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Transcript February 13/14, 2016

Hills We Die On | Deep Wells: Intentional Discipleship Jake Barker | Matthew 16:24-26; Philippians 2:5-8; Luke 12:25-28

Alright, well what’s up Traders Point? I hope you are doing well this weekend. I want to welcome those of you at our North campus. We are so proud of what God is doing in and through you on the northside of Indy. We are just so excited about the impact that is happening on the northside of our city. And if you are one of our guests or if this is your very first time, we are so honored that you would spend your time with us here this weekend. If you are new, or maybe if you’ve missed the last couple of weeks, let me get you up to speed as to where we are in our series. We are in a series called Hills We Die On. And what we’re doing is that over the next few weeks we are laying out the values of our church. These are the seven things that we believe in so much that we’ve made them our core values. These are the things that we will not negotiate on, these will always be true about us, these are not just events or programs, but these are hills that we will die on. The reason why these values are so important is that values serve as a great filter through which we can pass our decisions. So when we need to make a decision we can pass it through our values and ask: is that us or is that not us. Does that fit our culture or does that betray our values. These values keep us on track and they keep us locked in on the mission. In the absence of values, particularly articulated values that we all rally around, what our church will experience is a thing called mission drift. Maybe you’ve experienced this in a church, or an organization, or a team. It’s this thing called mission drift. It’s when you set out on your course together and at the very beginning everyone was aligned, everyone was excited, everyone was pulling in the same direction. Then about a year later you looked up and you realized, “Wait, we are way off course. We have totally missed the mark.” Something happened between there and here and it’s called mission drift. It doesn’t take much. Imagine that last week you got a phone call from the NFL and they said, “Congratulations, you have won the opportunity to paint the boundary lines of our Super Bowl field. You won the most random sweepstakes of all time. You won it, congratulations. You’ve got to get to San Francisco.” You are there and you start at one end of the field and you look at where you are going and you set out and you’re really, really close but you’re just 0.1 degree off course in your calculation. By the time you get to the other end of the field you would be five feet off of your mark. Just 0.1 degree will leave you five feet off of where you were supposed to be. Do you think that the Broncos or the Panthers would have cared about a five-‐foot discrepancy? Yeah, I think so. Or, imagine that you got a phone call from Delta Airlines and they said, “Congratulations, you’ve won the opportunity to fly a plane from Los Angeles to San Francisco: equally random sweepstakes, far more dangerous. I don’t know why they keep doing this. You keep winning. It just happens, alright? They say, “Alright, you’re going to fly this plane from Los Angeles to San Francisco.” You get in the plane and you set your course and you are 0.1 degree off in your calculation. By the time you land the plan you

Hills We Die On | Deep Wells: Intentional Discipleship February 13/14, 2016

Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 2

will be five miles into the Pacific Ocean. You would miss the city entirely. You would not have a safe landing at all. Just 0.1 degree off and all of a sudden you’re way off the mark of where you wanted to be. And 0.1 doesn’t seem like a big deal. It seems negligible. It seems like it will hopefully work itself out. And particularly in the church world what can happen is that we can know that there is some misalignment. We can know that there are some things that are just a little bit off. But because we don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, because we don’t really want to say anything, or because they’ve been here for a really long time we ignore the 0.1. Then, all of a sudden, we look up and we realize that we’re not the church that we wanted to be. Maybe you’ve been a part of a church that’s experienced mission drift. They used to be all about reaching new people and introducing Jesus to people who were far from Him. And then, all of a sudden, you looked up and it was the same old people in the same old seats each and every weekend. The mission had drifted. Or maybe you were a part of a church that was really involved in the community, and really reaching out to its neighbors then, all of a sudden, you looked up and the church had become about keeping Christians happy and everybody in the seats got a say. And that really ruled the day. The mission had drifted. So for us, we believe that the mission that Jesus has called us to is the most important thing that we could ever be a part of. Therefore, we will be ruthlessly diligent about making sure that we protect these values that define what we do. So, in week one, Aaron rolled out our very first value at Traders Point and it was Relational Evangelism. Relational Evangelism—and the way that we describe that is this. We will intentionally remove any unnecessary barriers that keep people from Jesus. Anything that gets in the way of people meeting Jesus, we will remove that even if it is at the expense of our personal preference. We will surrender that to the greater good, which is introducing people to Jesus. We won’t do that through programs, we won’t stand on street corners and hand out tracts—we want to do that in the context of relationships: our neighbors, our coworkers, our family, and our friends. That’s how we want to introduce people to Jesus: Relational Evangelism. That is a hill that we will die on. Last week Aaron rolled out value number two which is Biblical Authority. What we said is that the Bible is above us in the authority structure. The Bible is above our feelings and our logic. And if our feelings and our logic ever come into conflict with what God says we will surrender to His authority in our lives. But even though the Bible is above us it is not beyond our understanding. God did not reveal Himself to us in some secret code that we have to crack to really get to know Him. No, we believe that God revealed Himself to us so that we could understand Him and then know how to live. That was value number two: Biblical Authority. Today we’re going to talk about value number three. And we put it simply like this: Intentional Discipleship. Intentional Discipleship is a value of ours here at Traders Point. It is a hill that we will die on. And here’s how we simply explain it. At Traders Point we will dig our spiritual wells deep through study, prayer, and relationship. One more time: We will dig our spiritual wells deep through study, prayer, and relationship. That is a value of ours. That is a hill that we will die on.



