We've been going through a series unpacking what it means to be every day. What does that mean to us? Okay? Because every day is an ability, every day is in a program.
It's not just a service. It's a people. It is your nine to five. It's your Monday through Sunday.
Every day is a mentality, a perspective on life. Every day is a lifestyle. And tonight, we are going to be unpacking what we are calling the every day way. Everyone say the every day way.
That is the lifestyle that we are going to carry as a community. So we have four core values that we have had since the very beginning. If you were with us in the house, we had our first video. This is so funny.
Our first ever video that would go up on the screen. I forget how it would start, but it would go, you should take. So you remember? Intimacy, yes.
I got it. I got it. Intimacy experienced. Identity realized.
Life on mission. And that was our at the beginning. So our four values have always been the same. Intimacy, identity, mission, and together community.
Intimacy with God, our connection with the Lord, our identity, the way that we, so it's like the way we relate with Him, the way that we relate with ourselves, our identity. How do we see ourselves according to the finished work of the cross? How do I tend to the health of my soul? That's identity and mission.
How we relate with the world. How we relate with culture. How we relate with the lost and how we live on mission in our everyday life. And how do we do it together?
How do we relate to other believers? How do we do this together? And these values come from the life of Jesus, which is great. When we look at the word, we see that he modeled a lifestyle.
And this is just our way of expressing what we see. So there could be so many different ways to express the lifestyle of Jesus. But this is just the language pieces we have used since the beginning. And so as we are moving into this next season, we're just going to start calling it the everyday way.
And when we say that, we don't just mean it's this community's way. We mean, so remember, everyday isn't just a specific community of people, a specific ministry, a specific church. Everyday is your life, right? So when we say the everyday way, we literally mean your everyday way.
And so anyone, it's not like saying what our church is in our area. We're not trying to say the substance way or the ego broke away. And not that that would be a bad thing. That's not the language we're trying to use.
We're just saying, this is your everyday life. This is the way of following Jesus. And so wherever you go to church or whatever community you're part of, you can do that everyday way. So when we look at this together, we really see this as kind of our true north as a community of when we look at the life of Jesus, what did he model as a way to live?
Because we're supposed to look at his life and go, he showed us what is possible when a man walks the earth with God on the inside. He showed us what is possible through him. And so we go, okay, what did you do? And I want to emulate what you've done as I am becoming more like you.
And so tonight we're just going to break down those four core values. And we are going to be, to make it simpler, we are saying up out in together. Okay? So intimacy, identity, mission together, up out in together.
We do it all together. Okay? So we're going to just kind of break those down. So we are going to be as we are stepping into what we believe is a new day for the church, a new expression that is rising up in the church in this hour.
We're going to break down what we see him doing in these four ways. Yes. Everyone say up. Jesus spent time with the father in everyday life, right?
He modeled relationship with God. When you read the book of Luke, you see this all over the place that Jesus would actually take time away. He would slip away and just have private time with the Lord, just hours. He would go on to a mountainside by himself, away from all the crowds and be there for hours.
And then if you remember, he met his disciples walking on the water. That was after he was just hanging out with the Lord in private, right? And so Jesus modeled connection by himself with the Lord. He modeled connecting with the Lord with others as well.
And the disciples do this as well. They're going to the synagogue. They're going to this gathering place around the Lord. And then you see the apostles, they're writing letters.
They're even connecting and praying and worshiping in prisons, right? They're in prisons for their faith and they're just modeling this up relationship with God. And the concern that we have is that right now what's common in the bride in the West is that there's a doneness and there's boredom when we hear about a prayer meeting happening, prayer meeting for sure not showing up to that. And there's a perspective of prayer and worship or even the knowledge of God or reading our Bibles where we can actually get fascinated with who he is.
And there's actually boredom because we're so distracted with so many other things. And God is actually getting pushed into the margins and the edges of life. And the Lord's going, oh, I was always meant to take first place. I was always meant to be preeminent.
In other words, first place. And the one that in that first commandment lifestyle that we would love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, there's encounters. I just, as Katie and I've been praying about this transition as we've become every day. We've really sensed that the Lord and I want to be clear with what we're sensing from the Lord during the season, that this is a season of encounter for our community.
