Building for the Future | The Time is Now

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Join us as Gabe Kolstad brings us a message about Building for the Future. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, happy Memorial Day weekend, you guys. I hope you're doing well. And I'm really excited to be here with you. I was just uh actually right before this, I was just standing, uh kind of staring off into space out the window over in in our lobby, and just kind of I just saw the treetops and I saw the houses, and I was thinking about how grateful I am to be here with you, and I was aware of the fact that we're in a community full of people who may or may not have a connection to their creator. And I was aware that there's gonna be some people out there today that just need a touch from God, you know? We all do too, right? But we're not the only ones. And uh it just makes me so aware of the fact that God has placed us in this community for a really good reason. And he's doing work here, and we want to join him. And I want to welcome all of you who are here in person and online. And I believe that God's work is meant to do two things. I believe it's meant to work in us, and everybody here needs that today. No matter what your week has been like, or month has been like or year has been like, we all need God to work inside of us today, but we also get the thrill of seeing God work through us, and that's what we're gonna be talking about today. So grab those message notes out if you haven't already done that. I have uh a little quick story to tell you about a Google tour that I got to do. Anybody have been to the Google headquarters before? Anybody in here been to the Google headquarters? I've been one time. It was a crazy opportunity. I was going to California, had a friend who lived in San Jose, and he knew I was coming. He said, Hey, I could get you into Google if you wanted to tour the whole Google complex. And I was like, No, that doesn't sound interesting at all. I just not, you know, I'm just kidding. I was like, What? Yes, I want to go to Google. Yeah. And so he tours us through the whole thing with his friend that worked there. We saw all the buildings, we saw all the cafeterias. You wouldn't believe how many cafeterias they had at the Google Plex. It was so crazy. They had sand volleyball pits everywhere. There was a haircutting bus there, there was an oil change station for employees to get their oil changed in their cars while they were at work. They had Google School for the kids. I'm not even kidding. All this is true. And uh we I was just like, wow, how we we go through the one of the cafeterias and they said this is where the founders have their QA sessions with the employees, and they talk about how the company was founded and you know how what the values are and all that. And as they were describing that, I was starting to get a picture of how this company came together. You know, it starts real small, it's the dream of a couple people, and then they start gathering people and they have a plan and they start working it out and and on and on and on. And it becomes Google, right? And now we all do it all the time. And and Google got so embedded in our culture that it's now a verb. I mean, at first it was the name of a company, now it's a verb. Just Google it, right? It's it's like when when that happens, you know, I mean, that something has really happened. And so you you look at that and you're like, well, how does a company like that come to be? And what you realize is it was the it was the sweat, blood, and tears of many, many, many people that made something like that happen. And the same is true for us today. We stand in a time and a space that is blessed, so, so blessed. Blessed by the sacrifice of people who've gone before us. And on Memorial Day weekend, we should make sure that we pause many times and thank God for the gift of freedom that we have in our country because of the lives that were given to make that possible. Melissa sent me an Instagram reel. We always do that. Did anybody else send their spouse a bunch of Instagrams? You know, they're like, oh, check this out, you know, and we send all these stupid things. She sent me one, and I when I saw that she had sent me one, I always guess, I wonder what this is about. Is this about travel? That's her favorite thing. Is this about food? We love to eat good new food all the time. You know, what is this? A puppy one, what is this? And uh it ends up, I open it up, and you know what it was? It was this, it was just a uh a little video or a picture, I can't remember if it was a picture or a video, of just these boots. Just vacant boots, just so many boots, empty with little flags, you know, and and it was the boots of soldiers who had given their lives for our freedom. And it just caught me, you know, that image, whoa. And it was just this vast, this vast, endless amount of boots. It just reminds me that we're we're standing on someone else's shoulders, and that's true of our freedom nationally and politically and religiously, it's true, and it's also very, very much true of the movement that God is is working in the world right now. I think think about this for a second. If if you are here today, you're here because you have a spiritual interest. If you're online with us today, you're here because there's something that you're you're interested in. You want to know more about God, or