James: Slower and Stronger

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 If you have a Bible, and I hope you do, go ahead and turn to James chapter 1 still. It’s towards the very end of your Bible. Uh, we’re going to be spending a couple months here in this text.
Jay Stovall and his church, Portrait Church, is launching today, and so we’re really excited for him. He actually spoke for us back in April, if you remember, he helped us in our I AM series. Uh, but me and Jay are, have been friends for over a decade, and over the past year or so, we’ve really… As a church, we’ve been investing in them financially, and we’re going to continue to do so, but also just relationally and kind of spiritually helping them, because we’ve been there before.

And so, just be in prayer for Portrait Church. Today is a big launch day, and I actually got on the phone with him this week, and was just trying to encourage him, and I told him, I am a bit, just a slight nostalgic for launch day. There’s nothing like launch day. Right. And so I was calling him asking how everything’s doing, how everything is being prepared.

They actually wound up renting out like a really cool wedding venue that’s just available on Sunday. So it’s super cool looking. And so we’re excited for him. Um, I told him like, I, I want to be there. Like I want to go back, but I don’t at all. You know what I’m saying? Like launch Sunday was like one of the best Sundays of my life.

It was, it was a great day. We used to meet, uh, to know our story, we used to meet at the Harkins movie theater just down the road. And so I remember we got like the midsize one for launch day and we’re like, yeah, let’s do this. We sent out a couple ads, like three of them cause it’s all we could afford.

And we had a little tiny trailer. When I look at it, I’m like, how did, how are we still here compared to this launch day? Uh, but we wound up packing out the whole theater. I was like, Oh no, we need a bigger theater for next week. That wasn’t the case. Um, but then I remember we, we baptized eight people and we, it was January and it was freezing cold.

If you look at the next slide, we were trying to figure out why wasn’t the water warm. And so we wound up getting a blower heater. Do you see that over there on the side? We thought for some reason, pointing that blower heater towards the metal part of the horse trough would somehow completely heat the water inside.

It didn’t, um, now what it did do is if you got out and touched the side, you know, something bad would happen to your hands, but it, I mean, that was a freezing cold baptism. And so we launched, and that was the first day we were all excited. And then the next Sunday came, and I was on the phone with him, and I said, Hey man, has anybody warned you about the second Sunday?

He said, no. What about this second Sunday? I said, friend. I’m your mentor, and here’s what I do. I said, it’s gonna be the worst day of your life. He’s like, what are you talking about? I said, nobody warned me of this, which is why it was even worse. The second Sunday, I’m already talking to Harkin Cedars. Hey, I think we need the big one, like the thousand Cedar, you know, or whatever.

I think it’s 485 is the big one at heart. We might need that one, you know, and I show up literally like 20 percent of the crowd. We had a launch Sunday and came again the second Sunday, and I was like. Now it’s church. Got it. There’s like 27 of us here, and let’s keep preaching the gospel, and let’s build. And there was a lot of errors on my part, but I wound up a month later calling one of my mentors, and I said, I’m not gonna lie, man, I think I messed it up.

And he said, Second Sunday hits ya, huh? And I was like, Why didn’t you tell me? He said, Oh yeah, Second Sunday is when the real hits the ideal, and now, now you’re pastoring. Or, to quote the great theologian Mike Tyson, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Shout out to you. Jay Stovall.

I can’t wait for next week. Right? And we’re really speaking hope here today, but listen, leadership hasn’t happened until you’ve been punched in the mouth. And then what do you do next? That’s leadership. And that’s what’s great about James. James is one of the best leaders to learn from. To know the story, in James 1, Pastor Caleb did a wonderful job last week kind of prepping us for this whole book.

But it, right in the verse 1, it says who this is for. This is James, the half-brother of Jesus, writing. But then he says it’s to the twelve tribes dispersed abroad. Here’s what’s going on. James is writing to the people of Israel. And the, the Israelites, those who were Jewish, those who believe in the Old Testament, but now the Messiah came and there’s a group of them who were like, no, we don’t believe Jesus is the Messiah.