And it's when I say encounter, what I mean is that encounter means when you meet a person and you have a moment with them, you have an encounter with them, right? And so there's a lot of things that can happen when you have an encounter. And I believe that our community, I don't care if you've come from a Baptist background or Lutheran background, many of us are coming from very conservative backgrounds. And some of us are coming from charismatic backgrounds.
But I just want to lay a foundation here for us to understand that God is going to begin to blow our minds. And he's actually, he wants, when we're saying I want to see you, I'm literally, myself, I haven't been asking the Lord, I haven't been asking to see him in years. I haven't been actually saying Lord, I want to encounter you, take me up, I want to get taken up into the open heavens. I want to have a vision where you actually, I want to see you face to face, even before you return or I go to be with you.
I actually want to get taken up into the heavenly realm and encounter you, right? And I feel like there's a hunger that God's going to give us to go, I don't need an encounter to be okay. And I'm not just showing up to worship, just to get an encounter. I'm showing up to worship to give him something, right?
And I'm going to offer him praise, but I'm also, I have this hunger and love in my heart where I'm going, I want to experience more of you. I want to experience things that I haven't touched before. And I know that my heart is dull and I want to get fascinated again. And I just want to encourage you, you just start building your faith because there's, there's, just start praying for it, just asking for it.
I want to encounter you, encounter me in a way that I haven't experienced before and come expect it, expect it that you're going to meet him, okay? And I know that for some of us, we're like, oh, that's uncomfortable, things can get scary when encounters start happening. But in the father's house, he makes it safe and he's going to demystify it. He's going to help us, okay?
He's going to care for us. He's a good shepherd and there's no fear in love. And the encounter is for the sake of him just sharing his perfect love with us. And so we're just going to say no to fear and yes to Lord, I want to encounter you in a way I haven't experienced before, okay?
There's been this problem that we've got these board hearts. Does God even come to our mind in everyday life? Or it's like on Tuesday, did I even think of the Lord, right? And I believe the Lord is going, nope, this is everyday connection.
This is everyday always, it's Sunday plus connection. It's like beyond just the services, right? This is like a, my whole life is wrapped up into connection with the Lord. There's going to be an awareness of his nearness.
I believe that God is taking us out of wedding day Christianity. He is taking us out of, yes, I got saved and we became one and now we're a married couple and that was it. He's taking us out of wedding day Christianity. He's even taking us out of group date Christianity.
Once a week we go on a group date, me and him and it's really great. No, he's going, I want side by side, I want back to back, I want face to face. This is what I want. This is what I purchased on the cross.
When I went to the cross, I wasn't thinking about group dates on Sundays. He's going, I want a people fully in love. The joy that was set before me is lovers. The joy that was set before me was the bride fully in love with me because they've caught in the glimpse and they're beholding like John the Baptist and they've got this heart of going a point like John the Baptist where he says, behold and he has this point in his spirit.
He's going, look at him. Look at him. That only comes from beholding him. You can only have a point where you're like drawing attention to look at him when you've actually meditated on him yourself.
When no one was around for long hours and God's going, it's not just for the super religious anymore. It's not just for the Bible scholars or the seminary students. It's for everyone that feels too busy. It's for all the busy people.
It's for us. It's for the busy ones to be like Mary, to sit at his feet, get fascinated again. God's calling the priesthood of all believers together and he's going, you're all priests. You're all ministers before me.
I'm going to unlock your heart in the place of prayer and worship and you are going to know me. You're actually going to get caught up into the beyond of God, into the beyond my 80 years, beyond my 90 years beyond where I'm at on Google Maps in a moment. He's going, you're taking me out of just me navel gazing in my life and just thinking about me and you're catching me up into the one that has no beginning, the one that is everlasting that has no end. You're fascinating my heart with the life of Jesus as I read the Bible and I go, man, how long when Jesus walked from Capernaum to Jerusalem, how long was that walk?
Man, what was that? Oh, my goodness. That's a 17 hour walk. Wow, I don't know if that's 17 hours.
Don't look at it. I wonder what they talked about on the road where there's a sense of wonder that gets seated into our hearts. I feel the pull, the current into numbness and the Lord's going, oh, no, no, no, no. You're going to be like Mary.
