Connected To Your Calling

On that note, I want to talk to you guys today about connecting to your calling, and we're not going to have much on the screen today because of the verse I'm going to read you. I would encourage you to open up your own Bible. If you have a Bible, that's great. If you don't, you've got a phone.

You can actually download the Bible app.

If you type in Bible to your app store, you can download it and you actually open it to where we're going to be today and we're going to be in Philippians, chapter 2. I'll give you a second to go there. Many of us- we, we over complicate the idea of calling, and by many of us. I'm not just talking to you, I'm talking to me.

Right, like my whole life I've been overco complicating this idea of calling.

The word calling is used in the Bible usually comes from a variation of a few different Greek words. C is the one that I'm thinking about. Calling can mean. You know you're called, that's, it's pretty obvious.

But then you've got the idea of an invitation and really, if we can simplify this to recognize that calling is not something that's always crazy complicated, it's a simple invitation from God to get us in the place where he wants us to be, where he knows, we would be living at our optimal State. Calling is an invitation to live your best life and, before I start sounding like some Prosperity preacher, you live your best life today. Before I sound like that, I want to draw you into the text. Philippians, chapter 2.

Starting in verse 12, he says therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to Will and to act in order to fill his good purpose.

Now, there's a context to that passage. The context of that passage is Paul telling the Philippian Church to be humble, just like Christ was humble. He humbled himself to the point of death on a cross and because of that humility, God highly exalted him. The name above all names.

That passage finishes out right there and then steps into our passage and it says therefore, or so, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to Will and act according to his good purpose.

That is the text for today, and you might be thinking: what's that say about calling? That's what this sermon is going to be about. Today. A lot of us- anyone know what this is?

Good job.

Good job, it is a puzzle. A lot of us look at this picture. This is a picture of Los Angeles. If you got the camera, you might zoom in for a second if you need to show people online.

This is a.

This is Los Angeles and, it is a beautiful picture. It's actually really complex. You see, there's a bunch of buildings and all this other stuff. A lot of us in our lives we like the picture.

This is me.

When I was growing up, I always had this romantic view of puzzles. I would look at the picture. My mom might remember this. When I was younger, I was like: I want to do a puzzle, I want to do a puzzle.

I want to do a puzzle because when I look at the picture, I get really excited about it and I'm like we're, we're going to do that and in our relationship with God, he gives us a picture.

You can look all the way back in the Old Testament. He gave the first person. He called Abraham. He gave him a picture.

He said: as numerous as the stars in the sky.

Are your descendants going to be? He says: you are going to be the progenitor of a huge Nation. It'll be a great nation. He gave them a picture.

When we look throughout the Old Testament, we see that God gives them a picture.

When Isaiah accepts his calling, God gives him a picture in the throne room of Heaven during a vision. Jesus gives Paul a picture. Jesus gives his disciples a picture. God gives each of you a picture.

Now, sometimes our pictures incorrect because we don't know everything, but many of us, when we come into our relationship with God, we.

God presents us with a picture of what we can be. He presents us with a picture of what our lives can look like. He gives you a picture of what a life following him can look like, whatever that is for you. Many of you heard about Jesus and said: okay, Jesus is going to be the solution to all my problems.

And he is, don't he?

He's totally the solution to all your problems. And you thought that the picture was going to be that when you trusted in Jesus, everything would be perfect and you would start firing on all cylinders and you wouldn't be tempted anymore by the things that were problematic in your life. God gave you a picture. God gave me a picture after I trusted in him.

He gave me a picture when I was in Brazil, Florianopolis, Brazil, overlooking zakina beach.

I was like this is what I'm going to do the rest of my life. I'm going to preach the Gospel to people. I had an image of traveling the world and doing something big for Jesus. I started developing plans in that direction.

God gives us all a picture and the picture is inspiring.

Many of you came into your walk with God because of this picture of peace that is offered. He says: come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. That's a picture for you. Many of you have the picture of Heaven in your mind that says: one of these days, my pain is going to cease, I to spend eternity in heaven, and your pictures of Heaven might be a little bit different, but you have this picture of this great place where there will be no more pain, no more death, no more constraints.