you know about God and you want to grow in your faith, or you have a question and you hope you can find the answer, or you just need some community because life has gotten really hard and you really feel like you can't make it on your own. But what we know is that somebody planted seeds for you to be in this time in this space. That it it's it was the prayer of your grandparents, maybe. It was somebody who reached out to you as a kid, it was maybe the neighbor that invited you. I mean, there's there's people, right, who who we have to thank for the legacy that we are experiencing, and uh we're standing on someone else's sacrifice. I got a packet, I got this packet years ago and totally forgot about it. It's from a guy named Dennis Fessenden. Dennis Fessenden was uh on on staff at the college where Melissa and I graduated from, Multnomah Bible College in Portland, and he worked there, and I knew of him, but I didn't know that Dennis was the original pastor of this church that started in 1967. And you've heard all the stories. If you've been here for a while, you know Pastor Ken, you know that he came in 1975. Well, this church had been around for eight years before that. Dennis was the original pastor. And I forgot all about this. I stuck it in a drawer and I pulled it out this week because I was thinking about what's going on at our church, and it says, several years ago, my wife and I visited you. I was the first pastor at what was then called Aloha Park Baptist Church. It is this little church. In fact, um, I have the original brochure that they printed so that they could hand out to the community, and it has the information about the church in it. And in fact, I've got some pictures that came on a thumb drive in this packet that I had not looked at until yesterday or the day before yesterday, that even Pastor Ken has still not seen. And so I want you to see these, okay? He's gonna be here at one of our services. This is the original, this is the first building, okay? That's right over here, and it's now our kids' building. But this is the field, I mean, that was the first, look at this, the roof. They're just putting it together. I got I got a picture of some people eating. I mean, check this out. This is like the OG potluck inside the church. I think there's some green beans or something there. But if you're familiar with our kids' building, if you're a parent for one of our kids' ministry uh volunteers, let's go back up one picture. The that picture is in Club 45 space right now. So our fourth and fifth graders are meeting in that little space right there. Next picture is the kids' ministry, and it was Thanksgiving, I think, because they had, you know, the fun things on. But that was 1970 that that picture was taken. And uh interestingly, as I was showing these pictures last night, one of our band members, John, he said, he goes, Hey, he goes, remember, my family was here at this church at that time. John is, he plays keys. You'll see him up here in a little bit. And he goes, in fact, I think I might have seen my dad in one of those pictures. He said, Can I borrow the thumb drive? So he borrowed this thumb drive and he he took it home and he found a picture of his dad on the pictures that are in this thumb drive. And, you know, the legacy that we have is just amazing. That somebody would plant seeds, that somebody else would water, that would grow, that would lead to you and me sitting here today being in a season of really uh thankfulness and gratitude because what we've seen, I was looking yesterday at a chart of our church's growth since January of 2021. And COVID, you know, wiped out all the churches, and we started over. And um, I remember our very first actual in-person service being 16 people, and we were so grateful. We were crying, we were weeping, and just like, oh, we get to be back together after nine months. And then and then I see this chart yesterday and just keeps doing this. And so we realize we're in a season of growth, and that, you know, if you were here around Easter, you realize it was pandemonium, seven services, and now we're at a space where we can't keep up the growth rate that we've experienced without finding more space. And so you know that we're in a season of uh seeking the Lord and of uh believing Him for what's next, and we'll talk more about that today. But as you think about like, you know, we are standing on someone else's shoulders, I want you to remember that the world, listen to this, the world is really good at isolating us.

unknown 9:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Really, really good. If you're going through a struggle, the world is like, yes, the enemy uh looks at that and goes, yes, let's get you all by yourself. Let's get you to the point where you're so discouraged that you want to quit. Let's make sure you think you're the only one who's ever gone through this thing before and that no one would understand, so it's not even worth mentioning it to anybody because they'll just isolate you even more. So just shh, just back into a corner and quit. That's the actual agenda of the enemy for your life. But God has a totally different agenda. He wants you to be a vital part of a living community, not an isolated spiritual freelancer. I mean, God's bringing us in, and we're gonna talk about what that looks like and feels like today. And first, I want you to hear about King David from the Old Testament. We're gonna look at some passages of scripture today. I'm gonna explain what they mean. I want you to take some notes. I want us to learn together, to grow together. But David, King David, uh, you might know this, was a shepherd, and he was young and he was overlooked, and God chose him, and the prophet Samuel anointed him as the next king of Israel. And David started out pretty strong, really a heart after God. But very quickly, here's what his arc of his life looked like. It went to pride and self-sufficiency pretty quickly. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, they say. David caught that bug and he made some big mistakes based on pride and self-sufficiency, and he ended up in a place of brokenness because he had done two major problems, two major sins. One was he slept with Bathsheba, his uh not his wife, and he committed adultery and then murdered her husband to cover it up. That was the first thing he did. And then he also um he also took a census of the of the military of Israel. And God had told him, don't do that, don't do that, because what that's gonna lead to is you going like, look at us, look at us, go, we're better than them, we're better than them, we're better than them, we're bigger than them, we were stronger than them, look at us. And he goes, You're gonna forget that I'm your strength. So don't take a census. And what did David do? He took a census. He's like, Well, I know I just want to know. I just want to how strong we are. So he takes this census and God judges them greatly. 70,000 people were killed in the consequential plague that came from that. 70,000 people died because of David's mistake. Can you imagine the guilt from that? He repents, he's broken, and he comes back to a place of worship. What happened was he met God in God's mercy in this place that was a field. And uh I'm gonna talk about that field in a little bit. That field has great, great significance where David discovered God's mercy, but he began to prepare for the next generation as he realizes we are being called back into worship, and I'm gonna lead this nation back to worship. That's exactly what he did. And I want you to see how we build based on what we learn from David. So, number one in your notes is we build for the children. I want you to see this. We build for the children. As a church, we're being invited to move locations, to move half a mile or so down the street, to double our capacity as God continues to grow His work in the Portland area and around the world. And remarkable things are happening. I mean, every week we're seeing brand new people just come in all at all of our services. We always see every weekend people are coming to faith in Christ, raising their hand, going, I just said yes to Jesus, give me my Bible. Love it. It's a fantastic. And so now we're being invited to move. And uh we we uh we want to be sure we understand. This is we have to understand, we build not for us, we build for the children. We have to understand, and that's how it even was in David's time. And it's a surreal moment of handoff, you know. Like if there's a parent in the room, you know that if you ever catch your kids doing something good that they learned from you, um, it's it's it's this like rewarding time. You look at your kids and you're like, oh, they did it. Like on their own, you know? And then if they put their spin on it, it's even better. Like, oh, and they made it their own. Oh, and they owned it, you know, that's so good. I mean, there's too many times that we catch our children doing things that we don't want them to copy, right? And that's that's terrifying. But when they do one of the good things and you're like, whoa, this surreal moment of handoff to go, oh wow, you you you have a work ethic. Oh wow, you made a good choice in a hard situation, you know. Oh wow, this is just like the ultimate reward as a parent. And that's why we build for the children. I want you to see in 1 Chronicles chapter 28, this is the account of really the building of the temple, the preparation for the temple. And uh David, you might know, was told by God, you will not build the temple, your son Solomon will build the temple. So he tells Solomon this in 1 Chronicles 28, 8. David says, So now, with God as our witness, and in the sight of all Israel, the Lord's assembly, I give you this charge. He says to Solomon, Be careful to obey all the commands of the Lord your God, so that you may continue to possess this good land, and look what it says, and leave it to your children as a permanent inheritance. David's going to Solomon like, hey, I wanted to build the temple for God, because you know what? God met me in the moment of my brokenness in the field of Arana. That's where the the mercy moment happened for David after this big plague and all this, and David repents and he's in this field, and God meets him and he realizes he's been forgiven and brought back into a place of worship, in the field of Arana, and he goes, God, I want to build your temple. And I think it should be right here in this place of mercy. So he goes to buy the field, because that's where that mercy moment happened, and he realized that whenever we do this collective worship thing, we are in a moment of mercy. And David said, I want that to be where that happened, I want that to be the place where the temple gets built. So he goes to buy the field from this guy, Arana. And he's like, I'll I'm gonna pay you