[SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church located in Plano, Texas for more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry Please visit citizenschurch.com Can we thank Colton for sharing his story?
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish I needed this to be this high, but I don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I gotta lower it down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Luke chapter 5, we're in a series called The Coming Like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to become like Jesus in all the ways that He wants to change us.
[SPEAKER_00]: That means we want to think and love and feel and act like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is week one on act like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: The words we've put to that as a church is that acting like Jesus means cultivating a life that bears witness to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a few big prayers, I'm Jayman, and one of the pastors here, welcome.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few big prayers, I've prayed lately, one's kind of a new prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: By big prayers, I mean, things that I want deeply, and they just feel so much bigger than me than what I can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if they're gonna happen, then God's gonna have to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So one big prayer I've prayed is that years from now, God in His mercy would let me sit at a dinner table with carry as an old man, and that table is surrounded by our kids and our grandkids and they all love Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: that God would give me that moment, because if God does that, that one moment that dinner table would just hold so much answered prayer and so much grace, and that's bigger than me.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's bigger than me.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's gonna have to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's another prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been praying it's a big prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a new prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Candidly, I have not desired this the way I should always.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not exactly sure that I've found the best way to talk about it, so maybe you would talk about it differently than the way I'll talk about it this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would love to see a powerful, reviving move of God in this church, in my lifetime.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not something we watch happen somewhere else, in which we could have been there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But something that God does right here in our midst.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you imagine that?
[SPEAKER_00]: The first great awakening happened in the early 1700s, and those who led that great awakening said that it was marked by five things, the exalted Jesus Christ, attacked the kingdom of darkness, honored the scriptures, promoted sound doctrine, and there was an outpouring of love toward God and man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those five things in the early 1700s took over a generation to the effect that the church was more like Christ and thousands and thousands and thousands of people repented of their sins and trusted Jesus' Savior and a whole generation was changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you imagine that in our day?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's another revival in the early 1900s called The Welles Revival.
[SPEAKER_00]: 70,000 people came to faith in Christ in the first two months.
[SPEAKER_00]: 100,000 people total over the course of the revival.
[SPEAKER_00]: I read a story this week, that just that was amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of those services in one of the church services, the revival services, a guy's preaching and a skeptic, a known hostile skeptic to the gospel showed up.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was against Christianity during the sermon, he shouted at the preacher.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please don't do that and the preacher kept preaching and the guy got even more mad because he was being ignored And so a yelled louder and everyone ignored him and so finally he gets up and he starts walking toward the stage To confront the preacher and here's what the account said from the time he got out of his chair To when he reached the stage the spirit of God stopped him changed his heart He cried out for mercy and his friends around him yelled he has been saved
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you think of that as your friend?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like your grouchiest, most closed-minded, skeptical friend is mid-argument and God shuts their mouth and opens their heart at the same time?
[SPEAKER_00]: How much easier would it be just to be around them if that happened, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That man was one of a hundred thousand that the Lord saved during the Welsh revival.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you imagine something like that in our day?
[SPEAKER_00]: You didn't have to happen like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: God can do what he wants, but how I imagine is I imagine we're ending service on a Sunday and instead of leaving, people just start confessing sin and celebrating grace and people come to faith in Christ and stay in worship and bleak or just can't go home because God and His people decided church wasn't over.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know the lost friends that we pray for at the end of every service we've been doing this for about a year now, we end our service as asking, God to bring to mind people who are far from Jesus and then we pray that God would save them, family, neighbors, all that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine a season of our church.
[SPEAKER_00]: where a hundred of those just came to faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the people like the Lord saved your brother that you've been praying for, or your parents, or your prodigal child, he brings them home, or your coworker, or a whole family you've been praying for.
[SPEAKER_00]: They all just come to faith in Jesus at once.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we have to do in response to that is change our sermon plan and for a whole month just do celebration service every Sunday, just to baptize all the people who are Lord is saving.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we talk about that moment for years and years and years, as like this Ebony's remote, do you remember the fall of 25 when the Lord answered her prayers?