You're an extravagant one with your busy time. You're going to be extravagant. You're going to give me gifts of time and we're going to get fascinated together. You're going to be filled with wonder.
I'm calling you to look up. Amen? Just real quick, I was getting a picture. Josh was just sharing that of just some of you just weeping over the word and there being a grace for like Josh just said, long hours with the Lord.
And when he said that, I agree with him. But when he said that, I could feel attention maybe in some of your hearts going like long hours. Like what would I do hours? Like I might open the Bible app, read a verse to check it off the list for the day.
Maybe that's the extent of my devotional life or whatever. And it's like long hours. What could that even look like? And it feels like such a lofty thing that it's like easy to maybe dismiss yourself from it and say, well, I could never do that.
I don't have the time. And I just wanted to pause on it for one second and just say that there is. So much grace for you. If you're like, I do want to like step toward the Lord and giving him time, but I don't have time.
And I just feel like there is grace to give him time that you don't think that you have and to like set aside a time that feels specifically like time you don't have. So if you feel like you have 15 minutes, do 30, like choose 30, you know, whatever you feel like you don't have, choose that and set it aside, like put an alarm in your phone, like put it in your calendar and start to give him what you don't think that you have in the area of time. And I just felt like the Lord is like, there is a grace for this. So if that's you, you might even just like write it down or like, hey, 30 minutes, whatever that number is that comes to your mind.
Like maybe 15 is like, I don't have 15 minutes in my day. Then 15 is it, you know, there isn't a magic number. But I believe I remember when, and I know this is like such a tangent, but I just feel like it's important in this moment. I was in high school when I started to spend longer time with the Lord and I started with an hour because there was this challenge that I heard about and I had never had really any type of devotional life before that, even though I was a believer.
And I was challenged to give him an hour a day for 30 days. And I was like, I, and it's hilarious as a high schooler. I'm like, I do not have the time. I'm like, you have the time.
Yeah, you do have the time. But I was hungry and I signed up and I gave him that 30 days of an hour every single day. And at first it was like such a grind. Like it was a discipline, right?
To do that. But honestly, like five to seven days in, it was like an hour isn't enough. And how did I think that I didn't have time? And I could sit here all night and it would turn into two hours sometimes or three hours sometimes just pouring over the word and the word being alive to me.
And I was actually, for the first time, because I was actually giving it time and turning it into conversation with the Lord. And so I'm not saying an hour to set that as a bar. There is no bar. But if you're hungry, just give him what you don't think you have in your time and just see him meet you there.
But don't just like do it once. Because the first five, ten times you're going to be like, what was she talking about? I don't feel any grace for this. This Bible is so boring.
I don't understand anything that I'm reading. God, are you even here? Why am I like, this is so lame. Just keep hitting it.
It's a discipline. It's a spiritual discipline. When you meet it, it's for your good and it will actually spring up wells from inside of you. So just want to say there's so much grace.
Okay. You have anything you want to add? Okay. Everybody say in or jump him back in.
Okay. Jesus, when he looked at his life, Jesus knew exactly who he was. He knew where he had come from. He knew what he had been given.
And he knew where he was going. He had all of the confidence that he knew exactly who he was. And that infiltrated everything that he did. Jesus having a strong sense of identity and knowing who he was is what empowered him to do everything that he did.
If he didn't know who he was, we wouldn't see the miracles that he did. We wouldn't see the dead that were raised if he didn't understand who he was. We wouldn't see Jesus bend down to wash feet if he didn't know who he was. Jesus and all of his meekness, his strength, restraint into human form.
Jesus, if he didn't know who he was, he would feel insecure to bend down and wash feet because it, kings don't do that. They wouldn't think God in the flesh would do that. But he knew who he was and he knew what his job was. He knew what his assignment was.
A healthy sense of identity empowers you to live into your destiny. At the end of the day, we need to understand our identity. And I think that there are three ditches that I want us to look at that I think were against our identity. One of them being the religious ditch of, I'm a Christian, but I haven't actually studied what the Bible says about my identity.
