Care For One Another

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to the Met Church podcast. Here at the Met, we are all about connecting people to God and one another. If you have any questions or want more information about what's happening here at the church, then head to our [email protected] we would love to stay connected with you throughout the week through social media, so be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter now. Enjoy the message. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Well, good morning, everybody. Good to see you. And I want to, first of all, just thank all of you who responded wonderfully to the email as we sent out this last week asking for help as we needed to repair these air conditioners and also complete the necessary repairs on our light board. Thank you for responding. So many of you have done that. I'll be able to share with you the total after the weekend of what we were able to raise to be able to accomplish that. And I'm so grateful for your generosity. I'm thankful to you for that. And, man, when you get into these Texas summers, it just makes you very grateful for people like, I don't know, Willis carrier back in 1903 that invented the air conditioner. Wasn't he a wonderful man? I hope he's in a real cool spot in heaven right now. I mean, I tell you, man, when I grew up in my dad's church, honestly, it wasn't unusual. I mean, I was a child of the 60s. I'm a 58 model. And so I remember when they would do tent meetings, and they picked a time of the year to do a tent meeting in Texas in July. July, the hottest possible time of the year. And my dad's tent meetings would go two weeks, sometimes three weeks. Sawdust on the ground. So that way you can't put a fan in there. Cause you'll stir up so much dirt. I mean, it was just, you know, what they gave you to cool off. Some of you are utilizing the technology right now. But the funeral home would provide the church with these little fans. They were like a little piece of cardboard, circular thing with an ice cream stick type thing taped to them. And when you walked through the doors of the church, you weren't given a program, you were given a fan. And that came in handy because you're sitting out there working that fan. And I grew up kind of with that sort of thing. And I hear people from time to time say, man, don't you want to go back to the good old days? I'm like, if you're talking about good old days with no ac, unh, uh, I Don't want to go back to that. Are you kidding me? But great memories, great memories. But I'm glad they're all in the past. Thank God for air conditioning. And so thank you for helping us with that. And, you know, we've been in a series that really underscores what I've talked about and what this email was about, and that is the idea of how we act and react to one another. The power of relationships. I shared with you last weekend how In Romans, chapter 14, verse 7, the Bible said, none of us live to ourselves alone. None of us die to ourselves alone. God created people to be relational. He created people to have interaction and to be involved in the lives of other people. In fact, the only time a person isn't interacting with other people typically is when they've been hurt. And when a person has been injured, the first tendency is self preservation. And so when you've been hurt in a relationship, the tendency is you isolate and you insulate. But the problem with isolating and insulating from other people is God didn't design you to live that way. He didn't design me to live that way. Now there's a little period of time while your heart is healing or maybe even your spirit is healing where you do need to kind of back away from people and you need a little isolation and you need some time in spiritual or emotional icu. But you go there, you just don't stay there. The purpose of an ICU unit is to get you out, treat them and street them. They want to get you out of there. They want to get you back into your life because that's what you were designed to do. Well, the same thing is true of us spiritually. I mean, there are times in our lives when we're hurt and we're not on our best game and we isolate a little and we insulate a little bit. But you may go there, just don't stay there. Because God designed us for relationships. So when we think about the power of one, this series we've been exploring the times in the New Testament. God talks about how we are to act and react to one another. I mean, he talks about bear one another's burdens. He talks about pray for one another. He talks about comfort one another. He talks about greet one another. He talks about loving one another. He talks about forgiving one another. And this morning, I'm going to talk about caring for one another, caring for one another. Everybody in the room, whether you've thought about it or not, is a caregiver. You have the skill sets to care. Now the first instinct is self care. And you see, gosh, in the grocery store there'll be self care items and you go to the bookstore, there's self care. We get the concept of self care and we ought to be focused on our health and we ought to be focused on our mental health and we ought to be focused on our emotional health. And you're here this morning because obviously you're focused on your spiritual health. That's self care. We care for relationships or people that we love who are in our lives and our heart goes out to them when they're struggling and we try to care for them. Some of us has been in the, in the position to be a caretaker for a sick loved one at home. And so we