You may be seated. The band needs to stay up here for a second, though. I've been thinking about something, and, I probably stressed Carz out this morning because, I was thinking about what God's called us to in faith, and there's a level where we really do need to have vibes and feels, you know what I'm saying? Like, I mean, if I came week in, week out and there was no connection. If I—if I woke up next to my wife every day and I'm like, "Well, we're in it, " wouldn't that.

But no vibes, no feels, that would be kind of lame. At the same time, look at your neighbors, say, "It's both." It's both. It's still dark in here, so I know you're scared to look at your neighbor, but you can't even see them, they can't see you, just say it, it's both. Because at the same time that there needs to be some vibes and feels, there also needs to be something much deeper that undergirds all of those feelings, that'll take you into a season of chaos. I was thinking about the movie Drumline recently.

Y'all know that movie? You know, you can turn the lights up a little bit, we're not doing anything super—oh, I said a little bit, guys, we're working on it now. Y'all know it's a gym, if you didn't already, it's a gym, by the way. You remember that movie, Drumline? Steve, anyone who's seen Drumline?

All right, I love that movie. When I was in high school, cuz, you know, I was in high school and that's what you do, you know, you just—you love movies like that with Nick Cannon, and Nick Cannon is hilarious, so—y'all, nobody knows that joke, okay? I just made a Chappelle joke and they're going to get mad at me for it. But I watched this movie, and I remember, like half the plot of the movie was he grew up, got this natural gifting and talent, and he's playing back there, all drummers always getting in the way, he's just playing based on vibes and feels. Then he gets to college, and all of a sudden he realizes, "Oh, I need to be able to read music and understand the system of music theory so that I can get to the next level." And while, like, I'm not talking mess, he did a good job, and the movie plot did a good work in him, you know what I'm saying?

But there's a level where vibes and feels and gifts can get you to a certain point, but there's got to be a depth. Say it again: it's both. It's both. And so I was thinking of an illustration, I don't know how it's going to go because I didn't tell him about this beforehand. Did I, Carez?

You're back here—no, he's hiding in the back, say, "I ain't being a part of this at all." And what I want to do—like, there's a system, it's called the Nashville Number System, and it's something that not all musicians know. I didn't learn it until I was a full-grown adult, and I had to learn it. And what this system is, is it's a system that says rather than just learning chords, I need to have a base knowledge of scales, which is a base knowledge of music theory. But when you learn this number system, it actually makes it ten times easier, whatever key you're in, to be able to play. And so if I were to tell them, kind of, hang on the four—hang on the four—well, if you don't know the Nashville Number System, hanging on the what?

Key, y'all in G, y'all—hey, someone, the drummer's got the things, so drummers don't learn chords or the Nashville Number System. So I told you this might not work. You got it, tell them what chord it is. If you hang on the four, whatever key they're in, you kind of know—you know this system. And then if I were to tell them to go to the five, they go to the five, go back to the one—hey, I told them to learn the Nashville Number System, I'm making them do it in front of you guys today.

Let's go, go back to the four, to the five, to the four, and then to the one. You'll know pretty quickly I'm doing the bridge of the last song, sorry, they didn't know. And so, if I were—your timing—where's Mon? Mon, where you at? You gonna sing it from back there?

She—that's okay, she don't need a mic for this. I'm just kidding, all right, we'll do better, we're gonna do better second service. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you get my point, don't you, that if you know the system, it just worked out to where we're learning the system. But when you know the system, when you know something deeper, when you know what undergirds the vibes and feels of your faith, then when chaos ensues—like when it's about to happen—then you can roll through it, cuz God's gonna allow something in your life. Right?

Like, how many of you have never been through anything? Exactly. God's gonna allow something in your life, and when that thing comes, you're rarely ready for it. But if you've gone—you've gone deeper, if you've understood how he operates, if you get the system, then you're gonna be that much more ready to navigate and move when chaos ensues. In fact, my prayer for you today is that you would understand the beauty of both, because I've had people come into church and—, you guys can fade out in your own timing if you want to, no stress here, I didn't want them to feel like they had to stay up the whole time, so I just—I need to tell them—if you can understand the value of both.

