And when Peter had come down out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. But when he saw that the wind was boisterous, he was afraid. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times.”
You have been born again because your life did not come from something that dies. It’s from something that cannot die.
All right. Turn in the bible to—your bible, or a bible that you’ve stolen or borrowed, to 1 Peter Chapter 4; 1 Peter Chapter 4. And we’re going to continue walking through this very important book in the New Testament, and the title of the talk this morning is 'Pray, Love, Eat'. I think there was a movie or a book with a similar, I don’t know. I didn’t see it. But Pam saw it, but 'Pray, Love and Eat'.
Now, the reason I titled it this is because Peter is beginning to talk about the church. He’s beginning to talk to a group of people who are going to read this letter and he’s—remember the church is very young at this point. Maybe 30 years old at best; 25 to 30 years, these people have been meeting together, but it’s the very first church. There’s a lot of problems, a lot of young believers are in this group, and Peter begins to say, listen, I want to tell you today what’s really important. What’s really important that we get down deep in our soul. And in this morning, New Life, I don’t want to overdramatize this, but I really think that this morning is going to sound simple. But what I’m about to tell you is extremely important for us to get. I believe that we need to get this deep in our soul today.
Now, I've never had an ambition to lead a big church, and I can sincerely, honestly, say that I’ve never had a dream or an ambition to lead a big church. I never once grew up, growing up with my friends or with all my family, I never said, “Hey, one day I want to lead a big church”. I never have. Honestly. In fact, for most of the years that I’ve been a pastor, I’ve been trying to talk to God out of it, of me being a pastor. I tried to argue with God. But God put me in this position and I said,” Lord, I don’t care how big New Life ever becomes.” I really don’t. I don’t care. It’s God’s business. God builds the church. God grows the church. I don’t have any desire to see it grow or whatever, it doesn’t matter to me. But what I do have a desire is for us to be a family.
I’m so tired of church being an event that we attend, and not a family that we belong to. I don’t want Sunday morning to be some event that’s on our calendar, although I’m fine if you put it in your calendar. I don’t want New Life Church to be some event-driven place that we just show up, and go through the motion, and sit in a chair. I have no—I will get so frustrated with that if that’s what we are. I do want us to be a family. Families take time. Families take time to blend, and become, and love, and I know that. But my ambition for New Life Church is for us to be a big messy family. And I don’t apologize and I know the word “mega church”—I don’t know if that’s one word or two words—but that phrase “mega church” has—you know, when you say that to people, what most people think is some monolithic corporate entity, some big thing, big events, big buildings, whatever you might think, I don’t apologize for being big. It’s almost like a family that has six kids as opposed to a family that has two. The family that has six kids shouldn’t have to always apologize for driving a 15-passenger van and not a minivan. You know what I’m talking about? So they have six kids. So they’re a big family. That’s great. We have two kids. I don’t apologize for having two. You shouldn’t apologize for having two. You shouldn’t apologize for having eight. You take whatever God gives you. He’s the one that fills our query, right?
So I don’t apologize for being a big church, but I will apologize to people for being an unfriendly church. I do that. If I find out that we’re not being friendly, warm, and welcoming, that’s a problem with me. The size of the church doesn’t matter. The friendliness of the church, the warmth of the church, the hospitality of the church, that’s something that bothers me. And I do think you’re hospitable, and I think you’re friendly, so today is not a rebuke and it’s not—I’m not trying to tell you that you’re not. But can I tell you the difference between the Bible belt where I grew up in Colorado? Can I tell you what my observations are now in three years? Here’s the difference from where I grew up, and let me just say this, I am from the Deep South. I was raised in Louisiana, and Louisiana’s on the bottom of all the good list, and at the top of all the bad list. They really are. That’s the way I grew up. But with all of its weaknesses, there’s some strength about the Deep South where I grew up. And one of the strengths that is there is the friendliness of people. Yet, if you’ve ever spent any time in Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, where they talk normal, this is [laughter] they’re friendly.
How many of you are from the Deep South? I’m telling you, there’s a friendliness about the people. There’s a warmth and a welcoming about the people in the Deep South. So when I came to Colorado, I had never pastored or lived in a place outside the Bible belt, the Deep South. And what I found about Colorado—I’m not trying to offend you. I was trying to tell you this is my observation, all right—Coloradans are a friendly people; extremely friendly people. Let me give you an example. Last year I was out of town and Pam was driving through our neighborhood after a snowstorm, and she got stuck in a drift. In about 60 seconds, seven of our neighbors were out there digging her out of that snowdrift. Pam never had to get out of the car. I mean, they were the friendliest group of people—we don’t know where they came from. That’s the point about Colorado. We haven’t seen them since.
