Feasting with the Saints

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 We started this year at Passion Creek with a dream. Uh, this whole idea is, what if we became people who knew how to make friends and love other people? And I love that story we just heard from the Parks. Because the reality is, is chronic loneliness is at an all time high. We’ve learned that Gen Z is the loneliest generation of all recorded history.

Loneliness is damaging to your health. Uh, more than smoking 15 cigarettes a day, our national life expectancy is falling at a rapid rate. Not because of COVID or cancer, but from young suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism, which a lot of people agree that stems from feeling alone. You start to go to those sources.

Loneliness, though, isn’t just a problem out in the world. It’s a problem within the walls of a church. If anything, it can be worse in a church because we have this false idea to be Christian means to be perfect, and so I can’t really share who I am with people, therefore nobody actually knows me, therefore I feel alone even more.

Which by the way is the opposite of the grace Jesus preaches. We can totally be who we are and be loved and then brought in to change. So we have that idea that if we intentionally put the way of Jesus into the center of our community, friendship isn’t just common sense, it’s also common practice. And a common practice for friendship, fellowship, community, whatever word you want to put on it, is hospitality.

Our dream here at Passion Creek is to become a people who consistently create a meal, create space over a meal with saints, Strangers and sinners to experience the loving grace of God. I’m so excited. There’s more ping pong balls on the display that represents a meal Somebody had with a saint stranger or sinner and on Monday is Heather here today?

I’m not sure if I saw her No, well anyways, we were at Heather’s house on Monday night. It was a lot of fun We brought the girls with us and our youngest if you if most of you have gone to Heather’s house So I hear but if you go there, you’re probably gonna play a card game We did reverse uno or something like that flip.

Uno. It’s pretty insane. It’s intense guys And so my youngest is like not that competitive. So she’s like I’m not gonna play anymore So she started taking a score like so she’s writing down a little notepad and in the top it said feather And I was like, why does it say feather? And so then, you know, at the end of the night, I looked at her scorecard, and I won once.

Heather won the rest of the time. But then I asked her, I said, why did you put feather on top? She’s like, we’re at Miss Feather’s house. It’s like, oh, it’s Heather, Heather’s house. It was just so fun. Uh, and it’s been a joy. And so last week was feasting on the Savior. This week is feasting with the saints.

It’s our next step of progression. We’re a practice based church here. And so we’re actually not just talking about ideas, but talking about how to implement them. I want you to imagine how great would it be if everybody here had dinner with somebody else in this room this week. I think our loneliness would begin to plummet.

But, let’s not get too idealistic. Feasting with the saints is a lot harder than it sounds, especially if you do it over a long period of time. That’s what we’re going to talk about today, kind of the, the hard part of living and feasting in community. Let’s pray. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, thank you so much for your grace that we find at the table, that we find here in community.

God, as we open up Romans 12, I just ask you that you would God, shape our hearts according to your word. I ask you, God, that you would help us in our church to have meals with saints, strangers, and sinners. To the glory of you, King Jesus. In Jesus name I pray. Everybody says, Amen. Amen. All right. Romans 12.

Hopefully you’re there. If not, it’ll be on the screen. Romans 1 through 8. Let me give you some context. Romans 1 through 8 is some of the most beautiful theology in all of the Bible. It’s a lot about the depths of our sin, the magnitude of God’s grace, and the extent of Christ’s love for us. Who can separate us from the love of God?

Nobody. Nothing, Paul says. Romans 9 through 11 is like the hardest chapters almost in all of Scripture. There’s a lot of theology there. But, overview, it’s essentially a beautiful thing that Gentiles, most of us are Gentiles in this room, Have been grafted into the fellowship. We are now family of God, because what Christ has done for us, and it’s so much theology.

Romans 11 ends with a doxology. It’s a hymn of praise. I think Paul is blown away by the theology that he is writing down through the power of the Spirit. He has to take a pause and says, who can know the mind of the Lord, who has been His counselor, who’s ever given to God that he should be repaid. It’s just this wonderful, like, wow, God is so good.

But now Romans 12 starts with, Therefore, it is a shift in the conversation. In light of Romans 1 through 11, Therefore, what do we as a church do? A lot of people argue Romans 12. And following is about the people of God becoming a people of love. And specifically in chapter 12, verse 3 through 16, which is where we’re going to spend our time today, is about loving the Christian community.

