Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Hey, guys, this is Naim, and you've reached the Mosaic Church Podcast. So excited that you're part of our listening community and love for you to be even more connected. So check out our website. There's more content there and there's more opportunities for you get connected in our ministries and events as well. Also, love for you to share this content. If this is blessed to you. I know that God wants to use you to bless other people with it, so share this podcast you will. Lastly, would you consider supporting this ministry? This is made possible by other people's generosity, and I'd love for you to pay it forward. Join us to reclaim the message and the movement of Jesus together. So would you consider giving to this ministry? I know that God is able to do immeasurably more through us when we come together. Thank you so much. God bless you. Enjoy.
[00:00:56] Good morning.
[00:00:59] Wow. I know. I know some of you guys are like, hey, put it down already. Okay, for those of you who've been here for the last couple of weeks, this, my friends, is a Pulaski, right?
[00:01:11] It's not that weapon, friends. It's a tool. It's a tool. And so I know it's, you know, it might be a problem. You know, I like holding onto it. I walk around the house like this, you know, Know, I feel like I can. I can finish arguments, you know, really well with this. It's. It's kind of fun. No, I'll put it down. I'll put it down. Some of you guys are like, it was unsafe before. It's still unsafe. But, friends, this. This tool has been a conversation about where we're. How we move to next this year. And so this is our 19th anniversary, friends. Wow. Yai. 19.
[00:01:46] You know what? That explains why I'm so tired all the time. Like, that's it. That's it. But you know what? This morning, I do want to continue kind of the conversations that we've been having. So if you're here celebrating with us, man, thank you so much. For those of you who do not know this man, for 19 years, what's been true is that God's goodness and his faithfulness has been so evident to us. And so we've had ups and downs and highs and lows in all kinds of locations. And I'll tell you what, next year is going to be 20 years and 20 years, we want to do it right. You know what I'm saying? We're going to do it right. Everybody goes on a cruise. No, that's not true. No, that's not. That's not true. No, we would not have a church after that. Yeah, no one will like each other, but we're going to do it. Do it well. But, man, for those of you who've been here for, let's see, 19 years. Who's been here for 19 years?
[00:02:40] Yes, 19 years.
[00:02:44] 19 years. Like, wow, it's been amazing. Amazing. So there's so many people to thank. But I will just want to say thank you for journeying with us. So I want to talk about what I'm really passionate about, because this series, your move, has been really interesting because we've been talking about the idea that God wants us to make a move. Like this year, if God wants you to attain something, we have goals, we have dreams and all that. And so our first week, we began talking about how do we move our mentality? How do we move from being like, grasshopper mentality? This idea of, like, oh, we just compare. And when we compare, that's where we get our confidence from. And if we use always comparison to get our confidence, we're not gonna have much. And so I propose to you that we would use the knowledge of God as a forging tool to move us forward in life, and so we would get our confidence from what God says about us. Last week, I said, okay, let's move it forward. The conversation as well move from just giant, you know, grasshoppers to giant slayers. Let's pick our giant. And I, like I told you last week, we pick our giants. We identify our giants, and our giants are not as big as we think they are. In fact, in fact, most. Not most. A lot of you texted me, messaged me about the talk, and even from online, I mean, I have people online just saying, hey, thank you. That would really speak. Spoke to me. And so I was like, man, I. I feel like maybe there's one more conversation that we need to have. If. If we. If you've moved from, you know, from grasshopper mentality, always comparing ourselves to other people, to a giant slayer. If we identify our giant, what do we need to do next? The next is the conversation I want to have is how do you take the land? How do you take the land? How do you take the promised land that God's told you? How do you step into those things that God has for your life? How do you do that? And for us, the promised land is not filled with milk and honey. If you know the Old Testament. No, for us, it's like, this is the space I want to be Where I'll be totally fulfilled. This is the place that I'll be satisfied. This is the status. This is the season. This is the kind of person I want to become. And for some of you, for some of you, it might be just like I want to be married, I want to have kids, I want to be financially secure, I want to be out of debt, I want to start a business. It might be what? Whatever. It might be that land, it's kind of like the promised land. And you know, you know, you felt it. That man. I really believe that God's called us to this or called me to this. And I think we can do this. Like, God wants this for me. So here's what we're gonna do.
