Left From Right

Amen, I don't know you can have a seat. Sorry, I don't know if you noticed this. Some of you don't know me that well, but I'm in a good mood today. I, I feel real good, thank you.

I, you know y'all can walk around and follow me through the week and just clap for me when I do something like halfway decent.

It's like you cross the road, bro, good job. So I'm in a good mood. There's two possible reasons. One is cuz I didn't get any sleep last night and I said: it's all in the Lord, he's got it covered, or the.

The second reason is, as you smell, when you walked in, they waxed the floor.

So it's either chemicals or Christ. It's one of the two. I don't know which it is, but I'm feeling good today. I, I hope you would be inspired by the chemicals of Christ as well, but they, they just kidding, I'm joking.

I'm joking.

They waxed the floor. I, I, I knew about it, but I don't think it clicked to me or registered how it smells after it's waxed. So we walked in, we put the, the things in here. We're trying to flush it all out, opening all the doors, and then I, I sprayed perfume on my, I'm just kidding, I didn't do that part, .

But no, I'm excited, Ed, today, because today will be a vision oriented sermon.

They all, they all go back to Vision, but for me, today, this is one of those where I'm I'm really going to dial it in. We've gone through the Book of Jonah in our series called not Jonah, and we have, pretty much talked through every aspect of, the four chapters, but I'm going to hone in on verse 11 of chapter 4 today. Don't put it on the screen yet. I want to in introduce the topic with a story.

I remember, when I was a junior in college.

I was a junior in college, if you didn't know this about me. I went to college, I majored in public accounting. I've talked about this before, so it might not be a surprise, but to those of you who know me is like this dude must have been terrible. I wasn't any good at public accounting, but I was a junior.

And that's when you start having these interviews with different firms at the school.

And this group came from a firm called bkd. If you're in public accounting, you'll know who they are. They're a pretty decent sized firm and they invited me from the first interview to a on-site interview. That started with a dinner in Little Rock, Arkansas, which is where I live for a long time, at Sunny Williams Steakhouse.

If my mom's in the room, she'll be able to attest to the fact that's probably the nicest restaurant in Little Rock.

At the time at least, it was really nice. I'd not been to a nice restaurant like this. I didn't grow up upper middle class or above. You know, I grew.

I grew up without-, you know typical etiquette, if you will.

I didn't know where silverware went. I didn't know where the napkin was supposed to go, just in my lap, right I didn't know all this stuff that that they learned at deputat things up in the Northeast with all these Ivy, I didn't know any of that. So I go to this dinner and I'm just pumped because I've not had food this good in a minute, and so I show up. It's a large group of people.

It's a mixture of candidates, Partners at the firm, managers and Senior Associates, and they're all interviewing us to gauge whether we're going to fit the culture.

And so I get there and the, the, the waiter comes out and tells the whole table. It's a long table about 15, 20 people and he says today, here's your menu, we've got specials. And he lists the specials and one of the specials. Before I tell you this, I need you to know.

When you don't grow up with money or going to nice restaurants, when you hear specials, you think like borrows on a week day, I was like, oh, it's cheaper.

They've got it made special, so that we can eat it more cheaply for a lunch menu or something like that. So that's all I heard. When I heard specials, and one of the specials was crab legs, some of y'all know and I thought let me save them some money. I didn't know, I didn't know people.

I said let me save him some money.

Everybody else is ordering Stakes. Those things look expensive, but I'm going to get the thing that's on special because it's probably cheaper. That's not true. By the way.

Go to expensive restaurant specials are not.

They're not special, they're just, they're just expensive. So I ordered the crab legs. Another thing you need to know if you've never eaten crab legs before. In fact, I just want to know the room I'm talking about.

How many of you have eaten crab legs at a restaurant before?

Quite a few of you. Do you know how you have to eat crab legs? They give you a whole tool to break apart these crab legs. When you break apart the crab legs, there are juices and meat in the crab legs that you then have to sift out with another tool so that you don't make a mess.