17 and following is about loving the outsiders, the, the, the sinners, the strangers, those who are not yet a part of our community. So let’s, let’s look together in verse three of Romans chapter 12. Four, by the grace given to me, I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he should think.

This the biggest reasons people don’t live in community because they’re not serving the people around them. Instead, think sensibly as God has distributed a measure of faith. So don’t down yourself, but let’s be honest. We all have a part to play. Now, as we have many parts in one body, and all the parts do not have the same function, in the same way, we who are many, Are one body in Christ and individually members of one another.

Paul uses this imagery of a body a lot, also in 1 Corinthians 12, for example. Showing that like a nose, you need a nose, but you also need an arm, and a hand, and a toe. They all do different things, and you’ll know when those things hurt, you notice them more than ever, right? It’s like, I didn’t think my toes really meant much until you stub one, right?

And so all of these have a different part to play. And I would argue he’s talking about the local church. So us here, we all have different parts to play, to build up the body of Christ. Verse six, according to the grace or the gift given to us, this is all from God. We have different gifts, different ways to serve one another and to serve God.

It says, if prophecy, use it according to the proportion of one’s faith. If service, use it in service. If teaching, in teaching. If exhorting, this is like encouragement. I love these people, right? In exhortation, giving with generosity, leading with diligence, showing mercy. with cheerfulness. So he’s giving, uh, this is actually why we do membership.

That’s why we’re talking next, right after this in growth track. Like, what is your part to play? Let’s plug you in to the glory of God. But now verse 9 is really, uh, some commentators call it the apostle’s recipe for family love. It’s 25 different, like, boom, boom, boom, lines. So one commentator called it staccatos, where it’s just like these proverbs, this line, that line, that line.

It’s all so much wisdom. Let’s go through it through 16. It says, let love be without hypocrisy, fully sincere, right? Detest evil, cling to what is good. Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Take the lead in honoring one another. Other translations say, outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lack diligence and zeal.

Be fervent in the Spirit. Serve the Lord. In other words, don’t be lazy. Be enthusiastic about serving the Lord. Verse 12. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in affliction. Be persistent in prayer. Share with the saints in their needs. This is what today’s message is all about. Pursue hospitality. If you were here last week, we defined hospitality.

The Greek word here is philosenia. Philo is family love. Xenia means the stranger or the foreigner. And so it’s essentially this process where strangers become friends and friends become family. Verse 14, bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

We need to be people who like, you know, I, I know sometimes like when something exciting happens, sometimes I fear if I tell certain people, they’re going to think I was arrogant or they’re going to be mad because I’m not talking about them, but you know, we should be like. Rooting each other on like we had a cool thing this week the Queen Creek Unified School District honored us by giving me But it represented all of us I promise an award power of one because they’re saying man your church is doing so much for the community We want to honor you in front of the whole board and that was really cool But like some church context like why are you talking about that?

No, let’s rejoice together That was neat, but that’s also let’s weep if somebody’s having a bad day. You’re not ruining me Don’t know be honest with me. Let’s do community together Okay, so we put those who weep live in harmony with one another do not be proud I think pride is the number one source of Division why a lot of us just can’t get along instead associate with the humble do not be wise in your own Estimation verse 16 in the message paraphrase that says get along with each other Don’t be stuck up make friends with nobody’s and don’t be the great somebody.

I feel like that’s really good That’ll preach. So I want you to notice though. What is Paul painting here? He is showing the community of Christ. It’s a beautiful body that we are lucky to be a part of. But it takes a lot of work, a lot of intentionality, and there’s a lot of things that can quote unquote ruin it.

Things that he’s mentioning like pride, laziness, dishonor, immorality, Stinginess, impatience, there’s all sorts of things. So I want you to remember in January, our big series was Making Friends, Loving Other People, and we argued all month, if you weren’t here, that’s fine, I’ll catch you up real quick. There are four steps to like, genuine, holy, deep, as it says, deeply loving each other, community, and friendships.