[00:05:24] How do you take the land? How do you move into the land? Because once we figure that out, once we know there's a sense of, I gotta do this, we need to do this, we need to do this.
[00:05:35] How do you attain it? Is it just by faith? No. I want us to have a conversation which I believe is going to follow you your whole life, especially with your journey with Jesus. It's going to. Because it's going to be in every decision that you make, every move forward that you make. So taking the land means this. Okay? It means how do we navigate.
[00:06:00] Navigate God's call without manipulating God's will?
[00:06:06] Like, how do we. We have to learn. We have to learn. We gotta be really good at navigating, navigating God's call in our life. And the call is that land. The call is that place, that job, whatever it is. How do we. How we have to get good at navigating God's call without what? Without manipulating God's will. Manipulating God's will. Have you ever done something wrong for the right reasons? Right. And then gotten into trouble? Right? We've done that. We've done that because we just wanted to make it happen. We just wanted to figure it out.
[00:06:41] This past week, I was involved friends in a scandal. Okay? Let me just tell you, okay? It was a scandal. She's laughing about it because she heard about it in the first service. It's not that big of a deal. It is a big deal. Okay? Okay. So here's the problem. I was at Food lion checking out self checkout. Everything's good. And then I had some Brussels sprouts. Okay? Brussels sprouts. Which, by the way, anybody fans of Brussels sprouts? Anybody?
[00:07:05] Okay. No. Okay, okay, okay. Just wanna let you know, the 9:30 crew that you guys hung out with last week because we had one service, they're all about Brussels sprouts. I don't know what it is. It went crazy. Brussels sprouts. Forget cookies. Brussels sprouts. I was like, what is wrong with you? Also, they get up early. But anyways, okay, so I was getting Brussels props, okay? There was no tag on it, Nothing. It was just a bag. And so there was a lady who could help me out.
[00:07:32] I was like, hey, can you, you know, produce? Whatever. Whatever. Whatever. It was not working. It was not working. She tried it. I tried it. We tried. It didn't work. She was like. She took the bag. She took. She put it in my bag. She's like, just take them.
[00:07:45] And she's not the manager. She's not. You know what I'm saying? Just take them. And I'm like, huh? She said, just take them. Just take them. Just take them. She goes, just take them. And I'm like, what? What are you doing? What is happening? She's like, just take him. Just take him. She's like, listen, I don't. I'm. I'm the only one here, and I can't leave this post, and I can't do that. She gave me all these right reasons to do the wrong thing. She's like, just take him. And I was like. And then she took him, put him in a bag, and I think she kicked me out. Like, she like, go. So I'm walking out, and she goes, don't tell anybody.
[00:08:17] What?
[00:08:18] You said it out loud, first of all. And then I'm going through the gate. Now I'm thinking, I'm gonna get busted. I'm gonna get busted for Brussels sprouts.
[00:08:28] Local pastor gets busted for Brussels sprouts. Like, what? What's happening? What's happening? What did she do? She did the wrong thing for the right sort of reasons. Okay? We do this. We get into relationships. We say yes to stuff. We say no to other things. We move ahead. We make things happen. We muscle through to get to the land. We figure it out. You make stuff happen, and in the middle of it, you just kind of go, I think it's God's will. It's God's will. It's God's will. It's God's will. No, we just manipulate God's will. So how do you figure this out? And I'll tell you why this conversation is so important. I think it's important for you, for me, for us, as a church as well, because let me just tell you, you're going to be doing this for the rest of your life. For the rest of your life, you're going to be navigating God's call. The next thing, the next thing. And you're going to be tempted to manipulate God's will. And how do we get better at that? How do we not get better at manipulating God's will?