And so they stayed, not believing in Jesus. But then there’s a whole nother huge group that says, no, the tomb is empty. Like my aunt saw it. Jesus is alive. And so a lot of them were realizing this Messiah that was being prophesied throughout the whole Old Testament is Jesus Christ. And so they, they, they conform.

They, they have launch Sunday, Peter, he, he gets an axe too. The Holy Spirit comes down. It’s this crazy event that most Baptists would be super uncomfortable with, right? And so then he preaches the gospel and 3, 000 people, talk about a launch day, 3, 000 people come to faith in Christ and the church is birthed.

And then if you continue to read Acts 2, launch Sunday was amazing. They saw many signs and wonders from the apostles. They sold their possessions to provide for those in need. They were constantly breaking bread together, which I’m a fan of. Let’s do that more, right? And just this incredible thing was happening.

But if you continue to read Acts 8, 2nd Sunday comes along pretty quick. 2nd Sunday is Acts 8, 1. Saul, who would later become Paul, is a part of it, stoning of Stephen, and now persecution is ramped up, and now the people of God begin to disperse across the region. They have to. They’re gonna be killed for their faith, and so they are now being pushed out from Jerusalem, now to Judea, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth.

And what James is doing, he’s writing to a group of people who had an incredible launch Sunday, but now reality has hit him in the face. And he is trying to tell them, yeah, you got punched in the mouth. Now let’s live this Christian walk. Now how are we, how are we going to do it? And that’s the context of James.

He’s really helping here. It’s a group of people who are persecuted, exhausted. They know Jesus has risen. They know the tomb is empty. They know there’s so many good things, but yet they lost all of their family. They don’t know where they’re going to live. They lost all of their money. And as in this context, James is saying, look, this is it.

The vision is pointless if the mission is painless. The vision is pointless if the mission is painless. This mission is going to hurt, as Caleb mentioned last week. It’s not supposed to be easy. It’s actually designed to be hard. But as a great pastor, James is also a visionary. And in verse 26 and 27 of chapter 1 is this beautiful picture of what happens if we stay in.

If we get the punches in the mouth, but keep persevering, he says this, he says, If anyone thinks he is religious without controlling his tongue, his religion is useless and he deceives himself. So it’s a warning. He’s saying, Our kind of religion has a gentle spirit, gracious speech. But now look at verse 27, it’s very positive.

He says, Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this. By the way, this actually goes against us saying, Oh, I hate religion, but love Jesus. James literally says no religion’s good. This kind of religion is the pure and undefiled religion. That’s a side note. So he says, this is a good religion to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained from the world or, I would argue, a life of simplicity where you are not stained by the corruption of society.

This is his vision. You endure. You mature, you get punched in the face and you keep getting back up, we can create a church that cares for the least of these, and you actually have personal holiness. Now this passage we’re going to look at, the preceding verses, we’re going to learn the two punches in the mouth that most of us don’t recover from.

One reason why

the two punches in the mouth. But by the Spirit of God, we can get up and keep pushing through. Punch number one. It’s how do I deal with people in my community who offend me? And then later we’re going to answer the question, punch number two, how do I respond to the Bible when it exposes me? Alright, let’s pray.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we just invite you to give us wisdom today. Um, God, I just pray that we would get honest and we would all come here as we approach your word, knowing there might even be people in this room who offend us.

And God, I pray that we have humble hearts to hear what you have to say and what we have to do about that. And God, I, I know that there’s people in this room where God, you have been convicting us and maybe we’re just exhausted from it. Holy Spirit, open our eyes to see that this is an invitation to love and to joy and to peace.

But only if we follow your way. Give us the power to do that. In Jesus name, everybody says, amen, amen. How do I deal with people in my community? By the way, not just, you know, Joe Schmoe, who’s my neighbor, I didn’t sign up for him to be my neighbor. He’s just going to offend me because he’s there. No, like people in the room, people in my group.

Right? The people in our leadership. How do I deal with it when they offend me? James 1 verse 19 says, My dear brothers and sisters, understand this. It’s another way of saying lean in. This might be hard for you to get. So focus. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. For human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness.

