Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, guys, this is naive. And you've reached the Mosaic Church Podcast. So excited that you're part of our listening community, and I'd love for you to be even more connected.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: So check out our website.
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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 and enjoy.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Good morning, Mosaic. You guys doing okay this morning?
Excellent. Love it. I will tell you that today I am thrilled to be here.
I did say today I am thrilled to be here. If I'm being honest with you, sometimes I am insecure to be here. Okay. That's just the honest truth. There is a mirror at the end of this, like, hallway back here coming out of the green room.
And I always look in the mirror last thing before I walk out. And I want you to know that what I see when I look in that mirror is different than what you see when you look at me up here. Okay. Sometimes what happens is I look in that mirror and I actually see a different version of myself, and I see Kristen from 20 years ago.
Twenty years ago, I had met. Maybe 21 years ago, I had met Naim and Ashley when they moved up from Charleston to plant Mosaic. So I have been here since the launch team from day one. And I was a kindergarten teacher at the time, but I volunteered at Mosaic, and I think I was a pretty good volunteer.
That's why they moved me around a lot. I did not make the worship team. We know that we don't have to tell that story.
I would say I was efficient, though. You want something done for Jesus? I got you. Okay. I got it.
So they would move me around. I did almost every volunteer position here, and then one day, they put me in a position to pray out loud, and I was like, that's cute.
No. Thank you so much.
Prayer warriors. Where are the praying people? You love to pray.
There's praying somewhere else. Okay. Oh, we got a couple. Okay. The rest of us love that for you. I'll just let you know okay.
So I was like, hey, by the way, reminder. I'm a regular person.
I'm a regular person. I was not holy. I was not a staff person. I had not gone to Bible school, which is called seminary, apparently. Okay.
Also still not been to Bible school as of today.
That's something that I like to generally let people just believe what they wanna believe.
I don't usually tell people unless they ask because there's already enough reasons for people to doubt me being up here and be able to have a calling to do this.
It makes me insecure to have to answer that question.
But I was in this position where not only was I gonna have to pray out loud, but I had to pray for Pastor Naim before he walked out to deliver the message. And I was like, okay, okay, okay.
So now not only are you gonna make me just pray out loud, but the weight and the responsibility of the message is on my shoulders.
Like, if the message goes well, it's cause I prayed him up good.
And if not, that's on me. I cannot have the responsibility for a whole sermon.
Sometimes I still maybe should not have the responsibility for a whole sermon.
See, the problem was I was very insecure in my faith. I was insecure in the way I represented Jesus. I didn't think that I did it well enough.
Anybody else deal with insecurity?
Oh, thank you.
You guys are so much more honest than the first service. I'm already loving this. Okay. We have insecurities, right? About who we are and about what we can do and about what we can't do. Maybe you're leading teams and your families. As a parent, no one tells us how to do this.
Like, we maybe have it for a couple years, then they go to middle school and someone's like, can you take them for a while? Like, I don't know how to do this. We get very insecure in what it is that we're supposed to be doing.
And then I think, especially when it comes to our faith, insecurity is still there. Right? Does anybody ever feel insecure when you try to read the Bible?
Like that middle part where, like psalms, like, what do those mean?
What is a lamentation?
What are all these rules in Leviticus? Right?
By the way, if you missed it, or you also feel a little bit insecure about the Bible. A couple weeks ago, Pastor Nyims had an incredible, incredible message that talked about the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament. So please, if you haven't seen it, make sure you go back and listen or watch that that was a really phenomenal message for you, trying to figure out Scripture. But I think that we all deal with this, right? We're all like, okay, we are regular people. We're trying to figure this out. We can't reconcile why bad things happen if God is supposed to be good. We can't always explain what's happening in the Bible in these stories. And we don't know how to defend our faith if people ever were to have the audacity to ask us questions about it.
So it makes us insecure.
And there's one verse in particular that really stressed me out for a long time. We can put it up. It's 1 Peter 3:15, says, Always be ready to tell everyone who asks you why you you believe as you do why you believe.
