Authentic Community - Northland's Mission

One of the things that encourages me so much is when I talk to people who are new to Northland, they visited, for the 1st time, or maybe for a handful of times, and they will comment about how friendly you all were to them. That encouraged me so much to hear the report that people found our church, to be friendly. That's in large part to our amazing hospitality team. Don't they do a great job? Give it up for a hospitality team. They're out there helping to park cars when, on those occasions when the parking lots crowded, out there with umbrellas when it rains and greeting you at the door and serving you a cup of coffee and greeting you here as you enter in. They just do an amazing job. But not only that team, but really, I feel like many of you have been like deputized as informal hospitality team members and the way you just greet each other. And there's a culture here of making people feel welcomed when they 1st come. And I love to hear when people have that experience here. But I want to say today that being a friendly church is only the starting point. It's only starting. The goal is really not to be friendly. The goal is something more than that. I heard a pastor years ago tell me, people aren't looking for a friendly church. They're looking for friends. Looking for friends. It's not enough to just be friendly. People really desire community. Because the truth is, you can get greeted and welcomed a lot of places in our community. Here's one of them right here. You could be greeted at the local Chick-fil-A. Not today. They'll turn you away today. But the rest of the week, if you go to Chick-fil-A, is there any Chick-fil-A employees in the crowd are formal? Okay, there's all right. Any former Chick-fil-A employees? I feel like half the young adults in the Northland have worked at Chick-fil-A or a High-V at some point in their life. And, uh, so, you know, you go there. It's going to be your pleasure to welcome us, to serve us. You can be very friendly. Now, I think you're looking for something better than Chick-fil-A, and I get that you have to be Gen X or older to get my reference. I was told by many in the 8 o'clock, this one over their head. But here's what we really want. Not Chick-fil-A, you want this. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name. Look, you're thinking more now, if you're in portion, that's confirmed. A little bit. I need that enthusiasm during the break, you can see. You wanna be where everybody knows your name? Right? Chick-fil-A, they know your name because you told it to them at the drive-through, right? That's the only reason they know your name is because they had to ask you for it. We walk into cheers. They knew your name, right? They knew your lives. They knew what you were going through. It was a place where everybody came together. And I had one of our young adults say, I had no idea what you were talking. I would have no idea what you're talking about. He said, except a couple of weeks ago, someone said to me, churches should be a lot more like cheers. I'd hope he means the friendly part, the friend part, not, but, um, Just say, I took a picture of it and sent it to my friend and said, you won't believe what the pastor said today. We want to be someplace where we really feel welcomed and connected, not just where we're friendly, but where you have friends. In fact, you want more than friendly. You want to be part of a family. There's a progression. You need to walk, we need to walk through the church. Want to be friendly? And we want people to make friends, and then we want the friendly to become friendly to become friends and the friends to become family. We want to be family. What does it mean to be a part of the family? One of the very 1st songs I ever learned as a little kid. Actually, I think the 1st song I ever learned was the gambler by Kenny Rogers. Right after that, I think, was family of God. Anybody remember family of God? I'm so glad I'm a part of the family of God. You know that one? Some of the people are singing that now. That'll be in your head instead of the cheers theme. I remember as a little boy standing on the pew because we would hold hands at the end of the service, and we would sing family of God, and I would jump up on the pew so I could hold hands with the grown-ups standing next to me. And that's a memory in my ingrained in me as a kid. We're part of a family. A church just isn't like a family. A church is a family. A church is a family. We're going to talk today, what does it mean to really be a family? What does it mean to be a family? We're talking about our mission statement. We just wrapped up a series in 1st Corinthians. 