Now. Notice, first of all, James isn’t saying if conflict ever comes, do this. What’s he say? No, you’re gonna have conflict. And so every day you should probably exercise these three things. Quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. I would actually argue if you have friends in your life that you’ve never fought with, they’re not actually your friends.

You saying? I remember when me and Jordan got married. That honeymoon, like it’s great and all, but like, we were fighting and I was like, what is this? I was like, oh, this is roommate stuff we never had to deal with, right? It’s just part of the journey of getting to know each other more. You begin to rub each other the wrong way.

I would also say as your pastor, and I hate this part of the job, but if I have never offended you, one of two things have happened. One, I’m not preaching good enough. Okay, so sorry. I’ll try again next week, right? Or number two, you’re not listening good enough. Because the reality is that the Bible is an equal opportunity offender.

I, this week, I, this verse, I went, no, Lord, I have to, uh, I have to do this. Right? It’s offensive. Like, okay, so this is life. We get offended. It’s supposed to happen that way. Okay, now conflict is going to come, and we have to do those three things: quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger Adrian Rogers, one of my favorite pastors of yesteryear.

He calls it these three steps. You ready? He says you need to tune in. You need to tone down, and you need to lighten up. Well, that’s a pretty good tune-in tone down. So what do these mean? Quick to listen. Let’s start with that one. Quit to listen means you don’t run away. Notice this. If you were in a conflict, if you’re quick to listen, that means the person who has offended you is at the table.

Right? So if I, I can’t listen to the person I’m running away from. So step one is to stay in, stay engaged and hear them out. Um, I was talking to a mentor of mine, a pastor. And he, we, we love to just talk theory and figure out what’s wrong with, you know, X, Y, and Z. And he says, the biggest problem in the modern church is conflict avoidance.

He says he looks at the life of his church, and I think it’s true for us as well, and I think it’s true for kind of the modern church in general. He says most people leave church these days about every four years. Now, sometimes it’s legitimate, and we can have those conversations, right? But he says most of the time, what he’s noticed is around, around the fourth year, you actually get to know people.

Right before it’s like, hey yeah I met you, yeah you’re the guy who likes the coffee, yeah you’re the guy who’s always in the back row, back row Baptist, you But then like you’re in group together, you do life together, you All these things together, and then there starts to be tension. And the scriptures say, when that tension comes, don’t be shocked.

Listen in. Tune in. And too many of us, the moment conflict happens, we don’t want to change, and so we just go out and go to the next place. Which is really stunting our growth, which I think James, so much of James, is about growing, maturing, be better than that. So we have to listen. So we have to be at the table.

I have found you have to organize it. Hey, let’s meet you and I. Let’s do this together. Here’s my issues. What are your issues? Let’s figure this out. But the next thing is so important, slow to speak. Now what this means is when you come to a conflict resolution get together, that’s what we call it, it’s a get together, um, you don’t come with an answer.

I have noticed in my own pastoral ministry, anytime there’s two parties, and at least one of them already knows what they’re willing to budge on, One of them already knows what they’re going to say, that meeting doesn’t work. Have you noticed that in marriage too? If I already know what I’m, I’m not going to budge.

So what we have to do is slow to speak, hear them out, and realize maybe this new set of information from their perspective is coming my way and it’s going to completely rewrite the way I respond and the way I extend. Grace. You guys see that? So quick to listen. You got to be at the table. Slow to speak.

Don’t come with predetermined packaged answers. None of us should come with that. And then it says slow to anger. I was studying this word this week and there’s actually two words for anger in the Bible. The first one is thumos. Thumos. I’m going to do that pastor thing. Say it with me, guys. Thumos. Okay.

Thumos is just temper. And so it’s just, uh, man, I know I’m guilty of this. Just out of nowhere. I blow up anybody else. It’s just like something happens or like you’re driving and somebody cuts you off. You don’t even plan it. You’re just like, ah, right. And then you go, okay, I’m sorry. Please don’t shoot me with your gun.

It’s fine. Go ahead and cut me off. It was just a reaction, right? So Thomas is like. You know, hopefully, we mature enough where even that doesn’t happen right away, but a lot of times, it’s like, whoa, sorry, We’re good. We’re good. You know that kind of anger. He’s not talking about that. He’s talking about orgies.

