against me, they're mad at me. Okay, well, go talk to them. You can go have a conversation with someone where you say, it seems like you're mad at me, but I don't know what about, and I don't want to guess. You can go and say, hey, I know I did this, and I know that we hadn't quite been right since, and we need to talk about it. Matthew 18:16 says,> But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.That every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. We talked about this last week, but it's. If someone sins against me or if there's hurt, if there's conflict between us, I'm going to go talk to him privately. If that doesn't work, I'm going to get some other people to come help, and maybe that's because they don't see it. It's very clear that it's sin, but they don't see it. They're just denying it. Or maybe it's not clear that it's sin. We just aren't having a good conversation. It's hard for us to sort this out. Or they're, they said that I'm wrong, and so now I got to get somebody else and say, hey, maybe I'm wrong here, but can you come help us sort this out? But this is why if someone comes and talks to you about someone else, you are supposed to ask, what did they say when you told them? Because you're assuming we're on step two. If you're talking to me about it, you've already talked to them between you and them alone, and it didn't go well. That's my assumption. So how did that conversation go? And if you say, I haven't talked to them, then I'm supposed to say, well, go do that first. Now, I have had a lot of people ask, can't I come and talk to someone just to try to get some wisdom on how to have that conversation? Can I come and ask and say, am I wrong about this? Like, should I even be upset about this? And the answer to that is, yes, you can do that in limited circumstances with wise people who are actually helpful. You can come and say, hey, I'm trying to have this conversation with them. I'm really angry and I don't think I'm going to do it well. And you help me think about how to word this, how to structure this. You can also do that. You can say, I'm in conflict with a person. They don't have to know who it is. They don't have to know all the details. As a pastor, I do this all the time. Someone will say, hey, I'm having a hard time with someone. Can I tell you about it? And I'm like, yeah, maybe. But you can also, like, you can redact it. You can give me some of the details and not all the details. And I can try to be helpful on how to go have that conversation or how to approach this. You can go ask someone, am I wrong about this? And they might tell you, yeah, you're wrong. And then you may still have to go have a conversation with someone that says, I've been mad at you for bad reasons and it's affected our relationship, but we're ultimately going to be having conversations with the people that there's conflict between us. But this is the thing that happens, Philippians 4:2-3 says,> I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord. Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women, who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.So there are times where you just need somebody else to be in the room to help you have the conversation. I want to have the conversation. We don't communicate well. We need help. We've tried this two times, three times. I've already brought this up. They don't understand what I'm saying. I don't understand what they're saying. We need somebody else to come sit in the room and try to help us out. That's okay. You can get help. You're not trying to build a co if it's just conflict, frustration, difficulty, not addressing someone in sin. You're not trying to build a coalition of people on your team. You're trying to have someone who's wise and helpful to help you hear both sides sorted out, working towards peace, someone who's going to help make peace. Okay. Ephesians 4 says,> I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.He's saying, the church should look like Christians, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. Oh, what if that's what it looked like? What if someone sat you down and said, hey, I love you and I need to talk to you about something. But they had humility, gentleness, patience. They said, hey, I want to talk to you because I belong to Jesus and I love you and you belong to Jesus. And we need to sort this out because there's some difficulty between us being eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. I think we need to be real about the fact that a lot of times we're most eager to maintain our own comfort, more eager to maintain that than we are to maintain unity in the spirit. That I really just want you to get on my side so you'll quit getting on my nerves. And I'm not really wanting to sort this out in a way that gives grace and helps us both grow. But we should be eager to maintain that. We should dislike conflict between us to the point that we're wanting to overcome it. We should be like my sons, when there's a tag in their shirt, they will come to me like they're being attacked. Like a four year old will come like, and it's like, what is going on? This tag, let's burn this shirt. But it should be like that. It should be like there's something between us or something causing problems, and I can't stand it. I'm eager to maintain unity. So let's have a conversation. Let's get together, let's sort this out. And if we all have this, then it becomes easier. You should expect that this is going to be hard and you should expect other people to come do it. And when they come do it, you should feel loved, not attacked. You should go, oh, good, they want to maintain unity with me. They love me enough to try to sort this out. The reality is, if we clip off years where there's aren't conversations like this, if we go through your group never, then maybe y' all just aren't around each other enough or don't love each other enough because the idea that I'm around you and haven't seen things, that maybe, maybe we just aren't sorting things out like we should. Maybe we're not eager to maintain unity when we start telling ourselves, well, I just might. I might just go somewhere else. I think this happens so often in churches, especially in the south, where there's so many churches. You reach the place where now I'm going to have to have a conversation. I'm going to have to forgive, I'm going to have to repent, I'm going to have to go through conflict. No, I'm just going to go somewhere else. And you tell yourself that this shouldn't happen. There must be something wrong here. Because our assumption is that peace is a byproduct, not something we have to strive for as we just go somewhere else. And you're there for three years or four years or five years, really just long enough for these people to start really getting on your nerves or sinning against you or hurting you or for them. And then you go somewhere else. When we've reached the moment where we could grow and we could walk in a manner worthy of the Lord and actually step in the things the gospel empowers us to do and walk with the God of love and peace and have him be with us in these moments. Let's do that. Colossians 3:12-14 says,> Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.>> And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.Saying the same kind of things. He says, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved. He's saying, this is who you are. You're chosen, you're holy, you're beloved. And he says, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience bearing with one another. That warms my soul that that's in the. It's in the Bible. Why does he have to write to every church and say, please put up with each other. And you're in a church and you're like, I'm having to put up with these people. There's something wrong with this church. And it's like, no, we look like we're in the New Testament. We're Bible people who are having a hard time sorting some of this stuff out. That's fine. It's normal. It's what it looks like for us to walk in life together. So he says, bearing with one another, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. But I want you to see that bearing with one another if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, so you also must forgive. This is a command. This is why we commit to it. This is why we say, this is what we're going to do here. This is how we're going to handle this here. Because we're commanded to. I was talking to a pastor one time. He had been a pastor. He was doing some stuff in kind of church, the church world. And we were talking about something when the first church had just started, our church had just started a church plant, and we only had a couple of groups. And I said we had some people that were at odds with one another. And he said, man, that's tough, because you can't, you know, what are you gonna do? You can't make them talk to each other. And I said, oh, we're gonna make them talk to each other because of this, because we're commanded to do this. So we're going to expect of each other that we're going to do this. We're going to expect that we're going to try to sort things out, and it's good for us. I need that expectation on me from you. And you need that expectation on you from me that we're. No, we're going to have the conversation. We're going to sort these things out because we can. And the reason we can. And the reason why you won't do this. You will not do this unless you understand what's in the middle of that highlighted section as the Lord has forgiven you. If we don't know the grace and the mercy and the depth of the love and the forgiveness of Christ, then we won't do this. We won't want to, and we won't have the ability to. We just will refuse. But if we're walking in this if we understand the depth of our sin and the grace of Christ. And then we can. And we delight to do it because we're participating in something that Jesus bought for us, that he claimed for us, that he gave us. This is what Jesus. What Paul says when he's talking about Jesus and he's talking to the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers and the hostility that was between them. He says in Ephesians 2,> But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.>> For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.He's talking to Jews and Gentiles there, and he's saying that we get to all belong to the Lord. And that's true for us in these other situations. He's our peace, and he bought reconciliation between us and God, which means the reconciliation between me and you is so narrow. We're drowning in the mercy and the forgiveness of Christ. So we delight to walk it out with each other, to participate in it tangibly in a real way in our lives. I love Matthew 18. So this is. He walks through the stuff we've been reading about, addressing your brother in sin. He gets through it. And I love that Jesus has disciples who follow him around and ask questions, because they ask the questions that we ask. Then Peter came up and said to him, lord, how often will my brother sin against me? And I forgive him as many as seven times. Don't you just love the disciples? Sometimes Jesus is like, this is how you forgive your brother? This is how you go get your brother back. This is what it looks like. Peter's like, mm, that's so good. Quick question, though. When can I stop? And y', all, he says, seven. Ain't none of us saying seven. We're Americans. The most we go on things is three. Because of baseball. Been trained in us. You get three, some of us lop off that third one. Fool me once, fool me twice. Fool me, can't fool me again. Sorry. That's just how some presidents say it. But I love this. Peter asks. Jesus says,> I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.Just means all the times. What's so wonderful about this? We'll talk about us. We'll talk about what Peter's asking in a second. But I want you all to see this. You ever have that moment with the Lord and you think how Long before you're done with me. How many times am I going to do this before you're just done with me? How many times am I going to fail and come back and say, I need you and I need mercy and I need grace. How many times is this going to happen before you're done with me? And the Lord Christ expects us to Forgive each other 77 times in a day, because that's the type of grace and mercy that he has for us. When will he be done with you? Never. If you belong to Christ and are covered by his blood. He has paid everything to keep you. He will keep you. So how much mercy and forgiveness do we get? All of it. And how much mercy and forgiveness do we give? All of it. Because we're the only ones who have access to all of it. That's why the church is known by their love. Because we have so much love and so much mercy and so much forgiveness that we don't run out giving it to each other. And you say, they've sinned against me and they've done it again. Right. But I'll never run out of the forgiveness that Christ gives. So I never run out of my ability to share. And I get to participate in a real way. When I feel the pain of forgiveness, I get to know that he was actually dripping blood on that cross because it hurts to forgive, but it's so good because everything breaks down without it. And so we get blood bought reconciliation and we get forgiveness and we get peace and we get joy and we get those handed to us by the God of love and peace, who loved us so much that he died for us. And we absolutely will not settle for not sharing that with each other and not participating. As people who belong to this type of God, we get to delight to share it with one another, even as it is hard, because it reminds us of the goodness of Christ and the mercy and the forgiveness that he's offered. And we get to walk what it looks like to belong to Him. If you're going to commit to a church, how many times are you going to have to forgive? All the times. And how many times are you going to be empowered by Christ to forgive? All the times. Because that's how many times he forgives us.Let's pray. Oh Lord, may you bless this church by your spirit, that we would aim for restoration and that we would be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit. Lord, you have forgiven us so much. You have had endless mercy granted to us. May we share it with each other. May we not see the sins committed against me as higher and more egregious than my sins committed against you. May I not think so highly of myself. May we not be outwitted by Satan, but may we be people of forgiveness and mercy and kindness and goodness. And may we have the conversations that we need to have and share the love that we need to share, which is given to us endlessly by you. So God of love and peace be with us in Jesus name, Amen.The band's gonna come back up, and here's what we're gonna do. Jesus says if you have something against someone, you need to go talk to them. He says if someone has something against you, you need to leave your gift at the altar and you need to go talk to them. So they're gonna play and we're gonna have a moment. I want you to humbly walk to the Lord and just say, help me to see my sin. Help me to not think so highly of myself. Help me not to be wise in my own sight. And if there's someone I need to talk to, if there's somebody that the spirit's convicting you, that you need to have a conversation with, then go have a conversation with them. You don't have to have the whole conversation now. You can get up and go grab and say, how many. Let's plan a time. We need to talk. You can shoot somebody a text message. Some of you need to step outside and make a phone call as an act of worship. You don't need to sing. You need to go call somebody. We need to be people who are eager to maintain peace. We want people to commit to this. But some of you have come over here from another church because you're in the middle of this exact thing and you need to go back and sort some things out. But we want to be people who look like we belong to Christ. So take a moment, pray, listen, and do as the Spirit leads, and then we'll stand and sing together.