this much for it. And Arana goes, Oh, no, no, no, if it's for the temple, if it's for the temple, if it's for God, it'll be for free. And David looks at Arana and he says, Oh, don't you dare. Don't you dare take my sacrifice from me. He said, I will not offer anything that costs me nothing. He understood that he was about to set up a chain reaction, a generational shift that was gonna become something that his son Solomon owned, that he was gonna say to Solomon, and your children and their children and their children, this is to pass on. This moment of mercy, this place of grace is to be possessed. He says, possess this good land and leave it to your children as a permanent inheritance. We build for the children. We build for the children. That's what we're doing, okay? So this space that we're looking at, it's a half mile down the street. Now you know, I want you to grab something for me. I put on your seat this uh commitment card. So on your seat is this commitment. Would you just take this out right now? And I know for some of you who've been around all month, you're like, good night. How many times are you gonna talk about this? This is like you've done this every time, you know, and I know it's true because I want to make sure we all we all get an opportunity. So this is a commitment card. Next Sunday is commitment Sunday. You wanna say that out loud with me? Next Sunday is commitment Sunday. We're gonna bring these back next Sunday, and we're gonna say, hey, as as God leads me, and I'm talking about people who are Westsiders, I'm not strong arming anybody into this, okay, but we're excited about this. So we're gonna come back and we're gonna say, this is how God's led me, over and above my normal giving, you know, uh a gift out of stored assets, my monthly gift, and my total commitment. And here, here's what we're doing as a church. And um, it's gonna be exciting. But what I want you to think about is why are we doing this? Who are we doing this for? And so flip this over, would you? On the back, what's on the back? Anybody see what's on the back of this? Nothing. Because you haven't put it there yet. So I'm gonna ask you right now to put some names down. Who do you know? Who's a kid in your life that needs some influence for Jesus? Who's a kid that you hope carries the torch forward? Who's a kid that you hope imitates your spiritual passion? Who's your child or your niece or your nephew? I'll tell you what, I was uh this week blown away by what's going on. I got to go on Friday to Aloha High School and I got to be part of this thing called the community partners meeting. It was so much fun. Joel and Julia set this up for the community, and they're inviting community partners in, and we got invited in, and I was sitting there in the library in this big circle, and it was a couple staff and faculty, and it was a couple community members, and then there were some students there. I was so impressed with the students. I wasn't impressed with anybody else. I was impressed with the students. The students, oh my goodness. Owen and Dean particularly, they stepped up and they were like, here's what's going on in the in the Aloha Student Action Council, and here's what's going on in the resource center that we're running, and that we're talking about students sitting there telling. And so Joel and Julia, the people leading this meeting, people would ask them questions and they would just sit there and then they would just turn and look at Owen and Dean, the students, for the answer. And I was thinking to myself, that is so good. That is so good. To put the steering wheel of the the health and welfare of our community in the hands of the students is so good. And they are killing it. And I'm so excited. I want to continue to put the steering wheel of the welfare of our community in the hands of the students and the kids because they're gonna own it then, right? And they are owning it, and it's beautiful. We built for the children. This is this is by the way, this is this whole thing that we're doing as a church is not about a transaction. It's about an inheritance. The question that I keep asking myself is what will we leave to our children? To the children, to the next generation? What are we gonna leave? What's the spiritual legacy that we're gonna leave? I mean, I'm looking at these pictures of this this space, right? Going, wow, man, these people sacrificed and they and they built and they gave and they served and they shared their faith and they made good decisions. And here we are. Pastor Ken comes in 1975, and at that point, honestly, the church was eight years old and a little broken. 