So today we’re just going to answer a few simple questions. Number one: What does it mean to be a disciple? Straight from Jesus’ words, how would He describe it? And then we’re going to ask why it’s important to grow, to dig our spiritual wells deep, and then finally we’re just going to give you a few how-‐tos. How do we grow in our relationship with Jesus? Real simple. Now we use that word image of a spiritual well because it’s an apt description of what discipleship looks like. Many of us know what a well does. It’s not really complicated. It holds water for future use. That’s really the job of a well. How many of you—just raise your hands on both campuses—how many of you have a well, that’s actually where you get your water at home? So, quite a few of you—again you know that the job of a well is to hold the water until you want it later. Not very complicated, it’s not rocket science but it’s wildly, wildly important if you depend upon it. My wife and I when we were first married moved into this duplex. I don’t know if you know what a duplex is but it’s like a house that is split in half and the living spaces are duplicated on each side. And if I remember correctly, I’m pretty sure that the apartment was a total of three square feet. That was it. That was all we had. I got a square foot, she got a square foot, and there was one for the Holy Spirit. That was kind of the way it broke down. We didn’t have a ton of space and our furniture was all hand-‐me-‐downs. We were using hand-‐me-‐down dishes, and hand-‐me-‐down forks and all of those kinds of things. The only nice thing that we had—because I am a guy and I had just recently graduated from college, and I had my first full-‐time job, so I had one very important purchase to make. Fellows, I think you know what it was. What did I go buy? A TV of course—so we had terrible furniture but one awesome TV that took up two-‐and-‐a-‐half square feet. That was our living situation. I look back on that now and I remember it fondly as a time when we were growing in our relationship. But there was one primary problem with this living space. It was that every once in a while we would wake up and we would turn on a faucet and nothing would happen. Nothing—the thing that was supposed to happen when you turn on a faucet, it didn’t happen. The big problem was that my wife was teaching kindergarten at the time and so she was waking up early in the morning and trying to take a shower before work. And she’d turn it on and nothing would happen. She’d come into the bedroom crying and say, “Jake, we don’t have any water.” And I’d say, “Babe, I don’t know what you want me to do, here’s a wet wipe,” because I was really good at being married at the time. That’s what I learned. So we were just really frustrated with this whole thing. It goes on and off. For about six months we just didn’t know if we would have water. Eventually we had to move out of that space because that was just not the life we wanted to live. What we found out later is that the reason all of this was happening is that the well that was holding our water for when we wanted to use it was leaking. It was leaking out into the ground. So it would sometimes have enough water, and then there would be other times when there wasn’t, so we had very well watered grass but we didn’t have clean dishes. That was the situation that we were in. Now many of you (if not all of you) at some point or another have gone through a season when you had a leaky or cracked spiritual well. There was a season when it was full, in fact it was overflowing. Maybe when you first came to faith, when you first believed in Jesus, it was full to the brim. It was overflowing. You were reading your Bible every day, and you were praying all of the time, and you were so involved in good community.



