[SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church located in Plano, Texas.
[SPEAKER_00]: For more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry, please visit citizenschurch.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have a Bible, turn to Romans chapter eight and find verse twenty nine.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a couple of other scriptures this morning as you're turning there.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are new to Citizens Church, welcome.
[SPEAKER_00]: My name is Jamen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm one of the pastors.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are here and you call Citizens Home, it's good to see you church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, I know Chad mentioned this right at the beginning, but to all of our sixth graders who are in here now, we just graduated a class of fifth graders going into sixth grade and they graduated out of our elementary ministry and so now you're in here stuck with us every Sunday.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want you to know that we love you, and this is not your parents' church, this is your church, and your part of the family of God, and we're so grateful that you are in here with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Last week, we started a series called Becoming Like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just want to take some time this morning to answer a little bit more of the why and some of the hopes behind this series.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've said this before.
[SPEAKER_00]: My story is this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I learned to love Jesus in my home growing up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I learned to love the Word of God at Bible College.
[SPEAKER_00]: I learned to love the people of God here, this congregation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love our church.
[SPEAKER_00]: My life has been profoundly changed by you, by the people here at Citizen's Church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And every fall, I get really reflective about art church, our church's story, where we've been, what the Lord's done.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that happens for me in the fall, because fall just holds a lot of milestone moments for our church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, a lot of really important impactful things have happened for us in the months of August in September, going back a decade.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many know this, many don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our church started as a campus of a larger church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we were called, when we first started, we were called the Village Church Plano Campus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember a September Sunday in, in, fourteen, when we had our very first service in a building about a mile away from here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was anybody here for that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that means that that means that you have been a part of this congregation for eleven years now.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are getting old, my friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember in August Sunday, middle of August in the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the late of the
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember the first Sunday during the whole COVID season where we met again in person here, and we were on line for a few months, and then we started meeting in person with all these restrictions and distance and masks, and no one disagreed with any of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the first Sunday we met in person, it was the longest, my dad's a pastor as born race and church.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the longest I'd gone my entire life.
[SPEAKER_00]: without meeting in person with the family of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when we gathered back in during that COVID season, I just cried, it was beautiful just to be back together again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many, probably remember, last September, we had a big birthday celebration.
[SPEAKER_00]: We celebrated five years as a church, ten years as a congregation back then.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is fall for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And every fall, those memories just come back to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just think about where we've been.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it feels like, I don't know, this is my only experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it feels like our church has just been through a lot of different seasons, a lot of uniquely different seasons and lots of highs.
[SPEAKER_00]: and lots of lows.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of the most heartbreaking things I've ever been through have been with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some of the most sacred, life-giving moments I've ever experienced have been with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not just saying that as a pastor, this is my church just as a Christian.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very personal to me, my two of my three kids and the baptized at this church.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of my kids are being disciple in this church.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Lord has healed things in my marriage at this church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have found wise, born for adversity, friends here at this church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I learned to preach, at this church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the emotion that just surfaces every year around this time of year is profound gratitude to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: God has been so kind to us, kind to heal and to save and to comfort and to restore.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's been so kind.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what is true in all that, as I reflect back on where we've been, I'm going to give you a chance to aim in.
[SPEAKER_00]: The best thing about Citizens Church is Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is the hero of this church.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've heard me say this, our highest ambition together is that we would become like him.
[SPEAKER_00]: The greatest aim of our life is to be like him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in our years together, as our reflect back, what's happened is that deeply held conviction has just grown stronger in my heart and the heart of our staff and elders and in your heart church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's what this series is about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not mostly saying things that are new, but sending our roots deeper into that conviction.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let me just state it plainly what that conviction is.
[SPEAKER_00]: The church exists to form Christ-like Christians.
[SPEAKER_00]: The church exists so that followers of Jesus would become like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why we're here.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Jesus commissions his disciples, he says, go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I've commanded you, and I'm with you always, even to the end of the age.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the commission is not, go make converts who add me to their life.
[SPEAKER_00]: The commission is, go make disciples who become like me in all of their life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And those disciples responded to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: They waited in Jerusalem for the Spirit of God, and then the Holy Spirit fell on them at Tenacost, and then led by the Spirit of God, they preached good news of the risen Christ, and they formed churches, and planted churches, and those churches were people committed to loving Jesus, and becoming like Him in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's our heritage.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's our heritage.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of those churches, one of those Jerusalem churches, planted a church that planted a church that planted a church that planted a church that eventually planted highland village first Baptist church that became the village church that started the village church Plano eleven years ago that became citizen church almost six years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: My point is that it's from the very beginning, from the very beginning, the church has existed to make Christ like disciples in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why we exist.