And I still identify as a sinner who hasn't been made new, who needs to work for the approval of my father God every day. And every morning I wake up at zero and have to earn my way back into his favor or to please him. And it's only by my actions and by me white knuckling my life that I could possibly please God. And that is a ditch.
A really damaging ditch. And the other ditch on the complete opposite side is I've studied what the word says about my identity. I know exactly who I am because of the finished work of the cross. I know I'm a son.
I know I'm a daughter. I'm a cholera. I know he's given me all authority and all power. So I don't need to tend to my soul.
I don't need to tend to the sin patterns that are popping up over here. In faith I will shove them under the rug. So that's the other ditch. And the third ditch I want to talk about is a ditch that I feel like has been very pervasive in the way that it has infiltrated the mindset of the church and of believers.
And that is secularism. And what it says is I have no need for God because I have everything that I need in me. I'm strong. I'm brave.
I'm powerful. I can do anything I put my mind to. Okay. So we hear this how the world has stolen the language of the word and have taken it over here and have devoid of its power released it absent of God.
And we're seeing the church just take it and it's subtle. And this deserves a whole sermon series on its own. And so Lord give us Christ to do that. It's like I don't even know how to unpack it because it really is pervasive what we are subjecting ourselves to.
And it's so subtle because the language is the language of the word. But we're applying it to people that do not have Jesus. And those words are only possible in him. And so there's this perspective that we are getting a false sense of security and a counterfeit identity from the language of the world.
And it's like fake empowerment. Does that make sense? Yes. And so I think I'm strong and I think it's like we've talked about this kind of as parents before where it's like I don't just tell my kid you're brave.
You're strong. I say because Jesus is inside of you, you have the ability for the first time to be brave truly. You can't be. We have no good apart from him.
And so this identity piece of understanding our identity is so significant. If you've been around you've heard us talk about spirit soul body. I am a spirit. I identify with my spirit.
I have a soul and I inhabit a body. I live in a body. My spirit is what died when I chose to follow Jesus. It's my old man.
He died and I became a new creation at the spirit level. That's my internal reality as a believer that I became a new creation. And now at the spirit level, I'm a son. I'm a daughter.
I'm a co-era. I can enter his throne room with boldness for the first time. I've been given all authority, all power. I can heal the sick.
I can cast out demons. That's just what happened at the spirit level when I said yes to him. My spirit has been justified just as if I'd never sinned before. He removed my sin from me as far as the East is from the West.
He remembers my sin. No more at the spirit level. I always think of it like rings. So it's like a spirit level.
And then one ring out is our soul. Our soul is being sanctified. Our soul is in process. Our soul is working out its salvation every day.
Our soul is our mind. It's our will. It's our emotions. As a believer, we understand that how I feel is not who I am.
As a believer, I understand that my preferences are not who I am. My soul is submitting to my spirit and is learning how to do that. That is the process of sanctification. The process of sanctification is my soul who's used to being in charge.
My soul coming under my spirit and submitting to my spirit. Does that make sense? And then our bodies are in process. They are learning to submit to our spirit just like we just heard Morgan talk about.
So as a believer, yes, I know that I was a sinner. Now I'm a saint, a son, a daughter, a co-air, all these things. And I also know that my soul is in process and my soul needs tending to. My soul needs healing.
My soul needs healing from trauma that's happened. My body needs healing from trauma that it is still holding onto. My soul needs renewal of its mind. Our minds need to be renewed because of old patterns, old addictions, old habits, old mentalities.
And so this in value, this identity value is this partnership of our identity and knowing who we are before the Lord in confidence and then the humility to tend to our soul and not stuff things under the rug, but to actually tend to the unforgiveness that is actually wreaking havoc in my whole life. Okay? And so that's that value for us that it is both and as we take responsibility for what he's done at the spirit level, but we also take responsibility for the soul. Yes, when we think about in, we think about healthy souls, healthy hearts.
That's why we talk about soul care, right? And why we have soul care sessions here as a community and why we believe God is raising up an army of counselors and we get to be a part of raising up an army of counselors in our city that can actually infuse kingdom identity into healing and restoration on the soul level. And God is actually going to bring health to hearts and those healthy hearts are going to create healthy relationships, healthy marriages. And it's going to create healthy homes and healthy families.