Okay, all right, you're with me.

So I ordered the crab legs. I remember a candidate sitting across from me at the table. He said: you just sorder of crab legs. He said that to me.

I didn't know.

I didn't know, I didn't know. So I ordered crab legs. Now, on my right is a manager, on my left is a partner and in front of me is another candidate. So I order my crab legs and I look at it and I don't get crab legs a lot because they're not special, at McDonald's or something like that.

So I order crab legs.

I'm not really that used to eating them. So I got the tool. I knew how to use the tool. My mom got them all the time at Red Lobster when I was eating biscuits.

She was eating those and so I knew how to use it a little bit.

So I cracked it, but it didn't crack all the way. So what you got to do is you got to break it. Now, when I broke it, I need you to know what happened. The juices and meat squirted out everywhere and they were Cal.

They were trying to keep me comfortable so that I didn't screw up the interview.

And I looked to my right and the manager was like: oh, got me a little bit. Yeah, I don't think this is funny. I, I thought it was, I didn't know better, so I just thought it was fine. It was my first real interview and afterwards I was talking to some people about it and they were like: you did what?

No wonder you didn't get the job.

I didn't, I didn't get the job. Now, now, fast forward a couple years. I invite a student or a group of students out to eat with with me at Outback- now, Sunny Williams, Outback. Outback's like somewhere in the middle, right there, that when you're poor you think that's like top tier stuff, but then you get older and realize I paid 10 bucks for that piece of steak anyways.

So I went to outb.

I love Outback, it's great. I love their like brown bread. So I'm at Outback with some college or high school students, and some of whom I invited them out simply because I knew they didn't get that kind of blessing on a regular basis. So I'm sitting across from this kid and he orders a quesadilla- cool, reasonable, it's not crazy, it's not the most expensive thing on the menu.

Then he starts folding his menu.

He says: and, by the way, can I get one to take home too? Bro ordered two quesadillas. He didn't know better. He didn't know better.

Now I looked across from him.

I said: hey, if you ever want this to happen again, you order one meal, you eat it here if you can't take it home, that's part of it. You know, you be polite, you have etiquette. Now, I didn't know and he didn't know. Now I didn't get the job and he got a Stern talking to because I wasn't Rich at that point.

I'm not rich now.

Right, he got to start talking to. But had he gone forward and done it again, that becomes a different conversation. And had I gone forward and ordered crab legs at a job interview again, that would be unwise and foolish, right. I say all of that to say this: there is a difference in, like just reality and perception between someone who is maybe ignorant or doesn't know, they're not aware of certain things.

There's a difference between them and the person who kind of should know better.

And when we come into Jonah, what we are seeing from God is this perspective that God has a desire to interact with and love on people who he created, who are unaware of his presence in the world. They are unaware because the method that God chose to bless the world- this is Israel, starting with Abraham, who's the kind of the origin guy for their faith- did not fulfill that mission. This is in the ancient world. God says it all the time in the Old Testament.

And so God sent Jonah to Nineveh on purpose, so that people who do not know him would come to a saving knowledge of who God is, and God would relent of his judgment on them.

To God there is a difference between those who don't know their right from their left and those who have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. Let me prove it to you. Chapter 4- and I'm not even going to belabor the point by giving you guys a summary. Chapter 4: God says this to Jonah, who was sitting outside of this city: , wishing God would destroy it, but God's going to relent on his judgment.

In verse 11, God says this to Jonah?

And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals? What I need you to know is that you serve a God, or we're talking about a God who deeply loves you and wants to engage with you, so much so that when you don't know what's going on or know how to seek Him, He will send provision in the form of a fish for Jonah, in the form of a situation for you, in order to draw you to himself. He cares that much about you that he would take a prophet who's stubborn and obstinate, send him to you so that you can be blessed by the message that they're going to preach. He cares so much for you that, even if they don't preach it- well right, if I stand up here and I screw up the whole time, sometimes I have to remind myself that God can speak through a donkey.