And we argued it was proximity. Anybody remember? I doubt it. Yeah? Okay, my wife. Do you remember? Proximity, vulnerability, Practice and mission. I’m encouraged. It’s fine. Now, when you start practicing hospitality, you’ll start taking each step. Starts with proximity and onward. But here’s the thing, too. If you do it long enough, you’ll realize there is a dark side to each step.

There’s a shadow side. There’s something that can blow up the entire operation in each step of the way. And why? We have, 1st Peter says, an enemy who prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to divide and devour. Let’s put it another way, when the enemy wants to divide a church, he starts at the top and at the table.

For our church, unity has been a prayer for us, because that’s what happens anytime you live on mission. There can be such little things that begin to divide a church, because that’s what the enemy wants to do. And so up top, me and Caleb, we’re always making sure we’re dwelling in unity. Our staff, our leadership, our volunteers, it starts at the top.

Usually there’s something, he wants to divide the church as best as he can. But it also happens at the table, when you begin to open yourself up. It’s so easy for hard things to happen and what we have to remember Romans 12 the very last verse We didn’t read it Romans 12 ends by saying do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good So this is what we want to talk about.

There’s an evil that can really begin to spoil a community We want to name those things and say we don’t we don’t fight back with evil, right if they’re petty We’re not petty back No, we fight it back with good, and I want us to show what are those good things. Now, this sermon could have been a lot easier if I just said how to make a honey chicken stir fry, but that’s not what the sermon’s about.

Although, hopefully you know how to make something, if not PBJs, cereal, something for somebody this week. Nobody, that, I know that wasn’t a joke, but it wasn’t, whatever. Let’s talk about the shadow side of table fellowship. It gets really hard. So first, the shadow side of proximity and community. is familiarity.

So if you remember, we argued the first step to friendship, again, is proximity. In other words, you just need to get around people. Jeffrey Hawley is a professor at University of Kansas. He researched the time needed for friendships to blossom. He argues it takes 50 hours to go from an acquaintance to a casual friend.

I don’t know what that means, but casual friend. It takes an additional 90 hours to go from casual friend to friend. That’s nice, okay? Now we’re just actual friends. And hear me, it takes another 200 hours to qualify as a best friend. So I want you to look to your neighbor and tell them what category they’re in.

No, don’t do that. Um, what’s up casual? You know, whatever. Casual is a big deal too. It means you spent 50 hours together. That’s, that’s amazing. Okay? But once you’re in regular proximity, don’t you notice? Familiarity begins to creep in. There was actually a small stint, uh, when Pastor Caleb came on staff, and we did really well in the be in the beginning.

But then we started to get familiar with each other. And kind of what was bad, I had to really, like, wake myself up and not do this anymore, when we began to meet. Like, by the way, our meeting is at Black Rock. Like, that’s just we decided that’s our church office for now. And tell somebody in the name of Jesus Christ, amen, amen.

Alright, but For BlackRock, we meet there, and for a while, we would just show up and not even say hi to each other. We’d just look at each you know Caleb, right? Just look at each other, we’d look back, open up the computer, and we’d get to work. And that’s just what we would do. And there was a mutual understanding, there was nothing to it, but I thought, that’s not very honoring.

Right? I need to say, Pastor Caleb, how you doing, man? You know, like, let’s actually, like, be friendly here instead of, hmm, and get to work. It’s these little things, familiarity begins to creep in, and slowly but surely, you begin to dishonor the people you’ve spent so much time with. In Matthew 13, and other places in the Gospels as well, we see this happen with Jesus in his own hometown.

What happens? Jesus says a prophet is not honored in his own hometown. Why? Because they’re used to Jesus. They grew up with Jesus. They couldn’t imagine Jesus being this powerful rabbi and teacher. They remembered him in third grade. You’re just a, you’re a normal human like us, aren’t you? And Jesus said, I’m not gonna do many miracles here.

Why? Because of their lack of faith and their lack of honor. It was St. Augustine in the fourth century. He makes It’s the famous line, I think all of us have heard it, but I didn’t realize it came from a Christian. Familiarity breeds, does anybody know this line? Contempt. Did Mike say grace? Thank you. You get an A.

I’m just kidding. All right. Like this is good. Familiarity breeds contempt. It’s a slow but sure thing that happens when you get familiar with others. But look at Romans 12 verse 10, Paul is admonishing us to fight this drift towards familiarity And contempt. Verse 10, it says, love one another deeply as brothers.