Oh, I Won’t make you say it ready or geez. Oh, not ogre or geez. Oh, okay, or geez Oh is an anger you don’t move on from It’s the one that simmers. It’s the thing when you wake up in the morning, it’s the first thing you think about, and now you’re kind of anxious. You know what I’m saying? If that person just did this, and if they just did that.

And if you’ll notice, at least for me, when I have that kind of anger, it doesn’t go away, unless I go listen, and then slowly speak, and then usually that anger goes away. So some of you, you’re that silent assassin anger. You know what I’m talking about. You just give those mean mugs, just subtly. You’re angry.

Stop. Right? Caleb. Uh, the next one, I’m kidding. This You never know if Caleb’s mad at you. He’s really not. He’s just thinking. You know? And so I am so sorry, Caleb. He just went, What? Now, you know, that was a Thumos reaction. And so you need to now forgive No. Um, mine, I’m the aggressive energy. Okay? Sometimes I just get angry.

Right? And, you know, so I was trying to compare and contrast the ways that God has gifted us, Caleb. Um, the aggressive, I’ll have to ask for forgiveness later, I’ll be quick to listen, I’ll slow to speak. Uh, aggressive energy, he’s like, just move on. Um, hurtful words, right, maybe, or violence, right, either of those, here’s, here’s what we have to know from this text.

When you have that kind of anger, that should be a red flag of saying, okay, there’s a situation where you didn’t listen and you weren’t slow to speak. So go to that person. I think actually in the together guide this week, uh, we’re going to be studying the words of Jesus. What he says is how to respond to anger, to leave your gift there at the altar and take care of the situation.

Okay. So, is this hard? Absolutely. This is like impossible in the flesh, and that’s the whole point of the Christian life. Every week, what we’re doing is we’re showing us things that are impossible in our power, but through the grace of Jesus, by asking Jesus, by us taking the steps, and, and saying, God, if you don’t show up, this isn’t going to work.

That is when God begins to do what only he can do, okay? So, if we want, and I know I want, at James 1 27 Church, That looks after the orphans and the widows, that cares for the least of these, and is unstained from the world. Step one is when you get offended, you lean in, you deal with it, you love each other through it, and you move forward.

Does that make sense? Have you forgiven me yet? Okay, what’s the next punch in the mouth? I’m not wrong. Okay, good. Whoo. All right. I just should have warned you before it wasn’t in my notes As you know now second punch in the mouth. How do I respond to the Bible when it exposes me? These are the two things I’ve seen cause people to leave the church.

If somebody offends you, you don’t deal with it. You run away Two, the Bible keeps consistently pointing out an idol in your life, consistently pointing out a wrongdoing, and instead of surrendering and receiving joy and peace and moving forward, you get angrier and angrier, your heart gets harder and harder, and you move away.

Look at James 121, Therefore, ridding yourselves of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent, man, it’s prevalent, humbly receive the implanted word which is able to save your Souls. Notice that humbly receive the implanted word. I want you to remember our simplicity series. We looked in Mark four.

Jesus talked about the four different soils of the heart. The hard heart is stubborn. It’s jaded. He doesn’t even want to entertain the truths of God. The shallow heart likes all of the comfortable stuff about Jesus, but the moment it gets hard, they bail. But we’ve been talking about the crowded heart. Maybe even you like the words of Jesus, but you’re just so distracted by digital media and materialism and all these other promises the world tries to offer and it chokes you out.

He’s saying those kind of hearts, they’re not going to receive the implanted word, but a soft heart where you take in the word and you work it out. That kind of heart then receives the implanted word of God. This word implanted is a hapax logamina. Did I say it right? A hapax logamina, which means it’s the only time it ever appears in the Bible.

So this word. Implanted, it only appears one time, but what most people believe it means is once it’s received, once it’s in you, it now has supernatural powers that does things that you can’t even do in your own power. Does that make sense? It’s almost like a takeover. So our job is to make our heart like really receptive and receiving.