Peter, sir, my guy. This is a yes or no question.
Like, pass me the note. Do you believe in God? Check the box. Yes. Every time. I'm gonna pass it back. I'm done.
I don't know how to explain to you why I believe, why I believe.
And just in case you think that you also don't have this insecurity, I'm gonna get a mic and we're gonna pass it around.
Ah, now you feel it, don't ya?
We all have this insecurity.
We wanna show other people that we love God. We wanna show God that we loved God. That was always my mo. I had an entire drawer full of Christian T shirts like it said Christ instead of Crest, like the toothpaste. I'm so mad, you guys. I got too cool and got rid of them all. And I am so mad at old Kristen because they were amazing.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: Epic.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: But that's what we wanna do. Even still, right? We're like, let me show you my church attendance. Let me show you that I volunteer. Let me show you my tithe statements. Let me show you that I'm doing all of these things and I have the bumper stickers and I have the T shirts. But please don't make me ask me to tell you why or explain why I believe what I believe.
See, I don't think the problem actually is that we don't know enough about faith.
The problem is that we don't actually know as much about God or we don't know God the way we need to, or we don't know God as well as we think we do.
So it's actually why I wrote this book. It is called the Other side of Certainty. And I wrote this because I think for a lot of us, we expect our faith to Be just, like, up and to the right.
We're like, okay, Jesus, thank you. And now everything's gonna be great. When really it's like, up and down and side to side, and we don't even know where that line goes.
And so people are asking questions. They're asking really, really good questions, like, how do I reconcile all of these things together? How can I be confident in the goodness of God? Because there are seasons where you feel like your prayers are being answered and everything seems to be going well, but there are also seasons where it's not, and you don't know what to do. And so all of a sudden, you don't have answers to these questions. And if our faith is all tied to things working out really well, and our faith is all tied to being able to tie everything with a pretty little reconcile it all, then when we can't do that, our faith feels shaken, and we don't know where it leaves us.
And so these really are good things for us to question and to think about. Toni said after first service, she was like, you make me think. And I said, good.
That's the whole point. I want you to think about what you believe and why. And I know that these are questions that you are not alone in asking this week. Actually, at one point, this book hit number five for all books in faith deconstruction on Amazon, which was amazing.
Okay, don't clap too hard. I didn't say number one. I said number five.
Some of you need to still get the book. Okay. Some of you need to write reviews. All right?
But truly, like, I was thrilled because it really feels like confirmation that this was the right time and that there is something that people are looking for. And so please know that if you are wrestling, if you're questioning, if you don't know what the answers are or how to be a Christian, not just you.
There's so many of us. I wrote a book about faith, and I still am insecure about my faith sometimes. I still have questions, and I still have things that I wrestle with.
The problem is that we want religion, faith, to be clear and easy. And so because of that, we do struggle with our insecurities. Am I good enough? Do I know enough? Am I actually hearing God? Or are these just my own thoughts in my head?
I know God loves me, but does he like me?
Is he proud of me?
Would he actually choose me to represent him if he had the choice?
These are the internal struggles that we have, and so it can leave us kind of spiraling in uncertainty. And because we're human.
What do we do? We want to have answers. And we grab onto the things that we feel like we can control, which is usually a list of things that we can do, that checklist of things that we can do that tells us and God and everyone else, look, I believe in God. I've got it all together.
And I think this is actually what Paul is addressing in his letter to the Church of Philippians, because he doesn't want us to just keep doing all the things in hopes that nobody asks us questions.
So he's talking to this church, and last week we looked at Saul and how he had this radical experience with Jesus, and it completely changed his life. And he went from persecuting and killing Christians who were trying to follow the way of Jesus to becoming a follower of Jesus himself and actually starting churches all over to help expand the way of Jesus and bring even more people into it.
And what they would do back in the day, so they'd travel and whatever, and there was no Internet or threads or whatever. They would write each other letters, and that was the way that they had information back and forth. And I'm telling you, starting a church is wild work.