So while Coloradans are extremely friendly and willing to help, they just don’t want to be bothered unless there is a need. But if there is a need, they are the—right on, they are the hardest working, friendliest group of people I’ve ever met. There is a reason, though, we live out here in the Wild West. We want some space. Is that right?
All right, so let’s just be aware of this cultural thing out here in the west. We are friendly people, we’re willing to work hard, we are willing to help our neighbor, our friend, if we see a need. But there is also an inherent weakness about people that live out in the Wild West. We want to be left alone, we want our privacy. It just so happens that’s not the kingdom of God. And while that may seem noble and good out here in the Wild West, that’s not what the bible commands us to do.
And so I’m going to challenge you, Coloradans, to learn from some of us Southern boys about being warm and friendly all of the time. Now, is that okay if I talk like that today? Can I challenge you? Can I challenge the culture? By the way, the gospel—and I don’t apologize for this—the gospel is always countercultural. It’s countercultural. The gospel itself, the message of the gospel will cause you to be uncomfortable. It will cause you—it will challenge your deep core belief system that you grew up believing. So let’s take a look at this in 1 Peter Chapter 4:7 “The end of all things is near”. What a way to start off a passage. The end of all things is near. Now, what do you think Peter meant by that? I think there was two meanings that Peter was trying to communicate. Number one, there was a feeling in the early church that Jesus could reappear, come back at any moment. At any moment, that Jesus would come back. So they—and every generation has had that feeling. Remember back in the 60s when the Bay of Pigs happened with Kennedy and the Soviets, everybody thought well Jesus is coming back. Back in the 40s when Israel became a state, they said Jesus is coming back. Back in the great depression when the world economy tanked, people said Jesus is coming back. Every 20 years there's something that happens in our generation that causes us to say the end of all things is near. Right now with world events happening based on prophesies being fulfilled around us, there’s a feeling that I have that we very well could be the terminal generation, that we could be the last group of Christ followers on the earth before the return of Christ, that we could literally be the anchor leg, the last leg, of this glorious race that’s been running for thousands of years. I do have that feeling. So Peter is saying that.
But Peter is also saying, I think he had an awareness that his own life was coming to an end. Remember, Paul at this point—Paul had already been murdered when Peter wrote this letter. In fact, Paul had been dead for two years. And disciples were being martyred, believers were being sent to prison. People were losing their lives for the sake of Christ. And at this time as Peter wrote this letter, he was by far the most prominent church leader left on the earth. And I think he just knew, the end of all things is near for me personally. And sure enough, in a matter of a couple of years, he lost his life. He was murdered himself. Therefore he said—verse seven, “Therefore, be clear-minded and self controlled so that you can pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins”—so do un-tucked shirts, by the way. I’m so grateful for the fashion trend that we’re in right now because it covers a multitude of sins. All right, keep going—verse nine, “Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling”. In other words, why are you bothering me? What do you need? Those kind of phrases that come out of us, those kind of thoughts that we have. Verse 10, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” Listen to what he says, “the end of all things is near”. This is not a call to buy stuff like rice and bottled water and put it in your basement. This is not an apocalyptic declaration that causes us—we shouldn’t push the panic button. Listen, Christ followers should not be a panicked people. Christ followers should be the most confident, secure, humble, broken group of people, and no matter what the news says, no matter what report comes from Washington D.C. or whatever you get your news, whatever happens we should not be shaken. We’re not a people that are easily shaken.
This is what he says. Listen. He says, “The end of all things is near.” Then listen to what he says. He says, “Therefore be clear-minded” clear-minded, in other words, calm down, think it through, be clear-minded and self controlled, not angry, not spewing out words that’s just—angry words coming out of our mouth. He said, “Be clear-minded and self controlled so that you can pray.”