[SPEAKER_00]: How wonderful would that be?
[SPEAKER_00]: I would love to see a powerful reviving move of God through this church in our lifetime.
[SPEAKER_00]: there's a question over this moment that we're living in that a lot of people are asking is that happening?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that about to happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are we on the cusp of a generation changing move of God right now?
[SPEAKER_00]: There are parts of Europe that are seeing young people come to Christ in areas where faith in Jesus has been non-existent for decades.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a pastor friend who travels and speaks around the world and we were on the phone together on Thursday because I was asking for wisdom about a lot of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was telling me about his travels and he said that in the last year he's been to the UK, he's been to Australia, he's been to... He named Wales in Sydney and he said that the pastors there are all saying the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not doing anything different than we've done for years.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of a sudden, young people are showing up to our churches and asking about Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there've been spontaneous baptism services at some of these churches just because of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: In America a few years ago, I don't know if you remember this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I quoted from a book called The Great De Churching.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a book by a couple of Christian researchers who were tracing this mass-exodus in America.
[SPEAKER_00]: Americans leaving church and it started in the 90s.
[SPEAKER_00]: By 2021, from the 90s to 2021, 40 million people had left the church in 25 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's more than all the people who became Christians in the first great awakening, second great awakening, and Billy Graham revivals combined.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember reading that and thinking, oh no, that's dire.
[SPEAKER_00]: Barna is a research group.
[SPEAKER_00]: They released this article this past April.
[SPEAKER_00]: It'll be on the screen behind me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just the headline, belief in Jesus rises fueled by younger adults.
[SPEAKER_00]: From 2021 to 2025, the number of people who claim to follow Jesus increased by 12%.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's 30 million people.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says this in the article, the shift is not only statistically significant, it may be the clearest indication of meaningful spiritual renewal in the United States.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just a few weeks ago, another article came out and said this, young adults lead a resurgence in church attendance.
[SPEAKER_00]: For the first time in decades, younger adults, that's Gen Z and Millennials.
[SPEAKER_00]: are now the most regular churchgoers, outpacing older generations who once formed the backbone of churches in this.
[SPEAKER_00]: D.C.
[SPEAKER_00]: is happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the article, they called it a historic reversal.
[SPEAKER_00]: So over 25 years, there's this mass exodus of older generations from church.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it gets this low point in 2021, and more for the first time in America's history, church attendance fell below 50%, and then in just four years, a younger generation has driven a return to church of historic proportions.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's doing something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now those are headlines.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's easy to talk about headlines.
[SPEAKER_00]: That can feel removed from us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Colton just shared his testimony and talked about college life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our college ministry that ministers to UDD and now calling college, you know about them almost every celebration service in our church's history.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's included someone from this ministry coming to faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been fruitful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I asked them this week, let's go doing now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm reading those headlines, I'm reading the research, but they're front line doing ministry with college students.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the spiritual climate like now?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so here's what they said.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gena said that when she first started nine years ago, the campus was cold to the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now there's much more interest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Students are open, they're curious.
[SPEAKER_00]: Emily said, Loki, AI has made people question what's true, and that's been really great for the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Micah said, students are wanting answers to live biggest questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: They desire real community and belonging.
[SPEAKER_00]: J. T. said, they've tried everything secularism has to offer in our still dissatisfied.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now they're coming back or investigating Christ for the first time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they all said,
[SPEAKER_00]: They all talked about the Christian students that are part of the ministry.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Christian students who are on campus, and they said these students have a burden for the gospel, a burden for their lost friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're willing to make sacrifices, not waste their lives, and multiply their lives for the glory of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: A campus down the road, yeah, praise God, praise God.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a rule here, if one person starts clapping, we all just join in just to make it work.
[SPEAKER_00]: A campus down the road that was cold to the gospel nine years ago is spiritually open.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it's a spiritual curiosity that has not yet found a spiritual home, but there are young men and women on that campus, zealous for the glory of Jesus who are there to say, we have the answers you're looking for.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's at work, he's doing something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you imagine if God answered all the prayers that our college team is praying?