So just because you heard something from the Lord doesn't mean I'm special.

God can use anyone and he desires so much that you would know him that he'll. He'll send his son, Jesus from Heaven to die on the cross so that you might have life walking with your creator like that. That's how much God loves you and when you don't know him, he has a passion for you. Now I tell you that because that's one perspective that God has.

We as a church, we have that perspective, like when we came out here.

We chose Phoenix on purpose because we saw the city that was reaching 5 million people when we, when we heard about it that- and I'll break down some numbers for you in a second- but the vast majority of which do not currently attend church. I'll give you some numbers. When I came out here, the numbers that I heard for the West Valley was about 12 to 15% of people, attend, not even just regularly, they attend an Evangelical Church. I was doing more research over this week trying to prep for this message and I was looking at the population of Phoenix compared to the number of churches in Phoenix.

The population in Phoenix, like I said, is about 5 million people.

The number of churches in Phoenix, and here's what I found: I found that there are about 989 churches that have a phone number on their website. There are about 1,400 churches that have a website at all that includes a phone number or an email. That's how many churches in the Phoenix metropolitan area there are. Now there are more churches than that, but they don't have a phone number, email or website.

So God loves them and they love the people they're working with, but we don't know about them.

Okay, like that's, it's kind of where we land. I'm not talking mess, I'm just saying like, if you want to reach people kind of got to know about you somehow. So let's just say we're working with 1500 churches here in Phoenix, 1500 churches. If each one hit a thousand people, would you guys say that a thousand people in a church is pretty good.

Just say yes or no.

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty good. Right, like there are some Churches who hit 30 40,000, but that it was super rare. The average Church in America, or 60% of the churches in America, are averaging 60 to 80 people on a Sunday, and then it goes up a little bit, in smaller percentages, but overall the average is about 180 in a church. Now, praise the Lord for what he's doing here in Buckeye and Orbit Church, because we're hitting way more than that right now.

But, I let's just say it's 180 is the average Church size, they're not hitting a th.

So if you've got 1500 churches that reach a th000, that's 1. 5 million people that you're reaching. I said there are five million people in Phoenix. Now that includes Catholic churches.

Okay, that's a that's we're only if every Church in the city that's currently existing reached a th people. We're only hitting a quarter to a third of the population of Phoenix.

What that means to me is because about 60% of people in Phoenix would say that they believe in God, but that doesn't mean that they attend church. And if they say they attend church, that doesn't mean it's more than Christmas or Easter. And if they attend church, that doesn't mean they're doing it Weekly. Right, the number of people who are attending weekly is much, much smaller than what I just said.

But the churches here, if they're doing well, we're only reaching a quarter to a third of the population.

That means that 3/4 of the population is in the position, similar to Nineveh now, where God's going to Rel- I mean, got going to judge them currently for their present lifestyle- but where they don't know who God is, not, not the way that we know who God is. That is my passion. Like you'll even hear me, I'll get intense sometimes, because I am so passionate about people who don't know, the Bible would say their right hand from their left, that that, like that, is almost my like tunnel vision Focus. You're going to see at this church where, once you've tasted and seen that the Lord is good, I love you.

I still love you.

We're gracious with you, like we're amped and pumped for every single step that you take. I want you to know that we love you just as much. But my focus tends to be that, for people who don't even know who God is like, when someone came in 3 weeks ago and they said I've never attended church before, I'm sitting here like, okay, God, thank you for giving us the opportunity to Steward that conversation. That is who we're trying to reach.

Like if we were just reaching church people, we're shuffling around 1. 5 million people, Max, and there's so many people who don't know their left hand from their right.