I've had people come into church, they're like, "Oh my gosh, I love worship, " and by worship they mean specifically the time before the pastor gets up and preaches where there's music and we're singing words to God. Now, biblically, worship is your entire life, but they'll come in with that specific—why? "Well, because I love worship." Don't get me wrong, I love music worship, if I hated it I don't know if we'd do it as much as we do it, I love worship, because there's a calming aspect to the music and the worship. And so when someone comes in and says, "I love worship, " what I want to ask them is, "What else do you love in your relationship with God?", because worship is amazing, but there's more. And on the other hand, there'll be people who come in and they know the Bible, they know how church should operate—at least at the church that they were at—and the things that they've read about, and they'll come in with all of this knowledge and information, yet there's no worship really happening in their lives.

I think—I want us to, I don't think, I know, I want us to be a church that prioritizes both, because I want us to feel like we're in our relationship with God. I want us to be connected at a visceral level to what God's doing. At the same time, I don't want it to just be some mindless experience that makes us feel relaxed. I want it to be an all-encompassing connection with God, that yes, we get the feels, but also it hits us at our intellectual level too. So what I want to talk to you guys today about comes directly from John chapter 4:31–34.

We've been in this series called Harvest Season. While we're praying and fasting, like Maggie said, it is not too late for you to jump in. You won't get 21 days, you won't get 14 days, but you can get seven strong days where you're connecting with God at a deeper level by forgetting something that you spend a lot of time doing that doesn't really add a whole lot of value. But without further ado, I'll jump into John chapter 4, we'll be in verses 31 through 34. Here's how it starts:

"Meanwhile"—this is right after Jesus talks to this woman at the well—"his disciples urged him, 'Rabbi, eat something.' But he said to them, 'I have food to eat that you know nothing about.' Then his disciples said to each other, 'Could someone have brought him food?' 'My food, ' said Jesus, 'is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.'"

I was going to title this sermon something about dinner time.

Can you talk about food? Because he was—you know, because I was thinking about this idea of what it looks like—it's hard to get dinner time with your family, but there's something that happens when you, like, schedule that time and say, "We're gonna sit down at 5:30 or 6:30 together as a family, dinner's gonna be ready and we're gonna eat it together." At the beginning, we're gonna pray over our food, we're gonna have conversations about our day, we're gonna grow closer together as a family. There's a lot of benefit from that, and I recognize how hard that is. And what Jesus is saying is there's something that the disciples don't know about that he's got access to, and I think it's because of all of the time that Jesus has spent with his Father. On the earth we see him praying regularly, spending time with God.

That's why I was gonna title it "Dinner Time, " because there's food that many of you don't know about, because you don't have the time with God to have even experienced it or indulged in that information. But the Lord brought me to a different sermon title, where he says in verse 34, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work." And it brought me to a place where I think many of you might be. And so the title today is a question: What is God's will? What is God's will? And you know, I hope the Lord reveals something very specific and nuanced to you today, because I'm willing to bet all of us have asked that question at some point.

Like, "God, what's your will for my life?" Like, "What's your will in this situation, God, what's your will?", "For my family, or for my job, or for my future, college, or my career goals, or my friendships, or my relationship—like, what's your will?" I hope the Lord reveals something specific and nuanced to you, but what I'm going to give you today, it's not necessarily specific, not necessarily nuanced, it might not even be new to you, but based on what we see in Scripture, it is God's general will for each one of us. So what is God's will? The first thing—God's will is for you to know him. God's will is for you to know him. The Westminster Confession does a great job, it says, "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.", when God is talking to the Israelites and he's trying to give them kind of a standard to live by, that started off with the Ten Commandments, and then some other laws, and then laws for the Levitical priests, it's like they're starting a new country, "I got to give you a standard." The first thing he says to them is, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength." And second is, like it, "Love your neighbor as yourself." But the number one thing he told them to do is, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength." God wants you to know him.