Unapologetically You: Building Confidence Through Self-Connection

Chasing Brighter Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2025 17:22 Transcription Available

What if true confidence isn't something you build—but something you rediscover within yourself? In this episode, Jessica and Kelly explore the theme of building confidence through self-connection, particularly in midlife. They discuss the importance of introspection, recognizing disconnection from oneself, and the core practices that can help individuals reconnect with their values and desires. The conversation emphasizes that true confidence comes from within and is about being authentic and unapologetically oneself. They also provide practical tips for listeners to cultivate self-connection and confidence in their daily lives. Inside This Conversation: Confidence is built through self-connection and introspection. Midlife is a time for rediscovering who you are. True confidence comes from within, not external validation. Recognizing disconnection from oneself is crucial for growth. Practices like journaling and mindfulness can enhance self-connection. Honoring your values is essential for building confidence. Celebrating small wins helps reinforce self-acceptance. Setting boundaries is a form of self-connection. Doubt is a natural part of the journey to confidence. Being unapologetically you is about being at home with yourself. Connect With Us:

Re:Member Core Practices III Correction

member correction core practices

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2025

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week. Transcript

Re:Member Core Practices II

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 19, 2025

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week. TranscriptGood morning. My name is Spencer. I am one of the pastors here. We are continuing to go through our Remember series, which is an opportunity for us as a church to revisit our membership commitments and remember the things we're committing to. The first half of it was going through the first seven commitments of our membership commitment, which is the gospel. And these last seven that we're going through week by week are the practices that flow out of the gospel, the things that we commit to do as a church because Jesus Christ rose from the grave. So we're going to be in number nine this week, which reads, I will pursue deep, genuine relationships with others in the Mill City family through committing to regular participation in Sunday gatherings and a community group where I can love and serve others and ensure I am surrounded by people who love Jesus and love me.So last week we saw the importance of what it means to cultivate a personal relationship with Christ. And this week we get to see what it means to as Christians who've cultivated this relationship with Christ, where God has placed us in the context of community. We are made as image bearers in humanity. Like we're made in the image of a communal God who eternally exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who, when he made humanity, made him, made us in the image of our triune God. And he saw that it was not good that man would be alone. That's who we are. We're made to be in community in the same way that a fish is made for water in the context of what it is placed. Humanity is made to be in community.So that if you have a child who gets really excited about taking their pet fish to show and tell, and they don't do what every child or what every person who thinks about this has done is putting a fish in the bag, sealing the bag, and then taking it to school. If they just simply put the fish in their pocket and went to school, it's going to be a super tragic moment at show and tell when that fish is pulled out. Because fish are made for water. That's the context for which they are created. And we as Christians are made to be in community. And there are some folks who will say, yes, I think we're supposed to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I get that. But I don't love the church. I've got baggage, I got church hurt, or I decided. I don't really love organized religion. I think I can have a personal relationship with Christ. What I would say is that the scriptures don't bear that to Be true. That's a fish out of water. Like we're made to be in community. When you read the rest of the New Testament, it bears this out over and over again. So yes, we want to have a personal relationship with Christ, but the idea that you can do that disconnected from God's people is a very recent Western idea. It is foreign to the Scriptures. And I want us to see that today as we walk through this commitment to. I want us to see how we're called to live this out and what's at stake as we seek to commit to this.So let me pray for us and then we'll walk through this together. Heavenly Father, I pray that you might help us see the importance of what it means to have life together. God, I pray that you would speak to our hearts. I pray that you would help us be compelled to believe the Gospel and then live out the implications of it. Community. As a church, we ask this in Jesus name. Amen.All right. So why should we commit to deep, genuine relationships with one another in a local church? As I already said, part of that's how we're. How we're made. We're made to be in community, made in the image of a communal God. And the church has been doing this since day one. Our scripture reading that we had earlier is Acts 2, 42, 47. So we were in the previous verses leading up to that last week, coming into verse 42 or picking back up in 42 today. But it's it. This is what the church has done that after the church begins, it says in verse 42,> And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.So that when we look at our commitment, you can really put it side by side with this passage and really the pattern that flows out of this passage that when we say I will pursue deep genuine relationships with others in the Mill city family, we can see in verse 42 they devoted themselves the apostles teaching and the fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayers, they were devoted to one another. They deeply valued fellowship together. That when we say through committing to regular participation in Sunday gatherings and a community group. We see that's what the church was doing. It says, day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes. They received their food with glad and generous hearts that they were as the church gathering together to go worship in the temple. Now later on, they're not invited. They end up having to. They're not invited to the temple anymore. They start to be persecuted. And then this forms into worshiping on the Lord's day, which is guided the church, as the church has come together to worship on Sunday, the day the resurrection happened for the last 2000 years. And also they gather together in homes, which is why we have community groups. We come together on Sunday and then we live in the. In the context of our community groups living out the implications of the gospel. We find it right here.And what flows out of this passage when we say, where I can love and serve others and ensure I'm surrounded by people who love Jesus and love me, we can see very clearly in verse 44, it says, and all who believe were together and had all things in common, and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need that they so radically loved one another and served one another. They were selling off property, they were putting in money just so others could. Their needs could be met. So we look at this passage as foundational for how we live out the implication of the Gospel as a church and the rest of the Book of Acts and the rest of the New Testament. When you read the letters that make up the rest of the New Testament, continue to teach this over and over again. That's why we have this commitment for our church.So what I want to do is I want to slow down. I want to walk through each part of our commitment and help us see how the rest of the New Testament helps us understand how we're called to live this out as a church. So let's deal with the first part. I will pursue deep, genuine relationships with others in the mill city family. Okay? That's very specific language for a reason. When you look at the New Testament, there's a lot of metaphors for the the church. So if you look at Ephesians chapter three, you see, the church is called a temple in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.> In him the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.This picture of the church is all different building blocks of the temple that the Spirit has come to live and dwell inside of the church is also called a body. It says in Romans chapter 12.> so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.That we're all collectively the body flowing into Christ, who's the head of the body. And all of us are just different members of that body. We get. In Ephesians 5, the church is called the bride.> Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.The idea of two becoming one flesh together, the bride, the church and Jesus Christ the bridegroom. It's called a holy nation.> But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession...1 Peter 2. There are all types of metaphors that we could choose to build off of with this language. We chose the language of family. There are passages like first Timothy, chapter three that says,> if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.That's the household family of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and a buttress of the truth. One of the most common words that shows up in the New Testament is the Greek word for brothers and sisters. Adelphoi over and over again referred to brothers and sisters in Christ. You'd be the passages that talk about fathers and mothers in the faith. So we went with the metaphor family that we are devoted. We want to be. Have deep, genuine, loving, Christ exalting relationships with others in the mill city family. And that's what you see in the early church. They were a family. So much so they believed that they were selling off possessions because you take care of your family, you make sure they don't have needs. They, they believe this and they lived like it was true. Because listen, you, you don't sell your stuff and give it away to someone if you don't believe it. Like you're not doing that with any other person. No, they, they, they believed the gospel and they lived as if it was true. Because they understood if Jesus rose from the grave, if the God man took sin upon the cross and judgment on our behalf and he actually walked out of the tomb and he ascended to the right hand of God the Father, that if that's true, then I'm all in that you live a radically different life. If you believe that is true. If you go into the casino and you are guaranteed, as the roulette table goes, that it is going to be on red and you got all your cash, that's a win. Put it on red. I'm all in on that. So they believe if Christ, he's alive. Well, I'm all in on this. So we're going to have all things in common. We're going to be a family together. They believe this and they live like it was true.So I don't want us to be a church that just throws around the word church family and then doesn't live like it is true. A couple of months ago, I saw a video compilation of a bunch of churches like ours doing their opening announcements. And they just took the same kind of clip over and over again from a bunch of churches. And it was the same thing. It was, hey, church family. Hey, church fam. Hey, church family. Good to see you, church family. And I heard it over and over again, and a part of me died because I hate. I don't ever want to seem cliche. And they just, in a rude clip, they just, absolutely, just belittled the use of that phrase over and over and over again. So part of me looked at that and was like, oh, goodness, should we, I don't know, should we? Do we ever use that? Should we not say that anymore? I said, oh. And then I thought more about it and I was like, no, no, that's only trite and played out and cliche. If we say it over and over again but don't actually believe it, if we use it over and over again but don't live like that is true. But if we say it and don't back it up, then, yeah, it's super cringe. But if we actually believe this and own this, then, yeah, we're going to keep using it over and over again. Because being a church family takes investment. Being a family is investing. It's this Acts 2 devotion devoted to one another, which you see in these relationships that they have as they go deeper with one another throughout the book of acts. So we want to be a church that pursues deep, genuine relationships with others and the Mill City family.And the next part says, through committing to regular participation in Sunday gatherings and a community group. Okay, let's tackle that one at a time. Tackle groups first. Committing to community groups, y', all, groups are not just an event that you put into your calendar. We say this quite a bit. It's not just a thing, a programmatic thing that you go to. No, your group is the people that you journey through life with. It's the localized expression of family in the church. So you walk side by side with and sure, we do. We have a time that is helpful for all the family. For us in our groups to come together. We have a group meeting time that we come to once a week, and that's good for us to do. To practice the rhythms that the early church practiced. Says they devote themselves to the apostles teaching, to studying God's Word. They devoted themselves to prayer. They devoted themselves to a fellowship meal. We want to do that. And that's what our groups do. They come together once a week and they eat a meal together, which is incredibly valuable. It is good for us to come together and eat a meal together. There's something that God has designed in eating a meal with someone else that brings depth and connection, that builds relationship that is valuable.If you bring your dishes, you're bringing a bit of your personality. So if you volunteer boldly to take the Mac and cheese for the week and you don't bring this wonderful creamy casserole esque, but not over the top, like just simplistically wonderful, tasteful Mac and cheese, and you, like, throw a bunch of lobster in it and stuff, that just doesn't belong there, then we know some things about you. We've gathered some things that honestly probably should change with sanctification over time in the context of community. So there's a little your personality that comes, but also you just in conversation over a meal. This is universal. Have you ever traveled the world? People sit down together, even more so than Western culture, because sometimes we treat it like it's a substance to be consumed and not an opportunity to enjoy someone else across the table. But it's a universal experience to come to sit down and to talk and tell jokes and to laugh and to hug and to even cry like that. There's something that God has built in that. So we have that, that built into our groups. We're gonna eat a meal, and we're also gonna study the Word together.We're gonna open up the Bible. And one of the things that I so deeply appreciate is that I can spend all week in a text studying it, getting to know it, putting together a sermon, and I can preach that text and I can show up to group. And then all of a sudden, when we have our time together and we're studying the Word, I'll hear someone say something that I didn't catch after hours and hours and hours and hours of being in it. And I love that that happens to all of us. When you study the Word. We should study the Word, as we said last week, privately. But we also. We're meant to do this corporately so that when you open up the scriptures together you're going to hear how the Spirit worked through this person to grab that insight, and you're going to go, oh, that's a wonderful. That's a wonderful interpretation. I hadn't heard that. I didn't see that. So we study the word together and it sharpens us and it grows us together. And then we pray together. Though our groups, we should pray and grow in praying together.My wife and I, we led groups for a decade, and a couple years ago, we transitioned out of group leading and I got to be a part of a group. And our last group leaders did this so well that at any given time, they just stop and pray. Not just someone share something difficult and then move on from it. Not even just share something difficult and do what is actually good too, which is to give good news before you give good advice, but actually to just stop and pray. And they stopped and prayed multiple times. And I've so appreciated that as an aspect of life, to just stop and actually pray. Not to just say, I'm gonna pray for that, but to pause and just say, let's pray right now. So we pray together and we practice these practices as a group. But again, it's not just something that we do at a meeting time. It flows out of that, that we're texting each other, that we're getting together, hang out afterwards, that we're living life together. Groups of the people that you belong to. And it's essential, so essential that we, as a church, run our membership through groups like, you cannot become a member of this church unless you belong to a group.And what happens over time is that as you have your people in your group and it is your people, like this is your people that you rock through the most difficult times, that they come alongside you, and then you get the opportunity to do the same thing with them that as you live with them over time, eventually, God willing, in the next, you know, a couple of years, like, your group's going to multiply. And that's always bittersweet. It's exciting because it creates more opportunity for space for new people, but also it's sad because you're not going to be seeing them every week, but you do that a couple of times as you belong to this church for a few years, and all of a sudden you've built genuine depth with a variety of people in different parts of the church. So that when you come here on Sundays, you see each other, and it's just wonderful. But our groups are essential. And if you have been coming around for a little bit and you are not plugged into a group, please, like we say this every week and we, we want you to stop by our connect table. We want to talk to you about our groups because this is where you get to see the goodness of the gospel lived outside by side in life together.So we commit to groups that's valuable and important for us to live out the implications of the gospel and also committing to Sundays. Let's talk about that for a moment.Hebrews chapter 10 says,> And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.So our church is a collection of community groups, but those aren't individual house churches. That's not how we practice. The other churches that do that, that's fine. We don't. Those aren't individual house churches. There are community groups. So in order for us to Collectively Obey Hebrews 10, we do what the church has done for 2000 years. And all of our community groups come together here for a few hours on Sunday morning where we come and we fellowship and we remember and celebrate like we just did about how good Jesus Christ is. So that's what we do. We come together on Sundays in the tradition of the church for the last 2000 years. And we also live out the teachings of the New Testament on what the church is supposed to do when we come together.Colossians chapter three says,> Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.So that's the command, Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. And then the unpacking of how