understand, we understand the value of caring because inevitably, sooner or later the body will get into a place where it needs some care, where you're going to have to go the extra mile so that the body can be comforted and the body can become healthy again. And you're going to have to give attention to that part of the body that is hurting. And, and that's where caring for one another really has great importance. We are commanded by God. We are told by God to care for one another. When you think about the church, we talked about this. There's two types of things that come to mind when the Bible speaks of the church. The New Testament concept of church. There is a church that is universal. Universal. What do I mean by that? I mean that everyone who knows Christ are in the church. They're in the body of Christ. Our mission works in Nepal or our mission works in Uganda. Our mission work in Belize. And many of you support mission works around the world. And wherever our brothers and sisters are, there is a familial connection we have. There is a connection we have. They are in the body of Christ. They are a part of the church, universal. So there's a sense in which you and I are a part of the same family with people regardless of where they are in the world. There's a prayer center in Colorado Springs called the Weigel Prayer Center. And in the Weigel Prayer center, they network through the Internet with people all around the world. And anyone who has that address can contact the prayer center and ask for prayer. And it's interesting because people will be in that prayer center 24, 7 and they're there. They'll receive communion and they're there to spend a time in prayer. And you can look at the big screens around the wall and on the big screens around the wall are these prayer requests coming in from all over the world. And there are people that you'll never meet, and there are people that you'll never know that are needing prayer. Because we're in the same family. We're in the same body, the body of Christ, the church. So there is the Church universal. Then there is the church that he speaks of in the New Testament. That is the church that is local. You're in one today. A local church. The Bible refers to it as an ekklesia is the Greek word. It means to be called out, a called out assembly or gathering, meaning that we identify with a local body, a local church. There was the church at Jerusalem. You read the book of Ephesians. Well, it was written to the church at Ephesus. You read the book of Philippians. It was the church at Philippi. You read the book of Colossians. This is the church at Colossae. I mean, all of these churches and letters that are in our New Testament were written to local churches, not unlike this church. And these people were a part of not only a universal body of Christ, they were a part of a local body of Christ where they could combine their resources and their efforts to make a difference in the world. So this idea of a church and how we're to react and interact with one another is biblical. And it's something that Jesus established himself in Matthew 16 when he said, upon this rock, I'll build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against his church. In fact, the church is given two significant things. There is the great commandment. Jesus was once asked, what is the greatest commandment? And Jesus said, it's simply this. To love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. And the second commandment is equally as great, to love your neighbor as yourself. He said, on those two commands, hang all of the law and the prophets. What did he mean by that? He means that if we love God as we should, we'd never violate a command against him. And if we loved each other as we should, we'd never violate a command against one another. So the church was given the great commandment to love, and then it was also given the great commission. Matthew 28, go into all the world, make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and lo, I am with you even unto the end of the age. So we have a great commandment coupled with a great commission. And it's the marching orders of the church and A local ecclesia called out body is to be preoccupied with those things. So Jesus is looking at his body here on the earth, and he's saying, if you're going to fulfill that function, you gotta be healthy. And there are gonna be times when you're not healthy. There's gonna be times when you get injured. There's gonna be times that when you get hurt, you can be injured doing good things. You ever get hurt around the house trying to help a brother or help a sister? You're trying to do the right thing and you get hurt. You weren't doing anything bad. You were trying to help your family and you got injured. Can I tell you, sometimes in the life of a local body, the body can. You can have a part that gets injured, and the minute that part is injured, the care for the body kicks in. You hit your thumb with a hammer. No one has ever hit their thumb with a hammer and looked at their thumb and said, man, I'm glad that's not part of my body. I'm glad that wasn't me. No, man, you stick that thing in your mouth and you cry and you pray, oh, God, please let this thing stop. You know, because the thumb is a part of your body. So the point is, if we're members of the body, if we're all a part of his body, then when one part suffers, all the parts should suffer with it. So the care of the body becomes extremely significant. So keep the body concept in mind as I talk to you for the next few minutes. Look in 1 Corinthians, chapter 