And from that place, there's actually, that's how neighborhoods are transformed through healthy families going, hey, it's an open table. There's always a spot at our table. Come on in, come over for dinner because God is actually converging and he's going, hey, I don't want people to just sit around messages in church building. He's going, no, I want you to open up your house.
I want you to open up your table. I want you to start barbecuing on weekends and inviting people over because the Lord is calling us into out. Everybody say out. Jesus modeled having a mission.
He knew what his mission was and he knew what his identity was because right before his mission, what happened? The Father opens up the heavens and says, this is my son who I'm well pleased with, right? He has this connection with the Father. And the Father gives him his identity that he's enjoyed and then from that place he starts into his mission.
And his mission is actually to represent the Father to everyone, to represent the Father heart of God to the world. It says that in the Bible he was the exact imprint of who God is, who the Father is. In other words, he's like the carbon copy, but he's the physical version so that we couldn't actually know what our Father is like. And then he says, now you're going to be sons and daughters just like I am.
Now you get to be carbon copies to the world and now your ambassadors, now your representatives of who the Father is and what he's like. And now everywhere you go, we've got little Christ like little anointed ones, little sons and daughters that look like their dad everywhere they go. See this is a divine setup because now every time you show up to work, it's a divine setup because now God on the inside of you just walked into the room. You're not outmatched.
It's like when you walk into a space, literally God, Holy Spirit on the inside of you just walked into that room. And it's a divine setup that you're working the job that you're working, that you're in the classes that you're in, that you're walking into the restaurants that you like to go to. I believe God is giving us vision as a community again to be a regular. I was going to Jersey Mike's a lot for two years.
And I just was intentional to learn names. I'd write down in my notes app. After I left Jersey Mike's, every time I would write in my notes app the names that I learned of the people that work at Jersey Mike's. And I would review, I would open up my notes app because sometimes I forget.
And so I'd open up my notes app, look at the names before I walked in. And I'd write descriptors of what they look like so I'd remember. And I just loved. I just loved them.
I ordered and then I just asked them questions and loved them well. And over time there's tragedies that are happening. And I walk in. And they come to me as the tragedy is happening.
And I'm the one that is actually the representative of what God responds, how he responds to us in the moment of heartbreak and tragedy. When there's a death in the family, God walks in the room because he's God on the inside, right? And the father wants to comfort. I didn't go to Jersey Mike's for two years, the last two years because we moved to a different city.
So I haven't been to that same Jersey Mike's. And I walked in just two weeks ago into a random Jersey Mike's and there was two of those employees that I hadn't seen in two years. And I did not remember their names. But they remembered mine.
And there was this moment. Where have you been? There was this like, where do you go to Jersey Mike's now? Right?
But I believe that the Lord is going, that it wasn't an accident that I walked into that Jersey Mike's and now I'm going to begin to be a regular at my Jersey Mike's in Blaine, right? Because it stirred me up again to go, oh my goodness, I get to love. I remember I was going to Tase of Scandinavia and I was eating way too many cake donuts. What do you like to do?
What do you like to do? What do you enjoy? What type of food do you like? Do you like Asian food or Mexican food, American food?
What kind of food do you like? What do you like? What activities? What's your hobby?
How many of you know that evangelism isn't one night of the week on Friday night? How many of you know that you are revival on feet and as you go, you're not too busy to do things that you love and just be loved along the way? Jesus, 90% of the miracles that Jesus did was outside of a religious building. 90% of the miracles that we hear about is usually inside the church building right now.
God is flipping it upside down and he's going, no, I want to get out of the building. I want to get out of the building and I'm going to be revival on feet through my people. And the problem isn't that there's not enough hunger for Jesus in the fields. The fields are ripe, they're white.
And the only problem is there's not very many people that are in the fields that see themselves as laborers because we think the evangelist is the one that's on the street corner or standing on the lunch table or coming with a track to our door and it doesn't feel like us. But I tell you this, you can be you and you can be loved on feet and release the kingdom of God everywhere you go and it doesn't have to feel weird. What would it look like to love them right now? Holy Spirit, what are you saying over there?