the Word of Christ dwells in us richly is teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Which means that when we come together in order for the word of Christ to dwell in us richly, someone stands up here after spending time in the text and prayerfully discerning how this is going to apply to our people. And they teach and we sing songs together like we just did. Psalms, hymns, spiritual songs. And what I appreciate about this is that the understanding here is that yes, that's all primarily to God in worship, but there's a one anothering aspect of that. It says admonishing one another in all wisdom with singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. I appreciate the horizontal nature of worship so that sometimes when I'm singing and if you sit in front of me, sometimes you hear that I'm a loud Singer. And I'm sorry, because there's a reason I'm not doing that. Okay. But sometimes I just, I stop and I just listen. And in a morning like this morning, I just so clearly hear the saints collectively singing joyfully, worshipfully. And that blesses my soul. It's wonderful to hear one another sing to the Lord.But this is what we come to do on Sundays as we continue, as we also have prayers and we fellowship, we spend time together. And so one of the things I love doing is getting here and seeing other people. I love my group, but also seeing people that aren't in my group and seeing people that I love and having times to hug and to laugh and to cut jokes and to also maybe get away and to talk and to cry and to do the things that Christians are called to do. But here's the deal. You can't accomplish any of that if you aren't here on Sundays. You can. There's a reason why I don't look at the camera back there and say, hey, online campus, that's never going to be a thing, ever. We were at times debated, like, should we just, like, not even film this? Like, just. And it's like, no, like, we think this is valuable for those who can't be here. Literally can't be here. You can watch this when you're on vacation. That's. Yeah, it's fine. But we prioritize here, being here together as the church, because it's not just the songs, it's not just the teaching. It's being here and being here early enough to fellowship, which you should do is get here early enough to see one another, not do the express version of just running through this, but actually embracing one another, serving one another. This is valuable. And we want to continue to live this out together as the church.So in groups and on Sundays, that's how we assemble as our church. So I want to focus on this last part that says where I can love and serve others and ensure I am surrounded by people who love Jesus and love me. Okay? So the church gets to do this, Love and serve one another. Now those are a few of the one another commands that we see throughout the New Testament. And there are a lot of them. And because we have to be concise with our commitment, otherwise you just say all the things some of the people that we had, even in this process, people make really helpful, like, what about this and what about that? It's like, yeah, no, that's great. We're trying to make this as concise as Possible, but yes, absolutely. So I could throw in a bunch of one another commands in here. We chose Love and service as kind of the header for all of that. But when you read the rest of the New Testament, you see all of these one another commands. I just want to go through a few of them. Let's start with what we got on the page, which is love one another. Should love one another, which means knowing how people are loved and truly loving them.There are folks in this church who know that I love baked goods. They know I love sweets because they know I love a sweet tooth. And they love me because they bring things that are baked and wonderful. And that's some version of that with so many other people. This happens over and over and over again. What I love is that as a pastor, I get to see all of that. Not all of it, but a lot of it, at a bigger view. And I get to see all these examples of how people love each other in profound ways. And part of it is like, I want other people to know this. I want to be able to tell them. But then there's a little bit of like, yeah, I know, but we're called to do all of this. Not the left know what the right hand is doing. And we need to do things in a way that's for the glory of God, not for ourselves. I get all that, which is why we don't publish all of that. But boy, oh, boy, to sit in my seat and to see all the ways that people love one another is amazing.Love one another. And that command goes from the Gospel of John all the way to the end. First John's loaded with it, and they keep going. Serve one another. Galatians 5, 13.> For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.Serving one another. This is you using your gift and your abilities for the service of others. And again, I get to see this all the time. I get to see mechanics who turn a wrench 40 hours a week and would rather not do that once they clock out. Go and fix cars for other people in our church. I see people who build houses and work a trade, go and serve others with their time and their talents. I see people that are gifted in math, sit down with someone who's a kid that's not good at math, which I so would have appreciated growing up, and teach them homework. And that's what we're called to do, is to use how God has gifted you in service and to serve one another. That's not just in the regular Things that happen on Sunday, though, you should do that as well. Specifically Kid City. But also, that happens. And the one another service opportunities that happen regularly, week in, week out, serving one another.It says, live in harmony with one another. Romans 12:16, which is living at peace with one another, which means surrendering sometimes your preferences, because it's not all about you surrendering your preferences for the sake of others to live at peace with one another. Y'. All, I have opinions. If you know me, you know that I have preferences, which, again, if you know me, unfortunately, you probably know that. But I don't get all of my preferences, and I appreciate them. I do. I don't get my preferences on Sunday morning. I get a say in what gets sung. And I don't even get my preferences with all the songs. Every now and then I'm like, you know what? Not my favorite. This is not. But then I hear y' all sing it, and I'm like, boy, oh, boy, praise God. It's not all about me. We shouldn't get our preferences. We should live in harmony with one another. We should live at peace with one another in a way that's consistently yielding in preference for and to one another.We should bear with one another. Ephesians 4:2.> with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.That means being patient with one another even when that person is difficult, which is so valuable. And that's one of the things I appreciate about our church and our groups, is that if you've been in groups long enough, you know, this is that there are some people in your group that if you didn't have Jesus Christ in common, you would never hang out with them, ever. It just. It's just true. You can be in group. I can be in group with someone who's like, I don't really love football. I don't love sports. I don't love music. You know, I'm just like, what? What? What's wrong with you? I mean, I can just go down the list of, like, what are we even going to talk about? And then I have more depth with them than I do with someone who loves football and loves sports and loves hunting and loves all the things that I love, because the most important thing about me is the most important thing about them, and that's Christ. And when you build that kind of depth on him, you realize, oh, like this. This is what's most important. You can be in group with someone who is just difficult. Like, your personality and their personality. It's just. No, it's just like, I don't. You are so different than me. And what I appreciate is that in groups you get to die to your own sin, die to your own selfish desires, and bear with them in patience and love them, even though they are so much different than you.Bear with one another. Be kind to one another. Ephesians 4:32.> Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.To grow in kindness towards one another. Which means that when somebody on the group chat says, hey, will somebody watch my dog while I'm on vacation next week? And you know, their dog is the worst, is the kind of dog that absolutely will cause financial damage to your home and emotional damage to you and your family. You say, yeah, I'll do it absolutely. Because my life is more than my things and my comforts. And I want to be kind to you. Be kind to one another. Forgiving one another. Ephesians 4. 32. To practice forgiveness. Because we say this quite a bit, if you are in groups, if you're a part of our church, at some point sometime you're gonna get your feelings hurt. I have to say that to people I'm in group with that as your pastor, I'm also now side by side in group with you. And at some point I'm going to sin against you. Please do not be shocked. I am a sinner and you're a sinner. It's going to happen because that's what we do outside of the work of Christ in us and the Holy Spirit changing us, we. We are wretched. That's just the truth. So knowing that when it happens, and it will happen, we get to practice what Jesus commands us to do in forgiving one another. So important and so vital that in Matthew 18, that the parable that's given is, if you don't do this, you don't really know. You don't know God, you don't know his forgiveness. So that's what I love in seeing in our church, is people. I can see it. All of a sudden this person and this person have had friction, and then all of a sudden God moves in their heart and they go to a different part of the building and they just talk and they pray and they cry and they hug and they practice what it means to be a Christian and forgiving one another.Do a few more. Encourage one another. First, Thessalonians 4, 18, which, as I saw this week, and thinking about that, how that's directly used there in the verses that lead up to it, in verse 18, is talking about the work of Christ and the return of Christ, which is the gospel, out of the gospel, encourage one another, which that's good news before good advice. You guys, we're doing it. Encourage one another to look at people who are struggling to remind them of who Christ is and how he works, what he has done, and who they are in him. And going out of your way to bring encouragement to those who need it.Bear one another's burdens. Galatians 6:2.> Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.This is something that shows up in our care night content for groups that we should, as Christians, bear one another's burdens. That means y'. All. That means when someone is sharing something that is difficult to listen intently, do not, do not feel like you're being robbed because you don't have the opportunity to speak. Do not feel like you're just biding the time until they get done. Don't be thinking about other things. Don't be trying to move past them, to really sit in front of them and say, yeah, absolutely, I'm so sorry you're struggling with this sin. I'm so thankful that Jesus Christ died for that and he's empowered you to put that to death and I want to help you put that to death. To hear someone who's burying their sufferings and their trials and to just sit with them and to weep with them and to love them.Bear one another's burdens. The church is called to do. And I'll do one more. Outdo one another in honor. Romans 12:10,> Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.which for me, the way I think about this is almost competitive honor. And I see this, I see this in people in our church where they're showing deference here and deference here. And it's. Sometimes a part of me is like, oh, that's nauseating. Just someone just, just take someone, get in line and get the food. And I just like, no, but this is it. We're just showing honor and showing deference and caring about others more than ourselves. But this is what we're called to do as the church, to love and serve one another, growing in these practices together.And it's good for us to be knit like that together with this. When I was in high school, I got to do a trip with my stepdad, went out to California for a two week road trip. We started in Sacramento, we drove to San Francisco, we went down the one to la, but we stopped in a town called Big Sur south of San Francisco and we spent a night there. And there is the edge of the redwood forest. So if you've ever seen redwood trees, they're massive. We don't have these on the east coast, but I mean, any tree like this on the east coast, okay, these things are massive. They're like 300ft tall. They're huge. You look at them just like, whoa. And there's so many of them. And it may surprise you to know that redwood trees actually have a pretty shallow root structure. Like, that's a pretty shallow Beneath the surface root structure. It's not a deep tap root. It's a gigantic, massive tree that just has its roots just below the surface, spread out across the ground. You may wonder, how in the world is something that big, that tall, that massive, how in the world does it stay and stand when wind and rains and floods hit? And the reason is, is that they. They're. They're part of a redwood grove, and beneath the surface is a bunch of redwood roots interconnected, locked together in a system of support that they're tied together in a way that helps them as the. As. As they're growing taller and the seasons are getting harsher, that they're able to bear through storms together because. But no, beneath the surface, they're so deeply locked and interconnected and strengthening one another.And I cannot think of a more beautiful metaphor of what we're called to be as the church, as we serve one another, as we love one another, as we live out the implications of the gospel, to be so deeply knitted together and interlocked together in a way that when life is difficult and when suffering knocks us down and when sin is crouching at the door, that we're so deeply locked together as the church that when it hits, we stand. That when it hits, we might be moved for a moment, but we are built upon the rock that is Christ together in a way that we can get through anything. That's what the church is called to be as we live this out together. And that's why we have this ninth commitment written in the way that we do, that we are about one another, which means we need to be present. Like, it's bad when you're not here. It's bad when you're gone. It's bad when you. It's not just that. At group, if you volunteered to bring the meat for the meal, and then all of a sudden you just like, 10 minutes out say, God, I can't make it today. Busy. It's not just now we have to eat cheese tacos, which is the word, is that. No, like you, the Spirit works in you in a beautiful way that when you're not present, that's missing. It's not just that your seat is empty on Sunday. It's that the spirit works in you in a unique way, that when you're missing, it's lacking. We're called to be this together, and that takes devotion and commitment.So let me read number nine. Altogether, I will pursue deep, genuine relationships with others in the Mill City family through committing to regular participation in Sunday gatherings and a community group where I can love and serve others and ensure I am surrounded by people who love Jesus and love me.So as we as a church are considering in this recommitment process, as we're looking through all of this again, I want you to ask yourself, I want us to ask, am I committed to pursuing deep, genuine relationships? Am I committed to this? Am I hiding things from my life? Am I hiding the real me? Am I actually committed to pursuing deep, genuine relationships even when it is hard and sometimes it's hard? Am I committed to being here on Sundays? Am I committed to being here and worshiping y'? All? We have older saints that literally break bones and are just hobbling in here on Sunday because they see the value in this. They see how important it is. And at times when it's raining outside and it's cold, I just know I'm like, we're gonna have less numbers today. And it sometimes bears to be true. And I'm like, no, it's the rain. Am I committed to being here even though it's difficult? And we have the caveat, y', all, for those that are homebound and cannot be here, they literally cannot be here. We have the caveat for those who work jobs, they just literally cannot get out of the trying or they have an essential job. We have the caveat for those that are. That are ministering elsewhere on a Sunday morning, but that is a small, small minority. The rest of us should be committed. Let's commit at times for some of us, course correct. And being here on Sundays, am I committed to being to the people in my group? Am I committed to my people? Do I see the value in driving across town for our group meeting time, to actually showing up to the hangout times that we schedule at different times? Am I committed to actually reading the messages that come through on my phone and praying for that person? Am I committed to being a part of my group?And I'll tell you, one of the things I tell folks that are going through difficult periods of time, they're struggling with Suffering or sin or brokenness, anxiety, depression, lust, et cetera, is that at some point you've got to, as you are fighting sin, pick your head up and not just look at yourself, but look at the people that are around you. Because part of our spiritual health is developed through one another in and that happens mostly through groups. Am I committed to groups? Am I committed to loving and serving one another? Am I committed to the practices that God has called me to practice? About a year ago at a family meeting, Chet printed out all the one another commands. And then our group leaders at the time, I think they made a magnet of all of that and gave it to us and putting it on the fridge and seeing these over and over again was just so helpful and so encouraging to see this is what Jesus calls us to be. And I get to, by the power of the Holy Spirit, live these out even when it is difficult.So all of this, all of this is difficult and it cuts against the grain of culture, a culture that's so drunk on itself and the betterment of self. This is difficult. But if the gospel is true and if Jesus is alive and he is, it's worth it. It's worth the effort. It's worth from the hope of the gospel leveraging our lives for the sake of him and one another.Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you might help us live out the implications of the good news that you came to save sinners and call them into a church that belongs to you to declare the excellencies of you who called us out of darkness into marvelous light and God. I pray that that you would help us see the value of that. I pray that there are folks here that do not belong to a church. I pray they would see the importance of trusting in you as their Savior and belonging to a church. I pray that there's anyone here that is hurting and suffering from bad experiences in the past. They would not grow in cynicism or fear, but they would take a leap of faith and belong. And that in all of us. You would grow in us a radical belief in the hope of the resurrection that empowers us to. To be not about ourselves, but about one another. In Jesus name, Amen.We're going to come and we're going to close and sing and one final song. As I said earlier, may we be a people that as we worship, we worship joyfully. That may our souls be ministered to as we sing and as we listen and as we worship.