I can't imagine what it was like to start a church back then where they had no clue, no path forward, and nobody to look at. And so I want you to kind of imagine. I love to put us in the story.
And so I want you to kind of imagine that one day you show up at Mosaic and all of the pastors and the staff are gone, and you show up and we are not here.
It did happen one time, actually, during the pandemic.
Someone gave everybody Covid as. I think I was patient zero, actually.
It was me. It was me. Okay, we have amazing volunteers. Shout out to our volunteers who made the Sunday happen without us.
But this is probably where they found themselves. They're like, okay, we got it, Paul. Great, great, great. And then Paul's like, I gotta go do a thing somewhere else.
And so that room of people very much like this one was probably a mix where there were some people who were like, okay, well, we'd been worshiping God for a while, so we're gonna just probably, I guess, like, go back to the old ways and the old traditions. Cause that worked for, like, years.
But there are also a lot of people who are trying for the first time to figure out what does it actually mean to follow Jesus?
And have you ever been in a room where every single person agreed on what to do or why it matters? Even so My guess is that in their kind of wrestling and trying to figure out how to become this church, how to carry out all of the things that Paul had for them, that in their humanity they grasped for a plan or a system.
And the question was like, okay, what do we do? How do we do this?
And Paul writes this letter at this part, I think, to let them know that they're asking the wrong question.
We pick it up in Philippians 3. He said, Listen, we rely on what Christ Jesus has done for us. We put no confidence in human effort. It's like, it's not about you anymore.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: Boo, Boo.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: Okay? He's reminding them, bringing them back to Jesus.
Although he does throw this in there, though. I could have confidence in my own effort if anyone could. Indeed, if others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more.
So then Paul starts listing it off. He's like, I was circumcised when I was eight years, eight days old. Ooh, eight years. I'm in a tough situation. I was circumcised when I was 8 days old.
I am a pure blooded citizen of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin, a real Hebrew if there ever was one.
I was a member of the Pharisees who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law.
I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church. And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault.
Pretty sure Jesus was the only one without sin. But I guess Paul thought he was pretty close.
He's like, listen, okay, you think you know all the things, right? You're doing it. You got it. Great, great, great. If we were in a compete, which we're not, but if we were, I am the best. Let me remind you.
And I wonder.
This is just my speculation, but I wonder if there was some part of Paul deep down in that liked to remind people of that every now and then, because it did give him a little bit of security, it did give him a little bit of safety, a little bit of, like, moral hierarchy or power or control. To know, like, if we were competing at who's best, it was me.
I think all of us kind of have that within us sometimes. And those are the things that pull our insecurities out. Because when we feel insecure in what we can't do or we can't explain, what we fall back to and rely on is all of the things that we used to use to explain to people that we could.
But what Paul has realized is that he was focusing on doing all of these things. By performing and relying on what he could do.
And I think that we also tend to have this performance, right? We tend to perform in insecurities. And so I'm curious for you, you don't have to say it out loud, but what are the things that you do when you feel like your faith is shaky? Maybe you fall back on your biblical literacy and your ability to memorize Scripture, and you know which scripture to use in a counterargument, and you know the references for all of the scriptures. Where the rest of us are like, remember when Jesus said that thing with the fish? Like, it's somewhere in the Gospels.
That's me. I'm also like, I can't remember the references, probably because I didn't go to Bible school.
I think some of us maybe fall back on our experiences. Like, my prayers get answered. I can speak in tongues. I have the gift of whatever, fill in the blank. And so we rely on those, maybe for some of you, is having the right beliefs.
That's the idea of apologetics, right? That there's always an answer for everything. We can always explain everything. Maybe we fall to having the right doctrine, or we're really loud about what we're against, so people know that we're on the right side of things.
Today, it could even be a political party.
And you fall back to where you align and how you vote for specific policies or issues.
Maybe it's as simple as, again, going back to your own checklist of doing the right things. You're like, I pray, I go to church. I have a quiet time. I have good.