[SPEAKER_00]: And for a whole month, every Sunday, we gathered just to take communion and baptize college students?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's only a time for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please, Lord, please, I would love to see a powerful, reviving move of God in this church, in our lifetime.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not something we watch happen somewhere else, but something that God does in our midst.
[SPEAKER_00]: My hope this morning, and I don't think I can do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: My hope this morning is to stir in us a zeal to play our part.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every great move of God has come in concert with two things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Prayer for that move of God and Christ sintered witness to the lost.
[SPEAKER_00]: A church that prays for an outpouring of God's presence in their day, and a church that is zealous for the lost.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want us to want that here.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a lot of other things we could talk about going on in the world right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there's other things you would talk about in this moment right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: I pastor here and I don't pastor anywhere else.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want the testimony of citizen's church to be that the church always had the right reaction to all the headlines.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want the testimony of citizen's church to be our church was right in the middle of a life-changing move of God in our city, in our place, in our neighborhoods.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's my hope.
[SPEAKER_00]: to stir in us as you'll to play our part, to get our eyes on the work of God at work right where we are.
[SPEAKER_00]: So would you pause and pray with me?
[SPEAKER_00]: We do this at the end of every service.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm moving it right in the middle of the sermon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you ask God to bring demand, someone in your life, who is far from Jesus, who doesn't know Jesus, would you just think, would you just think about where God has placed you, where you live, where you work, where you go to school,
[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine what it would look like if a reviving saving move of God took over and you were part of it, would you just ask for that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Please Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you look at the loop chapter five?
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll start in verse 18 as I read this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you listen for three kinds of people around Jesus?
[SPEAKER_00]: And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd.
[SPEAKER_00]: They went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles and the midst before Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: When he saw their faith, he said, man, your sins are forgiven you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the scribes of verse, he's beginning to question saying, who is this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who speaks blasphemies?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who can forgive sins but got alone?
[SPEAKER_00]: When Jesus perceived their thoughts, that's terrifying.
[SPEAKER_00]: He answered them, why do you question in your hearts?
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is easier to say your sins are forgiven you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or to say, rise and walk.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that you may know that the settlement has authority on earth to forgive sins.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said to the man,
[SPEAKER_00]: And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God, amazement, seize them all.
[SPEAKER_00]: They glorified God and were filled with all saying, we have seen extraordinary things today.
[SPEAKER_00]: After this, he went out and saw tax collection and he'd leave eye, sitting at the tax booth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said to him, follow me and leaving everything he rose and followed him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And leave eye made him a great feast in his house.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was a large company of tax collectors, and others were climbing at table with them in the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples saying, why do you eat and drink
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus answered in those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repeat.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is teaching the places packed in all of a sudden dirt and rocks to fall down on everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they look up and there's this man being lowered through the roof to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus looks at the man.
[SPEAKER_00]: He sees the faith of the man's friends and he says you are sins or forgiven.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Pharisees say, well, you can't do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus says, well, what do you think about this?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he heals his legs and everyone marvels.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus sees Levi, who is Matthew, he's going to write the book of Matthew.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus said, follow me and Levi says, on a tax collector, everyone hates me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus says, I don't follow me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Levi and his zeal for Jesus throws a feast and invites all of his friends where the only kind of friends he has or sinful tax collector friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Pharisees grumble, and they say these people are sick with sin and Jesus says, I didn't come for healthy people.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we read, did you see the three kinds of people around Jesus?
[SPEAKER_00]: The critics, the crowd, and the missional Christians?
[SPEAKER_00]: the critics, the crowd, and the missional Christians.
[SPEAKER_00]: If a move of God is going to happen in our day, only the missional Christians will be part of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The critics are the scribes in the Pharisees.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 21 says, they began to question saying, who is this who speaks blasphemies?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who can forgive sins but got alone?
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 30, the Pharisees in the scribes grumbled up at her disciples saying, why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?