New Life, I want to call you to something this morning. I want to remind you of something this morning. It is prayer that changes our culture. And I do believe-- and listen, I get asked a lot of times to make comments about social issues. And I do believe in having a public voice and I do believe in saying things. I do. I’m not a coward about it. I don’t lack courage to say it. But I am so convinced that if we would just pray more than we complain, if we would just pray as much as we protest, that God would come with the power of his Holy Spirit and change the hearts of people in our culture. We have stopped praying and that’s why we have seen social issues and cultural issues deteriorate and decay, is because we’ve lost our burden and our passion to pray God into our culture; pray God into our society. Pray that God would move, pray that God would do something in the hearts of people. Listen, if the hearts of people change, abortion clinics shut down. We don’t need medical marijuana if people’s hearts have changed. These issues that we’re all upset about will go away when the hearts of people change. And that happens through prayer. Prayer, prayer, prayer.
And then he says offer hospitality to one another, verse nine, “Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling”. Now, I believe that we’ve lost the art of hospitality. When was the last time a complete stranger showed up at our door and you welcomed them into your home? We can’t do that in our culture. I mean, I can’t remember the last time—well, I can remember this kid was selling me this school supply fund drive, which is one of my top 10 things that aggravates me. But here’s what happens though if a complete stranger showed up at most of your doors. Number one, the door would probably be locked. They probably had to go through a gate of some kind. Your door would probably be locked, there would be a lapdog barking on the other side, and probably somebody with a gun on the other side of the door. This is the reality of our culture though. We don’t leave our doors open anymore. We don’t leave our doors unlocked.
Remember back in the days, some of us grew up in cultures where there was screen doors, and that was the only thing, and they were always unlocked. So the front door was never closed at my house growing up. There was always a screen door there, and it was never locked. All you had to do is open up and come in. There was constant—I could see outside and people could see inside your homes. Remember those days, those good old days? I’m not trying to reminisce this morning, I’m just trying to remind you that we’ve lost the art of hospitality.
Now, in our culture, most of us have vehicles with tinted windows so that nobody can see inside our vehicle. Most of us—and raise your hand if you can—how many of you can open your garage door without getting out of your car? Okay, look at that. All right, how many of you then have access into your home from the garage? And that’s pretty common. All right, so here’s what you can do. I don’t have to have contact with people. I have a pickup with tinted windows. I have a little button inside my vehicle that I hit, my garage door comes up, I pull in, I can lower the garage door, I get out of my vehicle, I go in to my house through the garage. I don’t have to connect with people if I don’t want to. And part of that is a safety issue, I understand that. But part of it is a cultural thing that God, I think, is convicting me of.
We don’t know our neighbors, we don’t know people around us, we don’t go across the street and introduce ourselves like we once did. We have become this individual collection of families instead of neighborhoods. And God is calling us to offer hospitality, one to another.
Let me ask you another question. This is a very mobile community, by the way. How many of you grew up right here in Colorado Springs and you have family here? Raise your hand if you grew up in Colorado Springs, and you have family here. I mean that’s probably what—five percent of the crowd? How many of you have family here but you don’t want to hang out with them? All right, don’t raise your hand [laughter] because that’s a different issue we’ll talk about later.
Notice that about 95% of the crowd were not from here. How many of you are not from Colorado Springs? Look at this. Keep your hand up. Was it like a hundred people here 50 years ago? Understand that's 95% of the crowd, were not from here. Chances are, of that 95%, 75% of us don’t have family here. Do you understand, if God’s calling us to live in family, though, and to live our lives one with another, we have a huge challenge on our hands. We’re not from here, we don’t have family from here, we’re a collection of individuals sitting in seats on a Sunday morning instead of this family. God will not let us live this soloed lives. God is calling us to live one with another, to offer hospitality one with another. So therefore because we’re a mobile culture, a mobile city, we’re not from here, we’re going to have to work really hard at this. We’re going to have to be super strategic if we’re going to offer hospitality one to another.
All right, let’s keep looking at this right here. In 1 Peter 4:9, listen to what the message version of this scripture says. “Be quick to give a meal to the hungry, a bed to the homeless, cheerfully”. And then Romans 12, listen to this, Romans 12:13; “Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice...” Notice the word practice, “Practice hospitality”. The word practice is the Greek word “Dioko” which means to aggressively pursue something, to make it—to be aggressive about it, to go chase something down until you catch it. And it can also be thought of as a young man who falls in love with a young woman pursuing them; pursuing that young woman until she marries him. The idea of that word means to be aggressive, to awaken everyday and to aggressively pursue hospitality and friendship one with another. That’s the word. That’s how aggressive this language is. In other words, this is not optional. This is not a suggestion from scripture. God says, listen, I want the army to form. But before you can become an army, you got to become a family.