Then, over time, something happened. You got busy. You got frustrated. Maybe you got bored. So you stopped maintaining the well. You stopped putting anything in there. Then life happened. I think you know what I mean. There was a personal tragedy. Or you were betrayed by a friend. Or you committed a sin that you said that you would never commit and you went to your well to draw out of it all of the lessons that you had learned and all of the truths of God that He had deposited into that well—and there was nothing there. It was dry. So you got frustrated, and you were disappointed, and you even wanted to quit. You wanted to quit. This is why it is so important for us to be intentionally digging our wells deep. To maintain the well and make sure that we are depositing in there because life is going to happen and this is the picture of discipleship. If you have a Bible or a Bible app, I’d love for you to join me in Matthew, chapter 16. Matthew 16 is where we are going to spend most of our time today. If you’re not all that familiar with the Bible then you need to know that Matthew is the first book of the New Testament. It’s the first gospel account. And a gospel account is the biography of Jesus. It shows us what He said, it shows us what He did, and it really shows us His life, death, and resurrection. That’s what Matthew records. By chapter 16 what we’ve seen is the majority of the ministry of Jesus. At this point in Matthew, Jesus is just on fire—like Steph Curry can’t miss a shot on fire. That’s what Jesus is pulling off. See, in chapters 5 through 7 He preaches this sermon called the Sermon on the Mount. It’s probably the most famous sermon ever preached. And it’s just as relevant today as it was when it was preached 2,000 years ago. When we get up here we hope we have a shelf-‐life of maybe a couple of days with our sermons. His lasted 2,000 years. That’s amazing! He gave the lame the ability to walk. He gave the blind the ability to see. He gave the mute the ability to speak. He looked at those people who were tired, and frustrated, and disappointed with life and He promised to give them rest. He said, “These religious laws that are weighing you down, I can relieve you of those burdens.” Everywhere Jesus went massive crowds gathered to hear Him, and see Him, and even to touch Jesus. So the disciples, His followers, are watching all of this unfold in front of their very eyes and they’re coming to some conclusions about what it means to be Team Jesus—what it means to be a disciple. They had come to some conclusions like, “You know what? It’s pretty great. This must mean that I get VIP access to a pain-‐free life and get a front row seat to all of the incredible things that God is doing. Being a disciple of Jesus must be easy, and it must be awesome, and must make me even happier. Then we come to Matthew, chapter 16. And in this whole chapter Jesus knows where the disciples’ heads have been and He spends a lot of time clarifying who He is and why He was here. In verse 24 He’s going to give us His definition of a disciple. So, if we want to be a follower of Jesus this is what it looks like straight from His words. You can follow with me. Chapter 16, verse 24, “Then Jesus told His disciples, ‘If anyone,’” like 100 percent all Christians, “‘If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.’” One more time, it’s so simple but it’s so powerful, “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” Jesus said that this is the life of a disciple. Number one: you’re going to deny yourself. So all of those desires, all of those urges, and all of those ambitions—they no longer rule the day. You will deny