12. And Paul really sets this up beautifully in chapter 12. I've got a selected group of verses for you here. For time's sake. Paul said, just as the body is one and has many members. Now, let me stop. I have one body. You look at my body, but there's many parts. Some of my parts you can see, some of my parts you cannot see. I mean, I'm just simply suggesting that I look at you and you look at me. And we know we are composite of a lot of different parts. The hand bones connected to the arm bone and the arm, you know, and so forth. And so he's saying here the body is one and has many members. And all of the members of that one body, being many, are one body, right? My eyes are part of this body. My hearing is a part of this body. My hands are a part of this. My feet are part. That's all he's saying. Now. He draws the analogy. So also is Christ. Then he went on to say, for as one by one Spirit, we were baptized into one body, meaning that we're now a part of one another. And I'll explain that in a minute. And then he went on to say that the design is that there should be no schism. I love that word. It means division. There should be no schism in the body, but the members of the body should have the same care. There's our word. The same care for one another, a healthy body. This hand is not in competition with this hand. These feet are going in the direction that this brain tells them to go into. If my brain tells my body to do something that my body doesn't cooperate with, it's called dysfunction. Because my brain is operating. It's the control center of all that happens within my body. And if my body is healthy, then my brain is giving direction to my body and. And my body is cooperating as one. And he's saying, that's the body of Christ. We receive instructions from our Lord. He speaks to us through His Word. He guides us through His Holy Spirit. He speaks through our pastors and leaders, and we discern what God wants us to do. And the body works without malfunction or dysfunction. It is healthy. It carries out the Great Commission in the spirit of the Great Commandment. That's a healthy church. But in order to do that, a church has to see the value of caring for one another, or it isn't long until you have schisms and division and you have. The hand is hurt because no one gave attention to it. And the foot is injured and everybody keeps walking on it without giving attention to it. And so the body has to be cared for. Jesus set the example in caring for his body. In fact, in First Peter, chapter five, Jesus said this. He said, cast all your cares upon me. Here's why I care for you. So he set the example. And just as he cares for us, we should care for one another. So the care for one another is a powerful thing. And get the metaphor of a body. The first thing I would point out to help us to understand what this looks like is what I would call the formation of the body. If you're taking notes, the formation of the body, how God designed the body. Now, I didn't read this to you, but in 1 Corinthians 12, if you look back up in verse 18, get this. He says, God has set all of the members in the body by his design. God has sovereignly placed members in the body by his design. Okay, think about it. If you and I According to this analogy, if you and I are a part of the body, the body of Christ, and we're a part of this local body, then that means God has sovereignly placed us here. Now, if God's placed me within the body, I need to know where I fit. I need to know how I fit. Am I an eye, a seeing part? An eye is a tender part. Am I a hand? That's a tough part. Am I tender? Am I tough? Am I, you know, where do I fit in the life of the church? I know I fit here. If God sovereignly placed me here, I know I'm here for a purpose. So when God begins to form the body, the local body of Christ, he brings people here, he draws you here. And I believe that very strongly. I think, for example, a great family just became a part of our church, wrote a sweet note to me this last week and is helping us with this project with these AC units and made the comment, we've been here a while. We want to become a part of the church family. Well, how did they make that decision? I didn't coerce them. They weren't manipulated. Nobody forced them. You can't force anybody to do anything anyway, nor would I try. They felt led to be a part of this body. That's how it works. It's not esoterical or ethereal or weird. It's just that you kick the tires, you visit a church, you kind of catch a little bit of their vision. You kind of get a little sense of their leadership. And after a while, something in your heart just says, this is where I'm supposed to be. Now, we have people here who are lifers. What do I mean by that? We have people who have been here for a long time, from the days of Carroll High School. Some of you have been here. And I mean, we have that. Then we have people who were seasonal. They were here for a few years, God led them in other places, and that's great. While they were here, they made a difference. And here's how that works. Sovereignly speaking, if we're all parts of the body, God looks down. And sometimes a body doesn't have all the necessary parts. Let's say you're an earth, and let's say this body has six ears and that body has one, and he needs another ear on that body. He may lead that person to go across to this body and be an ear at a body that needed two ears. Are you getting it? So he's saying that we're parts and we're sovereignly. Placed. And we're placed for a purpose. And so a healthy body is gonna be careful to care for