Re:Member Core Practices I

University Christian Church Sermons

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 12, 2025

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week. TranscriptGood morning, My name is Spencer, I'm one of the pastors here. We're going to be mostly in Acts chapter two today. So you have a Bible. You can turn there now we're going to be in verses 36 through 42. We are in our series called Remember. This is an opportunity for our church to remember and rediscover our membership, commitment and the 14 statements that we commit to as a church. The first seven of those that we've walked through in the last month are the essential elements of the gospel. It's what we believe. Over the last month, as we walked through the seven commandments, we saw that because the triune God of the Bible saw humanity in sin and on a path to hell. God the Father sent Jesus Christ the Son to die on the cross and to rise from the grave to give us faith through grace, sealing us with the Holy Spirit to advance the kingdom until Christ comes to make all things new. So that's the summary of the seven statements and that's the summary of the gospel. That's our hope. And every commitment that we're going to walk through, we're going to take these week by week now, one by one. Every commitment that we're about to walk through, the things that we commit to doing as the church flow out of that hope, meaning that the gospel remains central to the works that God is called to walk in. And that's what we're gonna see over the next seven weeks as we walk through these.So my son got a birthday gift. I want to grab it and show it to you. He got a birthday gift a couple about two months ago. It's a circuit board. You ever seen these? So he's 8 and he got a circuit board at 8. I was not getting stuff like this because I do not have the mind of my son. He has a mathematical mind in ways that I do not. So he's been taking this. It's got a power source here. And then basically it teaches electricity. So you do a bunch of different designs, a bunch of different circuits. It powers a bunch of different things. And he's been playing with this. And the other day he came downstairs and he was messing with it. He said, hey, it's not working. You can tell he'd spent a lot of time messing with the different circuits and the different designs, getting to do different things and just it's not working. And then he finally, he figured it out. He said, I think the batteries are dead. I was like, oh, but he's eight and he doesn't have the dexterity to pull these out. So I, being the hero father that I was, pried out the old batteries and put the new ones in and then, boom, flipped it on and it was working again. But it's neat. He's been playing with this, and it's been engaging his mind in a lot of different ways. But one of the things that I thought of as I was thinking through the remainder of this sermon series is that if you put all the coolest, neatest designs on this board, it's a fan that attaches to it. It has something that spins off the top. There's all types of neat designs. If you put all the different designs on here, but the batteries aren't working, this is pointless. This is powerless. And the reality is that as we walk through the rest of these commitments, we can have all the neatest and nicest language to talk about the church that we think we're called to be. But if the Gospel isn't central to what we're doing and what we're seeking to live out, it is as dead as a circuit board that doesn't work. It is pointless. It is powerless that all the things that we seek to be as a gospel center and community on mission, if they're not empowered by the Gospel, it is all meaningless and pointless. So what I want us to consider as we walk through each of these commitments is that though these are things that God has called us to be, the Gospel has to still be central. And God empowers us by the power of the Holy Spirit and belief in the Gospel to live out the implications of what it means to be a Christian belonging to a church.So I'm going to read this 8th commitment with that in mind. And then each week as we read these, the hope is we will continue to remember this as we walk through it. Let me read this eighth commitment. Having placed faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord and been baptized as a believer, I will seek to foster my personal relationship with him, allowing the Gospel to saturate every aspect of my life. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would help us as we seek to understand what it means to live out the calling that you've called us as Christians and this church. God, I pray that you would help us as we seek to understand this from the understanding that all this is empowered by you and faith in you. So God help us understand this as we walk through your scriptures in Jesus name. Amen.All right, so we're going to weave in and out of Acts 2 as we look at this commitment. I'm going to start off in verse 36, but before I do, let me give some context for we're jumping straight into the second chapter of Acts before this. The book of Acts is the early Acts of the Church. Jesus completes his work after the resurrection. He ascends to the right hand of God the Father. And then the Holy Spirit descends, the third member of the Trinity upon the church. And the church begins in Acts 2. And one of the first things that happens is that Peter preaches the Gospel. There's a crowd of thousands of people that he preaches to. I'm preaching from the book of Joel, connecting it to the work of Christ. And this is how he ends his sermon.> Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. (Acts 2:36, ESV)Peter highlights the reality that though we and those people, some of them there, were not at the cross, they were not the ones shouting for Jesus to be crucified. We, because of our sin, are the ones who put Jesus on the cross. Someone had to pay the penalty for sin. Jesus Christ stands in the way for us. That's what he's highlighting here. And then he says in verse 37,> Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" (Acts 2:37, ESV)So that's the work of the gospel. That message cut their heart. That's the work of belief. They heard the Gospel. They heard about Christ whom they had crucified, and it cut them to the heart. And they're responding in faith. This is what happens when you hear the gospel message, when the Holy Spirit works in our heart to remove the heart of stone and create a heart of flesh to bring us to new life in Christ to be born again. This is the work of what's happening here. Everything we walked through the last month as we looked at the seven commitments, the gospel at work in us changes us. And that's what happens to this crowd of people. And then they respond. Verse 38.> And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself." (Acts 2:38–39, ESV)> And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, "Save yourselves from this crooked generation." (Acts 2:40, ESV)> So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. (Acts 2:41, ESV)So what we see here is they hear the Gospel, God works in their heart, they believe. And then he says, repent and be baptized. And that right there is the clear pattern that is established in the New Testament. Believe the Gospel, repent and be baptized. So our commitment says, having placed faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord, and been baptized as a believer, we want to believe the Gospel and in response to that belief, enter into baptism. This is what we believe as believers.Baptism. Baptism for us is a holy sign. Holy meaning set apart. Set apart in a unique way. It's a sign. It means it points to something else, a symbol that points to something else. The baptism is a holy sign that points to the inward change of belief when someone places their faith fully in Christ and they are changed by Him. It is the symbol that says that we are brought from death to life, from old to. Some of the language we use when we do baptisms regularly is it's an outward sign of an inward reality. The baptism doesn't save us. The act doesn't save us, but it declares we already are saved because of what Christ has done in our hearts, that we have trusted in him for our forgiveness of sins and he's covered us. And baptism gets to point to that. And the people hear this. And 3,000 plus people respond to faith in Jesus Christ and are baptized. And what happens here is really the installation. This is the installation of baptism as the ordained practice of just demonstrating that you believe in Jesus Christ. Sometimes we'll call it an ordinance. This is something God has commanded us to do as a holy sign that points to the Gospel and other traditions. It's also called a sacrament. And I'm actually fine with that language as long as we don't take it to the Roman Catholic understanding of sacrament that this is a holy symbol and sign that points to the inward change that has happened in our hearts. And that's the order of what happens in the rest of the Book of Acts. You believe the Gospel and then you respond in.This goes back to the Great Commission. When Jesus commissions his disciples, he says,> Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. (Matthew 28:19–20, ESV)So Peter does this. He preaches the gospel, he makes disciples, and then they enter into the waters and are baptized. And that is the process for the rest of the Book of Acts. Let me hit just a few passages in the rest of the Book of Acts. As you see the Acts of the early church In Acts chapter 8 it says,> But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. (Acts 8:12, ESV)Philip is evangelizing to the Ethiopian eunuch. It says,> Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. And as they went along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, "See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?" And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. (Acts 8:35–38, ESV)He hears the gospel, he believes, and he enters into the waters and he's baptized. The apostle Paul, formerly known as Saul, when he trusts in Christ, after Christ blinds him on the road to Damascus. It says in Acts 9,> And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptized. (Acts 9:18, ESV)Scales fell from Saul's eyes, which is his physical regaining sight. But also it points to the inward reality, what's happened in him, that he has eyes to see and believe. And it says he got up and was baptized. Belief, then baptism. This is what Paul inspired by the Holy Spirit in Romans chapter six is getting at when he says in verses three and four,> Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:3–4, ESV)That as we come to faith in Christ and we enter into the waters, it's this picture of we were once dead in sin. That's all we baptized literally just means. The Greek word baptizo just means washing immerse in water. And the picture is that you are dead in sin, you come alive in Christ, picturing what has happened in our lives when we trust in him. So that's what we do. We practice. We reference this Romans 6 passage. Even when we are doing baptisms. And it's fun and it's awesome, we love baptism. That's why it's a celebration when we do baptism. If you haven't been here for baptism Sunday, it's serious. We take it seriously. We don't make light of it, but it is not somber, it's celebratory. It isn't toned down. We celebrate what God has done and we clap and we sing and we celebrate. We listen to testimonies. We're moved to tears because baptism is a wonderful, beautiful declaration of how Jesus saves sinners. So that's how we practice baptism in our church. And if you've been a part of our, if you're a member of this church, we've talked about this as making this addition to our membership commitment to clarify our beliefs on this, that we believe in believer's baptism. Now that is different than infant baptism. And if you have questions about that, because we believe in believers baptism, that you place your faith in Christ and then are baptized. But if you have a background like I did, I was sprinkled as a child, you might have questions about what does that mean? How do Presbyterians and Lutherans and, and Episcopalians and other people understand this? We did a whole YouTube podcast called Overtime. It's on our YouTube page for stuff that we don't have time for in the sermon. We'll spend some time in our recording studio downstairs. So Chet and I this week spent some time talking about this and went deep into the subject of baptism. So if you want to know more about that and how that differs from infant baptism and our beliefs on this and really some of the history of how this came about, I would encourage you to listen to that. It will be posted today alongside the sermon.But this is what we believe that having placed faith in Jesus Christ, we are baptized, declaring the work that Christ has done in us. And the next part of this commitment is I will seek to foster my personal relationship with him, allowing the gospel to saturate every aspect of my life. Let me focus on this one part. I will seek to foster my personal relationship with him because Christ has saved us. We get to be in a personal relationship with him. We get to actually know our God, our God. Hear this. He is not a distant deity that from afar demands, works to appease him. Our God is imminent. He's near, he's with us. And he wants us to know him in relationship. And it's good to know someone in relationship and to have the intimacy that's bound up in that, to actually have depth in relationship with someone. Like if you've ever been, have you ever had a really good friendship with someone where all of a sudden you and your friend are in a situation and you both hear a Phrase, just a phrase. And both of you look at each other because that points back to like an inside joke from years ago. And then all of a sudden, like it's a serious situation, so you're trying to keep it together, but you're like both looking at each other. And then you can't look at each other because if you look at each other too long, you're both going to crack up laughing. Listen, those type of friendships are wonderful, but they come through depth. They come through time and investment. Like the type of depth that you see in a relationship between a child and their mother. Some children, they just know their parents so well, they know their mother so well that they know the right phrase they can use just to make them smile. That's depth and that's wonderful. You see it in marriages sometimes that there's. In marriage, sometimes you can have a whole conversation with your spouse without saying a word. I mean, I've been there where all of a sudden the kids are acting crazy and she sees my face and I'm getting stirred up, like I'm about to take one of these out back. I'm about to handle this right now. And then she looks at me and she's like, no, don't. And I'm like, mm, this is about to happen. And then it turns to like a pleading look, like, please don't. We're at my parents house, like they're tired. Like, just, we're about to leave. Can you just like wait until we get out of the house? Like you can have a whole conversation with just looks, but you don't get there without the depth that you've created within that relationship. And it takes time and that takes investment. That takes knowing the other person. If you decided to date someone tomorrow, and then as a part of, you know, the first couple weeks of dating, you just said, hey, look, I've only got about 15, 20 minutes a week for you. We can do that all in one day, like on a Friday, or I can space that out throughout the week. You know, five minutes here, five minutes here, five minutes here. But you kind of choose your own adventure in this. You will be single indefinitely. Because that's not how relationships work. But the reality is that we often will treat our relationship with God like that, where it's just, let me carve out some time. I give you five minutes here, five minutes there. And that's not how we create the depth that God wants from us. God desires us to be in relationship with him. And the more we get to know him, the More wonderful, we see how the goodness of his glory and his attributes and all types of things. Jesus Christ in his ministry in the Gospels makes this appeal over and over again. I'll just give you a few examples.