And when it does that, the word begins to do things that maybe you didn’t even intend to do. And it saves you and heals you. Look at verse 22. But be doers of the word, as if you come to Passion Creek for any length of time, we quote this all the time, be doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving yourselves.

Now, hearing is huge. Some people have never even heard the word of God, and maybe today that’s the W. You’ve heard the word for the first time, but even hearing takes work. Just hearing the Bible doesn’t mean you heard it right. Um, I was reading Tim Keller, who just recently passed away. He has this great little book called How to Reach the West Again.

He identifies just so many assumptions you and I bring to the Bible and bring to Christianity. And when we don’t work those things out, they really just warp the whole thing. And so he gave a few words that when we hear them in the Bible, we assume a secular definition, but it’s way off. Let me give you a few examples.

Things like identity. The Bible talks about identity a lot, right? But when we hear identity, we think this lie, you have to be true to yourself. So if you hear the word, but then assume the wrong definition, it’s not going to really do what it needs to do. A few more examples, happiness. How do we define happiness?

You must do what makes you happiness, happiest, and you can’t sacrifice that for anybody. The Bible’s the opposite of that, right? How about morality? When we think about the idea of morality as secular, uh, people in the modern age, our definition of morality is everyone has the right to decide what is right and wrong themselves.

Which is simply not true. What about history? Our understanding of history is history is bending towards social progress and away from religion. That’s not the case. And even one more, freedom. When you and I hear freedom, we think of this definition. You should be free to live as you choose as long as you don’t hurt anybody else.

Sounds neat? When you hear the word freedom in the Bible, if you’re not really listening to the context and submitting yourself to the text, you will bring those wrongful definitions and you’ve, the Bible has gone way over your head. Freedom. That’s a word that we mess up a lot. Let’s keep reading. It says, uh, because if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like someone looking at his own face in a mirror.

For he looks at himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of person he was. But the one who looks intently into the perfect law of freedom. And perseveres in it, and is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer who works, this person will be blessed in what he does. This sounds like an oxymoron if we don’t do the hard work of understanding the text, because in our minds, law and freedom are totally apart.

And yet Jesus is saying, James is saying, the law is actually what brings freedom. An easy illustration of that, and I think we could all agree. You have the freedom. To drive on the wrong side of the road, but reality is going to hit you soon enough. Yeah, you could go ahead, but there will be consequences.

And what he’s saying here is like, yeah, you can hear it and do whatever you want, but if you do whatever you want, something’s going to hit you. And that’s the reality. So, what we have to do is submit ourselves and say, okay, I got to hear it and then not just hear it, I have to do it. We assume in our age, uh, it’s called Cartesian philosophies because of Rene Descartes.

We think the only thing we need is the right information. If we have the right information, everything will be okay. How’s that working for you? It’s not. Just information alone doesn’t change. That’s why we’re doing all these practices. We’re trying to show you, you got to hear it and then you got to do it.

I heard one pastor say this week, hearing and doing, it’s like hearing is like chewing the food. But doing is swallowing it, right? So you can chew your food all day, which gets really gross, right? And may taste good, but if you spit it out, it’s done nothing for your body. You have robbed it of its nutrients in the same way you can hear the word and it tastes nice and it’s amazing, but until you do it, it does nothing for your soul.

But let’s look again at this mirror illustration. He says, you know, if anyone, um, uh, is a hearer and not a doer, he’s like someone looking at the face, at his face in his own mirror. Now, mirror, we have to remember that ancient times weren’t so great. It was actually just like a really shiny metal. And so you actually had to sit there a long time to get the full picture today.

Mirrors are too good. You know what I’m saying? Amen. Right. And what mirrors do, though, is mirrors reveal reality. Here’s what I learned in high school. I was totally that kid. I couldn’t wait to see a mirror. You know what I’m saying? Working out every day, doing this, like, that’s right. Do we need shirts versus skins?

Basketball, I’m on skin. Now I’m like, no, we will never do that. It’s sweaters versus t shirts. You know, like, that’s how we’re playing basketball from here on out. And then when there’s a mirror, it’s like, oh, let’s not go that direction, you know? Like, that’s just the process of life. But here’s the thing about a mirror.

