7 Practices That Lead to Growth

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Well, hey. How are you? Good to see everybody.

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Happy Black History Month.

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It's February already. Hard to believe.

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My name is Kyle, if we've never met before.

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I am what's called a Lead pastor here at Crossroads.

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Brand new thing.

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If you hear that and you're like, "What does that mean?

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What happened to Brian?" Relax.

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He is still the Senior Pastor. He's my boss.

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Lead Pastor just means I lead the stuff that he asked me to.

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Senior Pastor means that he gets a discount

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at Cracker Barrel for being very, very old.

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That's what it means.

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I'm going to crush him next week

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in the Super Bowl of Preaching. That's what it also means.

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In case you're wondering,

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we're not competitive here or anything.

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Okay. Now, we are also, if you're just joining us,

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we are wrapping up this series on the book of Nehemiah.

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This is the last week of the series,

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and I'll just kind of give you the quick catch up,

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okay, if you've missed missed something.

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Nehemiah begins when a wall goes down

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in the year 586 BC, the Babylonians

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roll into Jerusalem and they attack.

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They crush all the walls, burn all the gates,

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and haul all the people off to be slaves in Babylon.

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146 years after that, this one guy, Nehemiah,

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who was one of those exiles in Babylon,

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goes to the king and says, "Hey, uh, I was thinking,

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what if you let me go rebuild the wall?"

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And the King was like, "Yeah, that sounds great."

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So fast forward, Nehemiah does it. It's awesome.

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Lots of leadership lessons flow.

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You should go back and watch it all in the Crossroads App.

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It's spectacular.

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However, today we're not talking about the wall

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because it turns out that Nehemiah has 13 books. Okay?

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And the first six books are about the building of the wall.

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But starting in the 7th chapter, there's no more wall.

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It's crazy. Literally only 40% or so

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of the book of Nehemiah is about a wall,

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which, if you were watching a movie, right,

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and the main character was there

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and they were kind of the feature

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of the first part of the movie, and then

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they were just gone and they didn't show up again.

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What would your conclusion be?

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Probably that they weren't actually the main character.

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Well, that's actually what the wall is in Nehemiah.

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So the surprise, we save for the end of the series,

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the book of Nehemiah isn't about a wall at all.

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So what is it about? What is it about?

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Well, to answer that question,

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we have to go back and ask the question

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of why was the wall down in the first place?

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You might be like, "Kyle, you just told us that.

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The Babylonians came in and crushed it all, that's why."

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Yeah. Okay, but let me ask you a question.

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These were God's chosen people,

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the God of the universe who forms mountains out of dust,

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who spoke everything into existence,

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who had protected them countless times

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from other enemies when they never had a wall,

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when they lived in tents.

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He could have stopped the Babylonians, but He didn't.

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So? So why?

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Turns out, the answer to that question

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is in the book of Isaiah, a prophecy written

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about 100 years before those walls fell.

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It says this, God describes His people as a vineyard. He says:

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This is God talking.

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See, the reason the wall was down

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wasn't because the Babylonians came along.

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The reason the wall was down was because

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God expected his people to produce and to grow fruit,

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to be constantly growing, constantly producing.

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And they didn't. So the wall came down.

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See, Nehemiah is not a book about a wall.

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It's a book about a garden God wanted to grow inside it.

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That's what it's about.

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Now later in the book of Isaiah -- sorry, in Nehemiah,

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they make this change. Right?

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The wall happens and then the wall is gone.

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But something new begins, which is

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they start to discover the Word of God.

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They pull it back out. Ezra the scribe takes over,

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he starts reading it to the people.

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There's this scene where they gather inside the wall,

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this garden, this vineyard of God.

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And this is what it says, Nehemiah chapter eight:

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This is the moment of why God wanted to return,

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why He wanted a wall built so the people

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could come back inside and they could

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become re-rooted in the Word of God

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and begin to grow the way that He wants them.

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This is what God wants, as it turns out, from all of us.

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He wants us to grow.

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There's an invitation to grow throughout

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the book of Nehemiah and far, far beyond.

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See, I think there's a thing we want to get today:

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growth may be more important to God than it is to you.

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We want to fix that today. So would you pray with me?

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God, thank you for the story of Nehemiah.

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Thank you for everyone who's here,

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everyone who's watching online.

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Would You help me be clear and say exactly what You want?

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Lord, help us all grow closer to You. Amen.

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Okay, it's been a minute since I've been up here,

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by the way, and done a teaching, I think, since September.

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And some stuff has happened in my life.

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I just want to keep you updated on,

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one terrible thing in particular,

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that is that my sweet, precious baby daughter

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has joined a cult.

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Um, not what I wanted, you know,

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sort of asking lots of questions, internal questions.

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You know, how could I would I have done differently,

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and all those sorts of things.

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And my conclusion is nothing.

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Because, see, in a marriage,

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you don't want to ever point a finger, right?

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You don't want to say like, it's your fault or whatever.

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That's never good.

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But I do want to just point out

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that this is entirely Sarah's fault.

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It is not mine.

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Um, she introduced our daughter to the leader of this cult,

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started singing along to all of the ideology

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and all all the stuff.

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And now I have a daughter who believes

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in the theology of Bad Blood,

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the doctrine of the Blank Space. You know?