See, a lot of these things can be good if we're doing them for the right reason and they're helping us to actually get to know God more.
But I think we have to ask ourselves, if you don't do them, if you have a bad day, a bad week, a bad month, whatever, and you don't do whatever those things are for you, what happens?
Like, are you good? You still good? Or do you start walking around in shame and guilt?
Do you start walking around feeling like you have lost your sense of security or your peace or your certainty if you miss those things? And I think if that's the case, that points to us carrying out all of these spiritual practices for a different reason other than trying to get closer to God.
I think that means that we are doing those things for ourselves.
Friends, God does not want your performance.
And Paul is gonna continue on to show us what he wants instead.
In verse seven, says, I once thought that these things were valuable. All his list of things.
But I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ. Jesus, my Lord. I want you to help me read this next part together.
For his sake, I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: Okay?
[00:17:03] Speaker B: I have to tell you, if you don't know, I love a word study. I love a deep dive on a word study sometimes, okay? And this is one of those words. I was like, garbage.
That's weird. Like, let's look it up and let's see. So I want you to know that the Greek word where we get the word garbage. Not actually, no, not where we get the word garbage. But what Paul is using right here. Because this is the only time in scripture that we see this word.
Okay? The word that he's using here is the word skubalon. Say Skubalon.
Okay, remember, this is garbage. It's like, say it like you mean it. Like Scubalon.
Some of you are about to be real mad at me that I made you say that in church.
Scubalon means animal excrement.
Get creative. You got me? You follow me? Okay, so Paul is not saying, like, oh, I found a new way, and it's like, a little bit better than the other one. Like, it's kind of cute. It's cool.
What I used to do is like, whatever. It is what it is. No, no, no, no.
My guy is like, you know that list of things that I used to really, like, root my faith in and count it all as, like, so important.
Now all that is bull. Scubalon, you got so nervous.
I'm not allowed to say that up here. I did ask. Okay, listen. Context of Scripture is so fun. I'm telling you. You get to find little gems like this. Like pick up the Bible, dig into it, find out context, get to know what is actually happening.
Paul, as we can see, likes to use a really well placed profanity to really, like, drive the point home. Okay? And that's what he's doing because he wants them to understand we want that. He wants them to replace their performance with relationship. The performance is not the thing anymore.
Relationship. We'll keep going. In Philippians, he said, I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law. Rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ.
For God's way of making us right with himself depends on faith.
Faith. What Paul wants now is not answers. It's not even new answers.
He's not trying to tell them like how to be better Christians, but it's how to know, to have faith in who Jesus is.
And, you guys, faith inherently is, like, connected to this idea, the premise that we don't know something.
Faith is connected to what we cannot see, what we cannot know, what we cannot contain or explain, or something that we cannot actually prove, something that we have to trust in.
Faith requires trust.
If we could earn our way to God by knowing all of the things, if we could earn connection with God by doing everything right, what would you need faith for?
You would not.
We would not need it.
Faith requires us to trust in the goodness of God that we cannot see or prove.
And often getting to this place means that we have to let go of some of other things to be able to know God even more.
Paul keeps going in Philippians, in verse 10, he says, I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead.
Then what does he say?
I want to suffer with him, Suffer with him, sharing in his death so that one way or another, I will experience the resurrection from the dead.
Last week, I taught y' all word study, where we get the word suffer from anybody remember? Extra credit.
Pasco. You got it. Pasco. Okay. That's where we get the word. And the word passion also comes from that same word. Because we learned last week that suffering and passion are so connected that they're about an intense emotion that compels us to change, that compels us to do something.
And so what Paul is saying here is that we saw God last week in the previous version of his life, right? When he was encountering Jesus, God saying, I'm going to bring Paul to this, Pascho. I'm going to bring him to this suffering.
And now what we see is Paul actually saying, no, I want to choose that myself, because I understand that in so doing, in suffering with Christ, in feeling all of these things, that this is how I can get to know God more.