> Abide in me, and I in you. (John 15:4, ESV)He looks at his followers and says, abide in me. Live in me and I will abide in you. I will live. I'll remain in you like a branch that flows out of the vine. He says, let's have this together. Then in the Gospel of Matthew, he looks at people who are struggling. He says,> Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28, ESV)Then In John chapter 10, he says,> I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me. (John 10:14, ESV)and that's a wonderful picture as a shepherd knows his sheep, and the sheep know the voice of their shepherd. We've been in stressful situations with your child and all of a sudden they're in a crowd and they can't find you and you can't find them. But you hear their cry and then your child hears your voice. It's distinct because you know each other. And that's what Christ is saying, like, I know my sheep, my sheep know me. And that's a wonderful invitation that Christ gives over and over again. Our God wants to know for us to know Him. Our God desires us to have an intimate knowledge of Him. But the reality is that we will fill our days with lesser things. When the invitation is there for us to know God, we will pour ourselves into things that do not matter. And the reality is that God wants to be the central moving force in our lives. He wants to be the power source for all the different circuits that flow out of Him. He wants us to know Him. And that's a wonderful invitation. And that's precisely why when the people who hear the sermon at Pentecost from Peter and they place their faith in him and they're baptized, the very next act that we see that they do picks up in verse 42. Here's the response.> And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (Acts 2:42, ESV)They sought to know their God. The word is devotion. Devotion. They devoted themselves. They wanted to know God. And there are a few different ways to get listed here. The apostles teaching. This would have been the teachings of Christ that eventually come to be the Gospels. So this is the scriptures that's being pictured here. The breaking of bread and fellowship. This is the fellowship meals they had together would have included the Lord's Supper and prayer. The humbling of ourselves to be dependent upon the Lord through constant communication for him, to him and with him, for every need in our lives. So next week we'll look more at the one anothering that kind of shows up in this breaking of bread and the community that's bound up in that. And that's a wonderful way to know God together. But I want to focus on two of devotion to the apostles teaching, that's devotion to the Word of God and devotion to prayer. Constant communication with God. I want to spend the most of our time left on those two things.Listen, there are other ways to know God. There are other disciplines. The means of knowing God, worship and singing, fasting, evangelism, silence and solitude, serving the other means of knowing God. But the Word of God and prayer become foundational in the pursuit of actually knowing who our God is. So in fostering a personal relationship, let's focus on that first one, knowing him and His Word. J.I. packer, a theologian, he once wrote a book called Knowing God, which is an excellent book. And in this book he starts off by saying this. He says, for knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a person's heart. That the design of relationship with God is to thrill us to provide maximum enjoyment. He goes on to say, what happens is that the almighty Creator, the Lord of hosts, the great God before whom the nations are as a drop in the bucket, comes to you and begins to talk to you through the words and truths of Holy Scripture. Perhaps you've been acquainted with the Bible and Christian truth for many years and it has meant little to you. But one day you wake up to the fact that God is actually speaking to you you through the biblical message that many of us may be familiar with the Bible may have touch points with it here and there, but what he's pushing on is that God has designed the relationship with him to thrill our soul. And when you begin to understand that fully and how God has revealed Himself in His Word, that these don't just become verses or lessons or life stories or morals or anything. They just become. They're not just disconnected lessons to help us learn facts, but they're actually an opportunity, an opportunity and a medium to know him, to know the God who made all things out of nothing. It is an opportunity to know our God, which when we think about that, I want us to reflectively consider how we spend our days, how we spend each day in light of the opportunity to know God through His Word that many of us will wake up and in the early morning moments, we have the opportunity to look to the Lord, to spend time with him, to meet him in His Word, but how quickly we've trained ourselves to jump to our phones and jump to Instagram or sports scores or anything else. But we have this opportunity to meet with him in His Word. And that's one thing we teach in our church, is that you should set aside time daily to meet with God, to read His Scriptures, to think deeply upon the Scriptures in the morning. And there are some people that's literally just not possible. They cannot wake up early enough, they cannot carve out the time, and they make time in the day later on. But the overwhelming majority of us can make the time in the morning to meet with him, to know him in His Word. And then what we like to push on as well, is not just to take a few minutes in the morning and then we've segmented that off and we've moved on to the rest of our day. But what we teach is also meditation upon His Word. Christian meditation is thinking deeply upon God as He's revealed in His Word. And the invitation is not just to have 10 minutes in the morning, but to think deeply upon God throughout the day, to enjoy him as the day goes on. As Psalm 34 says,> Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! (Psalm 34:8, ESV)The Word of God is not meant to be. Hear this. It's not meant to be a granola bar that you quickly unwrap and that you devour and that you discard and you move on from. The Word of God is meant to be like one of those giant jawbreakers, remember those from childhood, like the size of a baseball. The Word of God is meant to be like one of those. Got one of those as a kid, and it was a good time for weeks. You could just sit and savor every layer of it slowly and slowly and slowly. And that's what the Word of God is supposed to be to us, something that we slowly savor throughout the day, all our days. Psalm 1 gives a picture of this. The very first Psalm begins,> But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. (Psalm 1:2, ESV)that we should consider the invitation that we have to delight in the law. The law is just another way of saying the word of God, to delight in His Word day and night, throughout the day, from morning to evening, to delight in God through thinking deeply about His Word. And we cannot do that if we apportion 15 minutes of segmented off, just different set aside. But it doesn't actually build depth in a way that builds throughout our days.Now this means regularly coming to the Lord. What I fear is, and I felt this, I felt this, that the easy distractions of entertaining ourselves to death on things that do not matter, the empty, vapid, worthless pursuits of spending hours of our week on things that do not matter on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and Netflix and podcasts and sports and all types of things, when we have the living God who wants us to know him, that we should take an accounting of this, we should consider what has become our primary hope, where our primary energy is gone. And then we should look at our God and how wonderful he is and then repent and to change and to turn back to him and recommit. Yes, I want to end this season, recommit to personal relationship with Christ. And as we take the Lord's Supper in a moment, you'll have the opportunity to be thankful that we have a Savior who continually calls us into that.And we should be a people of word and a people of prayer as we seek to foster a personal relationship with him. Because God is wonderful and he's worthy of our time and our attention, and we just. We have to see these as means to knowing the God, the infinitely wonderful, amazing God. Like, if you could get 30 minutes with your favorite person in history, your favorite celebrity, how excited would you be? How thrilled would you be? Like, as a kid, if you told me I could have 30 minutes with Peyton Manning, I'd have been stoked, because I loved Peyton Manning. He was my hero. I watch him playing football games. I'm like, he's the best. And then he'd be in commercials. I'm like, he's the funniest. And then he'd be in the game again. He's the best. If I could just have 30 minutes to just hear about his greatness. What I've been thrilled and the reality is, is that we have that regular opportunity that is given to us to meet with God, who is infinitely better than Peyton Manning, who's infinitely better than any being we could meet with. May we be thrilled to meet with our God like this. This is what our God calls us into. I will seek to foster my personal relationship with him. Him allowing the gospel to saturate every aspect of my life.That's what I want to end with, allowing the gospel to saturate every aspect of my life. One of the ways that we talk about this regularly is the language of gospel fluency. If you've been a part of our church for any given period of time, you've probably heard it. It's like the greatest hits of Mill City. We use gospel fluency a lot because it's wonderful. And the idea is like, my two youngest children are in a Spanish immersion program, which means that all their math and science is taught exclusively in Spanish. When I say exclusively in Spanish, I mean that's it. I go to parent teacher conferences and they don't speak English. And I'm like, uh huh, yeah, sure, sounds great. I've seen my son approach his teacher outside at the doctor's office and she did not break character. She knows English, she just spoke Spanish. Because they're trying to help them be fluent in Spanish. And the goal is by middle school they'll begin to start to think in Spanish, start to process in Spanish. In fact, I've heard that it's hard for them once they get to middle school to learn math from an English speaking teacher because they've just so thought of numbers in Spanish. And the idea of fluency is that you think in a language, you process in a language, you understand reality in that language, you can even dream in that language. And the picture of gospel fluency is that we be so fluent in the gospel, we so know it deeply in our soul. The way that we process our very days, the way we understand every given situation in life, is through the lens of the gospel. And the reason why it's important to be saturated every aspect of us by the good news of a Savior who came and rescued us. The reason why that's so unbelievably important is because it becomes so vital and necessary for every aspect of life, including all of the difficult ones. So that when you suffer, you're not caught off guard. That when you enter a time of suffering that you just are so fluid. In the Gospel, you know, I know that this isn't. This is painful and this stinks. But God is good. And he's purposed suffering in ways I can't fully understand. But I know that. That he has done this in a way that is for my good. That when you enter into temptation, when sin makes itself enticing and appealing to your flesh, that you have this personal relationship with Christ that's so saturated your soul that you just as soon as it begins, you're just like, I know that my flesh wants this, it desires this. But I also know that Christ is better. And I believe that Jesus is better. And not only did I believe Jesus is better than this sin, I also know that Jesus knows what this feels like because he was tempted by Satan in the wilderness. And Hebrews 4 teaches me that he was tempted as I am, and he can sympathize with this. And I will choose him over my sin. That when death comes and hits us square in the face in ways we did not imagine, we're so fluent in the gospel that we just have this eternal mindset that says, I know this is painful, but I also know this is not the way it will be. That when we enter into conflict and we're dealing with conflict in life, that we're fluent in the Gospel in a way that knows that I am going to act like a Christian and I'm not going to just win to get my way here. I'm not just going to try to defeat the other person in the room. That I'm going to do the work of taking out the plank of my own eye so I can see the speck in theirs. And I'm going to reconcile with them. Because that's what Christ calls me to. That when we go through seasons where we experience betrayal, when we experience betrayal or get stabbed in the back or get abandoned or hurt by those we love, we're so fluent that we know that Christ knows what this feels like because he knows what it feels like to have one of his followers who be cared for for three years, sell him out for 20 pieces of silver. That he knows what it's like to have 10 of his friends abandon him and have only one of them stand at the cross. When we're fluent in the gospel and this becomes how we think and how we live, we can handle every aspect of life. We should consider this as individuals. Next Week, we'll spend more time on what it means to consider this as a community. Because it's not just a private journey, it's a corporate journey. It's together. The picture of all of us seeking to be gospel fluent, seeking us to know God individually, but collectively together, leaning on one another as the church as we leave lean on Christ, who is our rock.But as we close out, let me make this final appeal. I want to talk to the members of our church as we do this remembering as we do our recommitment. I want us to look at this. I want us to consider what it means to place that having placed faith in Jesus, Savior and Lord, and been baptized as a believer, I will seek hear this commitment. I will seek to foster my personal relationship with him, allowing the gospel to saturate every aspect of life, my life. To do that, to really consider and take an accounting of our own souls and consider, are we doing this? I felt this. I felt this. That the easy distractions of entertaining ourselves to death on things that do not matter, the empty, vapid, worthless pursuits of spending hours of our week on things that do not matter on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and Netflix and podcasts and sports and all types of things, when we have the living God who wants us to know him, that we should take an accounting of this, we should consider what has become our primary hope, where our primary energy is gone. And then we should look at our God and how wonderful he is and then repent and to change and to turn back to him and recommit. Yes, I want to end this season, recommit to personal relationship with Christ. And as we take the Lord's Supper in a moment, you'll have the opportunity to be thankful that we have a Savior who continually calls us into that.But if. Let me make this last appeal. If you do not have a personal relationship with Christ, if Christianity, if church, if Jesus has always been a mere part of your life, someone you can pick up at some point certain seasons and put away, pick up at certain parts of the week and put away. But you've never actually had this personal relationship I want you to hear so clearly this morning. You are missing out on what it means to have a personal relationship with the God of all joy and beauty and wonder and goodness and glory. And he desires you. He desires you to know Him. And as we take the Lord's Supper in a moment, do not come to the table, but come to start a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you might help us remember what it means to have you in our lives in a way that would compel us back to seeing you as worthy of devotion, so that you might saturate every aspect of our being. For some in this room, that's going to come through faith for the first time. Faith and surrendering to you. For others of us, it's gonna be the joy of repentance, the joy of going to our groups this week and being honest about where we've spent our best energy, where we spend our best moments in the day and our best thoughts and returning to you. But God, we pray you go to work in our hearts in Jesus name. Amen.We're gonna take the Lord's Supper. I wanna read from Mark 14:22, 25 to prepare our hearts to read receive the Lord's Supper.> And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, "Take; this is my body." And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God." (Mark 14:22–25, ESV)If you're a Christian, you get to come to the table remembering this sign that points to the gospel that Jesus Christ's body was broken and his blood was shed so that we could have joy and delight and satisfaction through relationship with him. So as you remember your sin and you remember the ways we need to repent joyfully, come to the table remembering our Savior. But if you have not trusted in Christ right now where you sit, I want you to bow your head and I want you to pray and I want you to humble yourself before the Lord and ask to start a relationship with him by trusting that he died on the cross for your sins, by trusting that he conquered death for you at the resurrection and starting anew with him. But when you're ready, come to the table.