itself, make sure the body's healthy. Does it need attention? When I need to check up the body, I need to make sure the body's healthy so that it can carry out the commission and the command. So the care for the body is significant because God has sovereignly placed us in the body. He has a place for us to fit, and that goes to the will of God. Did you know God has a will for your life? You fit somewhere in his body. God never looked down from heaven and saw you and just figured you out and said, I didn't know I had that one. What am I gonna do with that one? He's never done that. He has a plan. He said that you were fearfully and wonderfully made. The Bible says when you were knit together in your mother's womb, that's why life is sacred. That's why abortion is wrong. That's why when God knit you together in your mother's womb, God had a purpose and a plan for your life. And once you began to discern God's purpose and plan for your life, you realize, man, he's got a purpose and plan for my life in the body of this church. Now, I don't know a lot about the specific will of God. I can give you a little bit about the general will of God, what is true for all of us. Here's the general will of God. 2nd Peter 3:9. God is not willing. What's the will of God? God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. It is the will of God that every person on this planet know Jesus as their savior. That's the will of God. Now, I know there's some people that get caught up in a very hyper Calvinistic view of that issue. And they believe that God sovereignly looks down from heaven and basically says, any mini miny mo, you go to heaven, to hell you go. A very loosely understood view of hyper Calvinism. That's not how it works. John 3:16 says, For God so love the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him would never perish but have everlasting life. Now, that's not to say God's not unaware. He's not unaware of those who receive him. Charles Spurgeon said over the doorway, it says, whosoever will let them come. And once you step through the doorway, you look back and it says chosen in him. Before the foundation of the world, God has foreknowledge. He knows who will receive him and who will reject him. And. And predestination. According to Romans 8:29, predestination is according to foreknowledge, meaning because God knows what we will or will not do, he predetermines certain things that will happen in our life. So the foreknowledge of God is linked to his predetermined will. And I can tell you this morning, it is the will of God that you know Jesus as your Savior. So if you come to me and say, bill, I'm trying to discover what God wants me to do, the first question I'm going to say is, have you. Do you have a relationship with Christ? That's the owner's manual. Do you know him? And then once you know Jesus, the next step is that you identify with him in baptism. We saw that this morning. Now, there's nothing spiritual about that water. That water can't save you. It's Fort Worth water. You get in there dry, you come out wet. It is a symbol. A symbol. Romans 6 says it symbolizes the death when the person goes back into the water, burial when they go under the water, resurrection when they come up out of the water. It's a symbol. It was an identity in the first century with that local church. And we baptize because it's part of the great command. It's an identity with Christ into his local church. Now, we baptize by immersion because it is the biblical method and mode. And I'm not critical of anyone whose tradition was to sprinkle. Maybe a little dab will do you like real cream. I mean, I'm fine with that. It's not gonna get you to heaven any more than that Baptistery. And so I would never dismiss someone's, you know, baptism, if that's meaningful to you. I'm saying we don't sprinkle simply because the mode that the Bible speaks of is closer to this. Baptized, by the way, is baptizo in the Greek. And by definition, it means to dip, plunge, or immerse. When you look at the baptism of Jesus, the Bible says concerning him, he went down into the water, and he came up out of the water. He was baptized by immersion. So that's our mode of baptism. I had a lady one time. Can I just tell you this? I was at my old church, and we had these baptismal robes that you would wear in case you didn't come prepared. We had robes. And so those of us who do the baptizing, we kind of cheated. We got to wear waders with a robe over the top of our waiter, so we're not actually getting wet. But we got in the tub, and I had this lady, and we were friends, and she's. You know. Cause we kind of had this banter back and forth. And I couldn't get by with this with just anybody, but I could with her. So I'm in the baptistery with her, and I'm about to baptize her. And so just as I'm taking her back into the water, her robe becomes to come head north. So I'm going, wow, brother doesn't need to be seen looking at this. So I move. I look out at the congregation instead of at her, and in so doing, I have no idea where we are in the process of taking her under the water. I'm guessing maybe I've got her down far enough. I'm not sure. Bring her up out of the water. Everybody claps and we go. She comes up to me after the service and she goes, bill, I said, what? She goes, you didn't get my face under the water? And I went, oh, no, it was amazing. And she had this initially, this shocked look on her face. I said, you know what that means? You're going to be in heaven without a face. Well, she forgave me for that. But the point is, there's nothing. There's nothing. There's