We talk about mobilizing the local church using the strength of our numbers to do something great in our city. That will never happen if we don’t first become family. If you look around you right now and all you see are just nameless faces, if you don’t know anybody sitting around you, we’ll never form as an army here. We got to become family first, we got to know each other, we got to live life with one another. Let me get to the bottom line. We got to care about one another. We got to have some kind of concern for the people sitting around us. Do you even care? Let’s start there. If you don’t care about what’s happening in the lives of people, you won’t form as a family. We won’t form as a family. There has to be a felt need for us to move and to act like this. We have to be concerned about what is going on in people’s lives.
So I’m here this morning to challenge us to be hospitable. Listen, I want to tell you, define to you what I think hospitality is and what it’s not. I think there’s a real simple definition of being hospitable—I mean hospitality. Here it is. Hospitality is simply getting a group of people in a room, giving them something to eat, and finding something to talk about and laugh about. That’s it. I’m not talking about putting on these elaborate dinner parties, and although some of you are great at it, I’m not asking you to be Martha. I’m asking you to be Mary.
We hear the story of Martha and Mary we have--and there is a—most people when they talk about that story they say, hey, you know, sit at the feet of Jesus, Mary had it right. Martha was busy with all the details in the kitchen, listen, and that’s true about sitting at the feet of Jesus. But there’s another meaning to that story. When you have people over to your house—remember Mary, Martha, Jesus and Lazarus were kind of buds. They were friends. They hang out, they had a little tribe, they hang out together. That’s why when Lazarus died, Jesus wept. They were friends. Jesus was saying to Martha, he says, Martha, you’re so concerned about having the perfect party that you’re not even out here hanging out with your friends.
Listen, some of you have a tremendous gift of hospitality. But you put so much pressure on yourself to have the perfect gathering that you never leave the kitchen and hang out with people, and so you missed the whole point of the thing. I’m talking about simply having someone over to your house, preparing a simple meal on paper plates. That’s going to drive some of you nuts. Maybe that’s not economic—eco-friendly or whatever; whatever plates you want to use, I don’t care [laughter]. Just being simple, getting people in a room, talking about things, laughing together, eating. And this is, by the way, you know why Jesus said when you come together, remember me with bread and juice or bread and wine, what Jesus would say, what he was saying was this, “When you come together, I want you to eat together.” Communion is not just some religious ritual that we did. In fact, we've totally lost the meaning of communion in many cases.
The early church understood that when they came together, that food, and meals, and eating together, and being together, was kind of the reason. It was the reason for coming together. And while there was people who will stand and teach while they did sing songs and worship together and pray together, the real reason for coming together was to come together as a family, which normally was centered around a meal that they called communion. It was bread and wine and they’d come around and eat together and be together. That was the point of the whole thing. They were hospitable, and they did it all the time.
So this morning, I want to give you the six-week hospitality challenge. And the reason I’m calling it that is because we have about six weeks left in this year. Believe it or not, 2010 is—we’re six to seven weeks away, I think. I don’t know what exactly. But we’re coming up on the Thanksgiving Holidays, two weeks from now we’re going to be at Thanksgiving. A month after that, it’s Christmas, New Year’s; and this is the perfect time. I know we’re all busy but this is the perfect time, I know we're all busy, but this is a perfect time to welcome people into your home. And I want to give you a six-week hospitality challenge.
When you came in this morning, you got a little card, and that’s what I was trying to find. I had my card. Thank you. Blessings on you and your descendants. Thank you. All right—which are a lot by the way; he has four kids. All right. Everybody got this card? Everybody pick this card and look at this card. Here’s a six-week hospitality challenge. These are five practical things that I’m asking you to do and I just want you to do one of them in six weeks. I want you to do one of these five things. Everybody sitting in this room, if you’re obedient to your pastor, in the next six weeks, in the next six weeks, I want you to do one of these five things, because God is calling us to form as family. Let’s go over these real quick, and it’s really small so some of you are going to have to put this under a magnifying—I can’t even read it and I’ve got like 20-20 vision. All right, let’s go.