I want us to see here. There’s actually two Greek words for love here already in that first line. You have family love. That’s why we see brothers and sisters. Oh, sorry. We see family love, which is the like literally love and then brothers and sisters. So here’s the two kinds of loves. There’s family love, meaning like parent to a child.

So I love my daughters so much. I also love my sisters, but it’s like a different kind of love. Can we all agree? Like there’s just different levels and different. Uh, kinds of commitment, and I can go six months without talking to my sister, and it’s, but I love her, you know, but I’m fine with that. You know what I’m saying?

But we still got each other’s back. You can never talk bad about my sister, right, or we have problems, right? It’s all different levels. But here, I want us to see, this kind of love is a loyal love. We have each other’s backs, and that’s what we’re supposed to do, but hear me, the shadow side of familial love is familiar.

Just familiar. Oh, my sister’s in town. Cool. Okay, whatever. I know you, you know me, we don’t need to go out of our way to honor each other. And so we need to, look at the next line, take the lead in honoring one another. So we combat familiarity. With honor. Take the lead. I think what this means is literally to be intentional.

Honor, this tomeo is the word, literally means to give someone value. So this is why, like, if I were to preach at another place, usually they ask, Can we give you an honorarium? Which is literally like, let’s just pay you for your time coming, and I’m always grateful for that. So it’s recognizing somebody’s value, contribution, importance, and you’re either speaking it or literally giving.

Honor with your money. And so I love our church, we have a huddle every Sunday at 9. 15, 45 minutes before service starts. And at the huddle, we talk a little bit about the logistics, but we spend most of our time honoring one person in the room. When we first began, we just said, okay, let’s honor each other.

Anybody, any of the OGs remember this? We’re like, honor somebody that somebody did. And, and everybody, it was kind of weird. And like, maybe you got kind of a compliment. And so we finally focused it, because this is what honor takes. It takes so much intentionality. We said, okay. Today, who was today? Today was Spencer.

Hey guys, let’s all honor Spencer. So then Caleb starts and then somebody else mentioned something and then boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then I close it because it’s like this can’t go forever. Let’s be real, you know. So then I just, okay, great. Now let’s transition to the next thing. That has been such a powerful part of our fellowship.

But you know what I noticed? When we didn’t schedule it and assign it, we were never an honoring church. We hoped for it, but it didn’t happen. So we made it a regular rhythm. Let me encourage you. How can you make honoring people, any other, all your interactions, especially at the table, taking time to honor one another?

So we combat familiarity with honor. There’s another shadow side I think we’ve all stepped into. Next, the shadow side of vulnerability in community is co dependency. We preached in week two, we said your relationships won’t ever be valuable unless you’re willing to get vulnerable. Because we believe you actually connect way more through your weaknesses than you could ever connect through your strengths.

And there is a deep grace that happens when we’re willing to be broken before God, but also broken before our brothers and sisters, even at the dinner table. But here’s what you’ll notice. Vulnerability can morph from a tool to connect to a weapon to control. Anybody have those people in their life?

They’re very good at being vulnerable. In fact, they’re too good and they use it to manipulate you and you can never do anything because it’s always about their problems and you need to go out of your way to make them feel good. We call this, we’re a loving community, but we have to call that, what that is, is codependency.

Jenny Allen, in one of our recommended reads, Find Your People, she talks about this. She asks this, a couple hard questions. Look at the quote. It says, how do you know if you are in a codependent relationship? One sign is that you constantly feel discouraged and disappointed by the person. When you have an extreme reaction to something, you need to pay attention.

Because it’s probably evidence of something or someone you’ve made into an idol or a lowercase g god, right? When you’re unusually upset that a person didn’t call, or that person wasn’t loving enough towards you, or didn’t invite you to something, ask yourself, Am I putting unfair expectations on this person?

To meet my needs. That’s good. See, this can happen when we get vulnerable. We worry when we finally share something about ourselves. We now feel like we have to control, like, don’t use this against me. And we become over dependent on these people. Vulnerability is a beautiful gift to connect with others, but the enemy wants to thwart it.

He wants to pervert it by using it to control others. And I think we really need to fight that drift. And what’s so hard is recognizing your own codependency is a very hard realization to come to. But we can come to it because we know the Gospel of Jesus sets us free from codependency. Sets us free from that pain and misery.