September 28th, 2025

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 29, 2025 28:24

As we wrap up our series on our Core Practices, Jeremiah shares how the practice of developing patient rhythms that reflect the life of Jesus can help lead us toward justice.

jesus christ core practices

September 14th, 2025

University Christian Church Sermons

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 18, 2025 25:09

What does it mean to seek reconciliation in a world wracked by division? In part 2 of our Core Practices series, Jeremiah shares how reconciliation begins with God and calls us to unity.

god core practices

Created For Community | Core Practices Pt. 3 | Pastor Adam Haugen

Glad Tidings Church - Leander Campus

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 17, 2025 39:57

God never intended for us to walk through life alone. From the very beginning, He created us for community—a place to belong, to be known, and to grow together in faith. In this week's message, Pastor Adam Haugen unpacks the beauty and challenge of biblical community.It's more than attending a service; it's a gathering of grace, healing, and mission. Just as the early church met daily to pray, share meals, and encourage one another, we too are called to live in authentic connection. Discover why community is God's plan for shaping us into His image and how you can step into deeper, life-giving relationships today.

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Our Core Practices Part Two

Andrew Tootell's Ordinary Mind Zen Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 17, 2025 23:36

In this talk I discuss the principle of the middle way. In particular, the middle way between self and no-self and the middle way through the absolute and the relative. After establishing that our self, just as it is, is already Buddha nature, I discuss how difficult it can be to recognise this. The talk reflects on the preciousness of our impermanent and interdependent, self which arises in relation to other selves. It focuses on the importance of cultivating a healthy self and healthy relationships, on the basis of safety, trust, recognition, reliability and the willingness to mend that which can be mended. See part one here: https://soundcloud.com/ordinary-mind-zen/our-core-practices-part-one-by-sono

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Prayers That Aligns | Core Practices pt 2 | Pastor Adam Haugen

Glad Tidings Church - Leander Campus

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 10, 2025 47:37

Prayer isn't just something we do—it's the heartbeat of our relationship with God. But too often, we treat prayer like a wish list, a spare tire, or a spiritual checklist. In this message, Pastor Adam Haugen unpacks what prayer is not, why it matters, and how it aligns our hearts to God's will instead of trying to bend Him to ours. With humor, personal stories, and biblical truth, you'll discover how to make prayer a regular, life-giving rhythm—and why surrender is the key to hearing from God.

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Wired to Worship | Core Practices pt 1 | Pastor Adam Haugen

Glad Tidings Church - Leander Campus

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 3, 2025 38:58

We were made to worship. But in the absence of the holy, we often chase the hype—filling our lives with things that can't truly satisfy. In this message, Pastor Adam Haugen challenges us to see worship not as a song we sing, but as a sacrifice we live. Discover how worship transforms our minds, refocuses our hearts, and realigns our lives to the One who is worthy of it all.

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Our Core Practices Part One

Andrew Tootell's Ordinary Mind Zen Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 20, 2025 46:47

In this talk I will show how our practice principles can be translated into our core practices that I have inherited from Joko Beck, and in particular, from my teacher Barry Magid. The core practices to be covered in this talk are: 1. Just-Sitting. 2. Becoming aware of our curative fantasies and core beliefs and at the same time, cultivating an increasing capacity for self-acceptance.

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#206 Biohacking 2.0 vs 3.0: High Performance Practices for Superconscious Flow State, Stress & More | Dr. Mark Atkinson @ The School of Biohacking

Mind Body Peak Performance

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2025 70:03

Wondering why your performance plateaus despite doing all the “right” things? Dr. Mark Atkinson joins Nick Urban to lay out the difference between short-term fixes & long-term bioharmonized health. We'll be covering nervous system regulation, flow states without substances, stress alchemy, & what high performers miss when they only focus on physical optimization. In this episode, get actionable strategies to rewire your system from the inside out Meet our guest Dr. Mark Atkinson, MBBS, BSc (Hons), FRSPH is a globally respected integrative & functional medicine doctor, master coach, and human potential expert. He co-founded the UK's first professional training in integrative medicine and served as the former medical director of Bulletproof Dr. Atkinson is co-director of Optimal Mind International and the creator of Human Potential Coaching, through which he has trained over 850 coaches. He also leads the Optimal Health, Longevity & Biohacking Certification Program, equipping professionals to teach personalized health, energy, and longevity strategies Thank you to our partners Outliyr Biohacker's Peak Performance Shop: get exclusive discounts on cutting-edge health, wellness, & performance gear Ultimate Health Optimization Deals: a roundup article of all the best current deals on technology, supplements, systems and more Gain mental clarity, energy, motivation, and focus with the FREE Outliyr Nootropics Mini-Course The simple, guided, and actionable Outliyr Longevity Challenge helps you unlock your longevity potential, slow biological aging, and maximize your healthspan Key takeaways Shift mood, energy & focus instantly without supplements or drugs. Use your mind instead Biohacking evolves into bioharmony by balancing mind, emotions & relationships When routines stop working, inner growth & emotional honesty break health plateaus Joy & contentment often come from releasing internal stress, not chasing achievements Saying “welcome” to all thoughts & feelings keeps the nervous system calm & connected Quiet racing thoughts by practicing presence & the inner smile technique Visualizing a smile from your heart shifts mood, eases anxiety & boosts calm Let emotions flow. Honest expression prevents stress buildup & supports lasting health True growth happens when you let go of control & become more attuned to what matters The Optimal Health, Longevity & Biohacking Program offers real results for all levels Episode Highlights 7:14 The World of "Biohacking 3.0" 16:46 The Complete & Integrated Health Model 24:11 Core Practices for Mind Mastery & Self-Regulation 41:41 Relationship Between Emotional Mastery & Flow States 59:57 The New Program Designed For Coaches & Individuals Links Watch it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/gOeDZXqRWoI Full episode show notes: mindbodypeak.com/206 Connect with Nick on social media Instagram Twitter YouTube LinkedIn Easy ways to support Subscribe Leave an Apple Podcast review Suggest a guest Do you have questions, thoughts, or feedback for us? Let me know in the show notes above and one of us will get back to you! Be an Outliyr, Nick

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A Leadership Event That Changed Everything (Tami Chambers)

Culture Change RX

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 19, 2025 31:08

Send us a MessageIn this episode, Sue and Tami Chambers discuss the transformative journey of leadership development at Grant Regional Health Center. Tami shares her experiences as a first time senior leader and the impact of the two-day leadership immersion program facilitated by Capstone Leadership Solutions. They explore the importance of structured leadership practices and continuous learning. Tami emphasizes the significance of the nine core leadership practices that make up the “leadership bundle” and how they have shaped her approach to leading. Her experience with the leadership bundle practices, and her belief in their value, motivate her to teach these practices to others. The conversation concludes with encouragement for other healthcare organizations to invest in creating their own internal leadership development process.The two-day leadership immersion provided the official start to Grant Regional's leaders adopting a common and synergistic way of leading.Structured leadership development was lacking at Grant Regional before partnering with Capstone.Teaching others reinforces Tami's own learning and growth.Empathy is crucial in connecting with leadership immersion participants.Continuous learning is necessary for leadership effectiveness.Accountability meetings help reinforce what was learned during leadership development.Investing in leadership development is worth the initial effort.Healthcare organizations should take the leap to enhance their leadership. 13th Annual Healthcare Executive Forum - June 18 (afternoon) and June 19 (morning)High Reliability, Just Culture & Psychological Safety Made Simple focuses on breaking down these critical concepts into practical, actionable strategies tailored for senior leaders in small and rural healthcare settings.