So when we came out here, our vision was to reach people who don't know their right hand from on their left, not to be like Jonah who's judging them, but to bring a message of grace, of love, that inspires them to live the life that God called them to live by revolving everything around him. Here's our vision statement. Our vision is to help people find peace and develop Purpose By revolving everything around Jesus. Yeah, when I look at peace and I look at purpose, here's what I see.

Cuz, cuz I was.

You know, I always try to make it relevant. I don't know why I keep pulling my pants up. They're not even coming down. It's a bad habit.

I'm trying to be relevant with you.

I looked up cuz I'm left-handed. Anyone in this room left-handed? Look at you. It's about right.

Did you know?

10% of the population is Left-Handed? We're special, like crab legs. I'm telling you it's good man, like, you're special, and the rest of you are like you're weird. Right, about 10% of the population is Left-Handed.

And then I was doing further study and I saw that about 15 to 20% of the population actually struggles telling the difference between their left and right hand.

So I'm you want to play? Simon Says: real quick. We, we do real quick. Hey, let's practice like hey.

Simon Says: say amen, amen, amen, say amen, amen.

Yes, see, Simon Says. Simon says: all right. So Simon Says: raise up your left hand. How, how' y'all do some of y'all anyone?

Okay, Simon Says: raise up your left hand, Simon Says, raise up your left hand.

Simon Says, raise up your right hand. Cool, most of you are good. Some of you are slower than others. I see you back there, all right, I see you.

See, we're- I mean, we're mostly adults. Right yesterday, I did the experiment on my son, Lucas, who's seven, and my daughter, Micah, who's four. I said, hey, Lucas, raise up your left hand quickly. He was like gotcha and I looked at Micah.

I said, hey, Micah, raise up your left hand.

She's like, and she raised up her right hand. No lie, I'm not just trying to preach here. I'm telling you the truth. She raised up her right hand and I looked at that and I said that is exactly what this text is talking about.

It's saying that, in a spiritual capacity, the people in Nineveh are unaware.

They, they are so, I think they ignorant, but not in a bad way. They're without knowledge of their creator, so much because Jonah is the only one who's talking to him about it and he's barely trying. These guys are so unaware that it's as if they don't know their right hand from their left. You're looking at a city who, last week or two weeks ago, I told you their response was crazy radical, because they don't have any spiritual knowledge about who God is and how gracious he is, that he's rich in love and slow to anger.

They're like we got to do everything we can cuz we don't know anything about him.

They don't know anything. God has a passion for people who are without knowledge. That is his perspective toward them and we see this in the personal work of Christ too. When he's looking at people who just crucified him, he says: Hey, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

This is God's, this is God's disposition toward those who were unaware, and many of you came in here today.

You're like: I don't know. I don't know my right hand for my love. Spiritually, I don't know what it looks like to trust in Jesus. I don't know what it looks like to follow him.

I don't know how to take this anxiety I'm feeling and flip it to where I can have peace.

I don't know how to move from aimlessness to having actual purpose in my life. I don't know how to love my spouse. I don't know how to raise my kids. I don't know how to break these generational curses, like you are in this place where you came in and said: I'm going to try this because I have no clue what to do.

God loves you.

It's especially while you're in that position God leaves the 99 to go follow the one. Who's lost, who doesn't know, who's unaware, who probably thinks they're doing okay but they're not like. God knows that if, if you are successful but without him, you're not doing well, God knows that if you have all the stuff you dreamed of but you're not doing it with him, then you're not in a good spot. God loves you and will pursue you in that way.

This is what he communicates here: that he is concerned about 120,000 people who don't know their right hand from their left.

And we have, validated already that we are in a city of more than 3 to four million people who, spiritually, don't know their right hand from their left. And there's some people you might be saying, yeah, but a lot of people say that they're Christians. Yeah, but that doesn't mean they. They know how many, how many people are saying they're following God but have no connection or relationship with the God that you and I know.

That is God's posture.

He wants to pursue them. He wants to relent on the coming judgment. That is why he sent Christ to show us that he is willing to relent on his judgment toward us. Is he came like Jesus came out of Heaven, the phrase I've been saying lately.