2 weeks from today. We will start a new series through the book of Ephesians. So come back in a couple weeks. We'll be kicking that off. But we took a little break in the middle to remind ourselves. We do this every few years, circle back. What is our mission as a church? Put them on the screen here. Four things we want people to experience. A transforming encounter with God, a growing relationship with Jesus, authentic community, and fulfilling service opportunity. So this is week three, we're talking today about community. What does it mean to be a part of a community of believers. We talk a lot about this in churches. We use the word fellowship. And I think we say fellowship. I think I grew up at church where we had a lot of fellowship meals. We'll do meals here. Not as common today, like the potluck kind of thing, but we would do fellowship meals, and you get the impression that fellowship was just getting together and eating food. I heard a story one time of a teacher that asks the kids for show and tell to bring something that would tell people a little bit more about themselves. And the 1st little boy, he said, I am Jewish, and this is my star of David that I wear. And the 2nd little boy said, I'm a Catholic, and this is my rosary. And the 3rd little boy said, I'm a Baptist, and this is my casserole dish. So we get that impression that fellowship means eating food together. But fellowship is deeper than a casserole dish. It's deeper than a casual. What does it mean in the Bible? use the word fellowship in the Bible. It means that we share our lives together, not just sharing a meal, sharing our lives. The word means partnership. We come together in a deep way because of our relationship with Jesus Christ. We meet each other's needs. We care for one another because of a relationship with Jesus. So we're to talk today about what does it mean? to become a family. Rustin and I, we're talking this morning. Pastor Ruston and I were saying, we're kind of look forward to getting past this series and into Ephesians because topical sermons are kind of a challenge. It's a little bit better to like open up a book of the Bible. going to walk our way through this for however many weeks or months it takes us. A topic is like, where do we go with this, right? How am we talking about authentic community? There's a ton of pastors in the Bible. How do I pull together a message for today on community? So I begin to look at the scriptures and notice how often the phrase one another shows up. You ever notice that? If you read the New Testament, over and over again, you'll see one another or each other. Now, I don't know, I didn't go through and count them. I use chat GPT, but according to chat GPT, The phrase one another, each other shows up over a 100 times in the New Testament. over and over again. We see the phrase one another. That tells us that the Christian life is mint designed to be lived out in community with other people. If you found yourself stranded on a deserted island, and you had your Bible with you, and you read your Bible every day, you would find every day as you read your Bible, that a ton of it no longer applies to your life because there aren't any people around you. This is a book about how do I live out my walk with Jesus in community with other people and sharing the love of Jesus with other people around me. So much of the Christian life is about community and being around other people. And so we see that over and over. I found, I just kind of categorize these and found several different headings, you could put all these on. I found 25 different things. It's not a 25 point sermon, so just breathe sigh of relief there, okay? We are not going to cover all 25. But you'll see things like build up one another, admonish one another, teach one another. Sing to one another, care for one another, comfort one another, pray for one another, be hospitable to one another, submit to one another. Four times, it says, greet one another with a holy kiss. There's a line for you. But how do we, what does this mean to live out these one another passages? I want to talk today about turning a church from friendly to family. What does it take to go from being friendly to being a family? There's going to be 6 things we're going to look at, just 6 of the one another's that we see in scripture. We're gonna kind of be all over the place. I'll give you the references as we move through this, but we'll put them on the screen as well. The 1st is found in Romans chapter 15. Romans chapter 15, we see we're told to welcome one another. It all begins, this friendly, becoming family begins when we welcome one another. Romans 15, verse 5. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus. That together, you may, with one voice, glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In verse 7, therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God. And what does that mean to welcome one another. It's not a reference to a greeter ministry. This is like the 1st reverence to having greeters passing out bulletins. It's something deeper, that's more than that, to welcome one another. In fact, many English translations will translate this except one another. So it's not just welcoming, it's embracing, it's accepting everyone that's a part of the family. And then this context we see that. In verse five, notice verse five, it says that we're to live in harmony with one another, live in harmony with one another. In verse six, we're told that we may with one voice glorify God. And notice that the basis for this unity is Jesus, the basis of this unity is Jesus. See, verse five, may the God, may the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus. Verse 6, glorify with one voice, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 7, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you. And so Jesus is the basis for our unity. You know, you can be united by a number of factors. There's