Well, we've been in a series called The Harvest, and it's all about how we can share the goodies of Jesus with people that don't know him in everyday life. It's been a series where we're talking about closing the gap between the pew and the pulpit, closing the gap between the lay person that isn't qualified for ministry and the professional ministry. And what we've been doing is demystifying how you can share Jesus with people. And so we've been talking about how you can have like a conversation with people, right?
Like, can you talk to another person? Can you talk to another human? And let's practice that. Okay, things like that.
We're like, wait, you guys are doing that church? Yes. We have to break it down. We've been breaking down the baby steps of how we can step into having beautiful feet with good news, as the Bible says.
So the problem here tonight is that we've been breaking it down demystifying evangelism. Is that right? The problem though is that a lot of us still aren't doing anything with the information that we've got. So we've been trained and equipped.
And now there's not an excuse because I actually have all of the information. I know how to do some of these things. But then maybe I haven't been implementing. I've been a hearer of the word, as James one talks about.
Shoot, he pulled out James one. Not again. I hate when pastors say James one. Hearer of the word, but maybe not a doer of the word.
So the rubber meets the road where we start going, why am I not stepping out of this? And that's what I want to talk about tonight. And what I want to do is just start out tonight with a little activity. How many of you are loving the activities in this series?
Yeah, there's 20 of you. All the extroverts are like, yeah, all the introverts are like, no, hot again. What we're going to do is we're just going to have conversations with the people around us. Maybe that we came with or just welcome people into the conversation, please.
But the conversation is, what keeps me from sharing the good news of Jesus? Or what hinders me? And I want us to just take a couple minutes. I'm going to say ready, set, go and then introduce yourself to people around you or just have a conversation with the people that you came with.
I want to make sure that everyone is in a group dialoguing. So if there's somebody around you, make sure that they're in a group. But let's answer that question and just share. What hinders me from sharing the good news with people?
And now you don't have the excuse as much unless you haven't been coming to church. Now you don't have the excuse as much that you don't know how, right? So are you guys ready? Okay.
Ready, set, go. Introduce yourselves and talk about what hinders you from sharing the good news. Okay. I want to do some crowdsourcing.
I want to do some crowdsourcing of what people were saying. So just shout it out or everybody started raising their hands in less service because people started talking over each other. But we're just going to try to talk over each other and talk for a style and see if it works with this or this if you guys are more polite. Okay.
So let's just crowdsource. What were people saying in the group or were you saying? Yeah. Don't have time.
Yeah, it's a good one. Yes. Good. Back.
Wanting to do it perfectly. Yes. What else? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Huh? Being in sin. Yes. Don't know what the church that the church has already caused.
That's a good one. Yes. Subscribing the social norms are etiquette. Yes.
Yes. Empathizing too much with making them uncomfortable. Not wanting them to feel uncomfortable. Yeah.
You haven't built enough strong enough connection? Yes. That transition from, hey, we're just chatting. So like I just pulled out the Jesus card.
Yeah. Anybody else? Fear of losing your job. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yes. I think that's common. Self-focus. Yes.
It's good. Thank you for helping me with all my servants for the next month. You guys. Okay.
Man, I can't think of anything else. Let's connect to the enamest a lot of the things that we even share their fear around people, right? The fear of man, the fear of rejection, the fear of making them feel uncomfortable and the fear of us feeling uncomfortable because we made them uncomfortable. The fear of embarrassment, fear of shame, the fear of like I walk away and man, I totally screwed that one up moment.
Fear of failure. Romans 6, Paul's writing about Jesus and I want to pick up in verse 5. Romans 6 verse 5 says this. For if we have been united with Jesus in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
We know that our old self, our old nature, our sin nature was crucified with Jesus in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. For one who has died has been what set free from sin. Now we have died with Christ. We believe that we will also live with him.
We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died, he died to sin. Once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.
So you also, listen to this. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. How many of you know that fear is a sin? How many of you know that fear is a sin?