yourself. And then you will go and you will take up a cross. Now, that symbol would not have been lost on the disciples that He was speaking to. The cross was not the sanitized symbol that you and I wear on our jewelry today. It was a method of execution. It was our electric chair or it was a lethal injection. That’s what they heard Jesus say. He said, “Not only will you probably end up on a cross, you’re to seek it out. You’re to intentionally take up your cross.” Then, finally, you will follow the path that Jesus was blazing. And this was the path that was homeless, it was under appreciated, it was schemed against, and eventually it lead to a wrongful conviction and execution. And Jesus says, “If you are going to be My disciples, if you would follow after Me—100 percent of all of My followers will deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow Me.” Now we have to admit that this is kind of an odd recruiting strategy, right? If you’re trying to develop as many disciples as possible, if you’re trying to recruit as big an army of disciples as possible, this is probably not the slogan that you put at the front of your website. That’s just an odd thing to do. And it sounds really odd to us because we live in the 21st century and we have a western mindset and we’ve never been told any of this: deny yourself, take up your cross, following a life that isn’t always easy. See, this is so foreign to us. Think about the slogans that you and I have been sold on the majority of our lives. Think about the slogan of something difficult like the Army. What is promised on the commercials, on all of the information? They say that they will help you: Be All You Can Be. They will help you reach your full potential. That’s what it’s like to be a part of the Army. You will reach your full potential. You will be all that you can be. What about the slogan for Walmart? It says that they will help us: Save money. Live better. That’s all Walmart wants you to do—live a better life and save a ton of money, alright? It’s like win, win—you’re welcome. That’s so generous. I can’t believe they do that. In the 90s there were Gatorade commercials with an incredible jingle, “I want to be, I want to be, I want to be like” who? “Mike!” Right, like if you drink this sugar water with artificial coloring then you can be like the greatest basketball player to ever play the game. Gatorade wants to make you better. Now, in all of those slogans let me ask you a question. Who is the primary beneficiary of those products or those organizations? It’s me. I get to be all that I can be, I get to live better and save money, I get to be like Michael Jordan—this is incredible. All of these people are in it just for me. And after a lifetime of being sold on those slogans, I can come to the conclusion that the ultimate goal in my life is to improve my immediate circumstances at every step. That the point of life is to live the easiest life, to live the best life, is to make my circumstances as easy of a path as possible. And then Jesus comes along and He says, “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Me.” It just sounds so weird to us. So, in the interest of crystal clarity, here’s the definition that is provided for us in Matthew, chapter 16: A disciple is a selfless follower of Jesus. That’s what a disciple is—a selfless follower of Jesus. And it’s so counter-‐cultural to you and me because we’ve grown up in a world that has two very different ideas. Number one is: Self-‐indulgence. Self-‐indulgence says to you and me—do what you want. Do what feels right. Do what feels good in the moment. Don’t worry about what other people say because things can be true for you and not for everyone else. You just do you. Indulge yourself. That’s totally fine.



Our world also tells us the idea of self-‐righteousness. Self-‐righteousness says, “You’re fine. You’re a good person. You’re not as bad as those other people. You don’t need any handouts. You don’t need any help. You can live a good enough life to where God will be forced to love you and let you into heaven. Don’t worry about Him. He doesn’t need to speak into your world. You are self-‐righteous. But according to Jesus and the picture He paints: A disciple is centered on neither self-‐indulgence nor self-‐righteousness but rather self-‐denial. That is so challenging for us. I love the way that Aaron said it last week. He said if the Bible was just about winning converts, it would have made it easy but it didn’t. This is tough, tough stuff. We’ve been trained to live the exact opposite life where it’s all about us. It’s all about improving our immediate circumstances. And then Jesus says things like, “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Me.” Jesus wasn’t speaking figuratively. He was talking about the path that He was blazing. In case you’re not up on this—this is the path that Jesus followed. He gave up His perfect community with God the Father and the Holy Spirit to come live among us. He lived in a very fallen and broken world. He spent His time teaching hard-‐headed and selfish people like you and me and He was eventually crucified for crimes He didn’t commit. He says, “That’s the path I’m going down and I want you to follow Me.” And like all good leaders, Jesus went first. Here’s how Paul describes it in Philippians, chapter 2. He tells us to, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,” watch this, “but emptied Himself,” self-‐denial, “by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form,” here it is again, “He humbled Himself,” self-‐denial, “by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” So Jesus says a disciple is a self-‐less follower of His path. It may not immediately improve our circumstances but that is the call of every single disciple—anyone who is going to follow Jesus, this is the path. And so we have to ask a very simple question, one that I have a feeling is rattling around in a few of our brains. It’s one we may not say out loud but I’ll ask it for you: Why bother? Why in the world would I bother with that kind of life? You see, my world has told me that I can indulge myself so no one is going to blame me if I just live the life that I want. And I’ve been told that I’m a good enough person that I don’t really need this whole religion stuff, and I don’t really need God to tell me what to do, and so why in the world would I live that life? That sounds hard. Well, I’m really glad that you asked that question because Jesus addresses it directly in the next few verses. I have a feeling that He knew what we would think about His statement and so He answers our objection in verses 25 through 27. You can read it with me. Jesus said, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? …” Jesus says this is the why. This is the motivation. This is why you should bother. This is the only life worth living. I know that it sounds counter-‐cultural. I know that it sounds difficult. I know that it’s the exact opposite of what you’ve been told your entire lives but this is the life worth living. He says that if you’re