[SPEAKER_00]: John Stott was a British pastor in theologian.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he wrote the best book on the cross, besides the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: The last book he wrote before he died was called The Radical Disciple, and I read it this last month.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what he's doing is he's reflecting on his years of ministry as taught, as pastored, as written,
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was always grappling with this question of what God's purpose for his people and what's the best way to talk about it?
[SPEAKER_00]: What has this all been about?
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what he says.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to share with you where my mind has come to rest as I approach the end of my pilgrimage on earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is this.
[SPEAKER_00]: God wants his people to become like Christ for Christ's likeness is the will of God for the people of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: He psyched these scriptures to make his case and I want to read them together.
[SPEAKER_00]: One is the one that Imland read for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Romans eight, twenty-eight and twenty-nine.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.
[SPEAKER_00]: For those who are called according to his purpose.
[SPEAKER_00]: For those who are called according to his
[SPEAKER_00]: and sin has distorted that image in my life and in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And God sent his son as his perfect image so that we would become like him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we become like him, our image bearing humanity as restored.
[SPEAKER_00]: So to be like Jesus is to be truly human.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that has been God's plan forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those who forenew He predestined to be conformed to the image of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here at this way, Christ likeness is the eternal predestining purpose of God for your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: St.
[SPEAKER_00]: Corinthians three, eight teams says this, I'm trying to make the case that Christ likeness is why the church exists.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom and we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,
[SPEAKER_00]: are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.
[SPEAKER_00]: The holding the glory of Jesus are being transformed in the likeness of Jesus and that's happening when, right now, it's present.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Christ's likeness is what God planned for you in the past.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's what He's doing in you right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: First John three, one and two says this, see what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God and so we are.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Beloved, we are God's children now in what will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.
[SPEAKER_00]: One day Jesus will return and he will beautify his people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when he appears, we will be made to like him because we will see him in all of his glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that day is the fulfillment of the Great Commission.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of his commands will be our very character.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our discipleship will be complete.
[SPEAKER_00]: We will be with him forever because we will be like him fully when we see him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So see the movement.
[SPEAKER_00]: See the movement.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christ's likeness is what God planned for you in the past, predestined to be conformed to the image of a son.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christ's likeness is what God is doing in your life right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're being transformed into the image of Jesus as we hold him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christ's likeness is what God will do in your future.
[SPEAKER_00]: When he appears, we shall be made like you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stot says that this way, God's eternal purpose, historical purpose, and God's final eschatological purpose, past, present, and future, all combined to the same end of Christ's likeness, because Christ's likeness is the will of God for the people of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why the church exists.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why this church exists.
[SPEAKER_00]: I belong here, you belong here, we belong here to become like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, here's why I can't just pray right now, it'd be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: First, I don't think the ice cream sun is already yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's also how we do.
[SPEAKER_00]: What our years together have taught me, it would be so easy to settle for something less than this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Be so easy to settle for something less than that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes people ask me, Jamie, what's your five-year vision for citizen's church?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hate that question.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not much of a planner.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all I can do to have a one-week vision for our church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm also not the one who decides that here, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm not the only one.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm one of the pastors, not the only one.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's real.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not just something I say.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I think about it?
[SPEAKER_00]: The best I've got is that five years from now, my sincere hope is that God is still doing here what he's been doing here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like my plan, my plan is to just not get in the way of that if I can help it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by God's grace, second Corinthians, three-eighteen that we're being transformed from one degree of glory to the other.
[SPEAKER_00]: My hope is that that's still happening here in our lives individually and corporately.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the five-year plan is to just not shift from this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to aspire to anything less than Christ's light Christianity and Christ's light churches.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what's true below.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lean in.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is immense pressure and temptation to become a different kind of church than the Christ's light.
[SPEAKER_00]: If five years from now, we have made this about something other than Jesus, then we would be one of a long list of churches who were once faithful and started to fall apart because we left our first love.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just want to name two threats that we have to guard against.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the name two threats that we have to guard against.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first is spiritual complacency.