Looking back at my relationship with Jordan while we were dating, we met here in the cafeteria. I remember her, she doesn’t remember me, it’s fine. I was way too codependent in the early years. Don’t nod your head too much, Jordan, in the front. Like, I feel like she could never have fun without me, uh, I still kind of get jealous about that now.

Like, when she goes to a restaurant with friends, she’s like, it’s the best food ever. I was like, that’s, that’s fine, you know, whatever. Did you bring me home anything? You know, did you think about me? Um, especially in high school, like, I wanted, like, all of her friends had to be my friends. I feel like I had to be connected, always.

And we finally learned, this is what teenagers do, right? You kind of learn about relationships. We finally learned we couldn’t be all things for each other. We needed other people. And that’s an okay realization. And that’s what I love here in Romans 12, Paul’s language of one body but with many members.

Look again at verse 4. Now we, now as we have many parts in one body and all the parts do not have the same function. In the same way, we who are many are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. According to the grace given us, we have different gifts. As a result, we have different relationships, different friendships.

If prophecy, use it according to the proportion of one’s faith. If service, use it in service. If teaching, in teaching. If exhorting, in exhortation. Giving with generosity, leading with diligence, showing mercy with cheerfulness. We combat codependency by expanding our inner circle. We need each other, but we need a lot of each other.

We talked about this again. I’m repeating myself a lot today. It really does take a village. Jenny Allen in that same book argues we need all kinds of friends for all kinds of situations. She mentioned like the foxhole friend, the encourager, the sage, the challenger. She had a few more. It’s this whole idea though, a lot of friendships go sour or community because let’s say God has called you to be my encourager.

I want to be upset with you if you’re not being my sage, if I expect that from you. Does that make sense? So you need to realize you don’t have to be all things to all people, and the people around you don’t have to be all things to you. There is a balance here, so we need to fight that. When we begin to have feasting with the saints, we can begin to be codependent on each other, and not want us to add space to the table.

Let’s look at the next one. We need to beware the shadow side of practice in community. Here’s what I’ve noticed. We’re a practice based community, so we focus on something this, for the next three months for us, it’s hospitality. It’s very focused. But here’s what you’ll notice in your groups or your friends.

Let’s say you were the one always hosting because you’re really trying to apply this. You want to be a great host, but it gets a little annoying when you’re always the host and none of your other friends are also saying, Hey, let me host as well. You know what I’m saying? There begins to, it becomes less about what you are doing.

It becomes a whole lot more about what they’re not doing. It gets frustrating. I keep serving you and you’ve never served me, right? I keep giving and helping you, you’ve never given and helped me. And what happens is their failures generate within you a self righteous spirit, which then generates within you a resenting spirit, which then quickly divides and devours a community and you no longer hang out together.

Don’t raise your hand, but I think we’ve all been there, right? It gets frustrating. We have to combat that. Paul is saying Yeah, we may have that tendency, but through the Spirit of God, we need to keep focusing on us doing the right thing, inviting and encouraging others to do it as well. But you’re doing it to the glory of God.

Look at Romans 12, 12. It says, Rejoice in hope. So take joy in, in the hope that we have in the future because of Christ. Well, the next line though, Be patient in affliction. Let’s remember this was written, we believe, in the context of a community. So this isn’t talking about affliction from the outside world, it’s talking about affliction among the brothers and sisters in this room.

And that’s why he also says, be persistent in prayer. Is there something bothering you in the community? Keep bringing it before the Father, either asking, ask, this is what I ask for, I ask for both. God, change their hearts, but also change my heart. Whatever needs to happen here, I’m open to that. You guys see that?

So resentment really can begin to break a community. And, and I really believe that, like, people disappoint. They always do. It’s what we do. But if we give up, that’s to our detriment. For the sake of time, let’s look at the final shadow side, the dark side of community. The shadow side of mission in community is idealism.

I am an idealist to a fault. I get so excited. So getting ready for the series, I was so pumped. Like, feasting with the saints. Like, it doesn’t get more idealistic than that. Any Lord of the Rings fans here in the room, either the book and or the movies? Wonderful. You’re all my friends. We’ve now made friends.