Ep. 177: Exploring Earth Mysteries with John Michael Greer

Plant Cunning Podcast

The Chris Voss Show

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 21, 2024 31:45

8 Core Practices of Facilitative Leaders by Michael Wilkinson Amazon.com Michaelthefacilitator.com Leadstrat.com What is a Facilitative Leader? Facilitative leaders create organizations where engagement is the norm, collaboration is the vehicle, and higher levels of achievement are the result. Unfortunately, many leaders continue to view their role primarily as one of setting direction, allocating resources, and putting in place rewards, support, and development systems that ensure their people stay focused on achieving that direction. In the changing workplace, this archaic view of leadership is completely inadequate. More and more, employees are seeking to understand where their organization is going and to influence the paths taken to get there. This shift in the workplace requires a new set of leadership skills. Leaders must know how to inspire people around a vision, foster trust, manage group interaction, build consensus, resolve conflict, and adapt their approach to the specific needs of each person they lead. They must be able to facilitate rather than dictate. This new direction calls for facilitative leaders. Praise for 8 Core Practices of Facilitative Leaders "If you want a great book that takes a facilitative approach to leadership, here it is! The 8 Core Practices of Facilitative Leaders offers practical and insightful strategies any leader can apply immediately. Read this book and learn the best ways to create engagement, buy-in, and alignment in your organization." --Ken Blanchard, coauthor ofThe New One Minute Manager(R) and Leading at a Higher Level "Michael credits me with teaching him to value thinking and communication preferences. He has written a practical guide to help you understand the behaviors needed to be highly impactful as a facilitative leader." --Ann Herrmann-Nehdi, chief thought leader and chair of the board at Herrmann, creators of the HBDI Assessment and Whole Brain Thinking

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Core practices of Jesus: Meeting God in scripture-Gordy

Creekside Park City

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2024 29:33

jesus christ scripture gordy meeting god core practices

47. From Burnout Back to Balance: 5 Core Practices to Reclaim the Season

Cowgirls Over Coffee

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 30, 2024 28:39

We made it through September! As we go through this transitional time of year, I want you to be ready for the holiday season and soak in all the joy. Let's finish this year strong in your purpose! September is a prime month for burnout because we're coming off of the chaos of summer and gearing up for the winter season. I hit a wall in September, so I wanted to share five core practices I have used to refuel the tank and overcome burnout, such as writing a triggering journal and focusing on core care. By identifying the patterns that put you into burnout in the first place, you'll drive awareness to the root cause so you know how to prevent another cycle of it. So tune in to make an action plan to remedy your burnout and reclaim the season! Resources & Links:Cowgirls Over Coffee Episode 40: Need a Reset? I've Got You!Ready.Set.Reset WorkbookConnect with Thea and the community:Follow on Instagram @cowgirlsovercoffee Follow on Facebook @cowgirlsovercoffeeMake sure to hit subscribe/follow so you never miss a convo!

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The Five Core Practices for Creating a Positive Work Culture | Dr. Joey Faucette

Build a Vibrant Culture Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 5, 2024 37:43

How can you achieve a positive work culture through internal alignment?In this episode of the Build a Vibrant Culture Podcast, Nicole Greer talks with Dr. Joey Faucette, an executive coach and culture architect. We discuss Dr. Joey's strategies for fostering positive work environments, drawing from his book, Work Positive in a Negative World: Team Edition. We explore five core practices: Perceive, Conceive, Believe, Achieve, and Receive the positive at work, emphasizing the need for internal alignment of thoughts and beliefs before taking action. Dr. Joey shares personal tactics like a gratitude diary for positive thinking and offers resources to listeners, including a discounted book and access to his Work Positive Podcast and courses.I'm buzzing with excitement to share some of the golden nuggets we unearthed together.

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Unforced Rhythms of Grace: 9 Core Practices For A Rule of Life

Bridgetown Audio Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 8, 2024 49:40

Intro teaching to our new series "Unforced Rhythms of Grace." From Matthew 11v28-30.

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19. Azra Bosnjak

Student-Centered Coaching: The Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2023 35:43

In this episode, Diane and Brandon are joined by Azra Bosnjak from Boise Schools. As a middle school learning coach, Azra discusses one of the Core Practices of Student-Centered Coaching, co-teaching. In just year 2 as a coach, it's pretty evident that she has a bright career ahead of her! Don't forget to join the conversation on our Facebook Community and Instagram!

azra core practices

Special Series (1 of 4): Overcoming Overwhelm - Four Proactive Practices to Build Emotional Resilience

Live By Design Podcast | Release Overwhelm, Get Unstuck, & Take Action | Via Goals, Habits, Gratitude, & Joy

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 9, 2023 21:35

In today's fast-paced world, especially during the holiday season, it's easy to find ourselves buried in to-do lists, deadlines, and the weight of expectations - and I'm on a personal mission to help as many of us as possible create awareness and action plans around these sources of overwhelm, so we can continue claiming agency in our lives and actually enjoy these final weeks of 2023. And that why over the next four weeks we're embarking on a journey together where we'll explore the common causes of overwhelm, their symptoms, and most importantly how to manage it in both a proactive and reactive way!Think of this as your step-by-step guide to building emotional resilience, reclaiming your energy, and achieving a sense of clarity and balance. My goal is to equip you with the tools to manage life's challenges and find a sense of empowerment in your journey along the way. In this first of four episodes in this special podcast series, I share these four proactive approaches to overwhelm: Grounding exercises that encourage presenceProtecting your energy (say no to energy vampires

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Core Practices to Make Your First Million in the Event Rental Industry: Crucial Steps Revealed!

The Rental Boyz | An Equipment & Party Rentals Business Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 19, 2023 24:27

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Urban Core Practices - Doctor Demographics

DoctorDemographics Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 4, 2023 16:39

Demographers have been redefining the urban sites around the United States to try to find locations with growth and money that will offer a good return on the investment if they should they be sold. The term that they have started using is the "near urban core." It requires a little more marketing and management sophistication than average but the return on the practice is excellent. This episode explains more. Almost all metropolitan areas have a "sweet spot" like this for professional practices.

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We are CHBC: Four Core Practices

Cherokee Hills Baptist Church

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 30, 2023 51:36

Powell Butte Christian Church

LUKE: YEAR OF OUR LORD (WEEK 37) - MONEY MATTERS - WEEK 1 - An Overview

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 8, 2023 37:51

This morning we're kicking off a brand new message series based on many passages in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus teaches about one of the most important subjects we could ever understand as we follow his lead in living in the Kingdom of God. It's a 4 week series that I have entitled: “Money Matters.” So I have a question: Hearing that title, “Money Matters,” how does that make you feel? What's going on in your gut right now? Are you…Anxious, Angry, Defensive, Uncomfortable?Money touches almost every aspect of living: work, leisure time, creative activities, home, family, and spiritual pursuits. Everything we do and dream of is affected by our relationship with this powerful form of energy. Whether your dream is to travel around the world, pay for a house, establish a food bank, buy a Corvette, get out from under a mountain of debt, or take a year off to write a novel, that vision is intertwined with the possibilities and pitfalls bound up in the energy of money.”It's no wonder that Jesus says in Luke 18:24-25, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”Now, don't worry - we're going to unpack that verse in this series: what it means, what it DOESN'T mean… and we're going to discover that apparently Jesus understood the fact that money in one's life does bring with it a kind of energy - an energy to make us fearful, or make us discontent, or make us take advantage of people, or make us secure, or creates an excitement in us as we participate in something beyond ourselves.So our study in these next few weeks will be about Attitudes and Biblical Principles and Core Practices: the ABCs of Money Matters that God calls us into as we live in His Kingdom here on earth.We will look at a Godly perspective on money, we will look at the essential foundation to be built in order to live in a healthy way with our resources, and then we will even look at the necessary choices that must be made in order to FIND health in this area of our lives.

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Grow - Core Practices

Calvary Tabernacle Bentonville

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 19, 2022 54:09

What are the core practices of the church? Bible reading, fellowship, and prayer are essential to not only the church but to us individually. In this lesson, we learn about spiritual maturity and growth and how to become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.

jesus christ bible core practices

4 Core Practices

Cherokee Hills Baptist Church

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 11, 2022 69:17

October 31st, 2021 | Core Practices - Q&A

CFCJAX

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2021 16:40

October 31st, 2021 | Core Practices - Q&A by CFCJAX

Hope Illuminated_Sally Spencer-Thomas

Strengthening Your Spiritual Core - Practices to Create a Fun and Fulfilling Life: Interview with Kate Eckman | Episode 94

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 27, 2021 51:49

Well-being is a current obsession. When you hear this word, what comes to mind? Fitness? Nutrition? Bliss? A sense of belonging? What is often forgotten in these conversations is our spiritual well-being. For some people this means engagement with their religious traditions and faith communities. For others it is about connecting deeply with nature, the arts or social justice. Still for others, it means contemplative spiritual practices that connect us to a higher power. The common theme throughout all of these practices is a journey to understand ourselves in the context of something much larger and mysterious that invites curiosity, stillness, wonderment, reverence and courage.In this conversation I speak with Kate Eckman, an elite college athlete, broadcast journalist and TV personality and recent author of “The Full Spirit Workout: A Ten-Step System to Shed Your Self-Doubt, Strengthen Your Spiritual Core, and Create a Fun and Fulfilling Life.” We talk about the neuroscience behind our understanding of well-being — and what gets in our way of achieving and maintaining well-being. We discuss the curious versus the anxious brain and the learning versus the judging brain. We explore the questions of “when is enough, enough?” and “who do we really want to be?” We close with specific strategies on how to tip the scales from immobilizing fear to the ability to “stretch the comfort zone” and “build the emotional muscles.”About Kate EckmanKate Eckman is the author of The Full Spirit Workout: A Ten-Step System to Shed Your Self-Doubt, Strengthen Your Spiritual Core, and Create a Fun and Fulfilling Life. She is a broadcast journalist and TV personality who brings her expertise in communications, performance, and mindfulness to her practice as a success coach for business leaders and professional athletes. She earned a B.A. in communications from Penn State University, where she was an Academic All-American swimmer, and received her master's degree in broadcast journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. She graduated at the highest level from Columbia University's executive and organizational coaching program and is a certified ICF coach (ACC) and a licensed NBI consultant. Passionate about mindfulness practices for both brain and body health, she is also a meditation teacher and course creator for Insight Timer, the world's number one–ranked free meditation app. Visit her online at kateeckman.tv. and www.thefullspiritworkout.com for more information go to https://www.sallyspencerthomas.com/hope-illuminated-podcast/94

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Five spiritual core practices

Preaching On Tap

Play Episode Listen Later May 29, 2021 6:23

Desire, Bible, Silence, penance, and knowing Mary as mother

bible spiritual silence desire core practices

Sunday 3rd January – Core Practices

Countess Free Church Ely

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 3, 2021 26:45

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JTE: Contrast, Commonality, and a Call for Clarity: A Review of the Use of Core Practices in Teacher Education

SAGE Education

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 13, 2020 33:42

In this edition of JTE Insider, we are joined by Dana Grosser-Clarkson of University of Maryland College Park (USA) and Michael A. Neel of Vanderbilt University (USA). They are the authors of the article entitled “Contrast, Commonality, and a Call for Clarity: A Review of the Use of Core Practices in Teacher Education.” The article is published in the September/October 2020 issue of JTE.