Jesus came out of left field in order to make you right with God.

He came down from heaven in order to do for you what you could not do on your own. Like I, I got to love someone a lot to do for them. Like it takes every ounce of patience in me to go upstairs in my loft after kids trashed it, after I had some people over, some kidss trashed it- and to get down on my hands and knees and start picking up with Lucas and Micah when they were the ones who made them. It takes everything in me, but the love that I have for them is just enough for me to help them out.

But the love God has for you is enough to break your hostility and bring you into a connectedness with him that you've never experienced before I.

I need you to understand that his posture toward you is love, not of judgment. I know the preacher had a judgy vibe that one time and you felt like God hated you because you sinned and struggled. No, God loves you in spite of your sin, but while he has a posture toward those who are without knowledge, that is crazy, crazy, generous and gracious. There's, there's a plane that you cross when you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.

Hebrews actually tells us: , he, as it asked a question: how can you have tasted and seen that the Lord is good?

Yet fall back to Elementary principles of this world? And when I look at the church- hopefully not ours in a couple of years, but when I look at the church, what I see is I see a group of people who confess that Jesus is Lord, but don't act as if they've tasted and seen his power, his love, his generosity, his compassion toward other people. That's what I see. When I look at the country, it, it can manifest itself through churches that are full of judgment, and manifests itself with churches, that are full of inactivity.

That's how it manifests itself.

How can you have tasted and seen? How do you have knowledge? How does Jonah have knowledge of God's compassion that was expressed to them through the crossing of the Red Sea for his people through continued rescuing over and over and over from other, people who would have enslaved them. How can Jonah- who, who knows God, look at, look at God and his mission with contempt when he is tasted and seen that the Lord is good?

And so, while God has a posture of like, utter Grace and generosity, where he relents toward those who don't have knowledge because he's concerned for them, there's a different posture he has toward us and I want to be very clear, so clear, .

Please do not leave here saying, that, because I've heard about Jesus, God doesn't have Grace on me. He does like God is still gracious on all of us in the midst of us being disobedient, seriously, seriously, like God will chase you down, just like he did Jonah. Jonah knew God is still generous and gracious. The difference between Jonah and the syap phenician sailors, the difference between Jonah and the ninevites, is that Jonah had knowledge and they didn't.

So the difference in the way that God treated them didn't have anything to do with God's grace toward Jonah, had everything to do with God's expectation of what Jonah was capable of accomplishing you with me.

So when we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, it's not that God's grace changes toward us, it's that his expectation shifts for us. His expectation for you is to now start accomplishing his mission in the world, and so our mission as a church is to help people who don't know God- like unchurched, unknowledgeable people who don't know their right hand from their left- spiritually find peace, develop Purpose By revolving everything around Jesus. The first two are to help people who don't have anxiety: recognize it in Christ. They can have it.

To help people who are aimless: recognize it in Christ.

They can develop it. The second part of that is really to help people understand that when they follow Jesus, he puts them on a pathway for that spiritual success and that pathway it can be difficult, sometimes it comes with a task and a responsibility. So let me, let me break it down really quickly for you, those who don't know God. God loves, has Grace on and has a vision for, so much so that he will beat down walls in order to help reach them.

God also has that Grace toward those who have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, but he also gives them an assignment or a responsibility, because God does not give you an assignment just to accomplish a task.

God gives you an assignment because he knows that the assignment is part of the pathway to your spiritual growth. That's what the assignment is, and it comes with an expectation. And so when God comes to Jonah, says, go to Nineveh, God's like: hey, I've got an opportunity for you to revolve your life around me by going to the very people I am most passionate about currently. That's what I feel.

When God called me to come out here, he said: he said I'm going to give you a task.