trying to manufacture your life, if you’re trying to create the perfect life for yourself, you will lose it. You’ll lose it. I know that that’s a hard truth for all of us to hear because there are a lot of people who are hearing these words and you are successful, and you have created this life, you manufactured it, you did it by your own hard work. And you’ve created this life of success. There are others of you who are aiming at success as the ultimate goal of life. There are some of you who had it and then you lost it and you’re trying with everything within your power to get it back. I just need to say, it’s not working. It’s not working. Here’s why I think you know it. Whether you’ll admit it or not, I believe that you know it because here’s the experience. Many times in our lives we convince ourselves that it’s the next thing that is finally going to be the thing. The next thing that I get, the next thing that I accomplish, the next thing that I achieve will be the final thing that I need. If I could get that next promotion, if I could get that next possession, and if I could finally get that affirmation from the person from whom I want it from so badly—then finally that will be the thing that will end my life-‐long search for significance. Then we get it and what happens? Nothing. Nothing. It’s never enough. It never fills the void. It’s never done. There’s always a next thing. So Jesus said, “Man, if you’re trying to manufacture this life so that you think that you won’t need anything, if you’re trying to create this life of success that you’ve seen someone else accomplish—just know that you will lose it. It’s not worth it.” And if you really want to live the life that God has called you to then you will let go and become a self-‐less follower of Jesus. Now there are many other questions than this that rattle around and one primary one is, “Well, if I live a life that is not about me anymore, and if I’m continually giving things away, and if I don’t ever think about myself, then who will take care of me? Who’s going to take care of me? If I continually deny myself, who will take care of me? If I continually serve other people who will serve me? If I’m constantly generous won’t people take advantage of me? If I’m always compassionate, won’t people see me as a push-‐over? If I don’t use my gifts will people ever know how much I have to offer? If I don’t show off my strengths will I ever get invited to influence decisions? If I don’t demand an audience will I ever get a bigger platform? If I don’t show off my maturity will anyone ever consider me for leadership? If I stay behind the scenes will I ever be appreciated? If I don’t get the spotlight how will I be rewarded? What about me? And I believe that Jesus spoke directly to this in Luke chapter 12. You can see His words, “And which of you,” this is Jesus talking to us, “And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith!” In the original Greek Jesus words sound like, “Chill out. Relax.” Are we really under the impression that the Father of the universe, the Father of you and me, the Father who promises to give us good gifts would call us to a life that would leave us empty and not taken care of? Jesus is going to take care of us every single day, just like He has and He promises that He will. So He’s calling us to this life of self-‐less followership.