[SPEAKER_00]: Spiritual complacency will keep us from being a Christ-like church.
[SPEAKER_00]: A.W.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tozer in his book, the pursuit of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says so many of the problems with the church are a result of a lack of longing for God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen to this.
[SPEAKER_00]: The stiff
[SPEAKER_00]: and wouldn't quality about our religious lives is the result of our lack of holy desire.
[SPEAKER_00]: complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth.
[SPEAKER_00]: A cute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to his people.
[SPEAKER_00]: He waits to be wanted.
[SPEAKER_00]: People with half-hearted desire for Christ will not become like Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: He waits to be wanted.
[SPEAKER_00]: So hear me, if you hear that, and your response is, oh gosh, I want more than half-hearted desire.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if you hear that and it bothered, he waits to be wanted, and you think about your own life, and I don't want him as much as I should, and that bothers you.
[SPEAKER_00]: If that's you, be encouraged, because wanting to want more of Jesus is the beginning of more desire for Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you hear it and you're unmoved, be warned, goodness.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what's easy to do in our part of the world?
[SPEAKER_00]: Church?
[SPEAKER_00]: go to church.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're like, it actually was a very easy to get here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I get that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's easy for church to just become this complacent routine that I'm in.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are thousands of people, thousands of people who will go to church in Colin County this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: with zero expectation for God to do anything in their life, because there is little to no desire for more of God in their life.
[SPEAKER_00]: No expectation to repent or change or receive grace for being met by the presence of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not talking about lost people who try out church for the first time.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's people who've done church for years.
[SPEAKER_00]: People who feel completely obligated to a God that they're bored with.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they leave church unchanged and unmoved.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not because God didn't do anything, but because they got as much of God as they wanted.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's why numerical growth, especially in Plano, Texas, numerical growth is not the best way to measure faithfulness in a church.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a way to fail as a church by succeeding at what doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tozer again in another book, he says this, I know a lot of churches that would like to grow, and they do their best to get the crowds in, but because the Holy Spirit is not given a chance to work in our services, nobody's repenting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody's seeking God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody is spending a day in quiet waiting on God with open Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Seeking to mend his or her ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody's doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We just want more people.
[SPEAKER_00]: But more people for what?
[SPEAKER_00]: More people to come and repeat our dead services without feeling, without meaning, without wonder, without surprise.
[SPEAKER_00]: More people to join us in the bondage to the routine for the most part, spiritual rigidity that cannot bend as too weak to know just how weak it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord protect us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Protect us from dead services without feeling, without meaning, without wonder, without surprise.
[SPEAKER_00]: What a tragedy for the church to be full of people and empty of the presence of Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: What a tragedy for a church to grow in numbers and grow cold and holy desires.
[SPEAKER_00]: He waits to be wanted.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wants him.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this spiritual complacency, I just think it's the greatest threat to the church in our part of the world of all of the surrounding cultural things that bother us, of all the surrounding cultural things that might concern us.
[SPEAKER_00]: None of them are as dangerous to the church as Christians who don't care.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it'd be easy for you to think that I'm talking to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am so convicted.
[SPEAKER_00]: This complacency is in me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, there is this, I'm so troubled by it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is this dissonance that can exist in my life where I believe what I believe and am so unmoved by it at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I believe, I believe this my whole heart, that God loves us so much, that He sent His perfect son to spill His blood to cover every sin past present in future.
[SPEAKER_00]: And He right now pleads on our behalf, contending for our salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one day He will return, and every tear you've cried will dry up in His glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: And every death that you've agreed will be undone in resurrection.
[SPEAKER_00]: And every joy you've ever felt will be magnified for all of eternity in his beautiful presence.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have come here so many Sundays completely unmoved by it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And have mumbled through our songs and stumbled through a sermon and take communion wondering what's for lunch.
[SPEAKER_00]: And have gone home just as dry as when I showed up with no more of Jesus because I got as much of Him as I wanted.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is an evil kind of dissonance that can believe in Jesus in our head and desire no more of Him in our heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord protect us from spiritual complacency, protect us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not saying Sunday morning is the only time that that matters, or even the most important time for a Christian.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have just found, if I don't care now, I'm probably not caring anymore the rest of the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other side of that coin.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other thing we have to guard against is religious consumerism.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a quote by an author named Neal Cole says this ultimately each church will be evaluated by only one thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's disciples.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your church is only as good as it's disciples.