You're going to spend eternity doing something better than you're doing here.

We've all got this picture, God. God gave you a picture. I think sometimes the problem is this is this is where calling comes in to the mix. We have a picture of our calling and we see the picture, but what God gives us is- he gives you a map, that's the Bible.

Okay, anyways, he gives us the pieces.

I'm going have to clean this up in a little bit. He gives us, he gives us the pieces, and I'm going to be honest with you, going back to me getting excited about puzzles back in the day, I love looking at the picture and I love the idea of finally finishing that puzzle and getting to the picture. But as soon as I opened it up, just about every time my mom tried to motivate me a little bit, but then I'm, I'm, I'm looking at this. How many of you are puzzle people in this room?

Better than me, guys, and better than most of us?

Actually, if you can finish a puzzle, you are a different breed of people. You should run for office. Sorry, I look at the pieces, this imperfect, hot and mess in front of me. That is crazy, intimidating.

And while I've got an image that God has given me, he gives me the pieces.

While I expected some semblance of perfection, he, he shows me something that is imperfect, that though it may be eventually something that is a finished product, his work ship. Right now it is. It's a struggle bus and this is why many people not only don't finish puzzles. I, I'm looking at this right now and I'm thinking I don't even want to finish this illustration.

This thing is my OCD is kicking in like crazy.

Someone else can do this for me. In our faith, we look at the pieces and we get so intimidated because when you come into your relationship with Jesus, he, he does. He starts with an image like when you stepped into your faith. You're, you're amped up, you're excited.

God's working in my life.

You go home, you're ready to tell everybody about your relationship with God. You immediately make your faith public through baptism. You're making Steps of Faith. You're inviting people to church at work, you're doing all the stuff.

You're excited because God gave you an image.

And then a couple weeks- maybe even a couple months if the Lord's really generous to you- you get into it and you start seeing: Oh wait, I'm a work in progress. This picture is not complete yet. And this is you again looking at the pieces. And when most people look at the pieces, they're like the person in that metaphor Jesus uses.

They were excited at first, but then then they looked at the full weight of what it costs to follow Jesus and they're like- I don't know if I want to put this together- I, I, I know I got God's help, but he's telling me, right here you got.

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it's God who works in you. To Will and accomplish his purposes through right like this is hard. This was me when I trusted in Jesus. It was easy at first, but then it got hard.

And God's calling us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

In other words, to use this illustration, God's calling us to work alongside him by the power of His Holy Spirit to become who he's ultimately called us to be and do ultimately what he's called us to do. Guys, I told you calling was simple and then I poured out a bunch of pieces and you're sitting here, probably over welmed, thinking this is actually really complicated. What I hope to do today is, while there are nuances to developing your calling, there's some Simplicity and there's some framing that I believe God wants you to use to help you honor your calling in your life again. Let's connect to our calling.

I- I actually did some research this week, on how to do puzzles, cuz me, I've never actually completed one.

I think my mom helped one time- and by helped I mean I did a couple of pieces. We left it on the table for 6 months and then, she finished it one day when she got bored. But I've never actually completed the puzzle. So I actually had to do research on how to complete a puzzle.

And the first thing that they tell you to do, you puzzle people in here.

The first thing they tell you to do when you're trying to complete a puzzle, what do they say that that say that loud: The Edge, The Edge, okay, okay. So you got to find the edge, right? Oh, my gosh, I don't even want to find the edge today. Goodness gracious, find the edge.

Some of you puzzle people.

All right, this one looks straight. See, here's an edge. You also- I mean, it's really helpful to build your, your frame, right. You, you've got to find the edge.

You, you got to look for the corners, because those corners and the edges will actually help you build the frame and when you build that frame, it actually makes it not easy- not easy, but much less complicated- to start finishing the product right, right, in your faith it's very similar.