a lot of reasons why you would find community. My daughter, um, who's uh, 25. Now, she has, she had a best friend through a lot of her childhood, just because on the 1st day of the 1st grade, they both showed up in Jonas Brothers t-shirts. And it was just like, hey, I like the Jonas Brothers. You like the Jonas Brothers, and they were friends for years. They were friends because of a common interest in a band. You may have a hobby that you like. And you go somewhere, you play the sport, or there's a hobby, an interest you have. there's another guy who likes that same thing. And your friends, just because you both like to do the same hobby. So we can be united by a lot of things. In the body of Christ, we're united by our shared faith in Jesus Christ. And that transcends all of these other factors. It's our relationship with Jesus that puts us in this relationship. What happens here is that when you begin to trust and follow Jesus, you entered into a vertical relationship with Jesus, that now, not only is a relationship between you and God, it's also it's changed the relationship between you and other people. There's a little boy, Wyatt, who comes to the 8 o'clock service, and he takes sermon notes, and every after he brings his notes to me, like 4 or 5 pages. This is one of the notes pages. He drew this. He's got God up here and me here and he's got people on each side. And he drew this. That's a good representation. what I'm saying. You have a relationship with God that now changes your relationship with people. Your relationship with people is different because, you see, when God became your heavenly Father, you inherited then a whole bunch of brothers and sisters because of your faith in Jesus. When you were restored into a right relationship with God, you entered into a reconciled relationship with other people. When Jesus broke down the barrier of sin between you and God, he also broke down the barrier of distinction between you and everybody else. And so we now accept and welcome one another because we've been accepted, welcomed, and forgiven by Jesus. And by the way, it doesn't mean that we, accepting people doesn't mean we're ignoring sin. It doesn't mean no matter what you want to do or live or believe or think. We just accept everything. Jesus accepted us the way we were, but didn't leave us that way. He transformed our lives. And so this is saying that we are calling one another to repent of our sin and to walk in a new, forgiven life with Jesus together, knowing we've all been forgiven of our sins. We don't just overlook sin, we know that Jesus has forgiven sin, and when we're forgiven by Jesus, we enter into this family, when we repent. And now there's no limit. to our love for others, but there's no limit to Jesus' love. There's no distinction because there's no distinction in Jesus. A lot of you, remember this guy? He showed up a few months ago in 1st Corinthians, but I can't talk about our unity in Christ without bringing Belly Boy back on the screen. If you were here that week, I talked about Belly Boy. This is a Chiefs game many years ago. That's Mason, my firstborn son that he's holding. And I took this picture back before digital, before cell phone cameras. I had to actually take this role of film to Walmart, get it delivered, and a few days later, looked at this picture and thought, what in the world have I done? Who would do this to their child? You see on his chin the little red paint from Belly Boy's stomach, as he rubbed him up his sweaty, naked belly there? And who would do this? And I said before, about Belly Boy. We have very little in common. We don't shop at the same stores for our clothes. We don't go to the same gym. We don't, we don't go to the same hairstylist. We don't go to the same dentist. There's a lot of differences between me and Belly Boy, except a passionate devotion to a football team. And because we both love the Kansas City Chiefs, all distinctions between us melt away. Now, if we can enter into a football stadium and be united with all types of people from all walks of life and all cheer for the same team, how much more should Jesus Christ unite the body of Christ? How much more should we overlook all the differences between us and welcome one another because of Jesus? Our bond in Christ, our love for Jesus transcends any difference. It transcends race, it transcends ethnicity, it transcends income, or social class, or age, or any other geographic or demographic difference you might find within the body of Christ. We sit here on this hill, like a lighthouse for everyone who drives by, regardless of where you've come from or how much money you make or any interest or hobby, or age, or anything in your life. We're to share the good news of Jesus, and we welcome everyone as one body in Christ. The gospel breaks down every artificial division and barrier and overlooks every difference. Revelation 7 tells us there'll be a day when people from every tribe, every nation, every people, every language, will worship together before the throne. And when we come together as one body. It's a glimpse of heaven that happens in this place every Sunday when we come together from all walks of life, all of our differences, and worship one savior, Jesus Christ. He calls us to welcome one another. Now, once we welcomed