[SPEAKER_00]: It does not matter how good your praise, preaching, programs, or property are.
[SPEAKER_00]: If your disciples are passive, needy, consumeristic, and not moving in the direction of radical obedience, your church is not good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me say it another way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe more positive way.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a religious business owner and you're not a religious consumer.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are the church of Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: You do not come here to get religious products and I don't come here to satisfy religious customers.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are the Church of Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is this consumer mentality that the Church is mostly its services and its programs and its preaching and its building and if we do this right then you're happy and you invite your friends and if we don't then you take your business elsewhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a way to fail as a church by succeeding it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what growing a suburban religious business with happy Christian customers doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a waste of time.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a failure no matter how successful it gets.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because people might attend, but lines aren't being transformed.
[SPEAKER_00]: People are participating, but they're not changing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because consumerism is allergic to change.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just wants a transaction where I feel better about my life because I did something religious or I just want a transaction because I feel better about my life because I led something religious and consumerism worships comfort and change is uncomfortable, especially the change that Jesus demands.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unchanging Christians or disobedient Christians in an unchanging church has nothing to offer the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what's at stake, beloved.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what's at stake.
[SPEAKER_00]: The greatest danger when I treat this as a consumer, the greatest danger is we place the weight of our spiritual growth and the witness of the church onto the professionals when God's given it to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's given it to you, Christian.
[SPEAKER_00]: If someone asks you, tell me about your church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's how you can answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it would be okay to answer this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: You talk about our services or our location or our next gen ministry.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's theologically rich and intentional or incredible Bible classes that are serious about God's Word, our recovery ministry that's open door to sinners and sufferers, a preacher with a strange name, Christ exalting worship.
[SPEAKER_00]: You could talk about any one of our ministries and that'd be a fine way to answer if somebody says, tell me about your church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or you could also talk about you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell me about your church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I've been following Jesus for a few years, or many years, and I need Jesus every day, and here's where I'm growing, and here's where I still struggle, and here's where the Lord's been faithful.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, tell me about your church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am, because I'm the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the church is me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The church is for people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christ followers who belong in a local family of faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: A church is the disciples that she's making.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever the people are who make up the church, that's the kind of church it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: No worse, no better, no wiser, no holier to change the church you must begin with the people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Toes are says.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hear me?
[SPEAKER_00]: I have, as a pastor, been on the right side of this, meaning I have seen this reality sustain our church.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a season of our church where the leadership just wasn't doing that great.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm speaking for me, like where if it was up to the ability or the knowledge or even the character of the leaders here, citizens would not have made it, would not have made it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what happened was the mature, Christ-like saints of citizens church carried this place with your prayers and your grace and your love.
[SPEAKER_00]: A people who didn't look and say, this is their problem, but who looked and said, this is our church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the church survived that season, not because of her programs and her services were thriving, but because her people were faithful and her savior was kind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Praise God.
[SPEAKER_00]: A church not full of religious consumers, but faithful disciples.
[SPEAKER_00]: Praise God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I believe about us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want more than spiritual complacency and religious consumerism.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want more than that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want Christ and to become like Him together as a church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can I say what can't happen this morning?
[SPEAKER_00]: I would just be so troubled if what you hear me saying is, if you were a real Christian, you would care more on you would try harder.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of this is.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we need, beloved, if we're going to be this, if we're not having any shot at this, goodness, what we need is to behold Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: John Stots, I read a lot of tozer in a lot of stock in July, so you're getting a lot of their greatest hits.
[SPEAKER_00]: John Stots has this, the poor our vision of Christ, the poor our discipleship will be, the richer our vision of Christ, the richer our discipleship will be.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if we go back to Second Corinthians three with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord or being transformed, we're transformed because we're beholding Jesus to go back to first John.
[SPEAKER_00]: When he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.
[SPEAKER_00]: We become like him completely when we see him fully.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we don't become like him.
[SPEAKER_00]: by focusing on all the things that are wrong with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: That only gets us so far.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not enough to say I don't want to be complacent.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to be a consumer.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can turn our eyes away from that, but it's not just turning away to turning towards.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why the author of Hebrews in chapter twelve says, let us run with endurance to race that is set before us looking to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: The founder and professor of our faith are faithful endurance with Christ is about fixing our eyes on Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our discipleship will only be as deep as our vision of Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said all of that to say this.