God wants you to connect at a deeper level with him. Now, I'm gonna break that down into two specific areas, because I said it's both—I didn't start off with that illustration and example for no reason. First off, God wants you to know him intimately. God wants you to know him intimately. And by intimate I mean in an experiential way.

There are a lot of people who know about God, who know God, who have a propositional relationship with him, or even transactional, where they're like, "God, I love you, do this for me.", maybe that was you—that was me when I used to play basketball, and I was like, "Lord, help me make this shot and I'll do your will." And I don't know, I don't—superstitious faith, it was propositional faith, there was no real experience in that faith. It was a faith based on my mom making me go to church when I was little, and I was like, "Well, it must be God who's the center of the universe, I don't have a relationship with him, but I'm going to live as a Christian." That's many people, they have this knowledge of God, but they don't have an experience with God. Many a preacher has said, "It's not about religion, it's about relationship.", that's such an attractive message because it helps us recognize God's not just some being sitting on high judging from afar, he wants to be engaged with your life. You can know God intimately, and we say it every week, the way to know God intimately is to trust in the Son, Jesus, whom he has sent. That's how you can know him intimately.

But, you know, this is me and my walk with God early on, I—you know, when you're dating someone at first, I'm going to ask you to engage with me here—here, how many of you have dated somebody before? Nobody? None of y'all? Y'all just got married on day one, okay, cool, thank you for the interaction. You know, when you're dating in the first couple of months, or even the first year—and, for those of you who are perfect and carried the romanticism all the way through into ten years of marriage perfectly, without any adjusting, at.

All I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to the rest of us. You know that first several months, well, you don't know anything about each other really, but there's an intimacy. Some of y'all, the intimacy is for real. Intimacy for me and my wife, when we first got to know each other, we'd walk down to the river on the campus and we'd hold hands and stuff like that. That was our level of intimacy.

It's like, my heart was beating, she touched my hand. This is crazy, I know I sound super Christian here, but that makes some of y'all feel good, and makes some of y'all feel like, "He can't connect with me, cuz I started off on a Tinder date and it felt real romantic real quick." We get real at Orbit Church. We know what's going on. We're not crazy, we're not, we're not dense. But how many of you know that feeling early on?

You don't know anything about him, but it feels intimate and romantic. Just say yeah. Yeah, yeah, thank you for your hands, I appreciate it. We'll talk about that later, I'm just kidding. So think about it, the most intimate or romantic portion of many people's relationships is when you know nothing or very little about them.

That's us with God. For many of us, it's like we get an experience from God. God is gracious enough to like not physically strike us with lightning, but with a situation, he just makes it clear. He shows us a sign, and he clarifies who he is, and he reveals to us the depth of our depravity and our struggle with sin and disconnect from him. And he makes it so clear: I got to follow him.

And early on in your walk with God, if it's a real conversion for you, you're like, "Everything, I know y'all are my friends, but I just trusted in Jesus so I'm gonna sit at home this week." Immediately, immediately you're like — maybe you've been out hanging out, binge drinking, or just, you know, social drinking with your friends, all of a sudden God gets a hold of you, you don't know nothing about your relationship with him, you don't know whether alcohol is a sin or not, but you're like, "I'm done with that, no more hanging out with these people, " or something that you're thinking or operating in, and you're like, "We got to quit that immediately, " or you're like, "I'm going to church every week for the next 10 years." You start off that way, you're like, "I'm in, I'm all about it."

I started, I started a new habit recently, and I'm not going to tell you what it was because I don't want you people calling me out on it. And I started this habit, and I was like — I told my wife, I said, "I think I'm gonna do this all year." The next day my wife's like, "You still doing that?" I'm like, "Yeah, I'll get to it." This is us in our relationship with God. It is romantic, it's emotional, it's intimate. Like the worship feels amazing because you're understanding something fairly simple about your connection with God, and it moves you to immediate action. God wants you to have that.