one another. It goes a little deeper, we're called to love one another, to love one another. This is a very common command you find in scripture. This was all over the Bible all over the New Testament for sure. And we find one of those places in John 13. John chapter 13, John 13, verse 34, 35. This is some of the last words of Jesus in the upper room before he was arrested and crucified. He's given his final instructions before the crucifixion. This is one of the things he shared. A new commandment I give to you. that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. One commentator, D.A. Carson wrote of this verse. The new command is simple enough for a toddler to memorize and appreciate, yet profound enough that the most mature believers are repeatedly embarrassed at how poorly they comprehend it and put it into practice. Isn't that true? This is one of the 1st Bible verses. You bring your kids in Northland, in the pre-K class, they start memorizing scripture, three, four-year-olds, your kids probably memorize scripture, your kids. One of the 1st Bible verses, we teach kids here is love one another from John 13. You can a three-year-old can memorize that little short part of that verse. Yet you can go the rest of your life following Jesus and find that really, really hard to do. What does it mean to really love one another? There's a few things to say about this word love in the New Testament, particularly in this passage. First, it's a verb. It's not a feeling. It's not something you feel, it's something you do. Love is known by the action that it prompts. It's seen in what we do and it's identified by the action, how we put it into action. Are you showing love? It's also a choice. It's not something we fall into and out of. It's not a matter of the will. Actually, it's not a matter of the heart, but whether it's a matter of the will. We choose to show love. It's also unconditional. Love isn't based on this commonality. It's not based on friendship or common interest. It's easy to love our friends. It's easy to love people we share something in common with. It's easy to love people that might have something to offer us, but this is an unconditional love that we choose to show others. A couple years ago, I read a book called From Strength to Strength. It's about how you can, I would recommend anybody in their 40s or older, grab that book and read it or grab it on Audible or somewhere. It's about how you shift your mindset as you get older from how you thought in your younger years to how you look at life in your older years. And one of the things he says is that when you're younger, you focus on what he calls deal friends, deal friends. I form friendships for what I might get from it, particularly in your work, in your area of employment. What will this friend help me get the promotion? Will this friend mentor me? Will this friend help me? Will this friend? And he said, when you get older, you want real friends. There's a difference between deal friends and real friends. Not friends, I'm friends with you because I get something from you, but I'm just friends with you, and I get nothing out of it. That's biblical love. I'm not loving someone because if I love this person, they'll love me back or if I love this person, they'll do this. If I'm friends with this person, I might gain this advantage. It's not a deal friend. It's a real friend. That's what we're called to have in the family of Christ. Unconditional love that's active, that's by choice, and that looks to Jesus as its example. Love as I've loved you. When it's hard to love, we look to Jesus, and we see that he loved us even when we were enemies of God. He loved us and gave his life for us. And so we have the love of Jesus as our example. And then we see that love is the distinguishing mark of the follower of Christ. We're known by our love. How will you know that I'm a follower of Jesus, not by my t-shirt or my cross necklace or my WWJD bracelet or my Jesus fish stuck on the back of my car? It's by my love. You'll be able to look at my life. Look at your left seat. That person is loving others. That's a sign that they're a follower of Jesus Christ. Friendly becomes family when we learn to love one another. When we say, we're going to be different. There is going to be differences. We are going to let each other down. We're going to choose to love. My granddaughter, Marcy, who's four. Her life has been inconvenienced the last few months by the addition of her little brother. And she will say sometimes, I don't like my little brother. But she'll say, but I do love him, though. I don't like him, but I do love him though. He's annoying. He's aggravating. I don't like committed to it. And what's funny about when she says that, my wife says the same thing about me. I don't like him, but I do love him, though. She will see. I heard her say that. I don't like him every day, but I'm going to choose to love him every day. Love says there may be times when it's hard to like someone, but Jesus calls us to love. How are you going to show love for people in your life around you this week? What's it like just to choose love? Not based on common interest, not based on some deal that will help you get, not based on what you get gained from the relationship, just simply because Jesus loved you and we're called