It's a burden, but it's, it's a blessing. It's a burdensome task because it's going to take a lot of work, but, Matt, you and your team will get to be a part of something that will help you grow, but that will be a blessing to the people I am most passionate about, who don't know their left hand from their right. You might be thinking: okay, Matt, Matt's talked about the vision before. I know this, I know this, I understand it.

God is looking at you in such a way that he sees your potential and now he knows that you can accomplish it.

He, he, he looks at you, and he says: they, they know they shouldn't order, order crab legs right now, but they're kind of doing that. I want to help them when it comes to spiritual etiquette- not boxes to be checked, but spiritual etiquette. What does it look like for them to accomplish the task that I have set before them? Because they know me.

If they know me, they're going to be filled with gratitude.

They're going to offer their bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God. That's their reason, able act of worship. If they know me, here's how they're going to respond. But he looks at me and you and sometimes, like I look at myself and I.

I look at the people who come and I say: don't you like you've tasted, like you, you know I?

People come in from other churches and they know. Here's how I know they know. The first thing they'll say is: I hope you preach deep. They say I hope you preach the Bible.

That's the biggest like negative comment we'll get on Facebook these days.

It's like, yeah, y'all probably don't preach the Bible, do you? I'm like you care so much about the Bible but you're not really embodying it very well right now. They, they know about the Bible, but they're filled with judgment because they're not accomplishing the mission that God has for them. You put yourself in the pin with a bunch of lost sheep and you'll recognize why God is passionate about them.

It's like I look at my kids, my, my daughter, who raised up the wrong hand.

You think I'm mad at her because she didn't know which one was which she's unaware. She'll get there, she's unaware, but I would be a little judgy toward Lucas if he didn't get it right. It's like, bro, you, 7 years old, it's time to up your game a little bit. We've talked about this playing baseball with him.

It's like: are you left or right-handed?

I don't know, I'll hit both and I'm like you got to figure this out, son. Like this is something you should know. I'm not mean to him, but I think that, like if God was looking at me in my life- here's what I hear him say- said Matt, like, like you know, wasting your time in this way is not the like, it's not the most productive thing you could do, and you know that you love stepping into the very thing that I've called you to. So why are you spending two hours a day or 3 hours a day doing this, this thing?

It's not.

I don't feel judged, but I feel like mat, love your game a little bit, like you know better. You know what this does to your psyche. You know what this does to your activities. You know how this makes you feel later, because you were lethargic in this position and now you're less active here, when you could have been active and done something different, like when, when God is talking to me- not audibly, mind you, but when God is looking at me, I feel not judgment, but an expectation that is more similar to that of a coach.

He say, Matt, you're on the team like start, start acting like you're on the team.

You're on the team like you're not. You're not stepping off the team. I'm not kicking you off the team, you're on it. But you have a choice.

I said I'm going to put you in and you can choose whether you go, sit on the bench, and many of us have decided- I'm cool sitting on the bench and not seeing the miraculous work of God in this world, because it's easier to sit on the team and wait for heaven than it is to try to tackle what God places right in front of you.

It's easier to sit next to the temple like Jonah. It's easier to sit outside the city rather than diligently Proclaim to the people God is most passionate about, most concerned about the good news that God will relent on the coming judgment if they repent of their activities. So this is the vision of our church: to help people get on the team and start revolving everything around Jesus. I've had a couple people leave the church up to this point-, probably several, I just don't know about them, they didn't tell me.

But some people have told me they're leaving the church and we always try to do an exit interview and say, hey, what's going on?

How can we do better? Is this something that we did? Like? What's going on?

And you know it's all of the above.

There's a bunch of different reasons, but one that sticks out to me that I regularly remember is it, it was too much, and I, I get that, like, seriously, I get that. Or someone will step on the serving team and they, they'll pull back and be like that was a lot, like on that was a lot, and I'm like, no, I, I get it. And while on one side, I want- I want you to hear the grace and my voice- that if you start serving or, get baptized and then you scale back to something that maybe is beneath what God is calling you to. Don't feel guilty, that'll help you.