I don't want to negate that, God wants you to have it. But many times we get into our field and we get intimate with him, but that intimacy, if it doesn't have a base or something that undergirds it, when chaos comes there's something that's going to be missing. And I see it all the time. And coming to church is not the be-all-end-all of your faith, I want to be very clear. It's a huge part of it, it is not the be-all-end-all of it.

But from my seat, I can see when people get really excited, they sign up to serve, they sign up for small group, they sign up for the fast, they sign up for this, and they immediately sign up for everything. It's like when people convert to Jesus, the intimacy level with them and God is like, "You're freshman year of college, I'm signing up for everything." And then that intimacy, that romanticism, it fades — some quicker than others — but it does. And if you're like the vast majority of people in their relationships, it doesn't mean you don't love your spouse, it just means you've got to develop a greater level of intimacy, depth, and even sometimes a system where you can continue to maintain that connection. If you want a marriage secret — if you weren't here for the series in June — here's a marriage secret for you: if you think that romanticism is going to be there 24/7 your entire marriage, and you're unwilling to relent and adjust and create systems of greater depth in your relationship, it's not going to be good. It won't be good for you.

Depth of relationship that my wife and I have comes — not because I just have this. I'm not a romantic, you know, like — nah, you're kind of a romantic. But I remember when we got married, or when we got engaged, I was trying to — I had this whole romantic speech, babe, it was a good speech. I took you to the top of Mount Tamalpais, right north of — what's it called — San Francisco. I haven't been there in a minute, right north of San Francisco, when it still looked good in San Francisco.

And then I — I shouldn't have said that, this is church —, anyways, I went there. I was like, "You're either going to see the city, you're going to see some clouds, or you're going to see the ocean." This is romantic. And I was reciting my speech, and I didn't know how you're supposed to recite this speech. Guys, I didn't know if I was supposed to already be on a knee, or if I was supposed to open up the conversation while I'm standing and then get on a knee at some really monumental point in my speech. And I'm telling my speech, and she knows what's happening, and she looks at me — it's the most unromantic thing ever — she says, "You better get down on a knee."

So needless to say, the romanticism, it can wane, and now we've developed the system where it's rooted in something much deeper.

The Greeks actually have a way to delineate between these different types of love. They actually have three words for love: they have philos, or phileo, which is brotherly love; they have eros, which is romantic or intimate type love; and then they have agape, which is this unconditional type of love. It's like the Greeks understood something better than we Americans do — that that eros type love is limited, so we need a definition for love that is greater and has more depth within it, something like brotherly love and affection, and something like unconditional love. And while it's helpful and beneficial for you, you've got to go to the next level. Now, I did not say knowing him intimately is not good — it is amazing, you should.

But some of us are at the place where we should go to the next level, where you know God at a deeper level: intellectually. That's the second point, you got to know him intellectually. Now, by that I don't mean you need to know him academically, there's a difference, but I want you to use your brain to know him at a deeper level. Now, there could be a problem if you know him intellectually but you don't know him intimately — that's the problem that you see in academia, that's the problem that you see from people who grew up in church and know all the Bible stories and answers, but they have no connection with God to speak of, right? There's a problem when you just know him intellectually, but when you know him intimately already, then you get to know more about him.

This is why the disciples are perpetually confused, because they have a closer connection than you and I will ever have, at least physically, with Jesus. They get to walk with him, they know him, they've interacted with him, they've experienced things, they've — at least in John — experienced one miracle up to this point, and they're in Samaria at this point. They're probably looking at Jesus like, "What are you doing, trying to figure this stuff out?" But you can see in this story, and many other stories, they don't know him intellectually. So when Jesus says to the disciples, "I have food that you don't know about, " to me, yes, there is more intimacy to be had, but I also think that there's something intellectual about the connection that Jesus had with his father, that he was saying to the disciples, "There's more, I have food to eat that you don't know about." It's to do the will of my father who is in heaven, and God's will is to know and connect with him both intimately and intellectually. You know, it's interesting, Jesus healed and empathized and spent time with people that no one else spent time with.

