Do Unto Others

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Good morning HFF church. Shabbat shalom to you all. Shabbat shalom. There's a hearty Shabbat shalom. We should try that like side by side, you know, this side says Shabbat, this side says, no, we won't do that anyway.

One of the things that blesses me every week is the blessing of the children. I don't know how blessed. I'm not sure if you fully understand how blessed we are at hff. There are churches twice our size and larger that do not have as many littles as we have. The number of children around here is our blessing.

And it is one of the reasons why this is the perfect time for me to come and share an announcement with you. Because of them, as you, those of you who are young parents know, as you grow your one bedroom apartment that you started off in that you thought was going to be perfect pretty soon after two or three more kids, like it's not so perfect anymore and it's time to move out. HFF over the last four to five years has had the blessing of being welcomed into two different church homes facilities, two different church homes, both of which Timber Creek and Westmore Community Church have been absolutely gracious hosts and have been wonderful to us. We have had the benefit of coming into a facility like this when we weren't sure where we were going to go. That is about as high tech as you can get.

It's got all the gadgets and toys. I go back there and they just start yelling don't touch.

They can see it. But we've come to a crossroads moment in our church life. Westmore, without animosity or any antagonism, has asked us to find a new home because this is their church home and they would like to use it for their expanding ministries and have access to it on Saturday. So by the end of January, HFF has to find a new home. Up to this point, Chris and Vicki and others, myself included, have been looking at different church facilities.

We have reached out to other church families, seeing if they would be willing to host us. We have looked into retail space that we could go into and rent, but it would be ours the whole week and we could turn it into our home. That has become very obvious is cost prohibitive because the retail space is just so expensive. So after weeks and weeks of prayer and searching, it has become obvious that it is time for HFF to get out of the nest and find and purchase her own home. And so that's what we're coming.

The good news that we're coming to you today is that the elders and leadership have come to the conclusion that now you save that energy for a few minutes from now. Okay? All right, you keep that enthusiasm. But obviously that means that there are some financial commitments that we are going to have to make collectively as a body. And we have.

We want you to know that we have prayed over this, we've looked at this, and one of the things that will. A few of the things that will benefit us by purchasing our own facility is that it will allow us to be in the facility all week so that we want to be a full family, full life church. You know, many from our origin story, we just had Saturday fellowships, and that was it. We want this to be a true church in every way in how we are ministering throughout the week, giving opportunities for Bible studies and women's fellowships and men's fellowships, and that our children and our youth have a place to meet and call their own. And so, as you can see, we've got a heritage to protect in our children, and they are the number one reason for what we are about to do.

We have found a facility and it is the one that we are leaning towards. But this is basically. Remember that enthusiasm a few minutes ago. This is going to be our chance to get out of the boat because basically we need to raise $200,000 by the end of this year, by December 31st. Now, before you moan and groan, God, I look to you, I won't be overwhelmed.

Give me vision to see things like you do. Come on, you just sang it. And God said, okay, you want to learn that? Well, here we go. Ray, we want you to know that we have been preparing for this day financially, but there's only so much money you can put back.

And so we. There. There is a sizable amount of money that we've been saving for a down payment. But obviously, to convert a facility to our particular needs and to purchase the facility, we would need this 200,000. It will allow us to purchase essential equipment for our facility, put a down payment on the building that God opens up, and we're proceeding as if the one that we have found is the one.

And if that door closes, then we will know that it wasn't the one. But that's how we are proceeding. And we can begin the necessary renovations to make it truly a house for Jesus presence and a place that we can just multiply and not only provide nurture and spiritual care for your family and children, but for many other families as well. Now, that number does sound A bit overwhelming. However, when you do the math and you break it down based on how many families we have currently in our database.

We have over 100 families in our database. And we know that not every family is here every week. The nature of our church is that people come from different distances, but we have at least 100 families in our database. And our goal would be reached if each one of those families between now and the end of December, gave $1,000. That's.