It separates you from God, .

But at the same time I find myself in this position where I've tasted and seen how good the Lord is and I recognize that if someone can jump into that lifestyle of revolving everything around Jesus, right, like if you have a bicycle tire with a bunch of like spokes but no center, it's not going to be that helpful for you. There's no stability. And so when Jesus is at the center of our Lives, we, we take every aspect of our life and we say, hey, let's grab that and connect it to the proper source. And when we connect it to the proper Source, that's when we are most fulfilled, that's when we are most filled with, a joy and excitement.

That's when we see God do things.

And so when people leave, they'll tell me that. And you know I don't. I don't want to be rude or anything, but my heart cries like: oh my gosh, this person's been in church 15, 20 years and they're they're. They think that revolving their life around Jesus is too much.

And I'll be like Martin Luther, that guy way back in the 1500s.

He's like I got too much stuff to do, too much pressure in my life to not wake up in the morning and spend too hours seeking my Creator. I got too much to do to not revolve everything around Jesus like this isn't a task we add to the already busy schedule. This is something we Infuse every aspect into, every aspect of our schedule. And so when I've been in this like conundrum place where I'm like: are we too intense?

I'm just being vulnerable with you, like are we too intense?

Is this too hard for people? And then I look at what Jesus calls us to and I'm like like no, that was intense. This is like maybe more than the norm. And my encouragement to the people in this room is that if you can start revolving everything around Jesus, these things that he calls you to, they won't feel like too much, they'll feel natural.

One of my friends here in the church-, we're talking just a couple weeks ago and I remember them looking kind of exhausted and like this is a lot.

And then just this last week, they looked at me and they were like actually, Sunday's is my favorite day of the week, that quick, because when Jesus is at the center, he shifts things. You're going to find a community here at the church. You're going to find a connection with God, a Revelation from him in his word. You are going to find something drastically different.

This is why we raised the bar of the calling of this church.

If people want to find peace, goodness, if you want to find peace, it takes Jesus in every area, not just one. You get peace in one area, you just go find the other area. It's like putting fires out constantly. I feel better here, but I feel terrible here.

I'm a bad parent here, I'm a bad employee here, but I'm good here, but I'm really bad in this other area.

Or I need to go do this and do this. It's just jump, jump, jump, jump, jump stress, but it's like, okay, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus is at my sinner cool. If this is going poorly, I still got Jesus. If this is going well, still got Jesus.

If everything is going differently than I expected, I still got Jesus.

And in fact, when I look back at my life after infusing or putting Jesus into every aspect, I'm sitting here like, ah, that was pretty bad, but God used it. That was pretty good, but God wanted to pull me back from all that success so that I could understand him at a deeper level? God is so good and if you've tasted and seen that the Lord is good, how can you fall back to these basic Elementary principles? You are not ignorant, you are knowledgeable.

You have heard the word more than most people in all of history.

So if you've tasted, if you've seen God looks at you with Grace. But he looks at you and says: let's get going, I should have said: let's go, let's do it, let's help people. There are 3 million people in this city who don't know their right hand from their left and it's time for us to come out of- I guess you could say- left field, because we're in the west- and start making an impact to help people be declared righteous by trusting in Jesus. Say Amen, somebody, cuz that's what we're called to do.

We want them to revolve everything around Jesus.

It is our privilege to revolve everything around Jesus. So let me get pragmatic. If you're going to revolve everything around Jesus, it takes steps, not sedentary living, spiritually speaking. A step, step.

You're going to see people in a moment.

This is actually not their first step. This is the one service of all. The baptism Services were, like everybody I've known for the last three months is like why you've been waiting so long. But I'm excited about it.

They're taking a step toward baptism, but somebody in here, you've trusted in Jesus, but you've never taken that first step to make your faith public.