I look at fear and what it reminds me of is the people of God have covenanted themselves to the bridegroom, God Jesus. They've entered into covenant with him, but they were born with a nature that naturally fears, right? A sin nature. Well that sin nature gets crucified on the cross and gets buried into the earth and prays God.
And now it's a corpse. But we were married to that sin nature. We were one with that sin nature, but now it's our ex and it got buried. But we let our ex hang out in our house and in our bedroom all the time.
We let our ex hang out and work with us all the time. Wherever we go, it's like, hey, Jesus, he's my everything. But I kind of let fear just be there because we haven't named it sin. And I feel it because that hits me, right?
That hits me on a daily basis going, oh man, I'm having fear come up in my heart. And when I say about my heart and talk about my soul, my mind will have emotions. I'm having fear come up in my mind and it's actually the fuel behind decisions that I make it. Why I'm doing this and why I'm not doing that because of the fear and most often it's the fear of man.
Because I want love from man. I want approval from man. I want to be praised by man. But then we look at this verse right here in Romans 6.
Verse 5, for if we have been united with Jesus in a death like his. Okay, a death like his. What was Jesus's death like on the cross? Well, he was naked.
He was rejected and betrayed. He was a laughing stock of man. He experienced the rejection of man to the highest degree. He got betrayed by his friends.
His family other than his mom didn't show up to the cross. There he is, rejected by man and he climbed the mountain of Golgotha and he laid into it. He actually stepped right into the fear and he died to it. And so when we give our lives to Jesus, our destiny is to follow in his footsteps.
Jesus scaled the mountain of the praise of man and the rejection of man and it was all a plateau to him. It was all flat ground to him because he wasn't riding the wave of there's lots of crowds. We're really successful. And then I'm crashing and burning because everybody left me out to try.
No, he just was steady because he was a man of love. He was steady because he did not, I love this verse, he did not entrust himself to man because he knew what was in me. He didn't entrust himself to the praise or the rejection or the opinions of making people feel a certain way type of moment. He died to all of it.
Why? Because he knew where he had come from. He knew who he was. He knew where he was going and it all was wrapped up in love.
First on four, what does it say? Perfect love, what? Cast out fear. Can you remind me of anywhere else in the Bible where the word cast out is used?
Huh? Demons? Yes. Yes.
Perfect love. Cast out fear. No, it's like thrusts out. Pushes out fear.
I'm reminded of Mary O'Bethany. And this woman, she comes in or maybe she's a young girl comes in to Martha, her sister's house. And you've got Jesus this like up and coming. He's the guy, right?
He's the guy. He's the rabbi. He's the up and coming popular celebrity pastor. And he walked in.
He's like Kanye's pastor. Okay? It's like the up and coming guy, right? And Jesus, I don't know.
That doesn't relate at all. But I just had it like every week. How can I get Kanye into it? So anyways, you have Jesus, he walks in and his disciples, they all smell and they're just like a rag muffin group.
They're just not very impressive. But anyways, they walk in and Martha, she's going, okay, so now I need to prepare all of my house so that these guys can sleep here. And I'm making the meal. I'm hosting them.
And I make the bed. I've got to like put out air freshener because this is awful. These are stink. She's having to do all of the work, cutting the vegetables, making the fire.
I don't know what she's doing. She's doing a lot of things, right? And then what does Mary do? Many of us know this story.
Mary goes in and sits at Jesus' feet and is hanging out, listening to Jesus. And then Martha's like, hey, hey, hey, hey, Jesus. And she's kind of like smiling, but she's super mad. She's like, so Jesus, Father Rabbi.
And she kind of does that like tongue to the bottom lip. Like, you know that I'm really upset right now. And she has this moment, I love Martha because she has this moment of authenticity. She lets the thoughts that most of the time that we have that we don't let people hear.
She lets them come out, right? The thoughts of like bitterness and offense. And she actually let them out. Like, Martha, don't do that.
He's the son of God, you know. And she lets it come out and says like, hey, Mary's not doing squat. I'm doing all the work. Could you tell her to work?
And anybody that's a good teacher would have said to Mary, hey, Mary, why? Like, you're becoming love. Help your sister. Like be a servant.