You may say, well, that's not doable in my household. Well, this isn't about what's doable in your household. It's what's doable in his household. Amen. Now add to that, and for those of you who are watching online, welcome.

We love that you're with us. HFF Weekly reaches over 60,000 people. And so we are inviting those people because obviously, if we're going to continue these broadcasts that are obviously ministering to people out there in online world, around the world, around the nation, we want to invite them to participate in this as well. And with 60,000 people, if each viewer just gave $3.33, we would reach our goal. Now, when you begin to look at the numbers that way, it doesn't seem nearly as overwhelming as it may at first.

So how can you be a part of this? The first thing is we have created a place called HFF Church House. Sorry, there it is behind me. Look at there. Modern technology.

This is the place that you can go specifically to donate to this fund for hff. And this is just AI rendering of some upgrades to a facility that we are currently looking at. So how can you be a part of this miracle? First of all, obviously pray. Don't listen to your emotions and your heart immediately telling you what you can't do.

That's your flesh. Go to God in faith and say, lord, I'm not here to ask you what I can do. I'm asking you what you can do through me. And what do you want me to do? We don't expect anybody to give foolishly.

Come on. We do expect the body of Christ to give foolishness faithfully to invest and trust the Lord. We would like you to pledge to commit your gift before December 31st. And you can do that at HFF House or you can do it by check. We realize that there may be some who simply cannot make that payment by the end of the year.

Please go ahead and make your commitment and let us know. Hey, I can't do that till I get my tax return back. Whatever. Just communicate with us and let us, let us know. And by the way, let me just share.

We are not going to sit around in a circle with Pastor Chris and April and the elders and going, well, how much do they give?

Chris knows I don't ever want to know what any of you give, ever. So don't think that because you do a pledge, that means there's going to be a committee of people sitting in judgment on you. Thirdly, participate. Share the vision with others. Invite friends, family, co workers, not only here physically, but also online as well.

And we do want you to know God already knows the need and is already moving to meet the need. In the last couple weeks, we have had over $35,000 worth of necessary and essential lighting and sound equipment dirt donated to hff because obviously we're not going. Praise the Lord, right? So you gotta figure if God's already giving us what goes in the house, he must already have the house picked out for us. And that's exciting.

So this is our moment. This is a chance for us to invest in our families, in our children. Years ago, a friend of mine who I grew up with, who's a Baptist missionary, we were talking one day and he told me a story I want to share with you before I close. His grandmother was a part of a Baptist church. It was out in Tennessee or somewhere out in that area and it was dying.

They all looked like me, a bunch of old gray hairs and young minister came to his grandmother and said, I need your help. And this 80 year old woman went and gathered all of the senior adults in that church and she put this question to them, what are we going to do to make sure our grandchildren don't end up in hell? That's a mega church today. Because that little group of senior adults said, we're going to invest so that our children have a place to be raised and nurtured in the love of Jesus Christ and the word of God. Amen.

That's what's before us and what an incredible opportunity we have. So we're inviting you into this to pledge, to pray, to commit. And this is one of those times where your prayers are as important as your pledge. Absolutely. In fact, they are always the most important thing because like I said, we don't want you to give foolishly, we want you to give faithfully.

Can we just ask God to bless? First of all, are you excited about this? A new house, a new home for hff? Yes. And whatever we get, we'll probably outgrow that in six months.

So who knows but let's just ask God today. We're just gonna plant this seed of faith today and trust that God is going to do an amazing thing. Abba Father, I come to you in the name of Yeshua, the Messiah, the one who walked on water when everybody said it couldn't be done. The one who parted the seas when everybody said it couldn't be done. The one who came forth from the grave when no one believed it could be done.