[SPEAKER_00]: So Jesus forgives them in sins, and they call it blasphemy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus welcomes sinners, eats with them, and they grumble.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a dangerous thing to call evil what God calls good.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a dangerous thing to grumble at what God celebrates.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's what the critics do.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this group maintained this response to Jesus, the charge of blasphemy here is the accusation that makes that put Jesus on the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: They knew scripture.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were threatened by Jesus because more than they wanted a move of God, they wanted people to seek their approval first.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were the gatekeepers of right and wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Jesus comes on the scene and he packs houses with his teachings and they say, well, you should have run all that by us first.
[SPEAKER_00]: Last spring I went to a conference for a ministry called East West.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an organization that exists to reach, unreach people with the hope of the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the remissionaries there from all over the world, like my favorite part was I got to sit at a table with missionaries from Africa and Europe and South America, and we just worship together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this four tastes of heaven?
[SPEAKER_00]: All tribes, tongues, and people multiplying God's holiness and so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: The president of East West Ministries, a guy named Curt Nelson, he said this, and it was so convicting, I was reminded of it this week.
[SPEAKER_00]: missionaries have stories to tell.
[SPEAKER_00]: Religious people have rules to follow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Missionaries have stories to tell.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are there rules in following Jesus?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Love your enemies.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bear one of another's burdens.
[SPEAKER_00]: Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
[SPEAKER_00]: The point is not obedience doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: The point is not that there's no moral or ethical standard.
[SPEAKER_00]: The point is this, there's a way to be a Christian in the rules are all you have.
[SPEAKER_00]: in this story, the Pharisees, they have their rules, that's blasphemy, you can't eat with them, and they're all these made up rules.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do the friends of the paralyzed man have?
[SPEAKER_00]: They have a story to tell.
[SPEAKER_00]: We heard Jesus was close, and we heard that he heals people, and our friend hasn't been able to walk in years, and we carried him to Jesus, and we couldn't get in, and we were like, let's just go through the roof, and someone was like, I think the homeowner has insurance, let's do it, and they watched, through the roof,
[SPEAKER_00]: And then his legs, they told that story the rest of their lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: They told that story the rest of their lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cold hearted self-righteous critics don't have stories like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: They just watch critically from the sidelines, passing judgment on people who are actually doing the work of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Bible College, we had a guest preacher, he was an evangelist, and after he preached, he did a Q&A, and a student stands up, and he says, I think you are sharing an over-simplified version of the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're sharing an incomplete version of the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think the student understood what a Q&A was, because there's no comment, or no questions, just comment.
[SPEAKER_00]: As he asked that, as he made that comment, I agreed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought the way that the evangelist articulated the gospel was theologically light.
[SPEAKER_00]: But how he responded stuck with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The evangelist says, can I ask you something?
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell me the last time you shared your faith with someone who doesn't know Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lots of verbal pauses, and then the student was silent.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the evangelist says, I like my incomplete way of sharing the gospel better than your disobedient way of not sharing the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, I don't like conflict.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we can see it.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of things we could say about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I took away.
[SPEAKER_00]: If my robust, theologically rich understanding of the gospel doesn't make it out of my life as love for others and zeal for the lost, maybe I just want to be right about Jesus, but I don't care about being obedient to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Critics have a long list of people doing things the wrong way.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have no stories to tell of what God is doing through their life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would love to see a powerful, reviving move of God in this church in my lifetime if it happens, the critics will miss it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's the crowd.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is verse 19.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no way in because of the crowd.
[SPEAKER_00]: The crowd are those that leave amazed at Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: The crowd doesn't play a huge role in this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you were to do a survey of the crowd throughout the Gospels, what you'd see is that they are an ever-present group throughout Jesus' ministry.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Gospels will make a distinction between the crowd and the disciples.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus feeds the crowd, will teach the crowd.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes Jesus is rejected by the crowd.
[SPEAKER_00]: The crowd is around Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes interested in Jesus will marvel at Jesus, but not everyone in the crowd is a disciple.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not everyone in the crowd becomes a true follower of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the distinction.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not that the crowd watches what Jesus is doing and opposes it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's that watching what Jesus is doing is all they do.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't participate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me repeat some things you've heard me say very recently.