So he's choosing it for himself, and he's encouraging other people to say, hey, I want you to surrender. That's what it takes here. I want you to surrender who you were, and I want you to surrender all that you're trying to achieve so that you can get to know more of who God is, so that you can be transformed by the resurrection power, the same power that is within you now. How many of you love to surrender?
Right? That's one of those where you're like, we're gonna talk about surrender. And you're like, ugh, not today. I hate It.
But see, we assume that surrendering is because God doesn't want us to be happy. He doesn't want us to have the things that we like. But friends, that's not what surrender is about.
Surrender is actually giving up something to make way for something else.
When we surrender one thing, we make room for something more.
And so maybe for you, you need to surrender something that's not good for you. Maybe you do have old versions of God in your mind that are not quite accurate, or old versions of yourself.
Maybe there are voices or other things that you need to surrender in order to relearn and rediscover who God is.
But I think some of you might need to surrender things that are actually good.
If those spiritual practices like we talked about have become more important, doing them has become more important than connecting with God, then we're actually worshiping those practices instead of our Father.
We're actually worshiping the to do's instead of the who that God is.
So I think some of us need to surrender the things that tell us like, we're good, we're good, so that we can continue to grow and continue to know God more.
Paul knew that only in surrender and letting these past versions of him go would he be able to then experience what he says is this resurrection, this new life.
And it's a new life lived in the same life, right? That's what we get to do. We get to figure out a new way to live the same life as we move forward, trying to follow the words and the ways of Jesus.
And you're like, kristen, this is great. Great. I still don't know what to do.
Like, I still don't know how to know what God thinks or what he wants me to do. And so I have a very easy to do for you. Kenny's gonna help me out. When you go home today, I want you to pick up a bag of Doritos.
Okay? Anybody like Doritos?
Okay. It's getting closer to lunch. You guys are like, can we have this? Okay, here's what I want you to know about Doritos. You know, there are over 200 flavors of Doritos.
Over 200 flavors. Now, you cannot get them all at the store.
Some of them have been discontinued. I'd like to share with you a couple of my favorites that have been discontinued.
Ranch dipped hot wings.
Okay.
Sour cream and onion. I would have thought that one would have stuck, right?
Late night, All Nighter Cheeseburger.
That's got too much stuff going on.
Hot mustard?
Yeah. No, they're not all great. Okay? I will tell you that there is a one worst flavor and it is the red ones, okay?
You can keep your bad opinions to yourself. Thank you so much.
They gave me the microphone, remember? Okay. I do believe that red Doritos are awful. I don't know what they're supposed to taste like, but they taste like feet, okay? And Mr. Dorito, I think, agrees with me because he made the red ones and then he was like, uh huh, we can do better than this.
Hence we have maybe not hot mustard, but 200 other flavors. Okay? What is your best? What's your best flavor? What's the best Dorito flavor?
Not the red ones.
You get out of here.
I'm sorry, you can stay. Here's the deal. You have free will, okay? You have free will to make really, really bad decisions, to have bad opinions.
My favorite are all of these, like the Flamin Hot series.
These are good. The Flamin Hot Limon are really, really good. I will tell you, like I said, you have free will to choose your own flavor. If you like, take down a bag of these, that will be a free will and find out situation.
I'm just giving you a warning, okay?
Here's the thing.
There are so many different flavors of Doritos, and there are so many different flavors of Christianity.
Just like there are so many different options. There are so many different ways to be a Christian, and you are probably taught that one of them was right.
You are probably taught that whatever bag you pick up has to be the one that your family has always taken to the potluck. That's the right one.
Whatever Dorito flavor your pastor likes the best, that's the right one.
Whatever flavor has been around the longest, we know that's not true. That's the right one.
Okay? And some of you need to understand that you actually have a choice.
God wants to connect with you in a way that is appealing to you uniquely.
In a way that is appealing to you uniquely. Are there some better and some worse flavors of Christianity?
Yeah, probably.
Okay?
But the fact is you have a choice. You get to choose.
And so the point, I think, is not the flavor and the spice and whatever it is that's actually been added onto them, but that you get to try again and that you get to keep pursuing the best way for you to connect to God.