50 people divided in debt, no money in the bank. Some reason Pastor Ken and his wife Karen felt the call to come here, and they were looking in the windows of that building over there, and he tells me, he's told me the story. He goes, We were we were looking in the windows like this, and he said, We just felt it. We're like, This is the place. This is the place. And I'm I look back and I wonder, what was it about the place? Was it the fact that there was no money? Was it the fact that the church was divided? Was it the fact that it was in like nowhere, like in this farming community? What was the thing that was like, and he's like, No, God did it, God brought us in, and and so we we were like, Yes, and I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful that somebody would do that. But they did it for the next generation. Second thing in your notes, we build with devotion, okay? We build for the children, we build with devotion. Devotion was one of David's key strengths. I mean, wow. David, by the way, was one of the worst mess ups of the Bible. I mean, really big mess-ups. I already told you the the two bigs that he did. And those weren't the only things that he did. But when he learned a lesson, he learned a lesson. And by the way, this should teach you and me because he's also then called the man after God's own heart. And he writes the book of Psalms, and God blesses his his kingdom and his life and his work so much. And I think we should learn something, which is this is that your past does not predict your future. That you might be here and you might be like, I have too much of a past for God to use me, and that could not be further from the truth. So, David, he leads with devotion. We build with devotion. First Chronicles chapter 29, verses 2 and 3, it says this. It says, Using every resource at my command, I've gathered as much as I could for building the temple of my God, and now there's enough gold, silver, bronze, iron, and wood, as well as great quantities of onyx, other precious stones, costly jewels, and all kinds of stone and marble. And then he says, And now, because of my devotion to the temple of God, I'm giving all of my own private treasures of gold and silver to help in the construction. Wow. David He goes, I believe in this. But that's not all. I'm going to invest in this. And that's not all. I'm gonna give it all. I'm gonna give it all. He gives all of his own gold and silver. I mean, when he believed in something, he devoted himself to it. And that's how we want to build it. That's how we want to do what we're doing. Going to do. That's how we're doing what we're doing. Is with devotion to go, God, it's my whole heart. I want you to have my whole heart. And I know that that's what He wants, and I know that that's what that's actually what we want to do. I mean, David gave, listen, publicly, personally, sacrificially, voluntarily. And that's the same call for you and me. That we that we say, Lord, what do you want to do through me, in me, first, through me, for the children, with devotion, that we might see you continue to do your work here in this community and through our families. We build for the children, we build with devotion. Three in your notes is this we build on Jesus. So important. We build on Jesus. I'm walking you through this today because in times of transition, in times of opportunity, it's very easy to get sidetracked. It's very easy for a church to get sidetracked. It's very easy for a growth group to get sidetracked. It's very easy for us to maybe get excited about something that is good, but it's not lasting. And what we know is that that we're not in this for a building. We're not in this for a number. We are in this for Jesus. We're building on Jesus. That Jesus needs to be the star of the show, the star, star, star of the show. I mean, in 20 years, Lord willing, we make this transition. Lord willing, this is what we do. And we go and we and we and we realize bigger capacity. And somebody's gonna come in 20 years and they're gonna look back at the pictures, and they're gonna be like, oh my gosh, look at them eating, you know, green beans, you know, they're gonna be doing that. You and me are gonna be there, and they'll be like, wow, those old people really did that, didn't they? You know? And and and so 20 years from now, and they're gonna ask a question, they're gonna say, Why'd they do it? Why did they do it? Was it, you know, because there was no money in the bank? Was they know like what was that? Why did they do it? And here's what I think I want us to say. It was this, because Jesus was moving and we were making room. Jesus was moving and we were making room because we knew, we saw, we felt, we experienced it. And we devoted ourselves to it. But we built on the foundation of Jesus. It says in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, I'm gonna fast forward to the New Testament with you for a minute. 1 Corinthians chapter 3, verses uh 9 through 11. I love this passage. It says, for we are both God's workers, and you are God's field. Paul, the apostle, said, I'm a worker, you're a worker in God's kingdom. Again, we want God to work in us, we want God to work through us. He said, I'm a worker, you're a worker. And he said, and you are God's field, you are God's building. I mean, God looks at this whole thing and the building isn't the building. You're the building. He goes, I'm building you. I mean, I'm building you. He said, Paul says, Because of God's grace to me, I've laid the foundation like an expert builder. Now others are building on it, but whoever's building on this foundation must be very careful, for no one can lay any foundation other than one we already have, Jesus Christ. Uh as I mentioned, in times of transition and times of opportunity, it's very easy to get sidetracked. And here's the worst sidetrack we could possibly have. If we ever get our eyes off Jesus, if we ever get our eyes on lists of things people should do, or the way you should dress when you show up to worship the Lord, or um, or or a building. And like, oh, ooh, wow. Like, don't be enamored by anything. Don't be enamored by a dollar figure, don't be enamored by a number of people, don't be enamored by a