God has given us a framework in which to operate that actually helps us with our calling. When we hear the term calling, what we see is a very specific, unique thing that God called you to do, that God called you to do, God called you to do, you to do, and each one's so different, right you're? You're like: I'm trying to figure out my calling, I'm trying to find my purpose in this life and you're looking like in some deep hole, trying to figure out what that specific calling is for you. But I would encourage you, don't start by trying to look for the specific calling.

Start with what we would say regularly in the faith is a general calling.

Build your framework of calling. Let me put it this way: God has called you to a certain level of faith and obedience and in your faith and obedience God begins to give you the specifics. So let me put it this way: if you can find the edges, the framework, if you can start operating within your general calling, I think you're going to actually find success and you might get much closer to your specific calling. Here at the church- and I'm going to keep it simple for you.

Today we say that there are five general Pathways in your faith and again, this is oversimplified.

But sometimes we got to make it simple. You know, just make it simple. It's good. Anyone know what the five pathways are?

I will.

I will test somebody in here. There's five of them. We call them the five G's. Very good, very good here's.

Here's the five: We Gather, grow, group, give, go.

We really prayed and thought about this. We looked at the Scriptures, we looked at other churches and we tried to figure out how can we simplify like this and what we're trying to do is find a frame, and our framework here at orbit is the five G's. The first one is gather. We Believe, based on what it says in Hebrews, but also throughout the entire Bible, God prefers us to live in community with one another.

He doesn't want us to be isolated.

God knows that when we're isolated, we're much more- temp- likely to be tempted. We're much more likely to be attacked by the enemy. We're also more likely to like just internalize things and get ourselves in a place where we're not thinking straight. God has designed us to be in community.

I could prove it to you by talking about the essence of who God is: it's father, son, Holy Spirit, bound together.

In essence, we call this the Trinity. There is a community in that Union. God created man and woman, not just man. He said it's not good for man to be alone.

God has designed us for Community with Israel.

He called out a people group called Israel. In the New Testament he gives us a call and called The Church, the eklesia- you know how to translate that- a group of people who are called out. We are called to gather, and you might think I'm just trying to sell this church and get you guys to attend more frequently. 100%, 100%.

I want you to attend more frequently.

It's not for my narcissism, though it doesn't just make me feel better up here. We could have a thousand people in this room, but if you aren't taking steps toward God, I'm going to feel depressed at night, right like. This is not about you attending so you can pad my ego. It's about you attending so that you can develop further and further Clarity on your calling.

God's called you to gather together.

Hebrews tells us: do not forsake the Gathering, as some often do, and I might speak to those of you directly online. There is nothing wrong with periodically attending online. But God's called you. There's something.

There's something crazy, even Supernatural, that happens when you gather together with God's people.

He says: where two or more are gathered there, God is also. I could try to extrapolate and interpret that for you, but as I get older, I'm just realizing what God says is true, and so I'm going to take him at his word. He tells us to gather. The second one is to grow, gather, grow.

When we talk about growth, there's some ways we measure it here corporately, like when you take a step of making your faith public through baptism.

We get excited about that. That's a layer of growth. Maybe you attend next steps class. You're growing.

It might be leadership pipeline or some step that we can measure and see.

That's cool. But what I'm really talking about with growth is: are you pressing toward the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus daily? Are you developing an understanding of God's word? Because you won't develop it unless you continue to read it are.

Are you growing?

Are you are you developing a prayer life? And for those of you in here, I don't know how to do that. Pastor Matt, we can, we can help if, if you come to next steps or if you start serving, then there are people around you where you can start asking those questions and develop your faith. Growth is crazy important.

Throughout the Bible, you see God regularly through his, the people he inspired, talk about the church or Israel or the faithful people almost as if they're an organism that naturally grows.

God has called us to continue growing. Grouping, gather, grow, group. You might think. Well, that's similar to gather, it's different.

It's different because God's called us to gather, gather corporately, in order to, to worship Him, in order to participate in things like communion, serve one another.

See the miracles of God regularly displayed, as we see here at church on Sundays, but you're not going to learn as effectively in a big room as you would in a small room. God's called us to spend time together regularly in groups. When we see the early church operating, we see the early church operating, I think, in the form of small groups. The early church didn't meet in big auditoriums.