[00:09:28] How do we figure out how to navigate so we don't manipulate people, Things, stories, God's will. How do we do that? Because we know we want to. We want to take the land. We want to take the land. How do we do that? So here's what I want to do. Last two couple of weeks, we talked about Old Testament stories. We're going to go back to the Old Testament stories in First Samuel. And so First Samuel. The setup is basically this, okay? This is a conversation between Samuel, a prophet, and a king. King. Who was King Saul. King Saul, for extra credit, was the. Was what king? The. The. What's his number? He was number.
[00:10:08] Yes, he was number one. First king. Okay? This guy's name itself in Hebrew means prayed for. Saul means prayed for. This guy was. If there's anybody in this calling that, that should. Anybody. If there was anybody who knew about their calling, it was this guy. He was prayed for for his mom and dad. He was prayed for.
[00:10:33] He was the first king. I mean, when he became king, they went from being a nomadic group of people to an organized like state. So he was the first king. Big, big deal. God said, okay, you're the king. The thing is, is he was a king. And before I read that passage of scripture, I know I came up. I'll give you that. Just ignore that for just a second.
[00:10:58] The big deal about this is that he was a king. He was not a priest or a prophet. And he was supposed to be doing king stuff, not priest or prophet stuff. And what he did was he was fighting the Philistines one day, not one day. He's been fighting them for a long time in his reign. And he is at a point where he needs to make a call, he needs to do something. But the prophet told him, hey, hold up. Wait a minute, Wait a minute. Just wait for me. Wait for me, and I'll come and do a particular thing you're supposed to do. And then we go into battle. And when, if I do this thing, it will be great. It'll be good for you. It'll be awesome.
[00:11:37] But here's what happened. What happened is now we get to it. It says here, he says, what have I done? What have. Sorry, what have you done? This is Samuel saying, telling Saul, hey, what are you doing? And then Saul replied. He said. He said, here's what happened. When I saw the men were scattering, okay? That's excuse number one. When I saw the men were scattering, okay? And they. Did you not come at the set time? And the Philistines were, what, assembling at mishmash? He's like, okay, let me give you three reasons. Let me give you three reasons. Okay? Here's the thing. First of all. First of all. First of all, my resources. The men were scattering. They were scattering. They were just.
[00:12:23] Things were not going well at all, okay? And secondly, you told me you were going to be here at a certain time, and you did not show up. You did not show up. And lastly, things were getting worse. Things were just getting worse. What's amazing about that, though, is isn't it true that those things are. That's. That tempts us to make the move when we need to wait on God. If God called us and told us, hey, this is. This is what's gonna happen, and I'm gonna do this. And we go, you know what? God number one, the. The, like, time. Like, things were. Things were all falling apart. Okay? Things were falling apart. The season one is up. I mean, I had to buy this. I had to do this. I had to quit this. I had to say yes to this. I had to do that. Why? Because it was all falling apart. The deal was falling apart. People were scattering. People were. Everything was being scattered. It was all set in place, and it would have been great. I could have stepped into it. We could have done this. It could have happened. But it's scattering. And so that's why I did this. And also. And also you told me you were going to be here at a certain time. And. And you. Guess what? You didn't. Which is a great, great point, because I don't know about you, but that is always my excuse with God, right? I'm like, you didn't show up when you were supposed to. Like, we know. We know. We say God is always what? On time. He's always on time. Right, okay. Which I'm like, really, though? I think we just say that he knows he's not on time. You know, he's always in the nick of time, but. But he does not have a watch. I mean, love him, but he does not. He doesn't live time and space, okay? For me, he's always like, just before I'm gonna lose my mind, he shows up. Okay? So basically, you got Saul Saying, hey, men were scattering.
[00:14:14] You know, you didn't show up. And then, guess what? The. The enemy was mounting, like things were getting worse. And so I. So I did it. So I did it. He goes on and he says here in the next verse, he says, I thought. I thought, now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgad, and I have not sought the Lord's favor, which was. He meant the ceremony. He did that. That was not done. And so. So I felt What? So I felt what?