[SPEAKER_00]: This fall
[SPEAKER_00]: We are beholding Jesus that we might become like Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's our hope.
[SPEAKER_00]: A deep vision of Jesus that leads to life's deeply changed by Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: In March, twelve, thirty, Jesus tells us to love God, but he doesn't just say love God a whole lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't stack adjectives onto that command.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says love God with all your mind, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus doesn't just command that, but he lives it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He embodies the command.
[SPEAKER_00]: He satisfies the command.
[SPEAKER_00]: So be patient with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll unpack more of this in the coming weeks.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the Christ's likeness that we're after at Citizen's Church, if the Church exists to form Christ's likeness in her members, the Christ's likeness that we are after at Citizen's is to think like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Love like Jesus, feel like Jesus, and act like Jesus to have the mind, heart, soul, and strength of Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't want to compartmentalize Christianity either.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't want Christianity that thinks but doesn't love or acts without righteous affection and feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want a deep vision of Jesus that will search every corner of our life, mind, heart, soul, and strength and surrender all of us to Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not complacent Christianity, not consumer Christianity, but becoming like Christ Christianity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Know this as we close.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is committed to doing this in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said this last week, the Christian life is the paradox of becoming what you already are in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything that is beautiful and pure and righteous about Jesus has been declared to be true about you and your salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Without you doing anything at all, just a free gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are already like Jesus in the eyes of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And life with Him is this grace driven journey of becoming what you already are.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as he does that work in you, he is so patient with you, so patient.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus has never complacent towards you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's never transactional with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we said last week, He has always ready to meet our open-handed repentance with His grace that never runs out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing in my hands I bring simply to the cross-ecting.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're in a place where you're not very confident in yourself that you'll become like Him, that's a great place to be because when we are weak, He is strong.
[SPEAKER_00]: One more John's thought quote, if you have time for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is unique in his incarnation, the one and only God, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unique in his atonement, only he's died for the sins of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unique in his resurrection, only he is conquered death.
[SPEAKER_00]: And since in no other person but Jesus of Nazareth did God first become human, then bear our sins and triumph over death, he is uniquely competent to save sinners.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody else possesses his qualifications.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we may talk about Alexander the Great, or Charles the Great, or Napoleon the Great, but not Jesus the Great, he is not the Great, he is the only.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is nobody like him, he has no rival and no successor.
[SPEAKER_00]: This Jesus, the death defeating champion of heaven and earth, who empties hell of its power and fills the church with his presence, who has no rival and no successor, that Jesus is committed to loving you.
[SPEAKER_00]: and committed a change in you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He will do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We trust him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Desire him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Long in your heart to become more and more like him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Father, we love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Goodness.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need God your confrontation.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need your loving confrontation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Faithful are the wounds of the friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need you to confront us in our complacency.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just don't get it, God.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish I could just snap my fingers in all the desire I'm supposed to have, I would just have in a moment, and that could be true or a whole church.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it's true, Jesus, that you wait to be wanted, we do not want to keep you waiting.
[SPEAKER_00]: So help us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do it only you can do, take hearts of stone and make them flesh, take embers that are dying in our soul towards you and just light them of flame with passion for you and your people and your mission.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, please.
[SPEAKER_00]: And anyone in here, the best they can do is say, I don't care.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just pray God that they would offer that as repentance and confession to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Confirm our consumerism, Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can just turn this into some sort of transaction.
[SPEAKER_00]: that leaves you, Lord, neglected and disobeyed and leaves us no better than when we got here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Help us.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we need your loving confrontation, we offer our lives to you, and, and we need to believe that you're for us, you love us, there's grace for us, and you are committed to doing this work of transformation in our life.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to believe that there's nothing that we've ever done that could keep us from you.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's more mercy in you than there is sin in us.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I think back on our years as a church, thank you, God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thank you, Lord Jesus, that even on those Sundays when the preachers' affections were cold, you still met your people.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thank you, Lord, on those Sundays where it was the best we could do just to get here.
[SPEAKER_00]: You still had grace for us, Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thank you for those Sundays when it's like,
[SPEAKER_00]: The worst possible thing that could happen happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: And your strength was made perfect in our weakness, Scott.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just pray that what's true about how many years that you give us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, I pray what's true is that we would always be a place that exult you as our hero.
[SPEAKER_00]: That exult you about the best thing about us, Scott.
[SPEAKER_00]: We love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.