It reveals reality. And you know what I’ve noticed? I have never felt like I could argue with a mirror. That’s not how I look like. Why? No, you got it wrong. All it is, is reality. And I can grieve what I see in the mirror, but I can’t argue against it. In the same way, the Bible reveals ultimate reality. It shows us who we are and who we’re not.

It shows us how we fall short. It shows us the idols we’re trusting in. It exposes us. Sometimes it’s super painful. Sometimes, we don’t even want to get into the word because we know what it’s going to say. But you won’t get anywhere arguing it, but you get somewhere when you obey it. Over the past year, we’ve used this mirror of scripture to really reveal three things, mainly within the life of our church.

Number one, we are exhausted from our world of hurry. If you were here in February, we began to talk about this idea of the Sabbath because we live in a pharaoh-driven world where it’s never enough. You always have to do more. As a result, we believe this lie. We’re not spending time with our family like we should.

We don’t have work-life balance like we should. We’re ignoring church, even though we shouldn’t, we’re just exhausted. And from our exhaustion, we cannot be a people of love. Right? We need rest. So we’ve been talking about that. That’s been exposing us. Another thing we looked at the next, over the summer, is we are deceived by our world of lies.

Digital world, social media, TV, network, books we read, friends constantly, you and I are being lied to and deceived, marketed to and propaganded to. And guess what? It’s full of lies and corruption and emptiness. And the Bible is saying, here is the truth. Those are the lies. Will you cling to the truth? Will you practice scripture?

And the last slide we’ve been looking at most recently is we are corrupted by our world of consumption The quickest way to corruption is to be careless with consumption. Thank you. Deacon Dave, right? It’s just only it’s his favorite one liner I was about to drag you down, but I won’t Dave. I’m not even looking at you because of what happened to Caleb earlier. We’re corrupted, And so what we’ve been doing, it’s almost like every Sunday we get together, and we look at the mirror.

Ooh, you know, ah, that’s it. I’m not going right. Okay. And, and we’re looking at it and seeing if you knew that reference, God bless your soul. And here’s what’s hard though. I, part of my job is to take the mirror and go like, well, all week I got to look at this. I got to take the mirror and then go, okay guys.

Here’s the mirror. Here’s where we’re at. Here’s where we need to go. And it’s not always fun. I think I’d rather sell ice cream because that makes more people happier. But the reality is, is we are in wartime living, and it’s not time for ice cream. The enemy is winning battles that you and I don’t even know we’re fighting in.

And that’s why we are going crazy with these practices. Because what’s the alternative? Lately, I’ve just been in this mood where I’m re-reading the good stuff, you know? So, I love to read books. I read about like 70 to 100 a year. And now I’m like, I need to re-read the classics. And so, one of them I’ve been re-reading is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship.

Anybody? Heard of that or read that before? Okay, good, uh, change your life, the rest of you, but it’s a wonderful book, very heady, very difficult, chapter one is worth the price of admission, but he argues in chapter one that the issue we’re in today is because we believe in cheap grace. Cheap grace is just thinking Jesus came to give us permission to do whatever we want.

Kasi grace is realizing, no, Jesus died. We’re called to surrender everything and follow him. But here’s the good news. When we surrender ourselves in sacrifice, the grace of Jesus is like jet fuel. It’s power where we’re able to do the things that Jesus has called us to do. And when we do those things, even though it’s against our flesh and against all of our thoughts and preconception notions, we have joy on the other side.

So that’s D. J. Bonhoeffer’s whole theory. Well, we have to remember his story. He was in the 1930s. Um, The Nazis, he was in Germany, and the Nazis began to successfully co-opt the church. It was a really scary time in the Christian church in Germany. So they were saying Nazis are good, which as today, we’re like, how did they even get there?

Long story, we can talk about it later. But few of the leaders were raising the alarm. This is, this is not the way of Jesus. I know this gives you power and riches and wealth, but this is not the way of Jesus. We have to say no to them. And so Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of those leaders, and he realized we have to proactively, he actually went back to America, he went to America, was safe, and he’s like, no, I can’t do this.