Off the Beaten Path with Jan Bergstrom

Community Routes

Play Episode Listen Later May 12, 2020 42:33

This episode we sit down with Boston therapist, Jan Bergstrom. We dive further into Pia Mellody's work, discuss the 5 Core Practices Mellody introduced, and talked about Jan's book, "Gifts from a Challenging Childhood." "5 Core Practices" with Jan Bergstrom: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=589122901714715&id=388395065120834"Gifts from a Challenging Childhood" by Jan Bergstrom: https://www.janbergstrom.com/gifts-from-a-challenging-childhood-creating-a-practice-for-becoming-your-healthiest-self-jan-bergstrom-lmhcOur Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/communityroutespodOur Links: https://linktr.ee/communityroutes

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Core Practices in Spiritual Warfare

Southland Messages

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 27, 2020

spiritual warfare core practices

Journey To Discover The Self with Jan Bergstrom, LMHC

Connectfulness Practice

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 19, 2020 54:09

The family system is the first filter children experience the world through, it informs the senses and creates the meaning from which each of us understand the “me”, our unique “who I am.” It’s up to parents to reach in and help the growing child navigate their reality —but that‘s not what usually happens— usually parents try to make the child become what the parent needs the child to be so that the parent is comfortable. In this episode, my teacher, Jan Bergstrom, LMHC will help us understand how the Self exists in relation to our own perceptions, our own thoughts, our own experiences, and our own souls. Jan is an expert in field of codependency, developmental and relational trauma in the lineage of Pia Mellody, a pioneer in treating the affects of childhood trauma in adults. We'll go into depth about the 5 Core Practices for Becoming Your Healthiest Self. After all, that’s the journey each of us is on —to discover the Self— it’s the crux of our lives. How do we know the Self? How do we know who we are? What creates a sense of Self, protects a sense of Self, gets in the way of developing a sense of Self, and what practices help to bring us back to our sense of Self. Resources: Jan’s book “Gifts from a Challenging Childhood: Creating a Practice for Becoming Your Healthiest Self” is available on amazon. Jan’s clinical practice Healing Trauma Network is a directory that can help you to locate a trauma healing professional that utilize Pia Mellody’s Post Induction Therapy (PIT) model. Healing Our Core Issues Institute (HOCII) trains therapists to work effectively with developmental and relational trauma using Pia Mellody’s integrative Post Induction Therapy model. Pia Mellody February 27-29th, 2020 I’m hosting a 3-day intensive trauma healing workshop, “Reclaiming Our Power,” based on the treatment model developed by Pia Mellody. It will be facilitated by another of my teachers, Kim Ploussard, LMHC, I’ll be assisting. To register or for more information send us a message at hello@connectfulness.com space is limited. While these discussions will guide you into the Connectfulness Practice, the podcast is not meant to be a substitute for counseling from a licensed provider. Reach out. Initiate the ripple. Learn more about my connectfulness counseling practice, intensives, and our collective for therapists in private practice at connectfulness.com/work-with-me. This episode is brought to you by Therapy Notes. Therapy Notes is a simple, secure, EHR platform that keeps you organized and creates a container for all details that run a private practice -- so you can tend to what really matters. Use the promo code connectfulness and get two months free when you sign up at therapynotes.com After listening, we invite you to deepen into the discussion with us on instagram and please support the show by sharing and reviewing the episode.

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Core Practices of Investing and Sharing

sharing investing core practices

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 29, 2019 34:20

Core Practices of Investing and Sharing

sharing investing core practices

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 29, 2019 34:20

The Core Practices of Following and Partnering

partnering core practices

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2019 30:53

The Core Practices of Following and Partnering

partnering core practices

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2019 30:53

095: How to Be a Functional Adult with Jan Bergstrom

The Couples Therapist Couch

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 10, 2019 47:50

In this episode with Jan Bergstrom, we go into depth about the 5 Core Practices of a Healthy Life. This work was inspired by Pia Mellody and has become the foundation for many models of therapy. We talk about doing inner child work, feelings reduction work, and standing in your truth. We also touch on the importance of self-esteem and boundaries. Jan is the co-founder of the Healing Our Core Issues Institute. She is the author of the new book, Gifts From a Challenging Childhood. She has trained with Pia Mellody, Peter Levine, John Kabat Zinn, Sue Johnson, and Terry Real. For more information on trainings and workshops go to healingourcoreissuesinstitute.com. Get Jan's book, Gifts From a Challenging Childhood The Couples Therapist Couch is the podcast for Couples Therapists about the practice of couples therapy. The host, Shane Birkel, interviews an expert in the field of couples therapy each week. Please subscribe to the podcast for more great episodes. Get your free course called Working with Couples 101 Click here to join the Couples Therapist Couch Facebook Group Today's Sponsor The Kauai Retreat for Therapists The CAV Academy presents the Kauai Retreat for therapists on Kauai, Hawaii from February 13-15 2020. There are 3 days of workshops exploring the practice of Couples Therapy including one full day intensive with Terry Real. Sign up here!

The Heart of Self-Care

Inspired Conversations with Linda Joy

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 19, 2019 57:04

The Heart of Self-CareAired Tuesday, 19 February 2019, 2:00 PM ETSelf-care! It’s a topic that many women struggle with. With today’s fast paced world, it seems we’re always at the bottom of our to-do lists. My guest, author and healer, Sharon Rosen is passionate about helping women to stop being so hard on themselves, to set clear boundaries and create time for wise self-care.About the Guest: Sharon RosenSharon Rosen is an author and healer who works with busy, accomplished, spiritually aware women. Through her hands-on bodywork, meditation instruction, Kabbalistic healing, and wellness coaching, she helps them establish healthy boundaries while connecting to the power of their innate wisdom and goodness so they can do their best work in the world.Her first book, Crazy World, Peaceful Heart: 6 Core Practices for Cultivating Joy and Resilience, is filled with simple, effective practices and inspiration. Sharon offers her transformative programs and retreats both in-person and long-distance, and loves helping groups and organizations make meditation and self-care strategies a part of daily life.WEBSITE: http://www.heartofselfcare.comFACEBOOK BIZ PAGE: https://www.facebook.com/HeartofSelfCare/FACEBOOK PERSONAL PAGE: https://www.facebook.com/sharonhelenePINTEREST: https://www.pinterest.com/sharonhelene/

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ERRR #026. Janet Carlson on PCK and Core Practices

Education Research Reading Room

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 31, 2019 92:10

In today’s episode we’re speaking to Janet Carlson. Janet began her career as a middle and high school science teacher… The post ERRR #026. Janet Carlson on PCK and Core Practices appeared first on Ollie Lovell.

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44 How To Use Core Practices

Business Miracles

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 21, 2018

Listen in as we go in depth in to learning how crucial establishing Core Practices is in creating Financial Success as an HSE. "A Core Practice is the art of engaging consciously in chosen practices that activate a retraining of the mind." - Heather Dominick Learn more about this episode of Business Miracles at https://www.businessmiracles.com/44

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44 How To Use Core Practices

Business Miracles

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 21, 2018

financial success hse business miracles core practices

44 How To Use Core Practices

Business Miracles

Who you already are is enough!

Go Within or Go Without

Play Episode Listen Later May 14, 2017 29:17

Why is it that we are always looking to fulfill our selves from the outside? Join Daniel as he discusses with expert Sharon Rosen how to go inward and find the peace and tranquility you seek.Sharon Rosen works with healers and helpers who are so busy helping others they find it a challenge to make time for themselves. She does that through one-on-one coaching, specialized retreats and programs that allow them to embody peace so they can serve others without becoming depleted.Sharon’s first book Crazy World, Peaceful Heart: 6 Core Practices for Cultivating Joy and Resilience, is filled with simple, effective practices and inspiration. She works in-person or long-distance serving others devoted to healing the world. Her reverence for life in all its stages has inspired her to become an end of life doula, assisting others to craft their legacy and die with dignity.Her home on the web is www.heartofselfcare.com , where you can learn more about her programs and services as well as download her free gift, 10 Minutes to Your Calm Center. EMAIL: sharon@heartofselfcare.com

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Who you already are is enough!

Go Within or Go Without Radio

Play Episode Listen Later May 14, 2017 30:00

Why is it that we are always looking to fulfill our selves from the outside? Join Daniel as he discusses with expert Sharon Rosen how to go inward and find the peace and tranquility you seek. Sharon Rosen works with healers and helpers who are so busy helping others they find it a challenge to make time for themselves. She does that through one-on-one coaching, specialized retreats and programs that allow them to embody peace so they can serve others without becoming depleted. Sharon’s first book Crazy World, Peaceful Heart: 6 Core Practices for Cultivating Joy and Resilience, is filled with simple, effective practices and inspiration. She works in-person or long-distance serving others devoted to healing the world. Her reverence for life in all its stages has inspired her to become an end of life doula, assisting others to craft their legacy and die with dignity. Her home on the web is www.heartofselfcare.com , where you can learn more about her programs and services as well as download her free gift, 10 Minutes to Your Calm Center. EMAIL: sharon@heartofselfcare.com

peace resilience mindfulness peace of mind crazy world cultivating joy peaceful heart daniel gutierrez core practices sharon rosen

Five: The Core Practices of Sent People - Part 5 - FMC (Audio)

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2016

God's people are missionary people. “Sent” people are aware of where and when they have joined Jesus in his mission in the world.

Five: The Core Practices of Sent People - Part 5 - CC (Audio)

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2016

God's people are missionary people. “Sent” people are aware of where and when they have joined Jesus in his mission in the world.

Five: The Core Practices of Sent People - Part 5 - FMC (Audio)

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2016

God’s people are missionary people. “Sent” people are aware of where and when they have joined Jesus in his mission in the world.

Five: The Core Practices of Sent People - Part 5 - CC (Audio)

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2016

God’s people are missionary people. “Sent” people are aware of where and when they have joined Jesus in his mission in the world.

University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences

Language Talk - Episode 13

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 29, 2016 51:50

Sara Merideth, president of the Kentucky World Language Association, talks about the plans for the KWLA Conference in Louisville from September 15-17, 2016. She also describes her participation in the ACTFL-sponsored Leadership Initiative for Language Learning and the 6 Core Practices of World Language Teaching that are the focus of the LILL meetings. The music from this podcast is Intellectual Flypast by Doctor Turtle, provided by the Free Music Archive. Podcast producer: David Cole.

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Five: The Core Practices of Sent People - Part 4 - CC (Audio)

god jesus christ gospel core practices

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2016

God's people are Christ-like people. Getting to know Jesus through meditating on the four Gospels is a means of learning and becoming more like Jesus for “sent” people.

Five: The Core Practices of Sent People - Part 4 - FMC (Audio)

god jesus christ gospel core practices

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2016

God's people are Christ-like people. Getting to know Jesus through meditating on the four Gospels is a means of learning and becoming more like Jesus for “sent” people.

Five: The Core Practices of Sent People - Part 4 - FMC (Audio)

god jesus christ gospel core practices

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2016

God’s people are Christ-like people. Getting to know Jesus through meditating on the four Gospels is a means of learning and becoming more like Jesus for “sent” people.

Five: The Core Practices of Sent People - Part 4 - CC (Audio)

god blessing core practices

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 7, 2016

God's people are generous people. Blessing people with words, actions and gifts is a way “sent” people do this.

Five: The Core Practices of Sent People - Part 1 - CC (Audio)