to love others. What does that look like in your life? Welcome one another. Love one another. Third thing, friendly becomes family when we learn to bear with one another. Bear with one another. We find this in Ephesians chapter 4. Ephesians chapter 4. Verse one, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called. I want you to walk worthy of this call. You and I are following Jesus. And I want your life to reflect that, is what he's saying. What did he say in verse two? With humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. So we're to strive for unity, verse 3 says, sorry for unity within the body. Verse one says you want to walk worthy of being a follower, Jesus. Verse 2 in the middle tells us what that looks like. We exercise humility and gentleness and patience toward one another as we bear with one another. Welcoming one another, and loving one another is going to take a lot of patience. It's going to take a lot of grace, and it's going to take a lot of humility and a lot of gentleness to bear with one another. Why? Because we're gonna let each other down. Not going to be very long before someone in your church fame, in our church family disappoints you in some way. Not gonna be long before I disappoint you. It's going to be very often that I'm going to let you down, that others going to let you down, that you're going to let people down. And living in unity in the body of Christ takes a lot of patience and humility and gentleness and forgiveness as we strive to bear with one another. called to be humble and patient, forgiving, as we strive to maintain the unity within the body of Christ. You know, many people over the years. I've been here over 30 years now. Sadly, people have left our church, and it's not just our church. I hear it from pastors here from other friends who are believed to go other churches, will leave a church because someone let them down, because someone didn't measure up to their expectations. In fact, sadly, I've talked to adults who will say they haven't been to church in years because someone disappointed dad when they were a kid or someone disappointed. I've heard that story. We went church as a kid, and then dad got mad at the preacher. Our mom got mad at so-and-so. And now this adult has been 20 years, not a part of a local church because someone got mad at someone a few years ago. It would see how the unity is at risk here when we don't bear with one another. It takes a ton of patience with one another. We're going to disappoint one another. Um, I was thinking, Elijah, you and I were talking, uh, Elijah's a state attorney, and I asked you a while back, is there a busy season for that? Do you remember that conversation? And you said, right after Christmas, it gets busy. And I said, why is that? He said, because people get mad at Christmas and want to cut someone out of the will. And so he gets phone calls. Isn't that easy to, even in a family. Someone could say the wrong thing at dinner, and now I'm not a part of this family anymore. Someone can not show up to something they were supposed to show up to. And we just, we have so little patience with each other in the body of Christ. We're to have patience with each other, grace toward one another. We are going to disappoint one another. And when that happens, we make a choice that I'm going to bear with one another because of the patience and the gentleness and the grace that God has called me to in Christ. Fourth. Now, these 1st three, by the way, are a little more passive. I'm going to welcome. I'm going to love. I'm going to bear with each other. Let's get a little more like active with these last 3 we're going to look at. And the next one is care for one another. It really becomes family when we look for ways to actively care for each other. So we've accepted everyone, regardless of any distinction or difference, we're going to accept everyone into the body of Christ, we're going to love, choose to love. We're going to overlook when we disappoint one another, but then we take this next step. We're going to care for one another. We see this in a lot of ways of the Bible. Here's some 3 scriptures, short phrases on the screen there. Care for one another, comfort one another, bear one another's burdens. Kind of put these all under one heading here if we were classifying these. We're called to take care of each other. Here's the reality. We need each other. We need each other. Now, I know some of you, you're very relational. Maybe you're very extroverted, and you just need a lot of people in your life. I'm one of those people. I just need a lot of people in my life. I don't like being alone. Some of you like, man, I love, you know, all by myself. I'd love to just be away from people. And I'm going to tell you, no matter where you are. No matter how you're wired, even the most introverted person needs people in their life. We need people. We have a wiring in us for community. I going to give you another reference that's going to go over the heads of maybe the younger crowd. 