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She's like, what does that even mean? So, meta.

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And then and then this, like, prophecy

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of a messiah like character called the Anti-Hero.

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Have you ever heard of this? It's crazy.

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She's a Swiftie. Check this out.

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Can I ask you a question? - Sure.

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- Who is your favorite singer?

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- Probably Taylor Swift.

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- What's your favorite song? - Blank Space.

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- What's it about?

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- Um, it's about blank space, I think. I don't know.

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- You don't know?

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- I think it's about blank space.

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I mean, that's the name.

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- I love that. She sings along to the songs.

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She's no idea what they mean at all.

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You've ever been in a moment in your life where that's happened?

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Maybe at work, someone's talking about something.

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"Oh, the synergistic relationship between the..."

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You're like, "Yeah, that sounds --

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I don't know what you're talking about."

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She's not alone. It happens a lot at church.

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Come to churches ad we like to use code words

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and phrases that don't actually make any sense.

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We'll talk about your spiritual journey.

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And if you're new, you're like, "What does that mean?

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Do we get a spiritual backpack?

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Do we eat spiritual snacks along the way?

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Sounds cool, right?"

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Or walk with God, you know, I've heard that one.

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It's like, "Walk with God. That's awesome.

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Like, are we walking dogs? Are we going hiking?

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You know, should I bring I bring some snacks?

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How does this work?" We use these phrases.

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I think growth is one of those types of phrases

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or words, I think you can hear and nod your head along

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and even go like, "Yeah, no, I get what that's about,"

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and not actually understand it.

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This is certainly been me. Certainly been me.

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Now, growth is important.

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I want to make that very clear.

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As a church, we love growth. We believe in growth.

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It's actually in our mission statement.

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I don't know if you knew this.

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Our mission statement is connecting seekers,

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those are people who don't yet believe in Jesus,

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to a community of growing Christ-followers

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who are changing the world.

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Growing is the heart of our mission statement.

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We've actually spent a lot of time trying

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to figure out how to help us all to grow.

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We even invented a method of growth

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called the Seven Proven Practices.

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And if you've been here for any length of time

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of 12 months or so, you would have heard us

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talk about the seven practices.

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Maybe a community pastor stood on stage

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or in a video and said, "We've got these seven practices

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there to help you grow,

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and maybe you want to check one out."

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You've heard this, right? Very, very important.

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By the way, the seven practices

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are up there on the screen if you're curious.

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I'm not going to give you a rundown of them,

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but I will by the end of the service, though,

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point you to where you can find out more.

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They are actually proven, by the way.

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We did research on them to figure out

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what are the characteristics, what are the behaviors

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that add up to somebody actually growing spiritually.

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What does that look like?

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We determined that these are the seven.

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We also found that growth really starts to kick in

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when you're doing four or more of the practices.

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That's not all we found out.

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We did more research and we discovered that

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as a church, most of us are doing three or less,

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which means we have a problem.

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The problem is that most of us aren't growing

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like we could be, and therefore we're missing out

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on the life that God has for us.

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Now, the reason for that, I don't think

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is because we're bad, we're lazy, you know?

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I think it's because we're like Gracie

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and we're just singing along with a word

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that we don't actually understand

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the fullness and the richness of.

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But God has a radically different view of this idea

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of growth, what it is and and why it is

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that I want to root us in today.

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And to do that, I'm going to give you a lot of Bible,

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okay, a whole lot of Bible, so much Bible.

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But I think that you can handle it.

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Now to help you with the amount of Bible

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I'm about to give you, we're going to play a game,

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okay, as I give you the Bible.

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It's probably what you're thinking, a drinking game.

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How about that? First one I think in the history

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of this church that I know of anyway, drinking games.

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Some of you are like, "This is awesome.

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My mom said I wasted my time in college.

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Turns out I'm primed, about to crush it, right?"

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Others of you like, "A drinking game in church?"

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Relax, with whatever's in your cup, your water,

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your coffee, your juice, whatever,

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dude in the back row, I'm not going to ask what you have.

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It's fine. It's fine. Drinking game. Okay.

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Now it's going to work like this,

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when I read from the Bible the word fruit,

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you're going to take a drink of whatever you have, okay?

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Not yet. That wasn't the Bible, that was just me.

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That was just me.

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When I read from the Bible you're going to drink

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when I say the word fruit.

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The reason is because God says the goal of growth

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is not more knowledge, it's not better theology,

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it's not to become a nicer, kinder, more godly person.

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I think God's fine with all those things.

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I think He actually likes them.

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But the goal, the goal of growth is

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that you would bear much fruit.

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This idea is so thorough in the Bible.

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I was researching and working on this message,

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it was mind blowing to me how often God brings this up.

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In fact, what I'm going to share with you

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is literally 3% of the times it comes up in the Bible.

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We're not even going to get to the 97%.

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That's how big of an idea this is. Okay, so ready?

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Get your cup in hand. You're ready.

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Or an imaginary cup, that's also fine.

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Get it ready. Here we go.

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Do you know the first living thing that God ever made?

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Genesis 1:11, Then God said that

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the land produced vegetation, seed bearing plants

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and trees in the land that bear fruit. [ding]

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There you go. Even a little sound effect to help you.

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How about that? With seed it according to the various kinds.

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Do you know the first two words that God ever spoke to humanity?