Yeah, we come to you in his name today believing for a house, a home for HFF where we can continue to lift up Christ, to lift up the blessing of redemption in him and to reach out to many other families, not just locally but around the world online, sharing the good news of Yeshua, the Messiah and the gift of his grace. Father, I pray today that this would be a planting day, that you would plant a seed of trust within our hearts, that we would pursue you, that we would come to you, we would seek you. What can you do through us? And Lord, as the song lyrics said, we will not be overwhelmed. For each family, Father, I pray that you would give them a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus to know what they are called to do, to participate in this great moment in the life of hff.

And we will, Lord, give you all the glory in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. I know my family and I are extremely excited. We have been proud, faithful members of this church since day one and it is exciting to actually be at this point in time to have our own church house. We also know that there is a portion of people that come to HFF and kind of turn around because they like, I came to hff, but then they're like, but it's Westmore. And so to see the people that God has been trying to guide to our home and actually finding us here is going to be incredible.

Well, I'm excited to be with you guys this morning as Pastor Chris is down at a wedding in Texas. This morning we are going to wrap up Matthew chapter 10. And if you have your Bibles in your lap or in your app, if you would join me at Matthew chapter 10. And we're going to be looking at verses 40 through 42 today. So growing up in church, the golden rule was like this live, laugh, love of kinder church.

It was on posters in every Sunday schoolroom. There was some kid helping up another kid or a kid handing another kid a toy with big yellow letters, do unto others. Obviously this was to try and get us ingrained from a young age. To try and be good people. But we're people, and we fail at that pretty regularly.

And the point of that is that the problem is not that that's a really difficult commandment or not a really difficult request to be like, hey, you want to be treated nice? Be nice to others. The problem is that we take this way too literal. Sometimes it's like, well, I want to be left alone, so I'm just going to ignore some people. Or I want people to be really firm and direct with me, so I'm not going to watch my tongue as I talk to other people.

I might talk in some things that might come across as anger.

And some. Some of the fake introverts that we have in our communities, they say, I get overwhelmed by people. But often what they're getting overwhelmed by is the fact that they're putting on a facade. They feel like they have to keep up with some depiction or image that they have to uphold. When it's like, hey, if you're broken, be broken.

Hey, if you're happy, just be happy. Be who you are in front of people. But instead of doing that, we'll actively destroy relationships and try to avoid opportunities for somebody to hurt us. Because that's where our worth feels like it is, that we are worth Rejection, humiliation, and isolation. See, the thing is, we learn do unto others as a base level Christian standard, the kindergarten of morality.

But we never really graduate from it, because here's the truth. Most of us don't actually treat ourselves well, or neither do we know how we want other people to treat us.

And this is why when Jesus says, love your neighbor as yourself, some of us are thinking, uh, oh, my neighbor's in trouble. They're going to walk away so confused by this interaction.

But we can't truly do unto others if we don't understand how. This is why Matthew chapter 10 has been such an amazing time. It starts off with the disciples being given authority over the unclean spirits, the ability and a power to heal, to cast out, and to set people free. But it ends here at the end of chapter 10, with Jesus teaching them that real discipleship isn't about power, it's about presence.

The chapter begins with power and ends with character, because that's the real mark of discipleship.

All right, if you open up your Bibles and your apps in your Matthew, chapter 10, 40, 42, if you're there, would you give me a mm? All right, let's get into God's word. All right, Starting at verse 40, the one who welcomes me or welcomes you welcomes me. The one who welcomes me welcomes him who sent me. Anyone who welcomes a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward.

And anyone who welcomes a righteous person because he is right will receive a righteous person's reward. And whoever gives even a cup of cold water to the one of these little ones because he is a disciple, truly, I tell you, he will never lose his reward. Jesus says that whoever receives you receives me, and in turn receives the Father. This means that when you walk into the room, Christ walks in with you, that how you speak should reflect Him. How you treat others reflects him.

And how you respond to conflict reflects Him. Most of us have been guilty in the past. I've been guilty in the past. I do this thing on a regular basis. I feel like my job, I have so many different hats, and then I have all these hats I have to take off and put on outside of work.