Thank you, Kenny.
All right. The thing that really matters here, right, when it comes to faith, is that we keep our eyes on Jesus, that we look at Jesus. John 1:18 says this. It says no one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
Jesus came to show us who God is.
Like, that is the most true thing I can tell you.
Jesus came to show us who God is. And so if we want to know who God is, we have to pay attention to what Jesus does and does not do.
We have to pay attention to what Jesus does and does not do.
So when we're in scripture, these are the things that we look at, you know, what does Jesus talk about?
There are a lot of things that Christians care about the most.
Like a rolot that Jesus never actually mentions.
There are things that Christians root their entire flavor of Christianity on that Jesus never even talked about.
We have to pay attention to what Jesus talked about, which was love, mercy, grace, forgiveness, loving your enemy, welcoming the foreigner, being kind to the stranger, extending gratitude, building the kingdom of God, not the kingdom of earth.
What we see Jesus do is call out the hypocrisy of religious leaders who judge other people while overlooking their own sins.
What we see Jesus do is call out pride and control and love of money, and instead to call people to humility.
We see Jesus do these things because this is the heart of God.
We get to know more about God when we learn about Jesus. And what does Jesus not do? Jesus does not shame, guilt, coerce, or manipulate anyone to be in relationship with him.
And if that has been your experience, I am so sorry.
That is not the heart of God.
Jesus does not tell us to get comfortable.
Bummer.
Jesus does not tell us to treat people as we think they deserve. Jesus does not hold back his gospel from people until they're good enough to earn it.
We have to get to know more of Jesus so that we can know God. And what I want you to do this week, your homework, besides buying Doritos, is I want you to pick one thing that you see Jesus do or don't do, and then do or don't do it.
Whatever it is for you, pick your flavor, okay? Maybe you need to offer forgiveness and stop withholding forgiveness.
Maybe you need to be generous with your time, with your money, with your attitude, and stop being stingy with any of it. I want you to pick one thing this week to be more like Jesus and see if it doesn't help you to understand God in a new way.
Not completely, but in a new way.
In another letter to another church, Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, he says, now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling Reflections in a mirror.
But when we see everything with perfect clarity. But then. Then, sorry, we will see things with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete. But then when we're reconciled with God, I will know everything completely, just as God knows me completely now. I once knew somebody who liked to tell people in my presence that Kristin never met a mirror she didn't like.
And I was like, is that a backhanded compliment?
Are you telling me I'm pretty or I'm conceited?
Like, you can tell me I'm both if you want to, but are you telling me that I'm pretty or I'm conceited? I'm not sure, but mirrors, right? The thing about a mirror is, like, it always tells us a partial truth.
Mirrors never tell us actually what it is that we need to know.
You cannot see the back of your head.
Have you ever gotten ready and you've gone out somewhere and you're like, what is happening back here? Cause you can't see it. They're not telling us a lie necessarily. But mirrors can only give us a partial truth. They are incomplete. There's no way of knowing. It's just one reflection of looking in the mirror. That's all we get. And Paul is saying, you won't get a full knowing of everything that's going on until one day we find that completion. We'll be able to move from this one panel, you know, one layer of reflection, and know God in a relationship.
Like, you know those people that you hear something when you're sitting next to them, and you know exactly what they're feeling inside when they heard it. Or like, you lock eyes with somebody and you know exactly what they're thinking.
And then, like, maybe you start to laugh and you're at work and you have to look away.
Cause you're like in a meeting and you're supposed to pay attention. I'm talking like, that kind of knowing. And then even more at a more deeper level.
See, friends, we get this full knowing with God, this full reconciliation with him through relationship, because he sees you, he gets you. He understands who you are.
He knows what you're gonna say before you even say anything.
We don't put our faith in a what. We don't put our faith in a list of things.
We put our faith in a who, and that who is Jesus.