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Genesis 1:28, God blessed them and said to them,

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"Be fruitful [ding] and increase in number," perfect.

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The blessing that God gave after the Flood,

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which is kind of like God's redo on the start of humanity.

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Genesis 9:1, Then God blessed Noah and his sons,

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saying to them, 'Be fruitful [ding] and increase in number

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and fill the earth."

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What about the covenant that God made with Abraham?

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This is a massive moment in the history of the people of God.

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He grabs this guy Abraham, and he changes his name,

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and he kind of gives him this massive promises

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and this commission of what he was going to do.

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And he says this to him, Genesis 17,

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No longer will you be called Abraham,

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your name will be Abraham,

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for I have made you a father of many nations.

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I will make you very fruitful. [ding]

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When Isaac blesses Jacob, Genesis 28,

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May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful, [ding]

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and increase your numbers

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until you become a community of peoples.

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When God changed Jacob's name to Israel, Genesis 35,

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God said to him, your name's Jacob,

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no longer be called Jacob, so he named him Israel.

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God said to him, "I am God Almighty.

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Be fruitful [ding] and increase in number.

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The main sign that Moses was looking for,

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he sent the spies across the Jordan River

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to spy out the Promised Land.

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What did he want to know? Whether it had fruit in it.

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This is Numbers 13, There they reported to them

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and to the whole assembly

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and showed them the fruit [ding] of the land.

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They gave Moses this account.

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We went into the land to which you sent us,

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and it does flow with milk and honey.

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Here is its fruit. [ding]

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Perfect. You guys are doing so great.

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How about the opening of Psalms,

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the book of prayer and authenticity.

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Just one of the most, richest, just deepest,

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craziest parts of the whole Bible.

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Do you know that the very first chapter

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of all of Psalms starts with the idea of fruit?

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It says this: blessed is the one

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who does not walk in step with the wicked,

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or stand in the way that sinners take

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or sit in the company of mockers,

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but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,

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who meditates on His law day and night.

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This person is like a tree planted by streams of water,

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which yields its fruit [ding] in season,

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and whose leaf does not wither.

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Now, I'm not going to read you the major prophets.

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There's five of them, by the way.

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There's Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations,

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which is written by Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel.

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I'll just say that all five prophets

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also mention the word fruit.

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And so I'm going to quote each of them, ready?

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Fruit bing, [ding] and drink. Yeah. There you go.

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Fruit, [ding] fruit, [ding] fruit, [ding] fruit [ding].

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We saved so much time there. That was great.

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We're really making awesome progress. I just love this.

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You guys are incredible.

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Okay, Jesus's final major teaching, almost done.

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Jesus' final major teaching.

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This is a big moment, right?

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He's done all kinds of different teachings.

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He's gone all over the place. He's taught so many people.

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This is his last one before He's going to go

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to the cross and get crucified.

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It's really important. What does he talk about?

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John 15 Jesus says, "I am the vine

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and my father is the gardener.

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He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, [ding]

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while every branch that does bear fruit [ding]

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He prunes that it will be even more fruitful. [ding]

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You are already clean because the word I've spoken to you.

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Remain in Me, as I also remain in you.

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No branch can bear fruit by itself.

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It must remain in the vine.

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Neither can you bear fruit [ding] unless you remain in Me.

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I'm the vine, you're the branches.

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If you remain in Me and I in you,

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you will bear much fruit. [ding] This is crazy.

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Apart from me, you can do nothing.

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This is to My Father's glory that you bear much fruit. [ding]

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Showing goodness to be my disciples, John 15:16,

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you didn't choose <e, but I chose you

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and appointed you that you might go and bear fruit. [ding]

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Fruit that will last. Come on, ding.

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That was a double fruit. Where did it go?

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[ding] There it is. Okay. Perfect.

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You get the idea, right?

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Fruit is a big deal to God.

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There's a goal for your life,

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this is what I want you to hear.

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And you can put your cups down. We're cool. Okay.

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If you want to keep going, I mean,

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there's going to be more words of fruit.

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You can keep going if you want to.

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That was the end of the official game. Okay.

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The point is this: God has a vision for your life.

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And my question is, do you have the same one?

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His vision is that you bear fruit.

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Now, fruit isn't just like nice,

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you know, positive vibes.

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I'm just sending lovey vibes out into the world, you know?

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No, it's not that.

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Fruit is people who know and love God because of you,

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because of your investment in them,

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because of how you love them,

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because of how you showed them Jesus.

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That's the fruit that He wants from you now.

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Not just a little, by the way.

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Did you hear the word much in there?

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Good question might be how much, Jesus?

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You said much. That's a little bit vague. You know?

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Much can mean different things to different people.

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I take my kids to Chick-fil-A, they love Chick-fil-A.

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It's a great place. I love Chick-fil-A.

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We are a family of five, okay,

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so we roll up in our minivan to the drive through.

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This is the scene that plays out every time.

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I order $75 worth of chicken shrapnel.

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Just whatever parts you want. I'll take it.

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Just deep fry it. Right?

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Throw some waffle fries on the side.

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Order it, and then at the end of the order,

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they always say, "Would you like any dipping sauce?"

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And I say, "Yes." And they say, "What kind?"

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And I say, "Ranch." And they say, "How much?"