Number one, bring a meal to someone who is sick, has just had a child, or has suffered a loss in their family. Listen, every week we have couples who are having babies. Every week we have families who are in the hospital or sick, and almost every week we have somebody that’s lost a family member. We just had that happen, it was in the paper. There’s a family right now in our church who just lost their dad this week. That was a New Life family. And I’m aware that across our church, we have families who are really in need. We have families that just need somebody to help them. Now, I don’t want you calling the church and asking, “Hey, can you tell me somebody...”—if you do, we’ll try to help you, but I don’t want the burden to be put on our staff. This is going to require you to hang out after the service today and actually meet somebody and introduce yourself to somebody, and I want you to find the need. I want you to go find somebody who is sick. I want you to go find somebody who is in the hospital. I want you to find somebody who’s lost a family member. Find them and bring a meal to them. And you can even go to the drive through and take the meal to them. But just make it simple. Connect with them.
Listen, Pam and I, our first time I was a senior pastor, we were in a little church in West Texas where we pastored. And one of the things that I just loved about this little church that we were a part of was any time any of that happens, somebody got sick, or had a baby, or there was a funeral, I mean, the whole church rallied. There was more food than they could possibly eat. And I remember when Pam and I, we adopted Kelly while we were the pastor of this church. And for two weeks, we had more food to eat than we could possibly eat, because that church had caught this. Sharing a meal with somebody who is sick, somebody who is in the hospital, or somebody who’s lost a loved one, is one of the most spiritual and powerful things that we can do as a body of believers. And by the way listen, notice this, I just saw this in a research. Unbelievers, atheist, agnostics, and unbelievers, are fascinated about the hospitality that Christians show one another. They’re fascinated by it. They are overwhelmed with how Christ-followers welcome people into their homes. You want to win souls? Stop handing out tracks and hand out some chicken [laughter]. I’m serious. Keep the track. Give them some chicken and have them to your house and have a conversation with them, become their friend.
There is a pastor on our staff, met a girl in a coffee shop. And this girl attends New Life, so I’m not going to tell you all the details or who the pastor was. And they had just had a random conversation, found out—she said she was an agnostic, or an atheist. This pastor said immediately the Holy Spirit said to him, “No, she’s just mad at me. She’s mad at God. She’s not an atheist. She’s just mad at God.” So he said to her, “Why don’t you come over to my house. My wife and I would love to have you over for dinner.” So, this happened not long ago. They invited her over for dinner, they had about a two-hour conversation. Today, she is serving God—and by the way it was true, when she started talking, and she started talking about how mad she was at God because of something that had happened in her life, today she is serving, full of God, here all the time and it started with one of our pastors in a coffee shop saying, “Won’t you come over and have some dinner with us.” Today, that girl is in the kingdom. She is serving God, giving her life away for Jesus, because of a meal. That’s what I’m talking about. You’re serious, if you’re concerned about lost people, get serious about having people over to your house for dinner and not to beat them up with the bible, and not to sign them up for your down line. If you've got an agenda, business agenda, do that on your own time. You have them over to love them, not wanting anything from them. Am I clear on that? If I hear about that, you’re going to get a call from me. I want you to have I am talking about having them over to love them, to care for them, to have a meal with them.
Here’s the second thing. Invite a person in the church to your home for a meal, just anybody, invite a new person. By the way, if you’re the new person, invite somebody to your house. I have people tell me all the time, “Well, Pastor Brady, it’s such a big church. It’s hard to connect.” No, it’s not. There’s hungry people every Sunday afternoon. I guarantee you, stomachs are growling right now. On your row right now, somebody’s hungry. And they’ll go eat with you right after this service if you will ask them.
Number three, invite a student who is away from their family to your home for a home-cooked meal. Come on, anybody under 30 year would say yes to that? A home-cooked meal. I see a bunch of first-year cadets right here, and if you don’t have—I guarantee you, they’re sick of air force cafeteria food, aren’t you? Raise your hand if you’re a cadet and you’re open to the possibility of the semi-normal person inviting you over for a home-cooked meal? You’d say yes to them, I guarantee you. They’re scared to raise their hand because some of you all look weird. I know what their thinking [laughter]. All right.
All right here’s number four. Here’s a great way to be hospitable. Host a New Life group in your home next semester. That way, you’re scheduled every week to have people in your home. For at least one semester, you don’t have to do it for life. You don’t have to take a blood oath to do this for 20 years. Just one semester, have a group of people into your home and you talk about scriptures, eat together and pray together in a group.