[00:14:41] Compelled. I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering myself, basically. I felt compelled to do it. Have you ever done that?
[00:14:51] Have you ever leveraged grace and called it faith?
[00:14:56] Have you ever done that? You're like, oh, But I just felt compelled. I mean. I mean, you didn't show up, right? This was not happening. Things were not working out. If it's gonna happen, I gotta do it myself. You know what I'm saying? You're not doing anything. So guess what I'm doing. Making something happen.
[00:15:11] It's gonna happen. I gotta figure this out. We gotta do this. We can't wait on you and keep on praying about it. We gotta just keep on doing. Keep on. We gotta do this. And so Saul is saying that that is his justification. He's like, I had to do it. I had to do it. I had to do it. And so what would the next verse say? The next verse says this. He says, let's go to the next verse, all right? It says, you have done a foolish thing.
[00:15:38] Foolish thing. He's like, man, you shouldn't have done this. You shouldn't have done this. He says, you have not kept the command of the Lord your God gave you. If you had. If you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. He would have done that.
[00:16:02] But you do it. But you didn't do it. And see, the story gets worse after that. Because that's when Samuel says, hey, God's gonna find another person. In fact, he's going to find a person who understands God's heart. He's going to look for a man after God's own heart. And if you know Old Testament stories, who's the guy who's known to be the man after God's own heart? David. And he was next in line. And so the whole idea was is that, like, you got to find. I'm going to find a person who's not going to manipulate my will just because he wants to step into a calling. And because you manipulated God's will, you're not gonna have that calling. You're not gonna have that calling. And I worry about that. Sometimes I think, you know, I don't want to do that in my life. I don't want to make things happen and make things happen and make things happen. And Saul is a great example of a person who had. Who kept on holding on to a throne and eventually died holding on to that throne. And actually, yeah, he took his own life, but it was really bad. He just. It messes you up. You see, when you and I manipulate other people's will, you manipulate your soul. First you have to lie to yourself before you lie to other people. You have to do it. And the first lie is always like, it's okay, it's okay, I can do this. But it changes you. It messes with you, and it's not good for your. It's not good for your soul. So what's interesting about this is that those three reasons. I find it fascinating that in the scriptures, when you move from Old Testament to New Testament, you find there are these three things that always seem to tempt the human soul. John, one of the writers, he talks about them. He says, it's the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. It's really interesting. And we can get into that some other day. But then you also find when you connect it to the life of Jesus, you go, wow, this is actually.
[00:17:54] This is something that Jesus showed us, like, that the human soul would be tempted by. You know, I grew up Muslim, and what I love about the teachings of Jesus is that they're not just teachings. It's not just like, oh, he said these things. We're going to write it down. It's all great. But it's fascinating is when you see the. When you read the stories, you realize God's doing this interesting thing where he's showing us what it looks like to interact with a human Jesus. And then Jesus shows us how to navigate life and have this relationship with God.
[00:18:34] As if, like in the Old Testament, God used Israel, a nation to represent God's people and say, hey, this is how I interact with you. And that was like. That was insufficient. It was not complete. It was like, you gotta have priests, and only certain people could go there. And you had to have special people who could do special things. And that was it. And there was like, the people of Israel. Their disobedience kind of, you know, illustrated the disobedience of humanity. But all of a sudden, in the New Testament, what happens is Jesus takes over that Part of being Israel. He's like, I am one of you. I am the son of man, he called himself. And this is how I interact with humanity. This is how you interact with God. And so it's not surprising to me that Jesus on purpose does things and says, hey, this is how you can be human and this is how you're supposed to interact with God. So the first thing Jesus does is gets baptized. And some of you need to get baptized. He does. He shows us by his life, these are the things you do. And the next thing that happens right after getting baptized, I mean, he's in a high point of his life, something interesting happens and we'll go right to it. Okay? It's in Luke, in Luke, chapter four, Luke, chapter four. It says here that Jesus, full of the what Holy Spirit. I mean, he was full of the Holy Spirit, okay, returned from the Jordan river and he was led by the Spirit in the wilderness. And so he's led by the Holy Spirit. He's full of spirit.