2000 The movie Castaway came out. It reminded me of the castaway, movie castaway. Here's one of the starring characters in the movie Castway. You might remember this? Did you see the movie? If you've not seen Castaway. I highly recommend the movie. If you have cable, there's a good chance it will be on today. When you just go through the channels. And every time it's on, I stop and watch Castaway. In the movie, Tom Hanks plays a character named Chuck Nolan. Chuck Nolan was an employee of FedEx. He's on a FedEx plane, the plane crashes. He survives the plane crash, and the packages from the plane begin to wash up on shore, and one of those packages is a volleyball. There's a scene in which he gets a bloody handprint on the volleyball, and it becomes his friend, and the entire rest of the movie is dialogue between Tom Hanks and Wilson, the volleyball. And, uh, It illustrates the fact that if you're alone on an island, you will make friends with a volleyball. That's how much you need friends. If you're all alone, you'll find a friend. And there's a moment in the movie. It's a kind of iconic scene. If you've seen it. Remember when Wilson drifts away, Tom Hanks, Chuck Nolan gets off on the life raft? He's going to go try to get off the island for the finally, and Wilson drifts off to sea, and there's that heartbreaking scene. Wilson. I'm so sorry, Wilson. I noticed, I didn't notice the 1st time I saw it. It was the 2nd or 3rd time that I caught that scene that it dawned on me what happens. The very next scene after Wilson drifts away at sea falls off the raft and drifts away. Chuck Nolan puts the oars in the water and lets them drift away and he lies down on his back to die. Why? Because he lost his only friend. He fights for 4 years to stay alive on this island. And when he loses Wilson, he finally gives up to die. He' rescued then. I won't ruin it. Go see the movie. All right, go see the movie like you can go see it. Watch it at home. Not right now. Some of you are looking for it right now. Stop. Close Hulu, open the Bible app back again. Well, what it shows is we need people, and without people, we want to give up. We want to give up. Who around you need someone to care for them right now? Who needs your comfort? You know, many times I'll walk through a difficult thing in my life and Carrie and I will walk through some difficult thing in our family, and I will say, how do lost people do this? How do lost people get through life? When you go through something hard, It's only my faith in Jesus and my brothers and sisters in Christ who surround me that help me get through anything. We need each other. You need to be cared for and you need to care for others. What does that look like in your life? Fifth, friendly becomes family when we encourage one another. We encourage one another. We see this often in scripture. Here's one 1 Thessalonians 511. Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up. Just as you are doing. We're called to encourage and build each other up. It is so easy to get discouraged. So hard to stay encouraged. It's so easy to tear someone down and so hard to build someone up. We must be incredibly intentional about making the effort to encourage one another. And when I see this phrase build one another up. I think of when I was a little kid, I like to try to make houses with cards. Do you ever try to do that? Stack the cards real carefully. It's so hard to build a house of cards. And my little sister could come in and bump the table and the thing was gone in the blink of an eye. It can be so hard to build someone up. And so easy to bring them crashing down to the ground. I heard someone said one time, for every negative comment you hear, you need 20 positive comments to outweigh it. I don't know where that came from. I heard that 75% of statistics are made up anyway. Thank you. I don't know if that's true. I think it's kind of true in my life, though. I can have one person tell me I did something well. Oh, see, I can have 20 people tell me I did something well and one person criticize it and ruin my whole week. you like that? We got to have encouragement. We need people to come around us and encourage us in our walk with Christ. As I said last week, the Christian life's not complicated, but it's not easy. And what makes it easier is we have people around us building us up, encouraging us in our walk with Christ. Are you an encourager? To be an encouragement to someone. When I was in high school, I wasn't a great athlete. I played a lot of sports, but I played one season of a lot of sports, trying to find the thing, right? I remember one season I ran track and I usually ran shorter distances. I wasn't that fast, like I just was lazy and I could get 100 done faster than something else. And I remember one day the coach said, you're going to run the 800, never run the 800 before, but he said, we need someone to run the 800, I want to run the 800, but the 800 is 2 times around the track. And it's not a light jogger on the track. It's like running pretty hard 2 times around the track. Anybody run the 800 in high school or college? Okay? I remember running the Henry. I remember that 1st lap, kind of hanging in there a little bit, 2nd lap running as hard as I can, trying to stay close to the pack, and then I just got totally out of gas. totally out of energy. I don't think I'm going to make it. I'm on the back, coming around the curve there, about to go down the back stretch there. And I was like, I am not going to make it. I'm gonna die. And so in my mind, I thought, I'm gonna fake an injury of some kind to get out of this. And