What are you doing? Like, she's doing all this work. Didn't you see that she's doing all this work? You should just be helping her.
Why does he not do that? That's what a good teacher would say. He doesn't do that because he's God in the flesh. And he's trying to make a point.
And this is the point. Mary chose the very best thing. The very best thing is loving God. The very best thing is connection with God.
I'll tell you this, that lovers will always outwork servants. Lovers will always outwork workers. Lovers will always last longer than servants. Jesus knows that Mary chose the better portion.
And a better portion was connection with God. The better portion was connection with the God of love. And somehow she took all of the fear of what sister thinks, all of the fear of what all the men think, all of the fear of the social norms, all of the fear of embarrassment of what if Jesus says, what the heck are you doing sitting at my feet? You should never be doing that.
And she takes all of that. And just like Jesus, she literally dies to it all. And we see this in all the snapshots and shops of Mary. She's literally dying to the opinions of man for the sake of love.
All of us were meant to be like Mary to go, oh, but you Lord are my first love. And I've died to the rejection and the praise of man. And now I'm going to be a Mary on mission. There's six months ago that I felt from the Lord that the Lord said, I'm raising up Mary's on mission.
I'm raising up Mary's that have the first commandment in first place. Mary's that say, I'm going to be loved by God. Like 1 John says, and I'm going to respond with love for him. And all of my life wraps up into I get to be loved and I get to love him back.
And this first commandment goes right into the second commandment. That's what I love. The Mary heart that we're all called to, you were called to have a flame of love on the inside of your heart. Even today I'm going, I was telling some of my friends.
I was saying, I don't feel the flame of love. How many of you feel that same way so often? I don't feel like I love him. I don't feel passionate.
I don't feel the fire. I don't feel the burning like desire. No, it's mundane. I don't want to do what I have to do.
I don't want to have to go to work. I don't want to have to do all these things. I don't feel close to you. I don't feel today.
I'm telling you that Pastor Josh doesn't feel close to God today. I don't, but I know something that's true about me. That I'm a Mary even when I don't feel like it. That I'm a lover even when I don't feel like loving.
That he has first place in my heart. Even though I don't have the like, I love you and I'm going to cry about it. Right? I love you so much.
I'm going to cry. I'll give you any of your grandfors. I'm like, yes Pastor Josh. Pastor Josh cry right now.
Okay, we're going back to Romans 6, all right. Verse 6, listen, I want to replace the word sin with fear in this passage. Listen again. We know that our old self, our sin nature, our ex was crucified with Jesus in order that the body of fear might be brought to nothing.
So that we have no longer been slave to what? Fear. For one who has died has been set free from fear. Now we have died with Christ.
We believe that we'll also live with him. We know that Christ has been raised from the dead. We'll never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him.
For the death he died, he died to fear. Once and for all, but the like he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves. I love that.
Live to God. In other words, first commandment. In other words, your destiny will be a Mary. In other words, your whole life is wrapped up into love for God.
Verse 11, so you also must see yourself or consider yourselves dead to fear and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Fear is a contraceptive to babies being born spiritually in our nation. The fear of man is preventing millions of people from meeting Jesus. There's a couple of years ago, I was spending time with the Lord, and out of nowhere, it was like God started billowing from the throne in heaven.
It was like this groan that the Holy Spirit put inside of me, but it was also on him in the throne room. He was in throne about the circle of the earth, and I from the throne, I heard a groaning. And in the groaning, he said this phrase. He said, where are you?
It was this burning, passionate, longing. Where are all the born and good babies in my church? He said, where are all the babies that just gave their lives to Jesus? Because my people are leaving fear behind, because it's been crucified and stepping right in to the harvest fields with love.
God's calling us to be like Mary, because what happens when you're like Mary is you're in secret and you encounter his love. And then from there you start stepping into I'm going to love people with the same love, and I'm going to love them with him. Remember when we talked about last week, it's not doing this for him, we need to go with him. So now as I'm fulfilling the second commandment of loving people, I'm loving him at the same time.