nothing mystical or spiritual about the. It's a symbol. I married Cindy Jean in June 11, 1977. She gave me this ring I still wear in her honor. She. She's been in heaven for a few years, but I can be married to Cindy without. I could be married to her without a ring. All the ring is, is a symbol. It just shows that I'm married to somebody. And that's baptism. Baptism is a symbol. It's an identity. And once you've identified in the body, then you begin to find where you fit. And the care of the body is so essential because you want to take care of people who become a part of that body. Let me give you a little back on the will of God. If you're struggling to know the will of God, let me give you advice. This is free like the rest of it. If you'll do the general will of God, he will then reveal the specific will of God. I'll illustrate it in John 7:17. And this is kind of a loose translation of that. If you read that verse, basically what Jesus said is, if anyone has a will to know my will. They will know my will. Think about it. If you have a will to know his will, you will know his will. He doesn't hide the ball. Now here's how you discover his will. Do what you know you're supposed to do, and eventually he'll show you the part of his will for your life that you didn't know you were supposed to do. Principle Proverbs, chapter 4, verse 17. It says, the path of the just is as the shining of the light of a new day. If you took a walk down the beach, or you hike up in the mountains, or you go hiking in your neighborhood, and you're out there early in the morning, you have just a glint of light on the horizon. And as you continue to walk, the sun begins to rise, and before you know it, you're walking in the light of a new day. What's the principle of Proverbs 4? Walk in the light you have, and God will give you increased light. Do the will of God that you know to do. I gotta get up tomorrow morning, I'm go to work. I know what I need to do. I've got my plan, I got my schedule. That's what I know I need to do. And as I'm doing what I know I need to do, God began to show me things I didn't know that I needed to do. And so it's important that we understand the body was formed. The second thing I would give you in quickly is not only was the body formed, but the body was filled. You remember I read that part where he says that we have been baptized by one spirit. That's the filling of the body. When God created man in the Garden of Eden. Think about this. He formed man from the dust of the ground. But man did not take life until God breathed into his nostrils the spirit. It is the spirit of a person that brings life. When Jesus died on the cross, the last thing he said is, into thy hands I commend my spirit. It is fin tetelestai. It is done, meaning salvation is now complete. So Jesus gave up his spirit. The spirit is life. I'm living this morning because my spirit has illuminated this body. And I'll be here until I die. And when I die, by definition, the word just means separation. It's all death means. And that means my spirit and soul will separate from my body. My body goes back to the earth. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I've got three funerals this week, so I do understand what I'm talking about. And I'm telling you, when a person leaves his life, the body goes back to the ground. Ashes to ashes, cremation, dust to dust, normal decay. And the spirit, Solomon says, returns to God who gave it. So what keeps me looking at you and talking to you is the spirit in me is illuminating this body. And when God calls me home, my spirit will leave this body and this body will go back to the earth. And you better come to my memorial service and cry, or I will haunt you. People from time to time will plan their services and they'll talk to me about it, and I think it's a wonderful thing. And I'll have people from time to time, they'll say, I want my service to be a celebration of life. I mean, I get what they mean by that. It's hard for me as a pastor to put the fun back in funeral, you know what I mean? So I'm trying to think, how do we make that a celebration? I mean, get what they're saying. It's gonna be sad. There's no way you can say goodbye to somebody you loved and there not be tears. They're gonna continue for a while, but I respect the fact that they'll say, I want my service bill to be light. I want it to be enjoy. I want it to be a very uplifting experience. I thought about that. I thought about mine. I don't want mine that way. You know how I want my funeral? Sad. Incredibly sad. From the time you got out of your car, I want you to start crying right there. I want you to slowly walk into the building and if you can, grab a hold of a post to hang onto it because you're so overwhelmed at the thought that I'm not going to be in here. And then I want you to find a seat and fall over the seat and wail. I needed some wailers. Can somebody wail for me in that room? I just need you crying out. And then when you get to the casket, because I'm going to look down from heaven and I'm going to be watching this thing. I need you to fall over me and want me to come back. And if you can't pull that off, hire some people that will be here to do that for me, would you? I just think that would be a wonderful. That's how I want to go out. So anyway, where was I going with that? Oh, the spirit of the body is the life. Well, what is the life of the church? It's the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gives the church life. That's why? The spirit of Jesus living in you gives us. When we come together, you don't