And let’s love the other people, even though they are Whatever. So what I love in the Fellowship of the Ring, especially the extended edition, in the very beginning, the hobbits all get together, remember, and they’re just feasting, and there’s fireworks in the background, and they’re dancing, like, that’s kind of my vision of what we’re all supposed to do every week.

We’re not thinking about feasting with the saints, like, we’re hobbits, y’all, we’re gonna do this, and we’re just gonna have the best time ever. And then that gets really exciting, but then people get realistic. Oh, I’m too busy tonight. Oh, I don’t have enough money for this. Oh, I can’t go to that. And so it gets hard not to just get annoyed because we’re so idealistic, but we’re never allowed for the community to be realistic.

Genuine community, it requires endurance. It requires keep inviting, even when they say no. It requires patience. It requires humility. Look at verse 14 and following. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another.

I promise you, I won’t play the piano again today. But that idea of harmony, there’s different keys. We’re different. But when they’re put together, it’s a beautiful harmony, I think. Do not be proud Instead, associate with the humble, do not be wise in your own estimation. Being hospitable is really hard, especially if you have a proud spirit.

You need to know, when you have community, you need to balance the ideal with the real. Tim Chester, in a wonderful book, Honor Recommended, uh, reads at formedbyjesus. com. A Meal with Jesus, it’s such a rich book about the gospel of Luke and hospitality. He says the following, he says, Many people love the idea of the church as a community, but when we eat together, we encounter not some theoretical community, but real people with all their problems and quirks.

Remember when you, for those who are married, remember that? When you were like, oh, like roommate is, is not as fun, you know, like you have some weird quirks. Not you, babe, of course. The meal table. Love is an opportunity to give up our proud ideals by which we judge others and accept in their place the real community created by the cross of Christ with all of its brokenness.

It’s easy to love people in some abstract sense and preach the virtues of love, but we’re called to love the real individuals sitting around the table. That’s really good and that’s really hard. So do it this week. Amen? To the glory of God. To put another way your dream of community can demean your community for the dreamers in this room Your idealism might be the reason Your friendships haven’t blossomed because people will always let you down and guess what you’re letting them down as well You’re quirky as well This point hits home for me Because again, I When I take the church planter test years ago, they’re like, okay, you’re a visionary, you’re an idealistic person.

So that, that’s going to be your way to lead people, painting a better future. But what I’ve known now is that can lead to a lot of pain. Uh, pain for me. I, if I’m honest, there are people in this room who have hurt me. Um, maybe too familiar. And given jabs for the sake of being funny, but I kind of left hurt, you know, thinking about that jab all day.

Um, holding past mistakes I’ve made over my head. Sometimes it’s funny. Uh, like a good friend. He’s in the Middle East right now, but Dave Parks, he makes fun of me because one time I I preached on a hoverboard, and I deserve that. I deserve that kind of, why did you ever do that? Y’all, I planted at 23, forgive me.

Um, so that didn’t hurt me. But, you know, there’s things that have hurt me in the past. The hoverboard didn’t, because I floated the whole time. Anyways, um, but even worse, there are people in this room that I have hurt. I have over promised and under delivered a lot. I, um Too idealistic in my expectations.

So then when certain people in this room haven’t met those expectations, I’ve allowed resentment to form in my heart. I think, how come you’re not stepping up? And I’ve hurt, I’ve hurt you. Um, honestly, the list could go on and on. I, I decided to keep it at a bare minimum. If we need to talk after, I’m happy to, to ask for your forgiveness.

But, here’s what’s beautiful. We’re still in the same room. We’ve hurt each other. , but you’re here. And I’m here. And that’s the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That we are a people who’ve been reconciled. We are people of forgiveness. We are people of agape love. We know we fail and stumble along the way, but we still have each other’s backs.

This is what the gospel can do. And I have joy knowing I have zero resentment for anybody in this room. ’cause the love of Jesus sets us free from keeping records of wrongdoing. And so that’s what’s amazing, but I think we have to get honest. We do hurt each other. And we need to be careful just saying, ah, I hurt.

That’s what we do. He’ll forgive. Be wary of that. Be very cautious. And so we are, again, a people who embody this love and forgiveness and reconciliation we receive from the cross. If we really are cross centered people, we give that. To others and that’s really hard. So what I want us to do as a practice based Jesus first community.