[00:20:09] And he was tempted by the devil for what, 40 days. Jesus ate nothing at the time and became very hungry. We'll stop right there. Now what's interesting about that is this whole idea of 40 days, right? So Jesus goes and. As if he's linking the 40 day thing to Old Testament. Because if first week, if you remember, if you remember, like they didn't go into the promised land because they thought we are just grasshoppers and all that. And they went out and scouted the land, and they scouted the land for how many days? 40 days. And then for 40 years they wandered around because. Because they couldn't get over the fact that they compared themselves and they thought they were giants. There it was 40 days. And so interesting. And then this story right here, what's interesting about that is that again, there's a 40 day thing. Like, so if it was 40 days for the whole grasshopper thing, it was again 40 days. If you remember last week, last week you had David and Goliath, right? The two armies there before they fight, they've been hanging around and trying to figure out stuff for how many days? 40 days. And now you got Saul and Samuel and guess how long he was waiting for God.
[00:21:32] 40 days he had just lost. Like Samuel showed up an hour after Saul did the thing he was not supposed to do.
[00:21:41] And then here, now Jesus is fasting for 40 days. Now do I know the reason behind that? I don't know. It's some conspiracy theory. I'm not quite sure. I don't Know. I don't know what it is, but what I do know is he's linking. He's linking this idea of how we struggle with things. We struggle with things, him being human. And so he said he ate nothing. And then the temptation started. And here we find the answers, in fact, to how we navigate God's calling without manipulating God's will. So the devil comes to him and says, if you are. What? If you are the what, Son of God, tell this stone to become what?
[00:22:27] A loaf of bread. Loaf of bread. But Jesus told him, no, no, no. The scriptures say people do not live by bread alone. They don't live by bread alone. Which is interesting about that, right? The first thing he says is, hey, hey, you need to eat if you've ever fasted before, which I have. Oh, my gosh. It's for the birds. You know what I'm saying? Like. Like, really, it's tough. It's tough. You fasted, you know, for some of you, it's like dry January. You're dying. You're dying right now. Okay? So for others of us, it's easier, but for most of us, fasting is tough. Fasting is tough because it's a need.
[00:23:03] Here the devil comes and says, the first temptation is gonna be connected to your need. So our biggest temptation, the first biggest temptation to manipulate God's will and other people's will is going to be based on what? A need.
[00:23:20] There's no.
[00:23:22] It's totally justified. You have not eaten. You need this. You need this job. You need this opportunity. You need. You need it. You have needs.
[00:23:35] Needs. Need to be met. You need it.
[00:23:38] We've gotten into a lot of trouble because we're like, I need to meet my needs. And all of a sudden, it turns into a habit and then an addiction. Like, we understand the idea of needs.
[00:23:49] So the first thing I think what's gonna happen is we're gonna be tempted to go, hey, I need this. And so I'm gonna just go ahead and do it. So it's easy for us to leverage all kinds of things and say, God, I needed this. You know, I need this. And then Jesus says what? He says, man does not live by what, bread alone. Which is so profound to me. He's basically saying this. You are more complicated than you think.
[00:24:14] You think you just need bread, honey. You complicated. You need a lot more than that. I know we sing songs about all I need is Jesus, but that's not really true, right? It's like Jesus and coffee. You need that too, right?
[00:24:28] We need A lot of things in life, we need things. We need things.
[00:24:33] What the scriptures are telling us here is God says, hey, there's another way.
[00:24:40] There's more ways to move forward than just this one thing that you think, I have this need, it has to be met by this. No, there are more ways. The creative God of the universe knows you're complicated and knows that he can meet your need.
[00:24:56] He can meet your need in so many different ways. So maybe, just maybe, when you think about God's call, think about what God has for you. You go, God, I need this job. I need this opportunity. I need to make this happen. And he goes, you don't need this. I can figure it out.