I get home, I'm a husband hat. Oh, got to take that one off. Now it's a parent Hat has to go on. Now I'm the employee, now I'm the friend. Now I'm the pastor.

But then we also have this hat that we like to try and put on and take off called the Christianity hat. Thing is that hat won't come off that I am a representative of God. Hat is a part of who we are supposed to be all time. It's like that TikTok analogy where it's like, I can't take it off. There's like two people that got that.

There's my wife and. Yeah, okay, sorry. I'm glad you're not on TikTok. I'm not either. I don't have time to waste time like that.

And I know from firsthand experience that it will waste my time. But we say we've invited God into our lives, yet we find opportunities to exclude him from areas of that.

The thing is, we can't remove him from other areas of our life. We can't dictate where he is and isn't in our lives. If we have accepted him in to be an overwhelming power and presence in every aspect, he's there no matter what we try to do or say.

And so what actually happens is that we become bad representatives of Him.

We go into situations and go, well, maybe this isn't necessarily a church event. Maybe this isn't a situation where it's like, hey, this is an outside opportunity. So we tend to tolerate things. We let some opportunities and some speech Slide by. We allow our speech to be a little spicier than it might normally be.

But the thing is, just like this cross, as I wear it, yes, it's an outward experience. But if I take this off, I'm still a believer. I still understand what this represents. That Christ came and died for me and that without him I would be nothing that I am today that doesn't get to just be thrown over my shoulder when I walk in a room. That is consistently who I am.

That is consistently who we should be. This is why in Colossians 3:17, it says that whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to the God the Father through him. And this is where the title of our sermon comes in today, Do Unto Others. It's funny, I didn't know that that was the title until, like three weeks ago when Chris said it from the stage and I went, well, this could go a couple different ways, but to understand how and how to do this, how to do for others, and what that means, we first have to learn where that ability comes from. Our love of God reflects how we truly love others and ourselves.

First, John challenges us on this fact. 1 John 4:2021 says this. If anyone says, I love God, yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he can see, cannot love a God whom he cannot see. And we have this command from him.

The one who loves God must also love his brother and sister. This is the greatest command. And if you happen to be here for Building Blocks, Matthew brought this up on the last one. And if you want to dive into some First John stuff, it's all fantastic. Our Building Blocks videos are up on YouTube.

Matthew and Isaac did a phenomenal job talking about that. But the greatest command is to love God. And then the second I love what Matthew 22 says, that the second is like it. That loving your neighbor as yourself is that equal to God, and loving God and that one and the same, they all come at the same time.

This scripture right here from one John hits the same nerve that Jesus is pressing in Matthew 10, that if we cannot handle loving our neighbor that we can see, we're not actually loving the God that we can't see.

It's John's way of saying, your testament of people is the. Your treatment of people is the visible proof of your invisible devotion. Love for God and love for people aren't two separate assignments. They're the same thing.

It's Also pretty cool how God times things out because the past six weeks in our youth group, we've been looking at John chapter 13, verse 35, where it says that by this they will know that you are my disciples, by the way, that you love one another. You can't be a disciple of God if you don't know his love. Let's compare that with looking back at what we've learned over these past weeks that Pastor Chris has brought us from chapter 10. Authority over unclean spirits. It doesn't matter if you don't walk in his love if you don't have that relationship with Him.

It's an intimacy that has to be involved in that situation. That's why there's this story that scares me where it's like, have we not done these things in your name? He goes, I didn't know you though.

Using that authority, but not knowing his love, the ability to dust off and move on to the next house is something we won't be able to do unless we realize that his love is more important than staying in a bad situation.

You won't be able to be sheeps around wolves without knowing that his love outweighs their lives.

Not losing hope when your family isn't on mission with you. You got it? Not gonna happen. First John 4:10 also shows this that it says that love is consists in this. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Loving God isn't just saying I love Him. It's knowing and accepting the fact that he loved us first.