In fact, if, if you guys are ready to do it, go ahead and, go out there and get ready and they'll bring you in a few moments. I told them way too late last time, but that's one step, other people, it's time for you to find God's calling on your life personally, professionally, but also like ecclesiological, like church oriented, and so one way you can do that is by coming to next steps class. It's right after this: if we fill the room, we'll just move it over here, I don't care, we'll figure it out, but it's time for people to start taking their next step toward God, and we believe that not only reading the Bible and hanging out with people, but participating ating in what God is doing is one of the like sanctifying activities that we get to participate in, where we see God in a way that we would have never seen him before. We've got a big mission right now.

We're sitting at around like 300 regular attendants, and I look at the 300 and then I extrapolate it to the 1500 churches and tell myself that they're at a thousand and they're not.

And then I look at the 3. 5 to 4 million who don't know and I'm just like we got. I walk into Costco guys and I'm like that's so many people just in Buckeye on a Sunday afternoon who don't know God, that's just Costco on Sunday. I have a mountain next to my house in Sienna Hills and I walk up there sometimes when it's cooler outside, and, there's a little bench, it's a, it's a bench and I remember last year when we first got here, you can see from this little Hill on the bench, a city, the whole city, the entire Valley, and I looked, I actually posted a post, if you want to go back to like our 10th post ever, and I posted it because I was thinking about this sermon that I would Preach Today.

No Lie, this sermon was planned on that moment and I looked at it and I was like I feel right now like I'm Jonah sitting on a booth outside the city wondering what God's going to do. That was when I determined that that series would be called, not Jonah, like we want to be the opposite of Jonah.

I was sitting there and I was filled, not as good as Jesus, but I was filled with compassion for the people out there who think they're good but they're not. This church will be a place you call it might call it a hospital for those who are sick, but for those of you who are on the healing process, it's time for you to flip your perspective and help others, and in so doing, you're going to be blessed. You will be so blessed. By jumping in and helping others, even if it's just little kids, you're going to teach them something that you didn't know yourself.

And all of a sudden, you I learned the Bible today.

Why? Because when I was reading it, I couldn't figure it out because I got distracted, but when I was trying to teach little kids, I had to know it. And now, all of a sudden, you know the Bible better because you taught a couple little kids. You're going to know the Bible better cuz someone out here is going to ask you a question and you're going to be, like relying on the Lord to help you answer it.

It is in our service that God continues to help us be Sanctified.

So let's take those next steps. I- I would love to say everyone in here- is going to decide today to start stepping up and serving. It's not what this sermon is about, but this about what this, this is. It's what this church is about: Mission focused, find peace, develop Purpose By revolving everything all right Around Jesus.

It's a high calling, but it's a great opportunity.

I'll close with this. Buckeye is, is growing. I was at a city meeting a couple weeks ago and you know, I don't know if this is actually going to happen, but what they were saying is they're expecting, by 240, the population in Buckeye, with all our land, to be 1 million. I don't know if you've heard that before.

Some of you like: I don't want that.

I'm like, yeah, I, I have a mixed. It's a mixed bag, because I don't want my neighborhood to be crowded, but I also want heaven to be crowded, so it's back and forth with me and so, I get excited and amp to see that million people come by 2040 and we as a church orbit, church here in the West Valley- are a staple that people can come hear the Gospel, see life change and then develop habits that revolve around Jesus. There'll be people filled with joy, peace, Shalom. And we're just getting started.

Amen, we just getting.

Look at your neighbor say: we're just getting started, just get started. Look at your other neighbor say: do you want to be a part of it? Don't answer him if it's a no. If it's a no, just call me up.

I'll give you an exit interview.

It'll be super fun. I won't make you feel guilty at all. I'll learn from it. We're all being Sanctified in this place, but at this point, I want to give you a visual representation of what life change looks like.

So the band's going to come up and in a few moments we're going to bring up people who are going to get baptized.

What that means is that they are making their faith public. They already have the faith in Jesus, but they're making that Faith public- public through baptism.