Number five, invite someone who has no family in town to your home to celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas. Listen, that is—my mom growing up was amazing at finding people who had nowhere to go for the holidays. In fact, there are very few holiday seasons when we didn't have somebody in our home that wasn’t a part of our family. My mom was always finding strays and bringing them home. In fact, growing up, two different times when I was a teenager, we had other teenagers living with us until they could get on their feet. Two different young men that I remember who lived in our house for months at a time, and they were broken, they were literally homeless, and we took them in, and we nurtured them, and today, both those young men would say that was the turning point in their life for God because some family said you can come live with us. Why don’t you come live with us? And we didn’t have a spare bedroom. We didn’t have a—we didn’t have a basement that wasn’t being used. We always had small homes. We just made it a priority at our house, if we found somebody that we could help, we help them. And it changes people’s lives when you do these simple things. Listen, this doesn’t sound too super spiritual. This is easy. This is like riding a bike with training wheels, everybody can do this. Everybody sitting in this crowd can invite someone to eat with them. Everybody sitting in this crowd can take a meal to somebody, even if you have to go buy it. You can go get a meal and take it to somebody, but you got to know what’s going on in people’s lives. You've got to care, you've got to care.
I believe God is calling us to form as a family first, and it’s going to take intentionality. It’s going to take time, and it’s going to be messy. And by the way, people are not always going to be grateful upfront. But that’s not the reason we’re doing this. We’re doing this to obey the scriptures. Offer hospitality to one another. Aggressively offer hospitality. Go for it, meet somebody, and then listen to what Peter says in verse 10. “And each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others”. Whatever gift you've received, and all your spiritual gift to serve others.
And here’s the way I want to end it. I believe church has become a restaurant when it should’ve become a family. I want to help you understand this. This is what I’m fighting against. I am giving a countercultural message this morning because I believe God is calling us to be countercultural. Most churches operate more like a restaurant. Here’s what happens at a restaurant. Everything is taken care of by someone else. The staff takes care of everything. We’re not going to be that church. In fact, I tell the staff, we are not responsible to do everything. We’re here to serve, we’re here to equip, we’re here to make—and make opportunities known. We’re here to lead, we’re here to make disciples, but I’m not here to manage events. Everything is taken care of by someone else at a restaurant. At a restaurant, you can complain and it is okay. In fact it is almost your right. The food is not good, you complain about it. Try that at Grandma’s house this Thanksgiving. See how that works. In a restaurant, you pay only for what you consume.
Listen, I’m not into raising up a bunch of consumers here. If you want a consumer a driven church, this is the wrong spot for you. I’m not here to meet all the needs of everybody in the crowd. I can’t. In fact, I’ll burn out if I have to fall under that pressure of building some consumer model of church where you come and pay for what you consume. Instead, I’m calling us to be a family. And in a family, everyone pitches in to make the meal happen. This is one of the fun things of going home for the holidays. My mom will be in the kitchen when I get there. My mom lives in the kitchen, by the way. There is an eight-hour period where she is in her bedroom, and then the rest of the time, she hangs out in the kitchen. That’s the center of the universe at my moms’ house is the kitchen. She’ll cook breakfast, she’ll clean up breakfast, and then she’ll start preparing lunch. And then she cleans up the lunch. She may have a couple of hours in the afternoon, and then she starts preparing dinner, and the whole family is in there. Now, she’s not doing this by herself. I will do some of the cooking, I’m a pretty good cook, by the way. And then my sister, Annette, will be there, she’ll do some of the cooking. My mom will orchestrate the whole thing. It’s a symphony of cooking going on all the time in there. We all pitch in, so when it’s time to set the table, we don’t expect our mom to set the table. That’s what the kids do. The kids set the table. Everybody sets the table. And when it’s over, I don’t expect my mom to take my plate for me. I take the plate in the kitchen. We all pitch in, and we have this great meal. Three meals a day happens just like that. Everybody pitches in so the meal happens. We all cook, we all clean up, we all plan it, we all talk about it. The center of our universe is the kitchen. That’s what happens in a family.
Also in a family, you complaint at your own peril [laughter]. You don’t talk about it if the mashed potatoes are a little lumpy and the gravy is a little salty. You just taste a little bit of it and mix it in with something else, and you just go on your way. You don’t bring it up. And here’s another thing. You don’t mind paying for others to eat. In fact, it’s a privilege to buy food for your family. I don’t expect Abraham and Kelly to buy food. I buy the food. And I enjoy having food with my two kids. I don’t expect—I don’t mind buying the food for the family. Do you understand the difference between a restaurant and a church, and a family that's church? I am here today to call us into family and away from the restaurant. I’m calling all of us to pitch in to make dream centers happen; all of us to pitch in to make everything happen. And so, if you come to me in guest central, I don’t mind you bringing this up and say, Pastor Brady, “It’s hard to connect. It’s hard for me to feel like I’m a part of the family.” Here’s how you become a part of the family. Pitch in. Find somewhere to start serving. Help make the meal then. Just pitch in.