Now, I believe that there is a primary reason why many of us have yet to embrace this life-‐style. And those of you who have responded to the gospel, some of you have left some of it on the shelf, you haven’t fully embraced the entirety of the truth of the gospel. Here’s what I mean. The gospel says more than I was guilty and now I’m innocent. The gospel says I was dead and now I’m alive. That’s the full picture. Now, it is certainly true that when Jesus died for us on the cross He paid the price for the sin that we could not pay ourselves. We owed a debt that there was no way we were going to cover. Jesus paid for it all and we were guilty and now we are innocent. That is certainly true. But that’s just part of the picture. Not only did He forgive us of our sins but He gave us new life. We were dead: dead in sin, dead in direction, dead in purpose, dead in hope. We had nothing to offer and He gave us new life. And not only did Jesus give us a new lease on life He gave us a new perspective, a new lens through which we see the world. It’s one that teaches us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow His path. So what is a disciple? It is a self-‐less follower of Jesus. And the reason that we should give it up, and we should deny ourselves, and take up our cross and follow Him is because it is the best life. It’s a life that God created us to live. And so, say you’re still in. Say you’re still in. Some of you may have heard this and said, “I’m not ready for this. I don’t think that I want to do that.” That’s cool. You can listen to the rest. But if you are still in, if you want to grow in your faith and dig deep spiritual wells, we’re just going to ask: How? How do I grow? How do I grow? And the beauty of discipleship is that you never graduate. You never graduate. You never finish it like you get the degree and you’re officially done being trained as a disciple. That never happens. In fact, if you are not dead you are not done growing in your faith. That’s just true. If you are dead and you’re here, that’s weird. I’m not quite sure how that happened. But if you’re still alive and you’re hearing these words—you are not done ever, ever, ever. Maybe you’re just getting started. This is all brand new to you. You don’t even know what to do. That’s so great. We are so glad that you are here and we want to help you find your next step. Maybe you’ve been at this for a really long time and you can’t even remember when you started it was so long ago. There is still a next step. All of us have one more thing that we can grow in our faith. We’re going to break it down in a couple of practical ways. The first one is this: We study. We study the word of God. We study the Bible. Now the Bible is God’s revelation of who He is—He revealed Himself to us—and then in light of who God is it teaches us how to live. That’s really what the Bible does. So if you want to get to know God better, you study God’s word. And a few things are going to happen. A few things are going to happen if you choose to study the Bible, or pick it back up, or if you’re in it already. The Bible will always confront us. It just happens all of the time. It will confront us on what we thought was true, it will confront us on the things that someone else has told us, it will confront us on the thing that we are trying to hide from. God’s word is highly convicting. It will confront us all the time. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say this. If all the Bible ever does is affirm what you already thought, you’re doing it wrong. That’s just not the way it works. The Bible does not exist to confirm our previously existing biases. It will expose the dark parts of our heart. It will challenge us to live a better life, all because this is a life worth living. So the Bible will confront us. It will convict us. It will push us. It will challenge us. One thing that we need to make clear is that we need to study the Bible a little differently than we have studied in our education. I don’t know about you. Maybe you were one of those straight A students and



you had a photographic memory, and you retained everything that you’ve ever learned, which is cool for you I guess—super annoying, but congratulations. If you are anything like me, I had this really bad habit of waiting until the last minute, cramming to get enough information to pass a test, and then as soon as I was done with the test I handed it in and completely forgot everything that I just learned. Anybody with me on that? Alright, my people right there. Some of you are still in school, and this is like terrifying. Maybe you shouldn’t do that—find a different way. That’s not really going to work for us as we study the Bible. That’s not really the point because here’s why. We do not study the Bible to pass a test to make God love us. We do not study the Bible to pass a test to get into heaven. We are studying the Bible to get to know God better. So we’re not studying something we’re studying someone and that’s different. We’re developing a relationship with God. See you’ve studied people in your life. You’ve studied them inside and out to get to know them. When you were growing up you studied your parents. You knew what they liked and what they didn’t. You knew what made them mad. You knew what would make them happy and you used that to your advantage, right? That’s part of being a kid. You knew your parents. You know your best friend. You know what they are going to say before they say it. You know your boyfriend, your girlfriend, or your spouse. You study them and you get to know them. And ultimately when we’re studying the Bible that’s what we’re doing. We’re getting to know God better and in light of who He is it teaches us how to live. That’s why we study. Now, with this many people hearing these words there are different types of learning styles present. And what we are asking is that you just be self-‐aware with how you learn best because there are a bunch of different ways to study the Bible. That’s great. God wired you to learn in a specific way. Now, some of you are readers. And you are in luck because the Bible is a book. That worked out very nicely for you. So you can read the Bible. You can read study Bibles. You can read books about the Bible. And if you need a good suggestion on your next book you can go on our website and there’s a reading list there. We would love to equip you with some really good resources to get to know God better. But not everybody is a reader. We know that. And while we’ll always encourage you to read the Bible there are other ways of supplementing your learning. So maybe some of you are auditory learners and you love listening to stuff. Well the beauty of the day and age in which we live is that we have access to far more resources than any generation ever. We have podcasts and websites—all kinds of incredible Bible teachers out there, men and women who can teach the Bible in a relevant way and help us apply it to our lives. If you need recommendations, we’d be happy to provide you a list of some of our favorite teachers. Or maybe you’re more of a visual learner. You like watching something. And you’re in luck because by being a friend of Traders Point you actually have access to this thing called rightnowmedia—rightnowmedia. If you go to this website tpcc.org/rightnowmedia you can get a free account and it’s the Netflix of Bible studies. There are things on there—Bible studies, studies on marriage, studies on friendships, relationships, money—basically anything you want to find. You will not wear this thing out. There are so many awesome resources there and you can watch them and you can get to know God better.