space or a design or a color of paint, or for crying out loud, the carpet that we pick. Let's be enamored by Jesus, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, who's the one that's doing the work and we're joining him, right? And that's the beautiful thing. I have something here that my friends Dave and Shelley made. They're here today, and they made me this right here, and it says, What's your next move? I know you've never seen this kind of thing before. Like with this question, and then these this little diagram is three mountains, Jesus community mission. I know you've never seen this before, but um, just kidding, if you're brand new, we say this all the time. And uh they I we I said it so much that people started making me stuff to said it, you know what I mean? And uh, but this sits in my wall in my office, and I love it because you know what I love about this? It starts with Jesus. He is our beginning. We we we we first move into a relationship with Jesus. That's the first move. Then we move into the community of Jesus. Then we go on the mission of Jesus. It is Jesus all the way, it is Jesus only, it is Jesus always, it is Jesus above everything. It is Jesus as the star of the show, as the only reason we do anything that we do, and we may never lose. I'll be honest with you, we um we've got a board of directors here, and a number of years ago we rewrote our bylaws as a church. And one of the things that we did was we uh made sure that we preserved in there our faith statement, like what we believe as a church. And we did that because um we wanted to make it very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very difficult for us ever to move away from a biblical perspective as a church. Uh, that it would be so hard for future generations to un undo a commitment to the Bible and to Jesus, uh, that it would it would just not be worth the the trouble, that it would never happen because we we've built on a foundation and we don't want that to change. And I'm very excited about that. I'm very excited that that's gonna stay in place, that we build on the foundation of Jesus and may that never change. Fourth in your notes. We build in anticipation. This is my favorite part here. We build in anticipation. Like on the edge of our seats, just waiting. Knowing, expecting, fully expecting something. That we know something is changing as we participate with God. And the thing that I I want to ask is this question is what are we becoming? What are we becoming? Is what's the change God is making inside of us? One of the beautiful things that's been happening is, and we've been talking about, is we will see outcomes to the season that we're in. One of those outcomes we believe is going to be our church moving very short distance to a larger space so that we can continue to make more room, to reach more people, to do more service in the community, to host more people, to serve the city, you know, to reach the students, to reach the kids, all that stuff. Well, that's one of the outcomes, but one of the other outcomes, and I think the more important one, is how our spirits are developing and our faith is growing. And I've been hearing people come to me, and as they've been processing, even this morning, several people come to me going, like, here's what God's doing, here's what God's do you saw that video with Travis and Trish. You know, it's like God is working in us and we're and we're and we're releasing to him. And as we release to him, he's building us and growing us. And that's such a big, beautiful part of why we're doing what we're doing as a church. What are we becoming? Every day I wake up and I journal. I'm a big journaler, I love it. I'm just an introvert nerd, and I like writing, and so I just get these journals out and and I write these answers. And one of the questions I ask myself in the morning is this if one word could describe the kind of person I want to be today, that word would be this. And the reason is this. One word could describe the kind of person I want to be today, that word is this, and the reason is this. And my answer changes from day to day. It's it's kind of this pool of words that I really gravitate toward. But I'm kind of curious, if you would take your card right here, the one that you wrote those kids' names on. In fact, I'm gonna write, I'm gonna write, I got I dropped my pen. I'm writing my my soon coming grandson's name on here. Wesley. October 12th. I can't wait. Caleb and Maria. Um I want to know what's the word for you. What's the word? One word in anticipation of what? I want to be stronger. You know, I want to be faithful. What's one word that you wish if other people could look at you and go, oh passionate, loving, helpful, kind. You know, what's the word? That anticipation is why we build. Because we're looking at the kids and we're looking at the students and we're looking at the families, and we're going, oh God, do it all in all of us. That's the real work. We're building in anticipation of lives being changed. And I think that's so important for us to realize that that is the real work. Ephesians chapter 4, Paul the Apostle, he's talking about building. And he says this he says, Then we'll no longer be immature, like children. We won't be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Man, do we need that kind of change today, right? Instead, we'll speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. And here's the kicker, okay? Listen to this. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. As each part does its own special work, there's a part that we have to play for that to be true. And I and I in anticipation of what would that look like? What would it look like if the whole body, that's how Jesus describes his church, the whole body was healthy and growing and full of love. What would that be like? It'd be like heaven on earth, wouldn't it? And you know what he's talking about? Not just individual churches. He's not, he's he didn't say in here, and and and as it grows to the that Westside Community Church in Aloha, Oregon would be healthy and growing and full of love. He says, the whole body. He's talking about the whole world, every church, every believer. It's like we're all one, and he's going, I want the whole body to be healthy and growing and full of love. And I started asking myself a question this week as I was imagining this. I was trying to imagine, wow, what would it be like if the whole body was healthy and growing and full of love? Woo! Imagine a church with no division. Imagine, imagine this. Imagine people so devoted that when they saw a need, they sold their stuff and they met that need. That's what the early church was doing. And and they and they and it, you know, the city of Jerusalem was turned upside down, the world was turned upside down. Did you know that if the whole body was healthy and growing and full of love, there would literally be no needs in our community? What would that be like? What would it be like to live in a place where there were no needs because the body was so responsive because we saw it and we solved it. We loved like that. That's the anticipation that we live in, is that we see God working like He really wants to. Got a picture this week of a coral reef, and it just spoke to me. Coral reef. It's like this beautiful ecosystem that feeds on itself. You know? And it's at once a work of art and a work of life. And it's a life-giving, life-echoing, beautiful place. And I think that's a great picture of what the church is supposed to be. Maybe you're brand new to this whole thing, and you're like, I don't even know what a church really is. I hope that's your image you walk away with. I think that's what God's trying to build. And I hope you want to be a part of something like that. Because you know, when you connect with something like that, it makes you stronger. It makes you grow. It makes you more full of joy, it gives you more purpose in life. It makes you realize you're not alone. And that's the anticipation that we live with. We are, by the way, here's what we're up to. We're preparing a home where future generations can become strong in Christ instead of being swept away by confusion. But I want to end with this. There's a moment in every story where inspiration has to turn into participation. And that's this moment right now. The time is now. Time is now for us to go. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna decide how I'm gonna be involved in what God is doing through our church. And so that's my request for all of us is may we consider that next week I'm gonna ask everybody to come back and to be ready to make our commitments. And what will that look like for you? And listen, it's between you and the Lord. This is not about money, this is not about amounts, this is not about comparison, this is about a journey that we're going on and participating with what God is doing. And so my prayer is that each one of us would have that opportunity to grow in our faith by walking with the Lord through this. And it's our time to build. I mean, there's there, it's it's that moment in history. So I want you to bow your heads with me right now because I think the Lord wants to use you and me in a very, very special way. Lord, we thank you. Thank you for being the God that knows us and loves us and made us for a purpose and a reason that God, you you crafted this moment in history, Lord. You brought us to a place where our gifts make a difference together. You brought us to a place where we have relationships with people in the community and they're hungry for you, and our city is alive with this spiritual curiosity and movement toward Jesus, and we just want to respond, want to be available for it. It's so exciting. Lord, we pray right now for our neighbors around us that we can only imagine right now, many of them wanting to know more about you, many of them needing a friend in their life, many of them having questions that they just don't know where to get the answer for. And we just pray that today they would see Jesus as the solution. And Lord, I pray for those who are here today. Maybe you're a place, you're at a place right now where you're ready for Jesus to come into your life and make a difference for you. And if that's where you're at, I never want to close one of our services without giving you a chance to make that contact with your creator, to know in your heart that you are loved, that he has forgiven you, that you are his child. And so, right where you're at, I want to invite you to echo back this prayer to God in your mind and your heart. You can tell him, Jesus, I give you my life. Thank you for saving me. I believe in you, your life, your death on the cross, and your resurrection. Forgive me of my sins. Fill me with your spirit, lead me, and teach me to follow you. And I ask it in Jesus' name.