listen. You don't come to church to get your worship on. You bring your worship to church as a Christ follower. You come worshiping, you bring that into the room. And when you're in the room and we enter into worship, then you just take worship to a new level. Because the spirit of God living in you joins the spirit of God living in me. And we together, where two or more are gathered, we experience something dynamic in this corporate gathering because the filling of the Holy Spirit brings life. All right, track with me. You have the formation of the body. Everybody fits somewhere. You have the filling of the body. The Holy Spirit working in you brings life into this church. Here's a third one. You have the function of the body. Everybody has a purpose. God is going to use you in some way in the life of this church. It was crazy. This morning, one of our members, this guy's named Danny golden, he grew up in my dad's church. And Danny's mother and dad were bus captains. And I'll explain that for some of you that won't get what that even means. We. My dad had a bus ministry. He had 31 buses at one time. They were painted fire engine red. And those buses had bus captains. They had two couples that would work the bus routes and they would go into the parts of Fort Worth that were under resourced where families could not go to church. And they would go to the doors and knock on the doors on Saturday and they would say, hey, we're here. Inviting children to ride on our big red bus tomorrow and we'll take them to an incredible children's experience. And then we'll feed them and bring them home after church that day. Well, we had 31 buses. And think about that. Each of those buses were about 46 passenger buses. And then you have about 80% full on any given Sunday. It gives you some idea of how large the children's ministry was in my dad's church. Huge. And one of those men, Danny golden, his dad and mom were bus captains. He sent me this morning. He texted me, he said, bill, I just found this at dad's house. He says, incredible. It's a certificate thanking him for serving in the bus ministry from 1973. My dad's signature on it, the guy that was a director on staff at bus ministry, his signature was on it. Larry Metcalfe, 53 years ago. And I thought about that. I remember a few years ago, I was out in the lobby and I was talking to folks and this lady walked up to me and she said, hey, I just checked my kids into Met Kids. She said, did your dad. Did his church used to run buses all over Fort Worth? I said, yeah, big red buses. I said, yeah, you couldn't miss them. She said, I was a little girl on one of your dad's buses. She said, my mom was a single mom and we couldn't get to church. And she said, they came by and visited me. And I got on the bus and I rode the bus. Cause children's church was so much fun. And I gave my heart to Jesus. And she said, bill, I just tucked three of my kids in over there at Met Kids. And it goes back to what your dad did in that church in the 60s with a bus ministry. Now, I'm not advocating for bus ministry. I'm just simply saying this morning that when a church begins to function with unction, that's the filling of the Holy Spirit. Life happens. The leading edge of everything we do as a church, from the days we started at Carroll High School, has always been to reach people who do not know Jesus. And sometimes in a church, if you aren't careful, you can invert the model so that discipleship becomes a bigger priority than evangelism. And the problem with that model is inverted. Where discipleship becomes the bigger priority than evangelism is before long, you're just hugging your cousin. Cause attrition has caught up with you and your church begins to die. There's nobody here but us and them. And I'm just saying that a church has to have a large front door. You have to constantly be reaching people. And my heart, as kind of an evangelist at heart, my priority is I wanna reach people who don't know Jesus. The more messed up they are, the better they are. I mean, one of the things Cindy used to pray about with our corps when we started this church is, lord, please give us some really messed up people. People. And look around. Amazing. We're all messed up. It's working out. But I'm saying that's gotta be on the leading. The function of a church has to reach people who don't know Jesus. It has to constantly be saying, I've got a friend. I think they'd benefit from this service. I've got a neighbor that doesn't. Cause we're not building our church off of other churches. The dynamics of church growth isn't preaching, praying and proselytizing. The diamond confidant church has reached people who don't know Jesus. And the woods are full of them. There are tens of thousands of people that won't be in anybody's church this morning. And that's the goal, is to connect those people with God and then get them connected in the life of the church. Connecting with one another. That's the function of a church. We're to function with unction because we have the Holy Spirit and he formed us to fulfill the Great Commission in the spirit of the Great Command. Last thing I'd give you is what I would call the fellowship of the church. The fellowship of the church. That's when we really are in relationships with one another. In the fellowship of the church, you begin to find your safe people. And everybody needs safe people. You need those people that you can have a bad day. I've got a corps in my life that have been with me since we're kids. And some of them are here this morning. And I can have a bad day and I've had them. I