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And I say, "Much, much much, like a whole lot, you know?"

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In my mind that would mean, like, I don't know,

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a dozen packs of -- there's so much chicken and five of us.

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This is what happens every time

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we go to the drive thru. They hand us the bag.

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We say thank you. They say, "My pleasure." Perfect.

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I open the bag and inside are two ranches.

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It's not much to me, you know?

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We've got different definitions.

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So what does much mean to God?

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What's His version of much?

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Is there a place in the Bible where maybe

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Jesus connects the idea of fruit to the idea of much?

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It turns out that there is, actually.

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Matthew 13:23 says:

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Okay, there's math in the Bible. Did you know that?

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I don't if you knew that. There's math in the Bible.

00:18:18

I'm not going to tell my 13 year old. He hates math.

00:18:20

This would not be good for his spiritual growth.

00:18:22

But I'll tell you, there is math in the Bible.

00:18:25

Much to God seems to be a range between 30 acts

00:18:29

and 100 acts, anywhere in there He's cool with,

00:18:33

you know, 30 to 100.

00:18:35

You know, we can do math.

00:18:36

I don't know if you knew this as a church.

00:18:38

We have about 40,000 people,

00:18:40

unique people who engage with us every month.

00:18:43

40,000 people.

00:18:45

Do you know what 40,000 times 30 is? It's 1.2 million.

00:18:52

Do you know what 40,000 times 60 is? 2.4 million.

00:18:58

Do you know what 40,000 times 100 is? 4 million people.

00:19:04

That's in one generation.

00:19:06

There's other translations of this verse

00:19:07

that make it very clear that He's talking to some one,

00:19:10

one person, one generation.

00:19:13

If you do the Bible math, it would be reasonable

00:19:17

to conclude that what God wants from a church like us

00:19:21

is for that kind of range in one generation.

00:19:25

That's crazy. It might seem nuts to you.

00:19:29

Brian has been doing research on awakenings.

00:19:31

I'm sure he's talked about that a little bit from stage,

00:19:33

and you'll hear a lot more about it.

00:19:35

It's really been on his heart.

00:19:36

What is an awakening?

00:19:37

Well, an awakening is when

00:19:39

so many more people than usual

00:19:41

all come to God in one generation,

00:19:43

like 30 times, 60 times or 100 times more than usual.

00:19:47

And he's been researching, like, how do they happen

00:19:49

and and why do they happen and all this stuff.

00:19:52

And my assumption before he did this research

00:19:54

was like, God just sort of like spontaneously

00:19:56

did something and everyone was just there

00:19:57

and they're like, "Wow, we had no idea. This is crazy."

00:20:01

It's not how it works, not how it works.

00:20:04

It works when a group of people get a vision for it.

00:20:07

And they work for it and they pray for it

00:20:09

and they try for it, doesn't guarantee it's going to happen.

00:20:12

Doesn't guarantee that, but that's when it does happen.

00:20:17

Now, that might seem kind of crazy.

00:20:18

You know, I know, um, a lot of believers,

00:20:22

a lot of Christians can feel like big numbers are bad.

00:20:24

You know, I hear that a lot about Crossroads.

00:20:26

Some people where I work and it's like,

00:20:28

"Oh, man, it's so big. You know, it's kind of weird."

00:20:31

I'm like, "Well, it is big. Um,

00:20:33

I'm not sure why that means that it's weird or bad,

00:20:36

because that seems to be what you're --

00:20:37

What you're indicating. You know? It's bad, but I get it."

00:20:40

And by the way, if you feel that way right now,

00:20:42

if you're like, it is pretty big.

00:20:43

I'm like, no judgment, it's totally fine, I get it.

00:20:46

I remember back, um, I don't know, 2007, 2008,

00:20:50

we were talking about starting something called multi-site.

00:20:52

At that point, we were just one church, one location,

00:20:54

and we were going to add a site in Mason.

00:20:56

And I thought this was a bad idea.

00:21:00

Not because I didn't think it would work.

00:21:02

I just thought like, man, how arrogant of us

00:21:06

that we would think the world would need

00:21:08

more Crossroads churches. Uck.

00:21:10

That's just -- that's just crazy, right?

00:21:13

That's so prideful.

00:21:14

Humility. Humility would be to be reasonable.

00:21:18

Just work here. Try to grow this thing a little bit.

00:21:21

Right? That's that's reasonable.

00:21:23

Well, if you read the Bible, spoiler alert,

00:21:26

God doesn't seem to recruit reasonable people.

00:21:30

He doesn't train people to be reasonable.

00:21:34

He recruits unreasonable people and trains them

00:21:37

to have a child-like faith that what He says can happen.

00:21:40

Like Ephesians says that abundantly more

00:21:42

than they can think or imagine can happen through God.

00:21:45

That's what He's looking for. That's His idea of much.

00:21:48

I just think about what would have happened if we had stopped.

00:21:51

That 40,000 would be significantly less because

00:21:54

like 80% of that number is outside our original site.

00:21:57

That would, I mean, just think about that

00:21:59

if in my pride, which that's what it's called

00:22:03

when you don't agree with God, humility is,

00:22:06

"God, that's crazy.

00:22:07

I don't know how that's going to happen.

00:22:09

I don't understand it.