He showed the emotion and love that God has for his people, but he was also able to war with Satan during the time of temptation in, I believe it's Matthew chapter 4. He's also able to converse with the Pharisees and the Sadducees about things at a high level. And yes, it was Jesus — you're not Jesus, there's going to be a different level of intellect you can have in your connection with God. But one of my desires for our church is that we would be a people who have an intimate connection with God, but that intimacy wouldn't be where it stops, because I would love for you, in your conversations with your family, I'd love for you in your conversations with your co-workers, that when they ask you a question, you don't have to know every answer, but maybe you've read a little bit, maybe you've connected with a little bit, so that you've answered some of these natural and normal questions for yourself. What I mean is, I think you should interact with him at an intellectual level.

Well, how do I do that, you might ask? Well, opening God's Word is a very easy way to connect with God at an intellectual level. God's Word actually connects with your brain in such a way that it will give you peace, it surpasses all understanding, but it will give you discernment if you pray for it, and that discernment has been so powerful to me. I don't need to be the smartest person in the world to follow Jesus, I — don't hear me saying that, don't leave here saying, "Well, the pastor said I need to be smarter." Not saying that. God uses the foolish of this world, the shame — that which the world considers wise.

He's saying I need to be an apologist? No, you don't need to be someone who's going out and arguing your faith in front of somebody else, because eventually you're going to run into someone who's smarter than you, and they're going to make you look dumb. This is not about knowing more than somebody else, this is about knowing God, not just intimately and experientially, but intellectually. It's knowing the things that this Bible talks about. Like, there are things I know about her, my wife, and my kids, that you guys know nothing about.

You can walk and interact with them, you can experience how nice she is, how crazy my kids are, you can experience all of that, but there's things you don't know about, and a lot of those are at an intellectual level. Like, I know what she's thinking when she's coming up on a conference or an event where she has to talk. I know how she operates. It's like when I'm sick, for example — I don't know how it works for you guys, but sometimes I have to act more sick because I want her to do more for me — whereas when her family's in town, I know how she's going to think. You know, there's just something I know, because I've experienced it, but I've also processed through it with her.

I know, like, intimately and intellectually who she is, and I'm getting that with God, and I want you to experience that with God as well. I do think that drum line illustration is a helpful one, because most of the people I've interacted with in the church, it's all vibes. But vibes only get you so far, and at some point, like, knowing the theory and knowing the system will really help you. So what that means for us as a church is I would love for us to have a crazy experience — we, there, people are energized and excited, and there's movement in a worship service, and people are just seeing God work in a way that gets them excited, and there's this romantic or intimate connection they have with God. I also want there to be a base that undergirds that, that is more solid for your footing.

It's got to be both. It's got to be both. I've been to churches that are like all intellectual, I've been to churches that are like all intimacy, and it feels wrong. But nobody likes to go to a place that tries to mix both, but that's what God's called us to do — this tension between emotional intimacy and the intellect that is required for us to apprehend crazy things like Father, Son, Holy Spirit, that enables us to try to comprehend what it looks like to love others in the midst of what I'm dealing with. That takes depth.

And this is what I believe Jesus, to an extent, is talking about. But God's will — when God tells the Israelites through Moses, he says, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, " and then the second is like, "Love your neighbor as yourself." I don't think he's negating either. I think he's talking about both being extremely important. Obviously, love the Lord, Lord your God first. But he says the second is like it, meaning it has a huge level of importance.

He says love your neighbor as yourself. So what is God's will? God's will is for you to love others. God's will is for you to love others. And just in the line, in the same vein as the last point, first, love them emotionally.

Love them emotionally. I was thinking about it, and loving someone emotionally is like being a supportive voice for them in a hard time. It's being alongside them emotionally when maybe they have questions to ask about their faith. If it were something physical, like a fire, you'd be the person standing right there at the house saying, "Hey, we're praying for you, we're here for you." You're hugging them when they come out of the burning building, right? Like, that is huge.