I plotted out. I'm gonna let my toe, catch my heel like this, and I'll roll, and I'll get up, and then I'll like, I'll go, oh, I'm good, I'm good. And I'll do this, you know, and they'll say, look at his courage, and he says, will to finish the race, even though he fell. It's going to be awesome. Like, the ESPN theme is somebody, like, da, da, da, da. I'm like running. And our chariots of fire. Okay, that's a way old reference. But I get around there about to execute my plan and my neighbor Rod, who was an incredible athlete standing on that back stretch, and he was just cheering me on, cheering me on. And I kept going because he was on that far side of the track, not by the stands where all the people were, that far side of the track by himself, cheering me on on that lonely stress. I want to tell you that I went on to win, and I went on to state, and they made a movie about, no, I, but what I did is I kept running when I wanted to quit. That's the moral of the story. And I kept running when I wanted to quit because a friend met me on the back stretch and cheered me on. You got people around you right now who need that. They're about to quit. I don't know what quit means for them, but they're about to give up. And it's your encouragement that's going to keep them going. And friendly becomes family when we look around and said, who needs my encouragement this week right now? Finally, friendly becomes family when we serve one another. We serve one another. We're looking for ways to meet each other's needs. Now Russell's going to talk a lot more about this next week, so I'm going to see very little about it this week, but we see in scripture 1st Peter 410, each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another. What's a need? Someone has, you can meet. I heard someone say this week that we all need 4 we all need 2 AM friends. 2 AM friends. That personally, who can call you, they're going to call you at 2 AM. and get out of bed and meet their need, whatever it is. Do you have 2 AM friends? Can you be a 2 AM friend for someone? Lay aside your opinions and preferences and comfort. Well, how can I go out of my way this week to serve the need of someone in my family? Now what? What do we do with all this? Let me give you some practical steps here. I heard a preacher many years ago, say you can put everyone who comes to church in one of two categories. He said they're either a marble or a grape. They're a marble or a great. What's the difference between a marble and a grape? Marbles kind of just roll in and roll out. And the only connection they have is the time they're in the bag with the other marbles, and it's a surface connection. The grapes hang together and they grow together and they share life together. And they're connected all the time. They don't roll in and roll out. They're part of the living bunch of grapes. I'm gonna say there are people in our church. There are marbles or grapes. You can roll in and roll out and you say, I'm here, aren't I? You're here, but you're not a great. You have it connected to the life of the body, the life of the community. Say, I don't want to be a marble anymore. I want to be a grape. How do I go from becoming a marble to a great? Let me give you some steps you could take. Number one, you should join a local church. You should join a local church. I don't know if it's God's will for you to be a part of Northland Church, but I believe it's God's will for you to be a part of a church, to make that commitment to a local church, and say, I want to, I want to, there's this a difference between saying, that's the church I go to, and that's my church. When you talk about Northland Church, do you say Northland Church is the church I go to, or do you say Northland Church is my church? my church. It sounds really cool. I'll talk to people that are new, and they'll talk about us, and they'll say things like, you know what I really like about your church, or you know what I appreciate about your church? You know what's really different about your church? And then a few weeks later, we'll be talking about, you know what I love about our church? There's a I love it. I get so excited while I hear it. It's so subtle. I don't know if they even caught it. But I think a month ago you said, I like your church. Today you say, I like our church. I'm going to challenge you. Why don't you join a church family? If it's not North then, I'll help you. If you say, we've been coming, and I don't know, it's not. I mean, I've been around long enough. I know a lot of church in the area. I just, we want you to be a part of a local church. I'm going to join this church, that church, and it's going to make it not the church I go to, but my church. A real practical next step? You come today to the more about Northland lunch. We do these every few weeks. It's a lunch on how do you get more connected to making Northland, your church. If you are learning, is Northland the church for you. Come to them more about Northland Lunch. It's right after the 3rd service. Come back, go run some errands, go do grocery shopping, whatever, come back at noon, and join us for the more about Northland lunch. Second, take your next step to find community. Take your next step. We can create environments, but true community has to be organic. It has to be something