00:22:10

But I will just humbly submit under You

00:22:12

and try to follow You." That's humility.

00:22:16

Just, man, I can't even imagine.

00:22:18

Thank goodness that we didn't listen to me.

00:22:21

Thank goodness, you know?

00:22:23

Now, the stakes are high on this.

00:22:25

I need to make this point, bearing fruit

00:22:27

is not a hobby, it's not like a side project.

00:22:29

God's like, Hey, by the way, you know,

00:22:31

can you just kind of, like, like a side of fries?

00:22:33

Like a side of fruit on your life? That'd be cool.

00:22:35

Do whatever you want, just a little,

00:22:36

little cup of cup of fruit on the side. Cool."

00:22:39

No, it's not a hobby because the stakes are severe for this.

00:22:44

I read this in that John 15 section.

00:22:47

I want to read it again.

00:22:48

Jesus says to His disciples,

00:22:50

by the way, this is important.

00:22:51

That whole section, John 15 about the vine

00:22:54

and the branches and bear much fruit from Jesus,

00:22:56

that very last teaching, do you know where it took place?

00:23:00

This is on the roof of something

00:23:03

that's known as the Upper Room.

00:23:04

The Upper Room is where Jesus gave the Last Supper,

00:23:09

gathers His disciples together and does this thing.

00:23:11

He takes some some bread, He takes some wine,

00:23:13

and He blesses them. He breaks the bread.

00:23:15

He passes out the wine, says, "This is my body.

00:23:17

This is My blood shed for you."

00:23:18

It's the thing that we still do to this day.

00:23:20

Well, that all happened in the Upper Room.

00:23:23

But then after dinner, they arise to the Upper Room.

00:23:26

They go on top of the building where there

00:23:29

would have been something just like this.

00:23:31

This is a trellis and a vine.

00:23:34

And essentially before air conditioning

00:23:36

in the Middle East, if you wanted to be outside

00:23:38

and enjoy the breeze, you needed shade.

00:23:41

And so not uncommon, houses would have a trellis

00:23:45

and a little vineyard on top of the roof just to provide shade.

00:23:48

You can imagine the sun setting,

00:23:49

and this would help block some of sun,

00:23:51

and there'd probably be overhead beams

00:23:53

with it coming down too to block the sun overhead.

00:23:56

And so they're up there and Jesusis teaching,

00:23:58

as He's pointing at the vine in the trellis.

00:24:02

He says this, John 15:2:

00:24:13

He says God's like a gardener.

00:24:15

He goes inside the wall. He goes to His garden.

00:24:17

He's like a gardener and if He sees

00:24:19

a branch that doesn't have fruit, He just cuts it off.

00:24:22

Now, what does that mean?

00:24:23

Does it mean that you can lose your salvation?

00:24:25

This is a big one that I always get as a pastor,

00:24:27

can you lose your salvation?

00:24:29

Uh, personal opinion, I don't think so,

00:24:31

because the opposite of that would be

00:24:33

the way to keep your salvation is to do good works.

00:24:36

And we don't have a works based religion.

00:24:38

We have a grace based religion.

00:24:40

That's what Jesus's thing is.

00:24:42

It doesn't matter what you do,

00:24:43

you can't earn your way into heaven

00:24:44

and you can't mistake your way out of it either.

00:24:47

What does it mean to be cut off then?

00:24:48

It means that you miss out on

00:24:50

the abundant life that Jesus promised.

00:24:53

John 10 Jesus said:

00:25:01

Abundant what? Fruit, fruit. You get to enjoy it.

00:25:05

See, when you have abundant fruit,

00:25:07

you're the first person to get to partake of the fruit.

00:25:09

That's a verse from second Timothy,

00:25:11

it says the hard working farmer

00:25:12

is the first to partake of the fruit.

00:25:17

You can be cut off, you can miss out.

00:25:19

You can go through life fruitless.

00:25:20

That's not what God has for you.

00:25:23

How would you do that, by the way?

00:25:24

How would you become fruitless?

00:25:26

Is it accident, you know, it just kind of happenstance?

00:25:29

Just bad things happen? Well, no.

00:25:32

Part of this, I did a lot of research on vines.

00:25:34

You know, I was really interested, like,

00:25:36

how does how do vines grow?

00:25:37

And I found this whole crazy corner of the internet

00:25:39

where people are, like, hobbyist vine growers

00:25:41

and so learned a whole bunch about vines

00:25:43

that I'm never going to use ever again.

00:25:45

But I learned something really interesting.

00:25:49

A vine, every branch in a vine

00:25:51

will grow along the ground.

00:25:53

It'll search until it finds something to climb up

00:25:57

and cover, it's called a wild vine.

00:26:00

This is a picture of a wild vine.

00:26:01

You've probably seen scenes like this

00:26:03

as you drive around, maybe even as you're driving

00:26:06

south on 75, you're going to Florida or Disney World

00:26:09

or whatever, you see the kudzu like in Tennessee,

00:26:11

Georgia, it just covers billboards and stop signs

00:26:14

and trees and all kinds of stuff.

00:26:16

It just covers everything. That's a wild vine.

00:26:20

This is the same thing that we have today.

00:26:22

You and I naturally are wild vines.

00:26:25

And what we'll do is we will crawl along the ground

00:26:29

in whatever environment we happen to be in

00:26:32

until we find something to grow around.