[SPEAKER_00]: A crowd is easy in our part of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Filling a room and play no Texas.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's easy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's easy to gather a crowd around interest in Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's easy to gather a crowd around religious experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: This past somewhere I read a book by AWS, or about how church is die, just some light, happy reading.
[SPEAKER_00]: The title of the book is, Rott, or Revival.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first step to church death is what Toes recalls routine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Church is just keep doing the same thing in their own power and assuming God's in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says that this way in our service is God cannot get in, because we have it all fixed up for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: We say, Lord, we're going to have it this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, kindly bless our plans.
[SPEAKER_00]: We repeat without feeling, we repeat without meaning, we sing without wonder, and we listen without surprise.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is just what we do.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next stage he calls rut, it's where a church is going through the motions and can't see it anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: A church is doing things in their own power, but God is not there and they're stuck.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the last stage, the church just wrought.
[SPEAKER_00]: It dies from the inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tozer calls it the psychology of non-expectation.
[SPEAKER_00]: People are unable to visualize anything better.
[SPEAKER_00]: They no longer desire any more of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are content to just do church absence of the Spirit of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: I quoted this a few weeks ago, it's worth our time again, because the Holy Spirit is not given a chance to work in our services, nobody's repenting, nobody's seeking God, nobody's spending a day in quiet, waiting on God with open Bible, seeking to mend his own ways, nobody's doing it, we just want more people, just want crowd, more people for what, more people to come and repeat our dead services, that won't change anyone's life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got to plan every Sunday.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it my plan?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is the room for God to interrupt it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do I want a crowded room or do I want Jesus?
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's not always the same thing in our part of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a crowd.
[SPEAKER_00]: Crowds around Jesus, they marvel, they listen, they ate the food he made, they applauded the miracles, and then many left as soon as it cost something.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what I believe about Citizen's Church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't just feel pressure to say this, to rescue the moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Citizens is not just a crowd.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are a church of people who love Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know how I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have suffered too faithfully for this to be fake.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have repented too honestly for this to be fake.
[SPEAKER_00]: You love one another too sincerely for this to be fake.
[SPEAKER_00]: You love Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are not just a crowd.
[SPEAKER_00]: And,
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to do whatever it takes to protect us from becoming the kind of church that just goes through the motions, stops waiting on the Lord and dies from the inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's how that's made into my prayers.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few times a week, I come in here right here and I get on my knees and I put my face on the floor, which is hard because I have tight hamstrings and I just pray that the Lord
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I just start praying for things that I know that if they happen here, it will only be because God is here and He's working.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I pray that honest repentance would mark our life and I pray that God would increase our desire and I pray that sacrificial love, I pray that we would experience a kind of unity as a church that is just unknown in our polarized world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I pray that God would save the people that we've been praying for at the end of our services because you can't fake that.
[SPEAKER_00]: If that's happening here, it's because God is doing it, and only God gets the credit for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would love to see a powerful reviving move of God through this church my lifetime.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will not come through a disinterested, non-committal crowd of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will come through Christ like Grace Needy Zellis for Jesus Christians.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's the critics, there's the crowds, and then I see in this story, missional Christians, I didn't know what else to call them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 18, and behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: But finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles in the midst before Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when he saw their face, he said, man, your sins are forgiven you.
[SPEAKER_00]: In verse 29, Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe one way to say the big idea behind this morning is that Christians who act like Jesus share their faith with others.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a lot of verses we could go to to make that point.
[SPEAKER_00]: Talk about the great commission.
[SPEAKER_00]: Talk about Acts 1.
[SPEAKER_00]: Talk about Matthew 5.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are all precious passages.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's why we're in this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the simple zeal to get people to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Levi doesn't know anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't know anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's been following Jesus for a few hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says, I have a house.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have food.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a ton of sinful broken friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I throw a party, they will come.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if they come, they will meet Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: They just know their buddy can't walk.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all they know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they know Jesus heals people who can't walk.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they say, let's go and they look at each other and they say, you grab that side of the mat.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll grab this side of the mat.