I want us to practice Romans 12 13 this week Romans 12 13 says share with the Saints and their needs and pursue Hospitality, please don’t overcomplicate it. So the task is to take somebody in this room or somebody maybe who’s not here today But he’s part of our fellowship and Have a meal with them We do waffle Wednesdays, to the glory of God.

Uh, you can do taco Tuesday. You can do falafel Friday. If that’s what you do, invite me. Unless you’ve never made them before, have a few experiments. And then invite me. And so we, don’t overcomplicate it. I’m thinking cereal Sunday, maybe. If I’m, if I had to have a wife, that’s what it’d be. I’m making cereal, if you want to come over.

I’m a pretty good But go to formed by Jesus dot com slash hospitality for resources on this practice If you haven’t received a booklet, there’s some booklets over on the display on your way out It literally just says formed by hospitality on the front. This booklet is really helpful. It gives a lot of helpful tips This was written by Pastor Caleb For example, if you’re about to host he says this start with prayer and then extend that invite and then prepare So like actually make your home homely, right?

That’s not the right phrase at all. Homey And homie can also, anyways, English is weird. Uh, number four, serve, don’t entertain. That’s a huge blockade for us. Jordan had some people over last night, and I was just, you know, my house is smaller than I’d like, and I don’t know how entertaining this is. Taylor Swift entertained for them, so it’s fine.

Um, but it’s about serving and ending with honor. I love those tips, but there’s also different levels to this practice, and this is how I want us to end, to get very practical. For some of you, you’ve never done any of this, so do the very easy step. Very easy means start coming early and staying late to church to have intentional conversations with one another.

It’s so common to say, I don’t know anybody, nobody knows me, nobody cares about me. Well, when you come in, right, but when the songs start and you leave right after, how are we supposed to know you outside of that two minute awkward past the piece we do? There’s no, I know it’s awkward, it’s fine. We can do awkward things.

Make friends and love other people will always be awkward. Now very easy, you start that, say, you know what, we’re going to start showing up. We’d love for more people to come to 915 huddle. You don’t have to be doing something that day. Just come, pray, honor, and let’s do that together. Or just showing up 15 minutes early and leaving just a little bit later.

An easy step would be find someone sitting alone and sit by them and then go out to lunch after. So maybe next week that can be how you practice it. Um, I’m so proud. We have a, we, our church is a church for all different sorts of people. So we have people who are married. We have people who are single. We have people who their husband or wife works and so they come alone.

There’s all sorts of different dynamics in this room. We want to make sure we all have each other’s backs and so try to do that. A moderate level of the practice this week to Feast with the Saints is to invite people you know to your home for dinner. So schedule it. Hey, come over on Wednesday. I heard pastor do waffles, we’re gonna do pancakes just to be stubborn, right?

Whatever. Do what you do, but make it, go and do that this week. Something that’s hard. Invite people over that are in different stage of life, or might be in need, or just someone you’ve never spoken to before. We get it. That’s hard. But invite them over. Different stage of life. That one’s big. Something that burdens me is, we are, it’s just natural.

But if I’m in my 30s, I’m gonna hang out with somebody in my 30s, in their 30s. Or if I have kids at this age, I’m only gonna hang out with people with kids at that age. But there’s so much wealth of wisdom. Also just people who just need, we have college students in this room. Like bring them in. They’re, guys, they’re poor y’all.

College, you know. Give them something besides Top Ramen. They’ll love you for life, right? This is what we’re called to do. Last one that’s very hard. To the glory of God, we have stories of people already doing that, this thing. The very heart is to have dinner with someone who has hurt you and practice reconciliation.

Talk it out. Talk about the unmet expectations. This tone really hurt me. I’ve, I’ve seen that. We used to be great best friends. Now you avoid me. What’s going on? Friends, this is what the gospel empowers us to do. I don’t want us to be a church that’s like, oh, we love people, but we don’t do any of this.

That’s idealistic, and that is just not, that’s common sense, but not common practice, right? We want to be a church where friendship and community is common practice. And so think about it. I invite you now, as the music starts to come up, just kind of spend a few moments with the, with, with, with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and ask God, what step do I need to take this week?