Look at how that shows that we are disciples of Christ by how we love. Because how we treat people is how we treat Christ. How we welcome others shows how we welcome Christ into our lives.

How we serve others shows that honor and respect that we have for Christ.

And how you handle the least of these reveals our own heart towards our Savior.

How we speak when no one is listening, how we respond when someone's hurting us, and how we treat someone who has nothing to offer us all show how we have a relationship with Christ. This is discipleship lived, not just believed. Now this doesn't mean you just run out and try to love as many people as humanly possible. We're not trying to like pad our stats. As a Christian, you're like, I love 20 people this week.

The kingdom isn't a contest to see who has the most strangers that they can give a hug to. Jesus isn't asking for quantity, he is asking for quality.

The point Isn't to scatter shallow kindness everywhere just to say that you love people today. The point is to let strangers or let his love shape how you treat actual people that he's placed in your life. Intentionally loving 20 people badly is not the goal, but loving the one person God has assigned to you today, intentionally, faithfully, and like Christ, that's the real work of discipleship. It's about reflecting him in our relationships.

Matthew 10:41 goes on to talk to us about the reward that we can receive. And it shows us a kingdom principle that the way that we receive determines our reward. The verse teaches us that receiving a prophet because he's a prophet or a righteous person because they are righteous, connects the receiver with the sender's mission.

We can hear reward and think of things like, I got a good feeling. God's given me butterflies because I did something good today.

Or we can think that it's praise that suddenly we have to go after the adoration of those that we haven't interacted with based on the relationships that we're forming. Like, hey, I feel better about myself because Jacob told me I look really cool when I talked to that stranger that walked in the church today. Like, cool, that's not the point.

Or we can go down the bad rabbit hole of prosperity. And don't even get me started on prosperity gospel. We're not going to dive into that one. That's not something we're doing. But Jesus is giving us something greater.

His meaning of reward is that we get greater access to God and that we get to experience his voice and work in our own lives.

He gets in and fixes us. And if we aren't fixed, we need to switch our fixation. If we aren't being fixed by our relationship that we're bonding with Christ, then we are fixated on the wrong thing.

See here, receiving a prophet is someone who's carrying the word and direction of God. To receive a prophet means that you make intentional space in your life for the voice of God. You welcome correction even when it stings, and you honor what God is doing through someone else, not just what you prefer.

You might not think that you put God in a box, but if you decide to describe the reward that you should be getting from your interaction, you are limiting him to your own limitations and abilities.

It's like, oh, he's all powerful. But I think that the reward I should get over here is that my finances are fixed. Or if I go over here, and this is what we Learned from Ephesians 3, 20 Is that now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think, think according to the power that works in us. Not to the power that's working through us, but his power working within our lives. First, his ability surpasses our limitations.

Remember that we're also not receiving a person in this prophet, righteous person. We're not receiving somebody because they're special, but because of what God is doing in them and through them, because of their fruit, whether prophet, priest or pescatarian. You are welcoming them based on the powerful presence of God that is present in their speech.

And you can tell me that you're a prophet all day long, but if you prophesy preposterously, probably a situation where I'm going to be dusting my feet off, or as we say in Oklahoma, go on, git.

I've been told that a few times, heard that a few times in some households.

A righteous person or someone who lives aligned in God's ways to receive a righteous person means that we recognize faithful, consistent living and we honor that example and that we allow our lives to be shaped by the good patterns that we see within them.

A while back we did a study through Hebrews and it was one of my favorite things that we've done as a church. It was one of the first times we really went through a book. And in that man, I feel like we really dove into Hebrews chapter 13 for a good time. But Hebrews 13:7 highlights this for us. And if you have your Bible, highlight this so that it can be something that you remember.