I need to go back to Germany and fight this wartime living and try to save from the inside. And so he created this underground seminary. And so it was intense. It was actually based off of the cost of discipleship. I mean, it was like, you better follow Jesus. You can’t just hear the word. You got to do it.

And so they’re getting really intense with these practices. I mean, it was very, very strict. And so some of his friends were starting to get nervous because it sounded like his seminary was way too extreme. You’re doing way too much of that Jesus stuff, he has grace, you don’t need to do all of these things.

And so in 1933, Wilhelm Niesel came to rebuke him for going overboard, for being too hard on his seminary students. And as the story goes, Bonhoeffer responds to this rebuke by just taking him on a rowing trip. So they go row together on this river, and they get to the end of the river, and they go to a hill.

Meanwhile, this guy Wilhelm has never been here, he doesn’t know where he’s going. They get, they put their boats aside, they walk up this hill, Bonhoeffer doesn’t say a word, you just see in the valley in front of them was this Nazi training camp. Planes taking off and planes landing, soldiers walking in a pattern, being trained for more war.

And as the story goes, Bonhoeffer lets this man take it all in. He grabs him on the shoulder and says, this, pointing back to the underground seminary, must be stronger than that. Why am I so intense? This has to be stronger than that. Friends, rest has to be stronger than hurry. Truth has to be stronger than lies.

It’s contentment. It has to be stronger than consumption, which is why we have to keep practicing. The Bible says you want that. You got to do it. Uh, a mentor of mine, I keep mentioning this mentor. I don’t know if he wants me to say his name, so that’s why I just call him mentor of mine. But he said, man, you will find the word does its work when you work it out.

It’ll work, but you got to work it. That’s what he said. It’ll work, but you got to work it. And this is why as a, in my mind, we are seeing enemy territory, not a freak out way, um, uh, but saying, okay, let’s practice Sabbath. Let’s get in a formation because we’re in an anti Sabbath world. Let’s read scripture daily.

Let’s figure out how to do that because we’re unintentionally being informed by the lives of this world every single day. Let’s experiment with simplicity because marketing is in the very. It’s in our, our soul these days, like everything we think is we need to buy more and do more and be more and consume more and it’s killing us.

And so please hear me though. You are welcome here if you’re not bought into all these practices. Totally. In fact, I’m jealous. If you somehow are not discouraged, you’re not exhausted, and you’re not corrupted, shout out to you. Whatever you’re doing, don’t break it. You know what I’m saying? Just keep doing whatever you’re doing.

But for me, I’m, I’m tired. And I have feeling this pool of deception and that’s why I keep running to these practices. But again, if you don’t want to do, maybe there’s one of these you want to do, the others you don’t, that’s totally fine because here’s our really mentality. Morality is a requirement, but maturity is a request.

A lot of what we’re talking about here is like maturity. Now, what do I mean by that? We, we, me and Caleb are not going to exercise church discipline if you don’t Sabbath. Whatever. If you hoard things, cool, I just hope your house smells good, you know? You’re fine. But if you murder somebody, we’re calling someone, you know what I’m saying?

Like, that’s what we’re called to do, right? But this, a lot of this stuff, simplicity, it’s just an imitation. Just, whatever you want. Personally, for me, five years ago was a huge watermark moment. My wife constantly says, like, um, you know, that was like a new version of Trey. And in 2018, I just finally had the end of it.

I was trying to do church the way that I was trained to do church and it was just failing and I wasn’t getting in my word. I just wasn’t where I needed to be, and I feel like the grace of God came into my life. And what I like to call it is I experienced a holy discontentment. The things that used to make me happy just didn’t make me happy anymore, right?

Like church attendance. Man, if it was big, then I’m happier. That didn’t do it for me anymore. Um, Entertainment, escapism. I would just still feel this hollowness inside, and I realized that was actually an invitation to lean into what God actually has for me. And so I started to study the saints of the Christian past, and I saw that there’s this roadmap called the practices of Jesus or the spiritual disciplines or the lifestyle of Jesus or the way of Jesus, and it changed my life because I started to try these things and I started to experience life and life in abundance.