The early church met in people's households.

Now, sometimes there would be large groups involved, but I think the vast majority of the time, you see some form of Bible study. Paul actually started the church in Philippi based on someone who had started a Bible study is out by a river. There was something that happened in that small group that God utilized to build it into something different. I don't know if you realize, but this church did not start out like this.

The church started out in a small group.

There's something that God uses in personal conversations. Another thing that happens is you develop a self-awareness in a small group that you wouldn't develop in a large group. I always joke around with my brother- and I hope he doesn't watch this, but I always joking around with my brother, because he went to Baylor University and I went to a place called wash Baptist University. He's smarter than me.

That's why that happened.

But Baylor is large. I think there's like like at the time there were like 15,000 people enrolled there, whereas at was Baptist University was more like 1,500 people. And there's something I learned in the smaller group that if I took somebody off, they were sitting next to me the next day, and so what God used that to do is to shape me. It was like he says in the Proverbs: iron sharpens iron, and that's what I see in a small group: gather, grow, group, give a lot of.

You guys think that this is something that shouldn't be listed in our Pathways, but I can tell you from my own personal testimony, that trusting him in the area of my finances has been one of the greatest things that God has used to develop my faith and reveal himself to me.

The Bible tells us in Malachi very clearly that when we test God in the area of our tithe- which is 10% for me of my gross income, right, when we test God in this that he busts open floodgates of blessing. It's not just material blessing, it is Blessing of re ation of who he is. But when I trust him in my finances, God reveals himself to me. But he does something else that is unique and we'll talk more about this later on.

I'm not going to spend the whole time talking about giving, he also teaches me to prioritize him.

He says your treasure and your heart are kind of in the same spot, and so when I treasure God, when my heart posture is toward him, I start to rep prioritize the way I spend my money. It actually gives me more peace than I had when I centered it around myself. This idea of giving financially is super important, I think, to the heart of God, and he's called us to do it: gather, grow, group, give and go. This is the idea of serving, and we can measure it through serving on a volunteer team, but I want to help you understand.

The whole heart of going is that God has given us a commission.

This is. These five things are all General calling, they're not specific to you, like. This works for every single person in this room. What does it mean?

He says: go, therefore, unto all nations, making disciples, baptizing them in the name of the father, Son and the Holy Spirit.

A lot of us, because we're we're so focused on finding that one little unique thing, we miss the fact that God has called us to a mission to help others who don't know him, understand who he is everyone. I heard an illustration this week about the Battle of dunker, where there's a large group of British Englishmen stranded on a beach in France and this whole process of getting them off of that beach became a whole plan that required not just military vessels to get them off the beach, but individual vessels owned by normal citizens. And what? What I kept thinking?

This was not even the point of that illustration they were using.

But what I kept thinking is: God has called each of us to take a small part with what we have in the big plan for the world. He's called each of us like: your calling is not less than my calling, and so these general characteristics of calling- gather, grow, group, give go- can become the edges or the corners that help you actually start piecing together the specific calling God has for each of you. That's the first thing is you've got to build the frame, and many people they look at the pieces and they compare it to the picture and they give up. There's somebody recently that I was talking to.

They said I have a calling and I'm like: okay, I hope God reveals that to me too.

You know what I'm saying. Like I'm trying to figure this stuff out as well, and I can't perfectly identify what God has told you in private, and so I'm looking at the picture that's expressed, and so what I'm trying to do is the same thing that the Lord did for me. Is I like, all all right, well, well, here's the pieces and I'm trying to help shape and get this person where they want to be, and it is frustrating for the other person who's trying to figure this stuff out, but they're looking at the pieces. There's some people in here who are looking for God to redeem them from some of their struggles.

But they look at these pieces and they're struggling and because of that cuz they can't immediately put it together, because they don't know what's meant by Paul saying: work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

God wants to do a big work in your life and when he gives you these, he wants you to work alongside him to accomplish some things. So the first point is: build those Frameworks. Don't don't scale back on them. Frameworks, don't do it.