I struggle with that emotional sometimes, you know, cuz like I already told y'all, like I'm not good at wedding speeches. I'm not good at. I'm actually really good at wedding speeches, not good at engaging speeches. Because, you know, the emotional connection is something that I'm developing. I tend to be one of the action-type people rather than the feely-type people, and I'm growing and learning.

 If I cannot empathize with people, then I'm missing the character of God in my own life. It's important for us to love people emotionally, but we tend to be either someone of, you know, vibes and empathy, or someone of action. And we want to be both. So if my first one was love them emotionally, the second one is love them sacrificially. Because when you look at Jesus, he sympathized with our weaknesses—that's emotional.

 He understood what it is like to be human. But it's not a hop, skip, and a jump to tell you what Jesus did in terms of loving us sacrificially. And he says, "No greater love than this, than to lay down one's life for their friends."

 the love that Jesus talks about when he calls us to love others is self-sacrificial. And he's not just talking about your wife and your kids, he's talking about your neighbor. They ask him, he says, "Who is your neighbor?" And the implication from Jesus's words there is like, whoever you come into contact with is your neighbor.

And so I want to invite you guys into a life where we connect with God at an intimate and intellectual level, and where we love one another with an empathic tone and a self-sacrificial action. Like, I was trying to think of various ways to articulate this self-sacrificial. Because many of us are in this world and church of consumption, where it's about me. Like, one of the biggest complaints over various series, sometimes, like, I remember in the wedding, or the marriage series that we did, some people just loved it, cuz that's where they were. And then there were some people who said, "I'm not coming to this series." I said, "Why?" ", well, because it's not.

Straight, like, it was from the Bible, but it's not like. What do they call it, an expository series, is what they call it, where I'm book by book, verse by verse." That's. So I'm trying to help people who were struggling in their marriages, and we're talking about the Bible through it. And it's like the next series was expository, right, through John. And then someone's like, "It doesn't feel very relevant to me right now." And I'm just like, if we're in this place where we're just looking for ourselves and forgetting about our neighbor, God wants to take you to that new place.

Because church is not just about you, though it is for you, but it's about us honoring God's will to connect with him and to love others. And I'm just going to read something I wrote. No, I'm not going to read that, I'll give it to you next week. I'll give it to you next week. But I do have an illustration here.

I remember when I went from emotional love to self-sacrificial love, is when we had Lucas. Remember that? That 10-pound, 5-ounce baby! He came out natural, too. I mean, you had an epidural, but it was still natural, she didn't feel it, but I looked at it, it was crazy.

 And after they. No one told me about the cone-shaped head. So after the cone-shaped head and the cleaning off, and them finding a. A onesie diaper versus a newborn diaper, cuz he didn't fit in that one, after that, I looked at him, and emotionally I just loved him. I just loved.

He was like my kid, I loved him. And that was emotional. Hadn't done anything. You had. I hadn't, and the doctors did.

 But then the next couple of days, I learned what self-sacrificial love was. It was the first time I stood at that changing table, and he was a boy, you know, so you know what I'm talking about. And, and having looked at that from afar, I was like, "That's disgusting." And it is still disgusting, all you parents know what I'm talking about, it's still disgusting. But you know a little bit more about self-sacrificial love when you look at your. When you look at your kid and they accidentally pee on you.

You know, hey, hey, that's real, we get real in this book. Or when they're sick for the first time, and you got that little tube, you know what tube I'm talking about, and you're. Yeah, who knows? Come on, so don't leave me alone up here. And you're like, "That's really gross." Except that's my son, and I love him, and the sacrifice becomes natural.

So our faith needs to look, as we love God and experience him, it needs to look like not only do we have that connection, but that we get the will of God in this world, which is to love others emotionally and self-sacrificially. So we, as a church, we want to love others emotionally and self-sacrificially. And so we want to do that in a few very tangible ways. We want to do that by serving our community, and we want to do that by serving those in the community who come here, to try to connect them with God. That's.

I mean, there are other ways, but that's one of. Those are the two real ways that, every single week, we're trying to do.