[00:25:12] I have another way to fulfill you. I have another way to move you forward. Then next, what happens? The devil took him up and revealed to him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And then he says this. He says, I will give you what. I will give you the glory of these kingdoms and authority over them. And the devil said, because they are mine to give to anyone I please. He's like, I'll give you all of these things. All of these things. All of these things. And then Jesus says, what he says. He says, if you worship me, I'll do it right? And Jesus says, you must worship what?
[00:25:56] The Lord, your God. And what? Serve him only. So every time the enemy says these things or we hear these thoughts, Jesus is teaching us, like there's scripture that we can. That there's truth to come against lies. There's truth to come against manipulation. There's truth to that. So he says, no, no, no, no, it's not true. You must worship God. Worship the Lord your God and serve him only. What's he doing here? The enemy? Our thoughts, our temptations move from sometimes needs to all of a sudden wants like, I want this. I want this. He'll show you something. You'll see an opportunity. It's like, oh, my gosh, I want this. Like, I don't realize how many things I want until I see them. Have you noticed that? It's like you don't. You don't. And then you go, man, they'll be nice. You see it on social media. You're like, I want this house. I want this. I want this. And then all of a sudden, you go, I need this. I need this. We need this. I want this. I want this opportunity. I want this. I want that. I want that. I want that. It's that whole idea that John was talking about, the lust of not just the flesh, which is need, but lust of the eyes, which is like, I want this. I want this. See, sometimes we have to stop and go, okay, okay. Why do I want this? Like, why? I really want this for my family. I really want this. I really want this. Here's where wanting really goes wrong. Wanting slowly moves you into the center of everything.
[00:27:24] Your wants become the center of your family or your family dynamic and your friends dynamic. You become this. You center yourself because of your wants, and you don't even realize it, but it's one sense when you are in the center of it, you're sort of on a throne.
[00:27:41] And when you're on a throne, you're kind of like an idol. Like, you become. You don't even know, but everything revolves around you. Do you have family like that?
[00:27:50] Everything revolves around them. And God. And Jesus says, you would not. Don't make anything else, God.
[00:27:58] Don't make your wants, God. If you're tempted to make anything else God, you might be manipulating God's will, making it happen. And then lastly, he says, and the devil took him to Jerusalem to the highest point of the temple, and said, if you are the son of God, jump off.
[00:28:22] Jump off. You know, just jump off. Like you got superhero, superhero powers. You, you got this. You, you, you, you got this. And four, the scriptures say he will order his angels to protect you and guard you, and they will hold you up with their hands so even your foot won't hit on a stone. I mean, he's like, oh, it's like. And then temptation is using scripture to tempt him.
[00:28:51] Like, if you want to know how you and I are easily manipulated, it's through scripture.
[00:29:00] You got a verse for it. You got a verse for it. Like, organizations in churches have done that. We've got a verse for it. We got a verse for it. I mean, could you imagine? Like, imagine Jesus and the devil are having conversations. They're having Bible quizzes here.
[00:29:16] They're like, oh, well, hey, did you know that? Hey, did you know that? Did you know that?
[00:29:20] Because then Jesus responds. He's like, what? Well, the scriptures also say. They also say you must what? Not what, test the Lord your God.
[00:29:31] And then it says here, when the devil had finished tempting him, he left him until. This is scary. Until what?
[00:29:39] Yeah, until next time.
[00:29:42] Which, you know what's funny is we think, oh, the three temptations of Jesus. And then he was never tempted. You kidding me?
[00:29:50] No.
[00:29:51] Jesus lived a life for us to look at and go, okay, this is how you live in a Relationship with God. He's like, no, till the end. I mean, at the end of his days, do you remember what he was praying? He was like, I don't want to drink this cup of suffering. You remember that? Basically, he was saying, I don't want to be arrested and tortured and I don't want to be crucified. I don't want to do this. Please, if there is any other way. You remember that? And then he said, not my will, but what your will be done. Jesus continued to struggle, navigating what he was called to do and trying not to manipulate God's will to take the easy way out.
[00:30:36] Man.