Don't be that person who is constantly chasing this picture and not realizing the fact that God has called you to a much simpler picture than you're chasing.

I've seen it, guys. I've seen this. I've seen it here. I saw it at my former church.

I saw it at the church before people come in and they say I want this in my life and I'm like I got you.

That's cool. I think God can get you there. I really do. Whether you're called to be a pastor, whether you're called to be a big businessman who does something crazy with your life, whatever you feel like, your calling is that image that you believe God gave you.

I know he can get you there.

I am confident he can get you there. But if you come with a posture that says God can get me there, but he's got to do it in the way that I prefer, without me having to be obedient on the regular, you're going to miss out on the specifics of God's calling on your life. There are people who are in a very bad spot right now in their lives because God gave them an image. They kept pursuing that image to the neglect of gathering, growing, grouping, giving going.

And they're sitting there wondering, confused, why God gave them a picture that they're not realizing in their lives and almost daily.

What I want to, just I want to tell you, because I don't always get to tell people that sometimes they just ghost you, but what I want to tell you is, if you can gather, grow, group, give, go, if you can read your Bible, if you can develop these General callings in your life, you won't even be strug about your future because you're so enamored with the faithfulness of God in your life. Am I doing a new thing? No, God's doing a new thing. Am I the one who saved myself?

No, it's God who saved me.

So I'm working that stuff out with fear and trembling. God is going to do a new thing, and I quote this all the time. This is why Jesus tells the people who were listening to him at The Sermon on the Mount he said: seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Seek first the general calling and then all other things will be added.

You're like M, but that takes patience.

Yep, that's my second point. You got to find the frame. You got to look at that General calling, but then you got to have patience. That's why I don't finish puzzles, Matt, because I got to have patience.

I'm sitting here like yo frame someone, someone who's finished a 5,000 piece puzzle razor hand.

How long did it take you? Yeah, I love that answer, because that's what. That's what AI said. When I looked it up earlier this week.

They said the same thing.

They said: don't try to do it all at once. It takes time. You've got to be patient, and what happens is we'll put forth some hardcore effort over a short time span and then we're like: I tried, Lord, I tried to put it together. I've been trying for a while.

Sometimes God's going to call you to work on one section and figure some things out, and then you're going to realize something about another section and you going to start working that.

I'm not good at puzzles, so whatever I'm grabbing, you're looking at me like I'm crazy. I know I'm just trying to help you with this illustration. And then you're going to work on another section, but then you're going to find a piece that it's like I was looking for that one earlier and you're going to come back over here. It's true, right, yeah?

And then you, you're going to keep trying to work on this stuff and there's a section.

There's a section, there's a section, but then there's this giant Gap section. I'm I don't even want to touch it right now, I'm not even ready for that. And then you, you do it, and then your brain goes crazy and you're like: I'm done with this. But here's what I want you to know.

Your tendency is going to be: I'm done with this, this, but patience would say I'm done with this for right now, not done with church, but it's like: all right, gather grow, group, give go.

Gather grow, group, give go. We are not wired to work on all of the things effectively at one time, and so there's seasons of my life and God's calling to be be calling me to be patient in this, where I'm working on one thing and another thing and another thing. This is what interconnected has been about. We talked about connection with God.

We talked about connecting to ourselves.

We talked about connecting with others. Today I'm talking about connecting with calling their complexities. In each one of these things, and God is teaching me different things in different days and I just get frustrated. Sometimes I'm like God, can you just turn me into the finished product?

You work, Supernatural power, right you.

This is how you operate. Sir. Lord Yahweh, God, above all things, you can heal me from my FR, my deficiencies. You can help me develop skills that I don't currently have.

You can do all of these things.

Why do you keep giving me these? It's so frustrating, but the Lord keeps teaching me to be patient. In fact, sometimes the Lord even allows situations that teach me to be patient, not only working out my salvation, but sometimes dealing with with thorns. He's developing me through that, sometimes dealing with trials and tribulation, isn't it James?