This is Hebrews chapter 13, verse 7, because it repeats this righteous person reward because it says, remember the leaders who have spoken God's Word word to you as you carefully observe the outcome of their lives, imitate their faith. If someone's being Jesus, be Jesus with them. If someone's being dumb, don't be dumb. Be observant. Carefully observe the situation.

Model your life after the fruit that you're seeing.

The reward you receive will be strength, peace, stability and blessing. That comes from this specific way of life. A way of life, living out as a disciple of Christ, reflecting him in the situations that you're in. Remember, it's not about titles. It's about recognizing and responding to Christ in others.

Lifeway Research did this cool thing. I love stats. I like a good stat. I'm kind of boring that way. I watch documentaries and read stats for fun.

Lifeway Research did this study in 2019 about discipleship pathways and an assessment on that what they found was that 78% of churchgoers say that they have significant relationships with other people in the church. The sad part is that only 48% of people, under half of the people said that they intentionally spend time with other believers to help them grow in their faith. We form bonds and friendships because we want some kind of counterpart to have escapades with and be ridiculous and just for fun. But the thing is that iron should be sharpening iron. We should be working in a relationship and in a way as believers with each other, that our lives are getting molded from the strengths of other people, that our flaws are getting worked away because we're dedicated to being discipled by others so that we can disciple later in life.

Fewer than half in Matthew 10, Jesus is saying, if you learn to receive the right people, you receive the right growth.

So if you feel like you're moving at a snail's pace in your face, maybe you should stop standing around people that are stagnant.

Maybe you should be in situations where those people are really pressing you, where you're allowing them to push and strike a nerve. Because it's something that God has in you that he needs to work on, something that your faith needs to become stronger in so that you can be the disciple that walks in the room. And people are like, there's Christ. He walked in the room with that guy or that woman.

Posturing ourselves to let somebody else's discipleship strengthen our own.

Man. I had like eight pages of notes, Becky, and I'm still zipping through it. Luckily I had Brent to give us this like little, like warm up teaching this morning about, you know, funds and everything. And I guess I could just ramble on about tithe and we're going to lock the doors, but I don't think that that's going to.

But our relationship in that formation of having a lifestyle that is shaped after Christ, that's the discipleship. We're looking at how we're supposed to. From Matthew chapter 10, we're looking at how we should develop as disciples. And we look at the outside works, we think about it. Some of these things, it's this, I'm getting sent to this household to share a message.

I'm going to this far off place or I'm going to my own way. People, as the disciples were sent to their own people. And we look at those things and say, that's how I know I'm a disciple.

And actually how you know you're a disciple of Christ is when you walk in a room and somebody Else says it.

We don't get to define our own definition of our discipleship.

And how we treat people is how much of God we allow to enter into our life. It's based on how much of God we allow to enter into our life.

Matthew 10:42 ends in this way that whoever gives a cup of cold water to one of these little ones, just the least, the smallest disciple, or even the youngest disciple, the one that gives a cup of water to them, truly, I tell you, they will never lose their reward. They will never lose their reward. We're not talking about a six u P ball trophy that you have up in your attic. We're talking about a transformative power that is in your life forever.

Honor Christmas others and you receive Christ's life and transformation forever. This unlocks our spiritual inheritance, acting as disciples, allowing him to mold us, allowing him to so that we understand that his love was the first love. That we can't know love if we don't know God because He is love.

This is why even a small act, even a cup of cold water, matters and earns a reward. The amount isn't what matters. It's the heart behind the action. I thought that was an interesting thing as I was rereading my notes this morning. We're talking about the fundraiser.

It's like the amount though we are going to see God do great things, it's the heart that we also give behind it. So note that when you're giving your donation, when you make a pledge for that fund which is in God's hands, but have the heart posture of wanting it to be a place for Christ to move. Don't just do it because I go to hff. Do it because you want to see Christ move in your community and you want him to have a home and a place that welcomes people, that we can utilize every day of the week to fellowship so that we can create atmospheres for discipleship to truthfully happen. Because let's be honest, one hour on a Saturday is probably not cutting it.