What do you want them to know? We get to start releasing the kingdom everywhere we go and we're not too busy. It's not going to be too awkward. But we're going to love them more than having some type of awkward moment and being afraid of an awkward moment.
How many of you know that they are worth infinite God blood and we're letting a little feeling of awkwardness and insecurity keep them from meeting Jesus. I'm going to blow through that awkwardness. This person actually has infinite value to him. Wow he loves them so much.
I will not let insecurity keep them from meeting him. I'm not too busy. We're not too busy. Be with him.
It's a commission. Remember? I'm going to do something for God. It's a commission.
That's a commission. We do it together. It's a commission that he's given us. We get to live into that and be a regular and be with him in everyday life.
Everyone say together. This is our last one. If anyone had a reason or the authority or an excuse to go alone, it would be Jesus. God in the flesh chose to go together.
God in the flesh, Jesus chose to move in community. He must understand something that I think is hard for us as Americans to understand. It's kind of challenging in the West to understand the value of community because we have been taught that being independent is the truest sign of strength and it actually is making us weak. I think that there is just an invitation to explore this with him in a completely different way.
You want to step into mission. You're hearing Josh talk about out. How do I even start? I love what he just said.
Become a regular. Another way to start is by being in community with other believers. You may not. Why would you say that?
The word says that they will know we are Christians by the way that we love each other. It doesn't say that they will know that we are Christians by the way we love the lost. But usually that's how it gets translated. They're going to know the love of God when we love them extravagantly.
Yes, we need to love the lost. Don't hear me wrong. But the word says they will know that there's something different about you. That you follow a different way by the way you love each other.
That they will peer into the church. I don't mean a building the church. I mean like your community, the church, you as a people. They will peer into the church.
The people and go, I've never seen anything like this before. They know someone I don't know. They know something I don't know and I want in on that. There is a love and a unity in the body that will provoke the loss to jealousy and they'll go, I want what you have.
And I think it's one of the reasons that we don't see that a lot is because we aren't actually pursuing that community, that life on life lifestyle that Jesus himself modeled for us. I think that there are different reasons obviously that we don't engage with community. Maybe for some of you it's like I just have never experienced community and I'm doing just fine. I don't really see a need for it in my life.
Or maybe you have tried to pursue community and you have ached for community and longed for community but you have not been able to find it and it's actually there's a sting to that for you and it's painful to even think about community because you've experienced levels of rejection and there's been pain in that space. Maybe you've experienced community and it was thriving and you can point to a season of your life where you're like I remember when I was a part of this community and we were going after God together and all these things are happening and it was like my glory day is whatever that is for you and maybe you can relate to that and maybe something happened. Maybe there was a separation in relationship or something came up or maybe people moved away or maybe there was a painful moment and to look back you just go I can't do it again. I lost too much.
That was too costly. I'm not going to do that again. I'm good on my own. I'm good with just my family.
And I just believe that there's an invitation because Jesus himself opened himself up in vulnerability to be betrayed and betrayed he was. He modeled that it's not good for man to go alone. He modeled it with his very life but it wasn't without a cost. Like I even think of my goodness how much more efficient I'm an efficiency person and so I just think of how much more efficient Jesus would have been if he didn't have to bring his disciples with him.
And just you know his role and said he's like okay let me teach you again. It's like so much slower but he valued togetherness. He valued unity. It was his prayer in John 17, father make them one.
Where won. The Psalms say that he commands a blessing where there's unity. And yes there's unity here we talked about that a lot in this season because there's every reason under the sun to not be unified culturally right now and that's really valuable in this larger context. But I'm talking there's something different about a smaller group of people operating in unity and being iron that sharpens iron right and actually getting into each other's life and yeah it's messy and it can be painful and you're going to get burned because people are human but it is so worth it to go together.
Some of you are off struggling on your own. It's like the enemy divides so that he can conquer. Divide and conquer. He separates us and makes us an island so that we're conquerable.
If you are isolated he can take you out. But when you're in lockstep, when you're in community you have other people's eyes on what's going on. So you start believing a lie and then you have people going wait a second. That's not what's true and they speak truth and you go oh thank you we meet each other.