It says it's the testing of our faith that produces endurance.

So let endurance and patience have its perfect result: that you may be lacking in nothing. If you ever want to get to the full picture. You must be patient, and in order to be patient, sometimes you do have to say, all right, I've worked enough on this part for right now. I'll come back to it later and you'll move on to the next thing.

And the next thing some of you are working on just attending.

That's okay. I believe that Gathering Together, sitting under the worship, sitting under the, under the teaching, interacting with some people, that's good, and for you, the step right now is not to work on everything. It's to work on. Hey, I just need to come next week and the next week and the next week.

But some of you, you've been attending for a while and God's calling you to a different step and so you need to start working on your personal walk with God.

One of the tragedies in the church is that people have learned to figure out some of the attendance things, but they never step deeper into a personal relationship with God by opening his word and reading. And then some of you- you, you've done that a little bit. You've done your Bible Study, Fellowship and all this other stuff. Maybe it's time for you to work on spending time in a small group with people, so that God can continue to shape you like iron sharpens iron others of you.

You've been doing those three things pretty, sufficiently, but there's still maybe a lack of trust in the organized religion of Christianity.

And so you're like I don't, I don't trust where my money's going to go. But God's calling you to trust him, regardless of maybe some of the woses of past Church hurt, and he's telling you: trust me with your finances and that's the step you need to take. But I can't start with 10%, Pastor, start somewhere. We say three PS, start with a, make it a priority, a percentage and make it Progressive, because God always calls you to increase your faith.

Some of you like: well, I' I've done all that and I said: well, God's called you to parti ipate in the miraculous work he's doing in this world.

Maybe it's time to work on going, teaching yourself to make disciples, looking at God's word and asking him to help you develop people around you. We got to. We got to work on different sections at different times, because God gave us the pieces and he wants to create this finished product. And in order to get to that place, we've got to understand two things.

First, God's working in me to Will and accomplish his good purposes.

So if he's working in me, then I need to work alongside him. How do I work alongside him? I look at the fact that he has saved me from my sin, has given me an opportunity for all eternity to follow him and to praise him, and I'm I'm working that reality out with consistent labor. Is this where it goes?

Is this where it goes, like fear and trembling is when you look at the Salvation that God offered you freely and say, oh my gosh, I don't deserve this.

And since I don't deserve this, I am grateful ful for this CU. I didn't deserve it. So what do I do? Out of gratitude, I offer my body as a Living Sacrifice, ho and acceptable to him, as a reasonable act of worship.

I push on toward the upward calling of God.

In Christ Jesus, I am going to become one day what he's called me to be. He's creating something in me, but I'm working on this stuff and figuring out the pieces along the way. But when I build up the frame- and I'm patient- it starts to become easier and easier, easier, and we do this with God. So I want to give you my third point.

The third point is: you've got to gaze or look at the picture.

This is something that I haven't mentioned at this, up to this point O, something I haven't mentioned up to this point, but as you build a frame and you start trying to put the pieces together- if you tried to do it without the picture, you'd be in trouble, it would be a miserable experience- and you've got the picture, you've got the example of what you're trying to build, . When we look at the Bible, we see that there is no better example than the person and the work of Christ. Jesus says he is the Forerunner of our faith, he went before us, he became the genuine human being that each one of us is called to be. Colossians says he's a firstborn of a new creation.

So when we look to Jesus, we see a Templar, an example, an image of what we're struggling to put together.

And when you're putting together a puzzle, it's really helpful. When you're looking at different colors and trying to do the different segments, it's helpful to just keep referring back to the picture, back to the image, back to the example. Again, I'm saying this as a hypocrite because I don't do what I preach. I've never done a puzzle, but I think this is what AI told me and I think you would agree.

You got to look at the picture, right?

Yeah, okay, cool, she agrees, she's a professional, she's done 5,000 piece puzzle before. So you know I'm correct. Look at the picture and when I'm, when I'm, when I'm here, maybe I've got the frame, I've got the edges, I've got the corners and I've got a couple sections done. What am I doing?