Maybe you’re someone who likes to do things. You’re hands on and that’s how you learn best. That’s cool. That would be more like my wife. I’m a reader and she doesn’t love to read all of the time but she’s figured out a way to where she can be more hands-‐on. She’s a really creative type. When she reads she does this thing called illustrated faith. And the thing is that she’ll learn something about God and she’ll illustrate it on her own. She’ll kind of like draw it out. She’ll draw out the words, and the colors, and the shapes. She’s super creative and it turns into this beautiful art. If I tried that, it would be a pie chart. That’s about as good as it would get. But she is great at it and that’s the way that God speaks to her and the way that she learns. I spent all of this time on this for this reason. You can study God’s word no matter how you learn best. It’s just having the desire. There are so many different ways of learning about God you absolutely have the opportunity to learn more about Him. So the best way for us to dig a spiritual well—first step: Study God’s Word. Next step is this: Prayer. Studying is us getting to know more about God, prayer is us interacting with God. The beauty of the cross is that Jesus saved us from our sins, He gave us a new lease on life, and then He also gave us direct access to God—24-‐7. We can speak directly to God. It’s an incredible privilege. So for me to break down all of prayer in the next couple of minutes would just be impossible. That’s a whole sermon series in itself. I’m just going to give you four marks of a healthy prayer, alright? These are not the only marks. There are so many other things that could be involved. I’m just going to give you four. If you’re looking to get started, these are four to get you off the ground. Number one is this: Adoration. Adoration—what that means is spending enough time telling God how amazing He is. When you read God’s Word, when you hear a sermon, when you’re in a relationship with someone and you hear them say something you say, “God, You’re incredible. This is true about You, these are the promises that You have made.” And when you spend enough time adoring Him, spend enough time worshipping Him it sets your mindset for the rest of the prayer. So adoration is a great place to start. Then we can switch into thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is appropriately recognizing all the things that God has given us. Unfortunately, so many of us operate out of a scarcity mindset to where we are far more aware of what we do not have than what we do. This is us taking time to say, “God, thank You for everything that You have given me. You are a good Father who gives good gifts.” Then we can get to requests. Requests—now, there’s nothing wrong with having requests in our prayer unless that’s the entirety of the prayer. If our prayer looks like, “Hey, God. Here’s my weekly list of things that I need. I’ll check back in next week. Appreciate it,” that’s called a vending machine not a relationship, right? That’s what that is. So what we are doing is we are having a conversation and we’re saying, “God, if this is within Your will, if this is the way that You are leading me, these are the things that I believe that I need, these are the things that the people I love need, this is what I believe the church I love needs. And if You’re leading this way then we want it to come true.” That’s requests. The final piece is this. And it may be the most difficult of them all. It’s: Listen. Listen—in any conversation if only one person is talking that’s called a monologue not a conversation. So are we taking appropriate time to allow God to talk back? Are we taking time for Him to answer some of our questions