00:26:36

Now these things -- Oh, golf. Who loves golf?

00:26:41

Golf is awesome, right?

00:26:43

What we'll do is we'll just, we'll just be walking

00:26:45

around on the ground, just kind of crawl. Oh, a golf club.

00:26:48

Ooh, I'm going to bend my life to golf.

00:26:50

And we shape our time and our resources around golf.

00:26:55

Then some of us, we go over here, we're like,

00:26:56

ooh, a perfect family. Ooh, look at that.

00:26:59

I'm going to shape myself around having

00:27:00

the perfect family that show us up

00:27:02

really well on Instagram. So perfect. It'd be great.

00:27:05

Some of us, we find a little house, we're like,

00:27:07

ooh, look, ooh, a house. I would like a bigger house.

00:27:10

This would be fantastic.

00:27:11

I'm going to make my life about having a bigger house.

00:27:13

Then after that house, ooh, an even bigger one.

00:27:15

Oh, that'd be great.

00:27:16

Others of us would go over here, we're like,

00:27:18

oh, yeah, health, body beautiful. Let's do it.

00:27:22

It's great. That's kind of heavy. I'll put that down.

00:27:27

We're wild branches, left on our own,

00:27:29

we will find something to grow ourselves around,

00:27:32

something that will become our shape.

00:27:34

Now, I picked these for a reason.

00:27:36

It's because they're all mine.

00:27:38

That's why I've been trying to get healthier

00:27:42

and work out.

00:27:43

I started playing golf a lot more

00:27:45

in the last couple of years.

00:27:46

Hasn't lowered my handicap or anything,

00:27:48

but playing a lot more.

00:27:49

I live in a house where me and my wife

00:27:53

share one bathroom to shower, brush our teeth,

00:27:55

all the things with all of our kids.

00:27:58

Not great, you know, not the dream.

00:28:01

I'd like a different house or more house or something.

00:28:04

I like my family to be great.

00:28:06

And you know what I did just get a promotion.

00:28:08

That's what this represents.

00:28:09

I couldn't find, like, a nameplate or anything,

00:28:11

just a trophy, so I've got the corner office, you know,

00:28:14

the big job here.

00:28:16

Here's the point: none of these things,

00:28:19

in and of themselves are bad.

00:28:21

When Jesus says to grow fruit, or to be fruitless,

00:28:26

He doesn't mean that you have to enjoy

00:28:28

only church stuff.

00:28:29

You can't have anything good in your life.

00:28:31

That's not the point. It's not the point.

00:28:33

But let me be very clear, while I love all these things,

00:28:36

my life is not shaped around any of them.

00:28:39

None of them. They don't steer my dreams.

00:28:42

They're not my ultimate thing

00:28:43

that I'm thinking about every day,

00:28:45

waking up and going, how do I how do I get more?

00:28:47

How do I get further?

00:28:48

When that's true for you,

00:28:50

and yours might be other stuff, I don't know what it is,

00:28:53

when that's true for you, you are a wild vine

00:28:55

shaping yourself to something other than Jesus

00:28:57

and you will, will, will be fruitless.

00:29:02

So how does fruitfulness happen?

00:29:04

How would you end up being the vine

00:29:06

that bears much fruit? Is that accidental?

00:29:09

Are you born with some kind of a spiritual gene?

00:29:12

No, not at all. Not at all.

00:29:16

See, the contrast to a wild vine is a trellised vine.

00:29:22

A vine that somebody has come along, a gardener,

00:29:24

and carefully cultivated it and given it a structure.

00:29:27

A trellis is a really intentional structure

00:29:29

designed to lift a vine up off the ground

00:29:33

that's going to protect it from rot and bugs.

00:29:36

It's going to expose it to air.

00:29:38

It's going to expose it to the sun.

00:29:40

It's going to more evenly distribute moisture on it

00:29:42

without getting bogged down into puddles

00:29:43

where that rot might grow or fungus might develop.

00:29:46

A trellis is what a vine needs to grow

00:29:49

and become abundantly, abundantly fruitful.

00:29:53

Now, a trellis is essentially God's Word.

00:29:58

He's the vine dresser. He's the gardener.

00:30:02

And what He uses, like we saw in Nehemiah

00:30:04

in the beginning, is His Word as the thing

00:30:07

to prop us up, to lift us up,

00:30:10

for us to shape ourselves around.

00:30:12

Now, in Nehemiah, it was the Old Testament law, right?

00:30:14

It was the Book of Moses that they read from.

00:30:16

Well, we're actually post Jesus, which means

00:30:19

the Old Testament law isn't the thing

00:30:20

that we shape ourselves to anymore.

00:30:22

The thing we shape ourselves to

00:30:23

is the one who fulfilled the law, that's Jesus.

00:30:27

And Jesus said in John 14:6:

00:30:35

He's the way, meaning the way of life,

00:30:38

the way of acting, the way of organizing

00:30:41

the practices that you do, that's Jesus.

00:30:44

And the ancient believers, they spent a lot of time

00:30:46

on this idea of the way.

00:30:47

And the way that they started to describe it

00:30:49

or think of it was as a rule of life.

00:30:52

Not rules, by the way, but rule

00:30:55

comes from the Latin word regula,

00:30:57

which literally means a straight piece of wood,

00:31:01

not about measuring up.