I think some of you maybe have been looking at God through a mirror and you haven't even realized it. You haven't recognized that you're only seeing a partial version of God. Because maybe you were taught to believe that, like, no, once you know God, you know God, like, that's it, you're good.
I think some of you might be actually seeing what someone else wants you to see of God and the reflection that they're showing you of who he is.
But the thing is that we are called to know God fully in relationship.
And so for you, I don't know what it is, maybe for you today, you need to let go of performance so that you can choose that. You need to be able to choose presence with God. And that can look like praying where you, like, say all the things, but then also take time to listen, let God respond. Maybe it's digging into Scripture and seeing what Holy Spirit has, like, jump off the page for you.
Maybe it's just doing what you need to do to be in relationship with God more. And for some of you, I do think that you need to let go of some things. You need to humbly surrender this idea that you can all have it figured out or that we ever arrive as believers to the point where we don't need to grow or learn anymore.
Maybe you need to just remember that, like, you can't see the back of your head.
And so we only can ever know things partially.
And you can ask God to help you see him more in a new way by knowing who he is in relationship, by knowing his nature.
See the freedom that we can find. That I hope you'll find on the other side of certainty is that you don't have to have certainty. You don't have to have all of the answers. You don't have to be able to explain who God is in completion.
You just have to know Jesus.
You just have to know Jesus.
And some of you have known Jesus for a really long time, but it's time to, like, pick that phone back up, maybe dial in some prayers again.
He's not ghosting you.
He's listening. Some of you need to go, hey, I remember when I felt the presence of God before.
And so because of that, I can remember that I know God is real. And because of that, I can remember that I have value because of who I am in him, because I'm his kid and he loves me and I was created good.
And some of you need to understand that the reflection, the version of God that you're seeing, the things that you're hearing in your head that you fully believe to be true are not actually true.
If they don't sound like God, they don't look like God.
That's not the reflection of God and for others of you. You're like, I've never had a relationship with Jesus, so I don't know what that means.
And I would just ask you to think, like, what are the things that kind of dictate or guide your life?
Is it like societal norms or your family or maybe cultural values?
I'm not saying those things are bad either. Like, you can hold onto those. But do they give you the choice to decide what your value is and how you show up in the world and how you treat other people?
Like you can hold on to the things that make you you and also live in the freedom that only Jesus can offer.
The love, the mercy, the grace, the forgiveness.
If God offered all of that, he had Jesus encounter Paul himself, Paul, who used to persecute and kill people that were going after his way, and offer him all of the same things.
Radical life change.
There is nothing that you have done that you could do that you will do that would make him not offer all of the exact same things to you.
Friends, that freedom is available to you.
The invitation is available to you.
The love, the grace, the mercy, all of it. All you have to do is say yes.
I would love to pray that for you right now.
God, I thank you that you are always inviting us into new relationship with you.
God, I thank you that your presence is already with us.
Lord, you were speaking to us before we knew to discern your voice, God, your presence was with us before we were able to put words and to name what it was that we were feeling.
So, God, I pray that you would help us to trust you, God, that we would let go of trying to do everything ourselves, God, that we would let go of trying to be so strong, God, and going through the checklists and having all the things and putting on the happy shiny exterior for everyone else. Because, God, we get to show up with everything that we feel and think in your presence, and you still offer all the same things.
So, God, I just pray for the people right here, right now, Lord, that want to know what it means to be in a relationship with Jesus.
Friends, if that's you, you can just talk to him in your own words, in your mind. There's no specific prayer you have to pray.
You just say, God, like, I'm sorry for trying to do it on my own.
I want to know the freedom that comes through having a relationship with Jesus. And through Jesus, can I have all of the mercy and the grace and the forgiveness and the love? The answer's already yes.
You just have to receive it.
God, I pray this for everybody listening, everybody online. Lord, whether this is the first or the 19th or the 900th time they prayed this prayer.
God, that you would help us to know more of who you are, God, to be confident in who you are, because you gave us Jesus as the answer.
Would you help us to see and do what he does in this world?
Amen.
Thanks for listening to this message from Mosaic church in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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