that you step into. What are those opportunities? If you're not part of a life group, join a life group. Check out life groups. There's small groups that meet, some on Sunday morning, some throughout the week, join a life group. There is a display in the lobby with all the life groups on. Talk to one of our pastors, say, help me find the right life group for me. Form a discipleship group. These are groups of men or groups of women, small groups that get together throughout the week to challenge each other, to pray for each other, to spur one another on their growth. Come to one of the past. I want to be a part of a discipleship group. I want to start a discipleship group or just find some guys say, hey, let's start a group together. Let's start meeting together. Come to the gathering tomorrow night, young adults. 6.30 right here in the lobby is our young adult gathering. If you're a young adult, come and join us. Great place. Just take that next step. Next week, guys, forge meets on Monday next week, right a week for tomorrow, May 4th. Just a great next step. I want to meet some other guys in the church. Andrew, 630. Yeah, 630? 630? Show up for that. Ladies, I need to abide prayer thing is the next night, right? May the 5th is the abide prayer gathering. Ladies, come there. I want to meet some other ladies. pray for some other ladies, have them pray for me. Take your next step. Get involved in student ministry. If you're a teenager or parents, get your kids involved in student ministry. Help them find community with the teenagers in our church. Sir, find a place to serve. Some of the best relationships in a local church are forged in the environment of serving together. to summon a volunteer. Go out there to the volunteer, the VBS volunteer signup table, and you'll have some friends by the end of Bible school. Find a play, read your bulletin and see what we're looking for. Check the box on the connect card. I wanna talk about serving. Find a place to serve and find community as you serve together. Join the geezer group on Tuesday morning. Guys, the retire guys would love to have you there. The sewing group that meets on Mondays, all kinds of things for community. Take your step beyond this into community. Third, make the sacrifice. Make the sacrifice. It's going to take a sacrifice. You gonna have to connect with those who are different than you. You may have to love those who are harder to love. You have to forgive someone who's wronged you. You have to invest time in a relationship. It's a two-way street. It takes time to invest, to have these kind of relationships, this kind of community. What sacrifice can you make for the sake of community? Finally, look for specific ways to encourage, care for, and serve others. What's something you can do this week? A need you can meet, a person you can encourage? Maybe it's just a text. I tell you, it's so powerful. I don't know what you walk through. I don't know what discourage you. I can only speak to, like, as a pastor, like most pastors you talk to, Saturday night, they're worried about what they're going to say and Sunday night, they're worried because they probably didn't say it very well. I got a text last night. Someone said, I'm praying for you for your sermon tomorrow. That has encouraged me. I'm nervous and worried about one of them. And last Sunday night. someone sent me a text. This encouraged me when you said this or challenged me this way. Just encourage me. Okay, something made a difference. People, you know, just a text message this week from you can make a huge difference in the life of somebody in your church family. What's a need you can meet? A text you can send, somewhere you can show the love of Christ this week. Do you have a relationship with Jesus? Are you in that restored relationship? If not, turn to Jesus. He didn't just break down barriers between people, he broke down the greatest barrier between you and God, your sin. He died on the cross for that. We're going to pray together. And the band's going to come and sing, lead us into the final song. If you want prayer, we'll have some folks back at the prayer corner. If you have something going on, your life, just need someone to pray for you. Make your way back to the prayer corner and let someone pray for you today. You have some other need in your life. Use the connect card to let us know. We want you to know you're loved here. I'm going to care for you. Let's pray together. Jesus, thank you. For breaking down the barrier of our sin, that we can have a relationship with God, because you gave your life on the cross for our sin. We thank you also that that broke down the barrier that existed between people. that regardless of our differences or our distinctions, we are united in Jesus. We pray that we would welcome one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. We would love each other, even when it's difficult. We'd make that choice, that we would overlook the failures and forgive the times that people let us down. God, we pray that we would have our eyes open to people we can serve and care for and encourage this week. Lord, we pray that you'd help us to grow more and more into the family that you've called us to be in Jesus. We pray that we'll do this for his glory. And with this help. We pray this in his name. Amen.