00:31:02

It's about a support structure.

00:31:04

It's it's this piece right here, that is a regula.

00:31:09

It's a way of living.

00:31:11

Now the the point of it, like I said,

00:31:14

is to help you bear and grow fruit.

00:31:17

At Crossroads we have one of these.

00:31:20

It's called the seven practices that I showed you earlier.

00:31:24

It's our way of describing these are the things

00:31:26

that you would do if you wanted

00:31:27

to becom a fruitful person.

00:31:30

You receive weekly teaching, connect with God daily,

00:31:32

serve others, live generously, join community,

00:31:34

get baptized, share your story.

00:31:36

And I'm telling you, those things

00:31:37

might sound like so basic to you.

00:31:39

Like, "Kyle, really, all this just for those things?

00:31:41

Aren't those kind of obvious?"

00:31:42

Well, yeah, but are you doing them?

00:31:45

Is your life shaped to them?

00:31:47

Do you make choices away from other things to them?

00:31:51

Do you invest your time and your resources

00:31:52

in these things or in something else?

00:31:55

And if you're like, "Well, I don't know."

00:31:56

Well, have an idea for you.

00:31:57

If you want to know what your life is shaped to,

00:32:00

ask your spouse or your best friend or your roommate.

00:32:06

They'll tell you.

00:32:08

What are you shaping yourself to?

00:32:11

You might be wondering, you know, is this kind of

00:32:13

a rigor, is this kind of a thing, a way of life,

00:32:16

a trellis, these these seven things.

00:32:17

Do I need this? Is this really necessary, Kyle?

00:32:20

Is it necessary to do all this stuff?

00:32:22

Well, I heard a story about Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

00:32:25

who is a faith hero of mine.

00:32:27

He was an anti-Nazi activist in Germany

00:32:30

in the 1930s and 40s, eventually martyred

00:32:32

for his part in trying to overthrow Hitler.

00:32:36

Now, Dietrich started out as a reasonable guy,

00:32:39

very reasonable, came from a reasonable family.

00:32:41

They weren't really Christians or very religious or anything.

00:32:44

They were just kind of reasonable family

00:32:46

and Dietrich got a really reasonable job

00:32:48

at a university in Munich.

00:32:49

And he was kind of teaching.

00:32:50

And then the Nazi Party came to power,

00:32:53

and they started to just kind of overwhelm the people

00:32:55

and capture their minds.

00:32:57

And everybody who was just that branch

00:32:58

crawling on the ground found the ideology

00:33:00

and just sort of bent themselves around it.

00:33:03

So Dietrich was like, "I got to do something about this."

00:33:05

And so he quits his job.

00:33:07

He leaves Munich and he goes out into the rural,

00:33:09

kind of backwoods of Germany, and he establishes

00:33:13

an underground seminary where he's going to train pastors.

00:33:16

He's going to develop a curriculum, like a trellis,

00:33:18

for them to grow around so that they become fruitful,

00:33:21

even though the sky is covered

00:33:23

with this great evil called Nazism.

00:33:26

He called it finkenwalde.

00:33:28

So he goes out and he starts doing this work.

00:33:30

And a couple of years go by and his family thinks,

00:33:33

"Well, maybe Dietrich will kind of

00:33:34

get it out of his system," but he never did.

00:33:37

And so finally they sent a family friend out

00:33:39

to go get him, and the family friend shows up

00:33:41

to Finkenwalde and just says to Dietrich, says,

00:33:44

"Hey, man, you know, isn't this, um, isn't this enough?

00:33:48

Hasn't it been long enough?

00:33:49

I mean, is any of this stuff, is it even necessary?

00:33:54

And Bonhoeffer didn't say anything to him.

00:33:56

He just walked to the edge of a lake.

00:33:58

Finkenwalde was on this giant lake

00:34:00

and gets into a rowboat, motions for his friend to get in.

00:34:03

Rows them across the lake, gets out of the boat,

00:34:06

and they walk up a hill.

00:34:08

And at the top of the hill you can see

00:34:11

a valley down to the other side,

00:34:12

and in that valley was a Hitler Youth Training center,

00:34:16

where people are being bent and shaped

00:34:19

to the ideologies of Nazism.

00:34:22

And Bonhoeffer said, "You asked me is this necessary?"

00:34:27

He said, "Yes, because this,"

00:34:30

and he pointed at Finkenwalde,

00:34:32

"must become stronger than that,"

00:34:34

the Hitler Youth Training Center.

00:34:36

And friends, I know, I'm so thankful

00:34:38

we don't live in Nazi Germany.

00:34:40

So, so thankful. How great is that?

00:34:42

But please don't be deluded.

00:34:44

Do you think the kingdom of darkness

00:34:46

is taking a few decades off?

00:34:48

Do you think that the culture we live in

00:34:51

doesn't have just as evil intentions

00:34:52

to pull us away from the things of God

00:34:54

and shape our dreams and shape our thinking

00:34:57

to something besides Him? Because it does.

00:34:59

It's still here, and you will either shape yourself

00:35:03

to something that's not Jesus,

00:35:04

or you shape yourself to Him.

00:35:06

Those are your only options.

00:35:09

The goal of all this is to look like Jesus, by the way.