can go through a hard season and kind of talk to them and they'll lovingly smack me around a little bit and say, you gotta get rid of that stinkin thinking. That's not you. That's not how you need to think you need to do. And I'm saying you need people in your life that love you enough from time to time to let you say things that you may not believe even you've heard what you heard yourself say. I had a psychologist in our church tell me that one time. He said, bill, I've tried to get people. And when people will talk most of the time when they tell you what they're thinking, they don't believe what they heard themselves say. But you need safe people in your. You need somebody in your circle that can let you have a bad day. And they're not gonna post it up and they're not gonna, you know, go, oh, you don't believe what she said or what they let you have that bad day. I mean, think about Jeremiah. Jeremiah said on one occasion, I'm done. I won't even speak of God's name. Wow, that's a prophet. Jeremy got a whole book, two books, Lamentations. And Jeremiah and Jeremiah got so. And there's nothing worse than when the upright get uptight. And boy, he was twisted. And he said, I'm done with God. I'm done with all of it. And yet God brought him back. You know what I know about people? There's something powerful about the fellowship we have with our Savior and the fellowship that we have with his church. If a person truly knows God, they can walk away. Please hear this as I close. They can walk away. They can't stay away. God will bring them home. That's the whole story of the prodigal son. He walked away, but he couldn't stay away. God brought him home. We've got people in this room that have walked away. And I get it. One thing you learn about me if you don't know me very well, is I'm not hard on people. When they go through a hard time, I try to give them grace because I've walked that path. I've tried to understand where they're coming from. I had a lady whose daughter died and she said, bill, I can't be there right now. I cannot be in an atmosphere where people are giving God praise because I'm not there yet. Understood that. I didn't go, oh, after all what all God's done for you, and you're gonna see em in heaven and all that. She didn't need that. She knew that that's not where she worked. She just needed somebody to put an arm around her and say, I understand. I said, stay away as long as you need to. Coming here isn't gonna get you to heaven anyway. Jesus is gonna get you to heaven. Now I want you here. You need to be here when you're ready to be here. But that's not essential. What's essential is for your heart to heal. And you take as long as you need for that to happen. Guess what? She made her way back. She made her way back. You see, you can walk away, but there's something powerful about the fellowship with God and with his people. You just can't stay away. Sooner or later, he'll bring you back. Your heart will heal. You'll realize, man, I need these people. And I just want to be around some people that get me. And get this, you're not going to find that at Walmart. You're not gonna find that at Kroger. You're not gonna find that at your job. But when you step into a church, you find yourself in the fellowship of a company of people who've been saved by the grace of God, who are doing all they can and everything they can to make a difference and to heal and to help. And you're in that type of atmosphere. I've told you, there are no perfect churches. Gosh, if you ever find a perfect church, don't join it. You'll mess it up. There are no perfect churches. The only thing perfect about a church is we preach from a perfect Bible and we serve a perfect savior. That's not to excuse failure in the life of a church. I'm not excusing it at all. I'm just saying, listen, the best any of us will ever be are sinners saved by grace. And boy, once you know Jesus, the biggest important thing we do is try to make a difference in somebody else's life. It's the care of the church. Let's pray together. Father, thank you this morning that we could experience worship. We can fellowship with each other. We can close our minds and hearts and just slow our roll down for a little while just to hear from you. Father, thank you that we have people in our church that are salt and light in our world. I lift them up to you. This morning, I look around this room, I see business owners in this room. I see people in this room who are involved in medicine. We have doctors here and medical professionals. This morning we have lawyers here. This morning we have people like my friend Lee, who's running to be our next senator. We have her here this morning. We have people all over this place, Father, who. Who have invested their lives to being salt and light in a world that desperately needs it. So, Lord, I'm asking as pastor of this church, that you would allow our church to be a place, a safe place for people who need you to find you, to discover your purpose for their life and to begin to serve you in the life of the church, to make a difference in the lives of other people. I pray that this morning and finally, Lord, I pray for my friends who may never have trusted you as their personal savior, that this might be the moment and this might be the place when they pray a simple prayer like this. Maybe they're watching online and they say, lord Jesus, with everything I know about me, I now trust all that I know about you. Come into my heart. Forgive my sin. And I ask this in Jesus name. Amen. [00:39:08] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week.