[SPEAKER_00]: And let's get him to the house where Jesus is and they get there and they can't get in, but they're so close.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe the man on the mat says it's okay, guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for trying and they say, no, no, no, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not gonna give up.
[SPEAKER_00]: We will tear the roof off to get you to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Jesus forgives his sin before he heals his legs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you know why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because Jesus doesn't just want him to walk.
[SPEAKER_00]: If that's all he heals one day, this man's life ends and he stays dead and never walks again.
[SPEAKER_00]: He forgives his sin so that one day, he will be raised with a body that not only can walk, but will never die.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the friends didn't know that.
[SPEAKER_00]: They just knew he needed Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they got him to Jesus and Jesus had even better plans for this man that his friends did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Had even deeper healing than what they were asking for.
[SPEAKER_00]: What they had was strong arms to carry the mat and persistent faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I love about Colton's testimony is that Colton can't tell his testimony without talking about J.T.
[SPEAKER_00]: and Ryan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Friends who carry, remember how he said it?
[SPEAKER_00]: They were determined to carry me to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know of a greater honor in this life than the privilege of being an unignorable part of someone's testimony.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you share your story, you don't just talk about Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: You talk about people.
[SPEAKER_00]: You talk about Christians.
[SPEAKER_00]: You talk about party-throwing, mat, carry, and Christians who would not leave you alone about Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the details are different.
[SPEAKER_00]: And every one of our lives, for some it's a roommate, it's a mom, it's a teammate, it's a Sunday school teacher, it's a grandparent, it's a preacher, that details are different.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every Christian in the room is a Christian because of another Christian.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's God's design.
[SPEAKER_00]: He could do it without us.
[SPEAKER_00]: He could do it better than us.
[SPEAKER_00]: He delights and using us.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the way C.S.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lewis says that he says it like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: For he seems to do nothing of himself, which he can possibly delegate to his creatures.
[SPEAKER_00]: He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly where he could do perfectly.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not mere recipients or spectators, we're either privileged to share in the game or compelled to collaborate in the work.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is how God makes something out of nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: God wants to use you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wants to work through you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is an expecting perfection.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knows we will do slowly and blunderingly what he could do perfectly, but in his kindness.
[SPEAKER_00]: He uses us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't miss a halt.
[SPEAKER_00]: God does not just want you to have Christians in your testimony.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like these are the people who love me to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: God wants you to be the Christian and someone else's testimony.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the people I'm loving to Jesus, by Colton said, gospel in, and gospel out.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'd love to see a powerful, reviving move of God in this church, in my lifetime.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will come.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will come through Christ-like, matcarrying, burdened for the lost, desperate to get to Jesus Christians.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what all God is doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what all God's doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do note that every extraordinary work of God's presence comes through the ordinary obedience of God's people.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's play our part.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two things I think we need.
[SPEAKER_00]: Confidence in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need confidence in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us hear all this, do we just think of all the ways we feel ill-equipped?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like when you think about the people in your life who don't know Jesus, you're like, well, I'm trying, I'm carrying the mat, all they want to do is argue.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have questions about theology, your politics, or church, or they saw some scandal, and it turned them off, and I just don't know what to say, and I get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's my job to know what to say, and I often don't know what to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hear me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gospel is enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not trying to give a Sunday school answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe what Jesus says in verse 31, those who are well have no need of a physician, those who are sick, I've not come to call righteous but sinners, superpintence.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's mercy in Christ for the sick who need healing, there's mercy in Christ for sinners who need repentance.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might not know everything to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might not know what you think about everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: You do know that the great need of every human is right relationship with the Holy God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you do know that there's no other name under heaven by which the lost are saved than Jesus Christ our Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know the power of the cross is stronger than any sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know the resurrection of Jesus defeated death and disarmed hell.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if that's all you know to say, be confident in that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And trust Jesus with the rest, think about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the spiritual awakening that's happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the stories I told,
[SPEAKER_00]: are happening among a younger generation, Gen Z, young adults.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a generation that many believed was a lost cause because of phonetician skepticism and high rates of anxiety.