[00:30:38] See, the last temptation is this temptation of what you deserve. You know, he's like, it's not just needs and wants. It's what I deserve. Yeah, of course.
[00:30:51] I deserve this kind of privilege. I deserve this kind of thing. I deserve this kind of power. I deserve this kind of thing.
[00:30:58] See, when we get into that, I mean, we've lost our way. I've lost my way. If I fall into, like, hey, I deserve this. Of course I deserve this. I deserve. Yeah. Angels showing up whenever I need them to. I. I can go ahead and test God and do whatever I want to. I deserve this because I deserve. Why? Because I've been following him. I've been obeying him. I've been doing the things I. I tithe. I do this. I give money. I do. I do good things. I. I deserve a good life. I deserve this calling. I deserve the promised land.
[00:31:33] And I. And I know it's tough. I know it's tough, but that's why I have to learn to navigate so we don't manipulate, because these three temptations are the same. That tempted Saul, and he fell for it. And it's the same that tempted you and I. I was having lunch with a guy this past week, and Lynn and Sherry, I think they're in the crowd and. But I was having lunch with Sherry, and he was talking about just a lot of good things and great things. But as he was talking, though, I realized how long. How long they've been a part of us. And then I realized the amount of people and families have been a part of us and, you know, from doing security to doing. Taking care of, you know, Nura when she was just a baby, you know, and taking care of our kids. And it's amazing how much. How many people we've walked with, I mean, thousands of people, it seems like, in the last 19 years. And it's been really an honor to just Walk with certain people. Because some people come and go, and it's transient. You know, it's. Charlotte, it's life. People come and go. People come and go. But it's been really great to journey with people. And here's why, because I realized after talking to him, is there is no way that Mosaic, the Mosaic as an organization, could have navigated God's calling without people.
[00:32:55] Without people?
[00:32:57] What does that mean? Not just, oh, what we could do without you. No, no. It's like there are people in the last 19 years who've helped hold us accountable to who we are and who we are supposed to be and who we said we were gonna be.
[00:33:15] If there's a faithfulness of God, then there's also a commitment of people that I find, the people who have shaped my family and shaped me and shaped the church. And as I was talking to Sherry, I realized that there are people who. There are people. People. The ones who've helped us navigate God's calling. It's not because I've made all the good decisions. I've made some terrible ones. Okay, don't laugh that loud. Okay, okay. But I've made some awful ones.
[00:33:45] And I'm like, it's the. So you know what's interesting? If you want. And I believe this, if you want to be better at navigating God's call for your life and you don't have any kind of spiritual community, you might be tempted to manipulate God's will.
[00:34:04] If you gotta have community, you gotta have community. You have gotta have other people in your life who are trying to do the same thing, talking to you, who are trying. They're in the same boat. They're in the same arena. They're trying to take the land.
[00:34:20] They're with you. They've got their own dreams. They're trying to figure it out. When you lock arms with those kinds of people, all moving in a certain direction, then they're more likely to help you make really good calls in your life.
[00:34:35] So you need us, and we need you. Like my family needs you and you need my family. Like we need each other. It's so important. As Sherry was kind of wrapping up, he was like, you know, we've been here for 17 years. You know, I mean, they've been an amazing couple. They serve. They pray over the chairs. They. Every week. So chairs are prayed for. And they've been doing response time. They're setting up stations. But they've done other things as well. Sherry, several years ago, I think a decade ago, started becoming my Personal prayer person. Like, so he prays for me every day, which I know. I mean, I know some of you guys, you know, I have good pastoral friends that go, man, I'll pray for you. I'm like, no, you won't. But.
[00:35:19] But I know that he's disciplined to actually do it. And so I was like, I need a disciplined guy to do it. And he's been doing it. But what he said was, one of the things he said was. Was pretty amazing. He said, you know, we've been coming for 17 years. My only regret is that we've only been serving for 15.
[00:35:40] I was like, what?