If you think you're above needing other people to invest in your life I don't know what to tell you. We need each other. Some of you are struggling with old sin patterns or addictions, anxiety, depression and in that space trying to war with that in isolation it's just not how God created you. He didn't create you to go alone.
We need each other. Some of you, like your breakthrough and your freedom is in the mouth of a brother or sister. And we need to invite people into our life enough that they could actually see what's going on and be able to speak truth, speak to our identity and call us higher. It's like we call this the awakening service.
We talked about how it's too literally like agitate or irritate each other into love and good works. How much more when you gather with friends and they actually know how you're doing underneath the surface. They know what's happening in your Monday through Sunday and they get to like iron sharpens iron agitate you and spur you on into who God created you to be. It's like together is the glue for up for in and for out.
We weren't created to just do up on our own to be on mission on our own to understand who we are and work on our soul health on our own. We need each other and I just so believe that there's a new day for believers to not just have Christians hang out with Christians. That's not community. It's great.
Go ahead and like hang out with each other. That's great. If you're not gathering around Jesus, you're missing something. So I just want to say like I see that gathering around meals, gathering around the word, worshiping together in a living room, praying over each other, prophesying over each other, going out on mission together.
I just see it's a new day for community even in this community. Yes. Without together, there's isolation. Without up there's burnout, there's humanism and we start doing things in our own strength.
Out in families and together will suffer because we are not operating in health. And without out, we become ingrown, ineffective and clicky. We want to cast vision for this everyday way lifestyle. And I want it to be delivered as a gift and not as a burden and a weight.
Jesus, when he was sharing the sermon on the mount, he's sharing a way, like a new law, that's a gift because it's a way of life, but it's impossible to fulfill. It's impossible to get right. It's impossible to be perfect at it. And the expectation is that we aren't all going to be perfect at living out, about and together perfectly.
Right? But it's like a north star. It's like a compass where it's like when I look at the everyday way that this is the values that get to actually shape my life, I actually have something that I can give away when someone meets Jesus for the first time and I'm discipling them. And I go, hey, these are the elements of what your life looks like when you follow Jesus.
These are the elements of this is the lifestyle of following Jesus. Let me bring you along so that you can understand how it works and how to live the kingdom life. Okay? So there's going to be seasons where God is highlighting different areas to you and he's maybe going to be exposing things where he's going, hey, the inn needs some help right now.
Do you feel it? I'm the good shepherd and I'm really prodding on this part of your life. And then there's other areas where we go, man, this is a strength or maybe this is a weakness, but we're all, we all have different strengths and weaknesses in this area tendencies. And that's okay.
And that's good. And that's where community really comes in, where you start going, wow, it's really natural for me to not go to do the out thing ever. And then we start seeing somebody that's doing it and it doesn't feel as scary because I know that person and I know that they're not, they're kind of like me, but they just share that story, right? God is actually calling us into the up out in together.
And so I just want us to respond to the Lord. Katie, why don't you share how we can respond? Yeah, I think that what we want to do is just give you an opportunity to dialogue around this. So whenever we can, we like to just give some space to connect with each other around this topic.
So we just think it'd be so valuable for you to be able to turn to the person who came with or a couple of people around you and dialogue around the everyday way and look at up out in together and go, what, this is a question I would love for you to talk around. And that is, what comes naturally for you? Like when you look at your life, which one of those four are you like, oh yeah, I feel like that one comes pretty easily for me. And what is the one that you're like, don't ask me about that one.
I don't, I don't have a good answer for that one. And just dialogue around that because I think it's so valuable for us to see one, how different we are and see that we truly are a body when we're together. We actually fill out a body when we're together. And so to dialogue around that and just go, are they going to be good for you to chat around, why do you think that is?
If it's something that you're like, oh yeah, I'm really strong on out. Why is that? Is it because you've worked a muscle and you wanted to grow that muscle and so you worked on it or is it like, no, I kind of always been this way. Since I was young and this comes naturally, just share what is that for you or the ones that might be more challenging.
Why do you think that is? Does it feel opposite to your personality or how you're wired? Did you have an experience that you're like, I don't want to do that again? What, what is your story as it relates to these four values?
Does that make sense? Okay, so just turn to someone you came with or a couple people around you, we'll just give you a couple of minutes and then we will commission out.