Pam and I have been a part of big churches for 20 years. You know how I connected at every place? We have served somewhere. We didn’t sit out in the crowd waiting for somebody to say, “Hey Brady, would you do this?” Because sometimes they would ask me and most of the time, we’d say, “Hey, what needs to be done around here? Where's something that needs to be done and I will do that.” We started serving. And serving, by serving, by pitching in and helping prepare the meal, we met friends. Some of our closest friends that we still have today was from teaching a single Sunday school class in Amarillo, Texas that started out with six people in the class, and they needed a teacher. And I said, “Hey, I’ll teach.” So I showed up on a Sunday, started teaching it, it grew to about a hundred people in the Sunday school class. Some of our best friends—and by the way, the birth mom of our son was in that class. And I would’ve never met her and she would’ve never met me, and may have never offered for us to adopt Abraham if I had not said, “Well, I’ll teach that class.” And we connected. Pam and I connected with her and she became our friend. Then she got pregnant and she asked us to take Abraham, because I just said yes to serving in a class. And I didn’t have time for that. I was busy. I didn’t have time to prepare for a Sunday school class, I was working. But the church needed some help and it’s my family, so I just pitched in to help the family. It was a big old church like this; big old church. We didn’t find it hard to connect.
If you’re waiting to be served, then you’re going to find it hard to connect. If you’re waiting to serve, you’ll find this is the easiest place in America to connect. Just get dirty with us. Dive in. Say yes to the family, and say no to the restaurant. All right? How many of you are willing to at least pray about taking the challenge? How many of you will pray about it? This is simple, guys. In six weeks, I’m going to hold you accountable. I’m going to talk about this for the next six weeks. I’m going to bring this up from time to time, I’m going to bring it up. I’m going to say, “Listen, have invited somebody over yet?” By the way, if you need one of those cards, they’re out at the information booth. If you didn’t get one a while ago, go get one, all right? Go get one.
All right, let’s pray together right now. Would you just close your eyes and would you say Lord, if it is your will, and there’s somebody this morning that I am supposed to meet—as we’re quiet right now, just listen for a rumbling stomach next to you. That’s the person you’re supposed to invite to eat, all right—I do think that what I said this morning is very simple. But if we’re committed to caring for one another, the caring first for the family right here among us, listen, we have single moms, we have widows, we have people right here sitting next to you. So before we go out and launch dream centers and take care of single moms and widows in our city, can we first just take care of the ones right here in our house? In fact, I don’t think God will really bless our dream centers unless we first form as a family here. And this is a big concern for me. I’m telling you a very personal concern that I have, is I want us to first form as a family, right, I want to take care of each other. And don’t wait for me to take care of each other. All of us take care of each other. You find the need and meet it. You don’t have to tell me about it. Just go meet the need. Find the need and meet it. And then as we form as a family, God will mobilize us to go make a big difference in our city. I believe that’s happening. We’re about to launch, the boat is about to launch out into the deep waters. But before we launch out into these deep waters that God has called us to, God is first calling us to come together now as a family. Not as individual, independent people, but we are a big, messy family together; loving one another, caring for one another, offering hospitality to one another, sharing meals with one another.
So, Father in Heaven, I pray today, right now, in this moment that we’re in, that the word of God that’s been spoken today will fall on very fertile soil, and that it would take root, Lord that we would retain it, and by persevering produce a good crop. Lord I pray that these little cards will not just be tossed aside. I pray that these cards will be on refrigerators, and on mirrors, and on cars, to remind us of just how important it is to live our lives with one another, to come together and to eat together and be together, to serve together, to love one another sincerely. And above all else, to love one another deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins.
Father, I pray in this room that we would have a genuine concern for people around us. That we would really care about what’s happening in the lives of people. Father I thank you right now for your holy spirit. Holy Spirit, you’re the one, your scriptures say that you’re the father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, and Lord you set the lonely in families. We pray that we would become a family so that you can set lonely people right here amongst us. We would love them, surround them, care for them. Lord, we see people come into your kingdom because of meals that we share with one another. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