[00:35:42] Come on. I was like, that's beautiful. I'm like, wow. He's like, yeah. You know, the first two years when we came, we just needed to heal. We just needed to heal. We came broken, we needed to heal. And we spent two years doing that. And then we jumped in and I'm like, man, that's such a beautiful thing. Such a beautiful thing. So if I had my way, if I had my wish, if there was a birthday cake and a candle, and I would wish something for our anniversary.
[00:36:14] I know me and Ash would both wish this. We wish all of you, if you're not part of a volunteer team, if you're not serving right now in this season, jump on.
[00:36:28] In fact, if you have our app, volunteer needs are on that app. You can sign the form, fill it out on your phone. Easy enough. Because some of us, we go through seasons and you're like, it's been a little up and down. We've been in and out and traffic. Not traffic, but traveling and all that. And that's why some of you guys are watching online. But there are ways to be connected. I mean, we have. I mean, shoot, Marge is one of those people, like, who've been here, I don't know, maybe for 17, 18 years. And she moved away and now she still is serving. She's in Colorado, but she is one of the livestream hosts, and she does that and be a part of our community. Lals, who's in Malaysia, who's been serving for the last five, six, seven years from Malaysia, she just feels a part of us. I mean, we can go on and on about people, but I will tell you this. If you want to help figure out how to navigate God's call in your life, get closer to the people who are trying to do the same thing. Get closer. And the best way you can do that is jump on some team, start being engaged in groups or classes, get close.
[00:37:40] Because we're all in this. We're all in this together. We're all in this together.
[00:37:47] So I want to pray for us. I want to pray that as you try to take the land, the next thing. Because some of you, you're like, I don't know how to take the land. We don't know. I mean, some people are dealing with infertility. Like, how do you take that land? Like, you don't. How do you step into that? Some of us are walking through a divorce, and you're like, I don't know the next thing to do. I know I'm. I feel like I'm.
[00:38:12] I feel like I'm supposed to be married. I thought there's. There's. It's complicated things, hard things. They're not just easy.
[00:38:22] And it's so easy to be tempted to do the wrong thing for the right reasons.
[00:38:31] But we have to not manipulate God's will for our lives, for other people's lives. We can't do that. We gotta get better at navigating God's call, our life.
[00:38:43] The best thing about this is God knows how we are tempted. He showed us.
[00:38:49] And the temptation is not. Those three temptations show up at the most opportune time sometimes. So let's pray together. Can we do that? Lord? God, thank you.
[00:39:06] Thank you so much for who you are.
[00:39:09] Thank you. The grace that you have given us.
[00:39:13] God, I pray for that land, the place, the promised land that so many of us are moving towards. And we were feeling like, God, you are the God who. Who called us to this. But it's so tough to navigate. God, I just pray that in a weekend like this, as we celebrate your faithfulness, God, sometimes it's so easy to go. Yeah, but we've been here and we look at all the accomplishments, God. What we don't see sometimes is God, your grace and your mercy in our lives.
[00:39:50] God, I pray that as we move forward, we know, God, that we set our foundation firm on you.
[00:39:59] If we. If we. If we go, God, we. We want to figure out what your heart is. And we're going to do that.
[00:40:10] God, I. I know that you will allow us to step into the promised land.
[00:40:16] So, God, I pray for. Against discouragement and doubt.
[00:40:23] God, some of us are so burdened with anxiety about the future.
[00:40:33] God, I pray against that.
[00:40:37] I pray you remind all of us, God, you.
[00:40:44] You are still committed to us.
[00:40:47] You have not forgotten us.
[00:40:50] You will not quit.
[00:40:52] You will keep working.
[00:40:56] We might just have to wait a little bit longer.
[00:41:01] God, I pray that as we respond this morning as we receive communion or light a candle or go to the cross. God, God, what we are saying here is this God, we don't want to manipulate your will.
[00:41:19] We don't want to do that. We want to navigate your call.
[00:41:26] In Jesus name, Amen. Thanks for listening to this message from Mosaic church in Charlotte, North Carolina. For more audio and video content, visit us at MosaicChurch TV.