with a yes, or a no, or a not right now, or to redirect our lives into a different path. God will speak back to us if we take the time to appropriately listen. It’s a conversation. It’s part of the relationship. So we study to know God better, we pray to interact with God, and finally the last piece—this is where we’ll wrap up today—is through relationships. We believe so, so much that you will grow best in a context of relationship. It was very clear from day one in Genesis that man was not supposed to live alone. God said that wasn’t good so He gave him community. And if we’re not supposed to live alone, we’re probably not to grow alone either. So if you’ve been flying solo on your discipleship, it’s time to get in a relationship. I can speak to this personally because it has taken many men, and women, and friends to speak into my life to shape me into the person that I am today. In fact, this week, off of the top of my head, I wrote down just a bunch of names of people who have helped shape me. It starts with Dale and Lisa. And then there were Ruth, Todd, Chris, Wayne, John, Scott, Mike, Jody, Sean, John, Mike, Sean, Phil, Howard, Jim, Aaron, Neil, John, Petie, and Trudy. That’s 22 people. It took 22 people to make “this”. Imagine then if I was flying solo. It would be a mess. I’ve needed so many people to come along and encourage me, and challenge me, and speak truth into my life. That’s why we do groups around here. We believe that small groups are the best environment for you to grow in your faith. This is a big place and we know it. We want you to connect with a handful of other people who are headed in the same direction as you. I belong to a men’s group. There are three other guys in the group and we meet every single Tuesday. We talk about life, we talk about family, we talk about sports, but most importantly we talk about what God is doing in our lives. We challenge each other. We encourage each other. Those guys are my brothers. I could not do this on my own. There are some of you who are trying to do this solo and you don’t have to. That’s not God’s plan. So we want you to get into community through connected relationships. So a little bit later we’re going to talk about how you can get into a group. Some of you who are listening to this—not only do you need to be in a group but it’s time for you to start leading one. In fact, you need to step up and start leading others in their discipleship because here’s the truth. If you are a disciple this is something that will be true about you. Disciples make disciples. That’s not like the super-‐disciple, that’s not like the advanced level disciple—all disciples at some point or another make other disciples. That’s the call of a disciple. Eventually, when you are ready, you will start leading other people in their discipleship. Now I know all of the reasons that you shouldn’t. I know that you are busy. I know that you don’t have all of the answers. I know that you don’t have the time. I know that your house is a wreck. I know all of those things. I know all of the objections. Let me just tell you a story of my first small group leader as we wrap up today. My first small group that I belonged to, I was a high school freshman, and there was a guy named John. John was a successful attorney in Lexington and his son was one of my friends, he was a freshman as well. So John was tasked with leading a small group of freshman high school boys. There may not be a more difficult demographic in the world than freshmen high school boys.



So John… I’ll never forget the very first time we got together. We were in his basement and he put in this VHS tape. Do you guys remember VHS? It was like a brick with a movie on it, right? You just kind of shoved it in. And it was a documentary of archeological findings and their correlation with Biblical events. Freshman high school boys—it was the worst small group I’ve ever been a part of in my entire life. It was super boring. We all checked out. So John read the room and he realized that it wasn’t working so he backed off of the archeological dig and he just started spending time with us—a ton of time. He encouraged us and he called out gifts in us that we didn’t see in ourselves. And he cast a vision for our lives that we couldn’t see, we couldn’t even comprehend. And about 15 years ago a handful of guys in that group were in full time ministry. The rest of us are involved in our church heavily—all because John was able to spend time with us and point us back to Jesus on a regular basis. He called us out when we were being lazy. He called us out when we were being stupid—but all in the context of love, all in the context of love. You don’t have to have all of the answers. You don’t have to be super cool. You don’t have to have it all together. But disciples make disciples. For those of you who have been consuming for a really long time and you’ve been receiving some really good leadership and some really good teaching and you’ve been the beneficiary of other people leading, it’s time for you to step up. It’s time for you to start making disciples and lead one of our groups. At Traders Point we believe in intentional discipleship and the way that we do that is we dig deep spiritual wells through study, prayer, and relationship. Each time that we’re unrolling one of these values for you is an invitation. We’re inviting you to get involved and come along with us in this mission that Jesus has called us to. Let me pray for you. Father, we are so grateful for this opportunity to be disciples. We know that the call is not easy, we know it’s counter-‐cultural, we know it’s unfamiliar to us, we know that the path may not be all that simple but because You’ve called us to it and we trust You, we will follow You. Stretch us, challenge us, push us to be the people who You created us to be. It is in Your Great Name I pray. Amen.