The reward is not a good feeling, applause, or a sense of moral superiority. The reward is Christ himself being revealed more in you, your life becoming aligned with kingdom and with heaven.

We do unto others because Christ has done it unto us.

We know because we've seen it. We know because we've experienced it. That's how we can actually do the things.

It isn't just I learned about this, it's that I've experienced it. So I'm speaking from experience. How many people know that somebody speaking to you from experience outweighs some person trying to give you some nonsense advice like, I've been there. But if they haven't, you're like, get out of here. We're going.

Like, we're not. We're not listening to those words. But somebody that has been in that situation with you or has been in a similar situation that actually knows how it feels, their words matter. And so when you're trying to talk about transformative life change through the power of Christ, if you've actually let it happen in every area without setting up blockades where he can move everywhere except here, or he can move exactly like this, except I really need it to go this way. If we break those barriers down and allow him to move in our lives how he's supposed to, then when we talk to others about Christ, we don't have to have any sort of confidence that we're going to say the wrong thing because we know we're speaking from experience.

God has healed. He has fixed my finances. He has restored my marriage. He has done great things with bringing family together.

Your life will be a testimony that is irrefutable.

Worship team. You can come back up.

Being a disciple does not just mean that you've learned something. It's that you do something.

I really was trying to avoid the Nike slogan in here. And I'm not going to say it because I feel like we might get pegged on YouTube for some reason, some copyright thing. But you know it, so it's in your head.

I'm hearing some people say it out loud. Yes, you know it. Confirmed. We have witnesses and testimony. The moment when love stops being a concept and becomes a practice is when it stops feeling like a rule and starts becoming a reflex.

We can look at scripture like rules and commandments, but it's not supposed to be that way. It's supposed to just be something you do. It's who you are. You don't have to think about loving others. You just do do it because God loved you despite who you were, how you were, and in what situation you were in.

It's not rules, it's reflex. And the intentional shift is where a life of blessing begins. Not because you're earning anything from God, but because you're finally aligning with his way and his kingdom. Act.

It's in the works. And when we decide to do what Jesus taught consistently, even when it's inconvenient, we stop living from learned behavior and step into a life shaped by his presence.

This is where blessings flow, not from knowing the right things, but from doing the right things.

Everything that Jesus taught In Matthew chapter 10 comes down to this. That you give what you have received.

You want to be able to speak into the unclean spirits in your life and cast them out from those areas that are affected by them. It's because he's already cast something out. He's given you the opportunity. You have the power. Because he's given you the power.

You want to be able to stand up and be confident when things around you and situations and relationships are not looking the best. Because he's giving you a love in your life that matters far beyond anything else that anyone can do. It surpasses shame and condemnation that in Christ I'm found and I'm made whole and I have grace.

You can't love well unless you've loved him first. And you can't represent him well unless his presence has filled you first.

For us to do unto others, he has to do the work unto us first.

So as we enter into a time of worship, come with a simple posture. Lord, I open my heart. The areas that I've been trying to dictate your presence over, wide open how you want to do it, do it. Because I want to walk in a room and let people know without any doubt in my mind that they're seeing a child of God, that they're seeing a disciple of Christ. Not because I'm thinking about it or doing it intentionally, but just because it's a part of who I am.

Whether I have this on or not, whether my clothes are dirty and filled with oil or grease, or I look like Tim Davis after he's been welding all day long.

I don't have to look clean to be clean.

The mess on the outside is not the mess that I am on the inside. God's done a good work work in you. He's done a good work in me. And we need to be prophesying and proclaiming that into every situation, into every room that we go into Christ.

Lord, we open our hearts. Give us what we need so that we can be who you've called us to be, so that we can be sons and daughters and disciples of you and. And so that everyone that meets us meets our Savior, and in that meets the one who sent him, that knows the love of the Father. Let us join together in worship.