00:35:11

Jesus described it this way in Matthew 16:

00:35:28

The invitation is to actually take up the practice,

00:35:32

to to take it upon yourself.

00:35:35

I started doing this, by the way,

00:35:36

these seven practices I had heard.

00:35:37

I've been part of forming them,

00:35:39

and we had talked about them for a while.

00:35:40

It's probably about nine months ago,

00:35:42

the beginning of last summer.

00:35:43

I just had this conviction moment where I went,

00:35:45

"Oh, what about my life, God?

00:35:48

There might be some things in here

00:35:49

that that I'm missing."

00:35:51

And so I looked through the seven

00:35:52

and was kind of praying about it and thinking about it,

00:35:54

and I got convicted about the one that said Serve Others.

00:35:58

I thought, "Well, you know, my whole job is serving.

00:36:00

God, that's what I do.

00:36:01

And that's the genuine kind of mindset I try to take

00:36:04

to pastoring is I'm here to serve you.

00:36:06

I'm here to help you. You know?"

00:36:08

God was like, "Well, yeah, but, uh, that's your job.

00:36:13

What are you doing that you don't have to?

00:36:16

Who are you serving that you don't have to serve?"

00:36:21

I didn't have a good answer, so I signed up.

00:36:24

I went to middle school camp, led a group of 8th grade boys.

00:36:27

It was terrifying and awesome all at the same time.

00:36:31

And since I've been volunteering

00:36:32

in middle school ministry leading 8th grade boys

00:36:35

at Crossroads East Side.

00:36:38

Can I just tell you how much more abundant my life feels.

00:36:43

How much more joy I have,

00:36:46

how much more I can sense God.

00:36:48

Why? Because I'm trying to shape myself to Him.

00:36:53

He said, "Take up my cross.

00:36:54

Take up your cross. Follow me."

00:36:58

This isn't a self-help. This isn't self-actualization.

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This isn't about becoming the best version of yourself.

00:37:02

This is about becoming like Jesus,

00:37:05

pure and simple, that's it.

00:37:08

The apostle Paul said this, Philippians 3:8,

00:37:10

he says that his goal is:

00:37:23

The idea is to be conformed to the Cross.

00:37:25

Now we think that a cross

00:37:27

is shaped like a lowercase t, right?

00:37:30

But if you go back to ancient drawings and artworks

00:37:32

of crosses, they look a lot more like this over here.

00:37:35

This is the artist Giotto from the Arena Chapel

00:37:38

in Padua, Italy. Painted that in 1305.

00:37:40

You'll notice that that cross

00:37:43

is more like an uppercase T,

00:37:46

two pieces of wood and a sign on top.

00:37:50

It looks a lot like a trellis.

00:37:53

This is the call of Christ.

00:37:57

If you want to be fruitful, you bend your life to Him,

00:38:00

you give your life away,

00:38:03

you love people the way that He loved people.

00:38:06

Right before He did this teaching, like I said,

00:38:08

he was downstairs in the Upper Room,

00:38:11

and He did the thing with the bread and the wine

00:38:13

that we now commemorate as communion.

00:38:16

These were His words, Matthew 26 says:

00:38:47

Did you notice Jesus never said the word wine?

00:38:49

He called it fruit.

00:38:52

You know, every grape starts out,

00:38:55

every glass of wine starts out as a grape.

00:38:58

A grape that has to be crushed.

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A grapes that has to be sacrificed.

00:39:03

And this is the destiny of all fruit.

00:39:05

It's not to keep it for yourself.

00:39:08

It's to let yourself be crushed

00:39:09

so that your life can nourish somebody else

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so they might know and love and follow God because of you.

00:39:17

Now a grape gets crushed

00:39:19

and gets put away into the darkness for a while.

00:39:23

When it comes out, it's something new. It's wine.

00:39:25

We're going to take communion to close out our time together.

00:39:29

This is a time to remember and reflect on

00:39:32

the fruitful life that Jesus lived for you,

00:39:35

so that you might bear much fruit.

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Time to have a conversation with God.

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And we're going to do this a little bit differently.

00:39:44

We're actually going to use grapes instead of wine

00:39:48

to remind ourselves of that, that He was crushed.

00:39:51

Isaiah 53 says:

00:40:02

So as you have communion, as you take that grape,

00:40:05

I want you to bite into it.

00:40:07

I want you to imagine the crushing

00:40:09

that Jesus went through for you,

00:40:12

not to make you feel guilty,

00:40:13

but to make you feel grateful.

00:40:15

And I want you to ask Him how you might

00:40:17

step into living that life of fruitfulness too.

00:40:20

And in just a minute, your campus pastor

00:40:22

is going to come on stage and give you instruction

00:40:24

or come on video and give you instructions.

00:40:26

But for now, let me pray for you.

00:40:28

God, thank you, thank you, thank you

00:40:31

for living the abundant life,

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for inviting us into fruitfulness.

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And I just ask that You'd help us take a step

00:40:38

this week, a step closer to living

00:40:40

the way that You want us to live,

00:40:41

to practicing the things You want us to practice.

00:40:43

That we may be the garden that You love,

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the vineyard that's so fruitful.

00:40:47

We might even see something as crazy

00:40:49

as a hundred fold return in our lifetime.

00:40:52

We love You. Amen.

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