I'm, I mean, it's actually you know what I'm going to do.

I'm not going to put it behind me and look back to it all the time. I'm going to put it right here so that as I'm working, I'm I'm constantly looking at the template. It's like, oh n that that doesn't go there. Nope, no, no.

What am I saying?

And how does this apply to your spiritual walk? It's pretty obvious, isn't it? Look at the example. We find the example in God's word.

And so what?

What I want to encourage you to do as you're walking, as you're trying to develop this framework of Faith where you eventually get to your specific calling in life, as you become increasingly patient, I want encourage you to continue looking at the work of Christ Jesus as is expressed in his word. I've talked about this in a sermon I preached recently, so I? I won't belabor it, but one of the things we say is: we put God's word in our world. This is what I mean.

I mean whenever I'm operating.

I'm looking at this. When I'm having a good day, I'm thinking: how should I operate today based on what your word says, Lord? When I'm arguing with my spouse, I'm thinking: how should I say the next thing that I'm about to say? Should I say it in the flesh, or should I allow Faith to drive me to say it much more correctly and nicely, so that this conversation doesn't continue in the wrong way?

When I am at work, how should I operate?

How should I respond to people who ask me about what I believe? God, what does your word say about this? I'm constantly looking, and some of you are probably going to Le this sermon a little bit frustrated because, like man, I was hoping he was going to tell me about how to find my specific calling. The way you find your specific calling is by consistently and patiently embracing the general calling and consistently referring back to the picture.

But some of you, you're trying to piece together your life without a picture of what it could look like or what it's supposed to look like.

I think this is where our world is. We think we have to shift our identity because we don't know what we're supposed to look like. We think, think we have to shift certain people out of our life and other people into our life constantly because we don't know what our life is supposed to look like. We have these thoughts about what success looks like and we keep trying to get there, but we never feel like we think we're going to feel when we get there.

Why be?

Because we don't have a picture of what our life is really supposed to look like. I'll tell you this: regardless of what you do in life- and it will be specific to you- you are not going to feel what you need to feel, what God has created Creed you to feel, unless you do it in Christ. So that's why you got to start with the frame. That's why.

That's why, when God we got to look for the picture that God's trying to give us- and, like I said, for those of you in here who were, may I say, aimlessly walking through life without an image of where God wants you to be, that's got to be miserable.

Right to not have a destination, that that's got to be miserable, or to have a destination but not know for sure whether that destination is the right destination to get to. It has got to be miserable- about as miserable as you giving me a bunch of puzzle pieces and telling me, hey, can you put this together? But you didn't give me the front of the box and this is how you're walking through life. When you're not walking through life with Christ, it is impossible for you to live the way God has called you to live without gazing upon the work of Christ, Jesus.

Jesus on the cross, seeking forgiveness of sin, accepting him as your savior and following him.

Impossible. But you don't have to. You don't have to try to put together this puzzle of your life without an image of what it's really going to be. And so I want to encourage you, those of you who have never trusted in Jesus, I want to encourage you right now to consider what it looks like to trust in Jesus with your life.

The Bible says: if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised from the dead, you will be saved.

And what that means is that when you're saved, God's going to start giving you a picture and then he's going to start revealing to you the puzzle pieces, and then for the rest of your life. It's stressful at first, but it's enjoyable now. For the rest of your life. You're going to be working out that salvation with fear and trembling and you're going to be doing some stuff, but the Lord's going to be doing a whole bunch more stuff and he's going to make you into a new creation.

Like the old stuff is going to pass away way and the new is going to come by his power.

But we work. He works but, but we do too. We don't work for salvation, we work because of Salvation. We work to understand deeper about our Salvation.

We work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

So if everybody would bow their heads and close their eyes, I want to give you an opportunity right now to trust in Jesus. You might say this: y'all repeat after me out loud: God, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I believe he died on the cross and Rose from the grave. Forgive me of my sin, make me a new creation and I will follow you for the rest of my life.

Today is my new beginning.

It's in Jesus name we pray amen. Now can we celebrate those who just trusted in Jesus.