Sometimes we forget that even me sharing the good news of Jesus with somebody that doesn't know him is literally the first commandment getting fulfilled and the second commandment being fulfilled at the same time. I love you so much, I want to brag about you because you're the best. Like when I brag about Katie, it's actually because of love in my heart. And then guess what?
She hears about that through the grapevine, guess what she feels loved. Right? So the first commandment is amazing, but from that place then I get to fulfill both and do the second. God's calling us as Mary's on mission into the field.
There's a man named Zincen Dorff in German history, and he went to this art museum, and he's just this average guy in upper class, man in Germany, and he went to this museum because that's what all the snobby people do, right? I'm so sorry. The art con is usually like, excuse me. So there he is, he's looking at a painting, and it's this painting of Jesus, and it had some phrase on the top of it.
And for some reason he just stood in front of it and he couldn't get it out of his mind. And within days he actually gave his life to Jesus because of this painting. And then, which, what do you think that artist, did you think when that artist was painting the painting that they're going, oh man. Some guy, some day is going to be looking at my painting and give his life to Jesus, no?
I want to encourage you, all the artists in the room. God's giving you creativity because he wants to be made known in the earth. He's thinking about people like Count Zincen Dorff. So Count Zincen Dorff, he buys a property that's a pretty significant property in Germany, and then he hears about these Austrian refugees that are experiencing persecution.
And so he opens up his property and says, yeah, you can come. What happens is there starts to be a whole community of refugees that start building houses on his property. And they're passionate lovers of Jesus. And Count Zincen Dorff, the guy that just looked at a painting in an art museum, starts leading a whole group of refugees and they start doing day and night worshiping prayer.
24-7, they do hour watches and they maintain day and night worshiping prayer for 100 years. We're talking kids, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, following in their parents' footsteps, spending time with Jesus praying. And the Matthew 9 cry, sit laborers into the fields. Do you know that word sin?
It's the same word for cast out, echbolo. Cast us out of the church. Cast us out of church buildings and send us into the fields. That's our destiny.
Jesus knows it. So, okay, I got to get back to Zincen Dorff. So then the Moravians, what happens is the Moravians day and night worshiping prayer, first commandment, year after year after year, and it gives birth to the greatest missions movement in that century. And it's one of the greatest missions movements in Christian history.
They send hundreds of missionaries to the unreached people groups all throughout the world, tribes, full-on tribes, people selling themselves into slavery to be missionaries. And it's from the place of prayer, adoration, worship, and counting. This is what Jesus' strategy is. Disciples go into a room, an upstairs area, and pray.
Do you know what's happening? As he says, I want you to go and pray in the upper room and wait, waiting in John 17. Jesus and the disciples know that when he says, wait, he's talking about praying. They're having a prayer meeting for 10 to 14 days.
They're in the upper room. Why did he have them wait that long? Because he needed to get the fear of man off of them in the place of prayer. What were the disciples doing after Jesus rose from the dead?
Ooh, I'm scared. They were literally hiding in the upper room because of the persecution that their leader just experienced. Fear of man, fear of persecution. What happens?
They encounter God in the place of prayer as born again believers. Love starts working out the fear inside of casting it out. Listen, Holy Spirit's power is not the thing that dealt with the fear of man. Holy Spirit's power came and gave the power to heal into signs and wonders, not to actually set them free from the fear of man that they were carrying.
That's the love of God that actually overcomes fear. We as a people are signing up like the Moravians, like the disciples, to be people that pray and spend time with Jesus, that we would be known as a praying church. Yeah, I want to be a church community that's known for loving people that don't know Jesus. I want to be a church community that's known for taking care of the widow and orphan, but man, I want to be known for that first commandment love.
I want to be known as a praying people. As a people that worships him. There's going to be a day when we're in a different building and we're going to have a prayer room. And we're going to fill the prayer room just like the tabernacle.
And he is worthy of day and night worship the prayer in our city. He's worthy of a place where people can come and encounter him all the time. Walmart is open 24-7. Jesus is worthy of 24-7.