I really held on to this line by Eugene Peterson. He says the Jesus way, which is the practices like doing it, hold us the Jesus way wedded to the Jesus truth. That’s what brings about the Jesus life. And I grew up in a world where the Jesus truth brings the Jesus life, which it does go pretty far. But you just begin to practice it, and a whole new world of satisfaction and purpose opens your way.

Now, is every day perfect? Not even close. In many ways, I think I am more depressed than I ever was before because every time I try to run to things of this world, the Lord gives me the wisdom to know that that is not the way. It’s empty. But can I tell you, I really do believe there’s been a genuine transformation in my spirit.

I think I’ve experienced joy in a deeper way, I have gladness in a deeper way, and it’s really slow, but it’s sure. And I do want to end with this encouragement. This must be stronger than that, and that’s why we’re talking about these practices. But also, this, the way of Jesus, is slower than that. I think this is why this is really hard.

We’ve done a lot this past year. We’ve learned how to Sabbath. We’ve learned how to read scripture, hopefully on a daily basis, and then we’ve gotten rid of stuff. We’re not on our social media stuff anymore. Like it’s a lot. And I am really assured, I think by us doing that, we’re becoming a James 1 27 church, but also want to just recognize that for some of us, we’re moving a little too fast.

Like, man, I’m still trying to figure out the Sabbath thing. And we want to say, yes, it took me five years to figure this thing out. There’s so much grace and patience and forgiveness working. It’s going to be slow, but this battle is real. And so we have to keep pushing and leaning in. And as Caleb mentioned last week, we’re hoping to mention every week, the whole point of this is love.

The whole point is to just see that Jesus loves us and that we love him. And love is spelt T. I M E. You can’t rush it. You can’t figure out Sabbath in a day. If you did, you didn’t. You know what I’m saying? Like, you missed the whole point. It’s slow. Why? Because guess what? These practices, they’re not about marking off tallies for God.

They’re about marking out time with God. That takes a long time. It’s not check, we’re good. You missed it. Simplicity, removing things, it’s not removal to get approval from God. We’re already approved because of the cross and the resurrection. Jesus loves us. There’s nothing we have to do to earn that. But we are making space for more of His grace.

I’m doing simplicity because I know His love is there for me. And so I’m doing these things not to earn His love, but to churn to His love. Because so often I allow my mind to get distracted, my body to do things the world tells me to do, and I find that I have taken a thousand steps away from the love of God.

But here’s the good news today. It always just takes one to come back, because He’s pursuing us. And so I, I just felt like, as your pastor, some of us feel exhausted from these practices because it’s actually exposing our idols. It’s a mirror showing you reality, and you have to let go of these other gods, but also some are exhausted because you’ve tried too much too soon, and that’s okay too.

So what I really want to do, I want to end with this prayer. It’s like a, it’s this guy, I can’t even say his name, Pierre Teilhard de Tardin. That’s the right way to say it, I promise. But he has this little prayer that I’ve just been reading over and over this week, on Wednesday night, I read it for the first time, and I was like, I need this.

I’ve been saying it over my life. And so, how I want to end today is I just want to proclaim this truth over you. So, if you’re a visual learner, you can just pay attention to the screen. Or maybe you can just close your eyes and just have this posture of reception. But I want to proclaim this over you as we are a church who’s truly trying to fight this battle.

And we want to be stronger, but it also takes so much longer. It says this, it says, above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability. Hear me, some of us are at that moment in our walk, in these practices, we feel a little bit unstable. That is by design. Look what he says. Through some stages of instability. And that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you. Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow. Let them shape themselves without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on as though you could be today what time will make of you tomorrow. I’m going to say that one more time. I feel like we need that. Don’t try to force them on.

As though you could be today, what time will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you. And accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete. Anybody feel that? If you’ve been leaning into these practices, you have to have been feeling that. Trust that God is doing a work that can’t be done overnight.

And there’s a reality where you’re supposed to feel that anxiety, that suspense, and feeling incomplete and trying to judge yourself. Am I this great? Am I doing this?

Just allow God to form you, and that formation takes a lifetime, but there’s nothing more joyful than that. So keep hearing the word. And keep doing it, because Christ is doing something in you that you don’t even know.