[SPEAKER_00]: One writer called them an unlikely cohort for spiritual revival.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he makes this comment, awakenings always begin with desperation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this generation is experiencing a soul, starved, meaning vacuum.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're desperate for something to fill it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for many of them, Jesus is meeting that desperation with himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's meeting it with himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so a generation that many were giving up on is the very generation Jesus is reviving his church through.
[SPEAKER_00]: How confident can we be in him?
[SPEAKER_00]: You notice doing his keeping his promise, the gates of hell will not prevail against the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is no one in your life who's too far gone, no one, no one.
[SPEAKER_00]: You offer your obedience.
[SPEAKER_00]: You say what you notice, say, and you trust Jesus with the outcomes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the second thing we need, and I'll invite us into this as we end, is an expectation for Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I think we need an imagination for more than we thought possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need a zeal, a passion for the presence of God that is more than just our own small world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if God answered the last 20 prayers you prayed, what would change?
[SPEAKER_00]: What would be different about the world around you?
[SPEAKER_00]: The most recent revival in our country was the Asbury Revival in Kentucky.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember hearing about that?
[SPEAKER_00]: February, 2023, what happened was just a normal 50-minute chapel service at Asger University did not stop for 16 days, 50,000 people came, most of them were young adults.
[SPEAKER_00]: The President of the College wrote a article about it, and here is the testimony of what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: As students flooded the chapel with prayers and worships.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what he said, as they came to the altar, the prayers of students fell into one of four categories, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and addiction.
[SPEAKER_00]: Referring to their raw and desperate prayers, a colleague said, if we had the spiritual eyes to see it,
[SPEAKER_00]: We would see an altar covered with loose and chains.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we had the spiritualized to see it, we would see not just students in a chapel at an altar praying, but we would see spiritual bondage breaking.
[SPEAKER_00]: We would see blood-bought, freedom, and Christ falling on a life forever changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you just pray that the Lord would give us that?
[SPEAKER_00]: God is at work here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just asking for more.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just asking that God that we would expect to be a part of something so unmistakably God that to understand the scope of it, we would have to have spiritual eyes to see all of God's doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what it looks like to us is church, like what we see as baptism, but if we had spiritual eyes, we would see lineage changing faithfulness to Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we see is prayer, but if we had spiritual eyes, we would see life-saving freedom from sins, loosens chains of addiction, and idolatry, and self-hate.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we see is a family member who comes to faith that we thought never would.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we had spiritual eyes, we would see someone that God has loved since before creation.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we see is 500 kids disabled every Sunday if we had spiritual eyes, we would see the future of the church of Jesus contending for Christ in his kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we see are worshipers, but if we had spiritual eyes, we would see the worship of heaven touching earth, a four-taste of what we will do forever and ever and ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we see is the church gathered if we had spiritual eyes, we would see our Savior at the right hand of the Father, pleading for His people, delighting in His people,
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want this church?
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, stir in your people, confront apathy in difference in your people, awaken, oh God, in your people, an expectation for more and more of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: pick our pocket of trivial things that distract us from you, pry our hands off of the things that we worship instead of you, protect us from missing you in our moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord Jesus, would you give us a powerful, reviving move of your presence through this church in our lifetime?
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't want the attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: We just want to be an all of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So would you,
[SPEAKER_00]: lead us by your spirit and to honest repentance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stir in us, Lord God, a desire for more, save our friends, put a clear, unwavering gospel proclamation in our mouth, help us to be faithful, to be obedient, and then we trust you with the outcomes, Lord Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you ask for this church?
[SPEAKER_00]: Forgive me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know the best way to lead out in this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: But would you in your own way and your own words with your own mixed heart, whatever desire there is for more of God, for the work of God, for a,
[SPEAKER_00]: revival that can only be attributed to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever desire you have for that would you just ask God like the fish and the loaves to multiply it in your life and then plead with Him in whatever way you know how to.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need you, Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: we need you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You love us.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're pleased with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in your kindness, you're inviting us to be right where you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Help us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.