He's just not worthy. I'm not going to say there's a whole doctrine of theology that I believe about 24-7. Worship in prayer and I'm not going to die on that hill. But I do know that he's worthy of it.
He's worthy of me spending time reading my Bible and praying and having love soaked in my heart. And then from there going, I have to share him. Let's go together Lord. I want to just tell people about you because you're the best.
I want to share with you the first day you guys can come to the front. This is what God is doing in this day right now. He is converging prayer and missions. And it's always been his ancient strategy.
But it feels fresh to us because it doesn't happen very much. This is his plan. This is what he's doing to the earth right now. He's converging.
And this is when I say he's changing the expression of Christianity in one generation. What I mean by that, what I mean by that is this. He's making everyday people. You.
Yes, you. All of you. You're going to be known by the way that you love him. And by the way that you love people.
Not pastors. He's changing the expression from Jesus when he's hanging on the cross. He's not, or he's not in the garden, sweating drops of blood. Saying God, Father.
Oh, that they would go to church services on Sunday. That they would love singing songs on Sundays like around a campfire. And then, oh, that there'd be amazing youth groups and youth programs. Oh Lord.
I'm believing for curriculum. That's really good. I'm believing for businessmen and women that would give 10% of the money that they make. Do you?
He's changing the expression right now. He's shaping the body of America to be lovers like the Chinese. Like the people that would be martyrs of love that would give their whole lives. That when they read Romans 6, they've actually experienced it because they had to count the costs.
See, we're comfortable. See, it doesn't cost us very much. That's the problem. We have to reorient our lives.
And I feel the sting in my own life going, man, I'm comfortable. God's calling out you as a Mary on mission. And he wants to egg-follow us. He wants to egg-follow fear.
And he wants to egg-follow us in love. Amen? Let's all stay in love. If you want to respond to the Lord tonight as a Mary, I want to encourage you as we're spreading out in worship to respond at the front.
If you're wanting to say, Lord, mark me as a Mary, mark me as a lover. Mark me as a person that's, and if you're coming up, I want you to come as far to the front as possible because I know there's going to be a lot of people there responding. But if that's you, you're saying, I want you to mark me, Lord, that my life would look like Mary. That my life would be free of the fear of man because love is completely undoing all of the brain paths that I've had, the neural pathways of fear.
Tonight, if you're like, Mary, you want to break up. You want to break up with fear tonight. Break up with the X. Break up with the corpse.
Lord, here we are. We declare that you are the first love. We were destined to have love be the anthem of our hearts. We are destined to be sons and daughters that know the Father's love and then experience it.
Lord, even when we're dry, we're not signing up for feelings of love. We're trying to, we're signing up for the devotion, like even when Mary a day later thought, what did I just do? I poured perfume on Jesus. And then he died and she had to grapple with the love and the actions of love that she took.
Lord, we declare that there's love stories that will be shared just like Mary's from this community. Love stories that created risk in our lives because we said no to the fear of man, the praise of man, the rejection of man, and we scaled the mountain like sons and daughters do that climbed onto the cross and said, I'm dying to fear, dying to sin. This is who we are Lord. We respond to you.
I just, I don't have any eloquent thing to say and how we should articulate this, but all of us are mature enough to say, just you share with him as we're going into worship. What you want him to know, you share with him the longing of your heart. I remember, I remember when I was, when I was 19th and I was in a room and we were getting commissioned by Lou Engel. And Lou was on his knees and he was rocking back and forth.
And he was this burning man of love for Jesus. It was like he touched a hunger that I had touched. And I said, God, I want to burn. I had that prayer in my heart.
Lord, like the cherubim, make me a burning man. Make me a burning woman. Maybe that's your prayer tonight. Make me a burning woman that raises all the beauty of God, all the days of my life.
Like David, the longing of hunger for Jesus. Lord, even when we don't feel it, brand us. Brand us with hunger. Brand us with love, Lord, like Mary, in Jesus name.
In Jesus name, Lord, we bring ourselves to you in all the mess. In all the mess like your little sheep. We don't know any good things to say, but we just, here we are, Lord. Here we are, Lord.