Welcome to Walk in the Truth podcast.
How do we know where to find answers to the toughest questions in life?
While the simplest answer is the Bible, where do we start this search and how do we discover
this truth?
Today, in this teaching podcast, John Metter, lead pastor of Cross City Church, takes a
specific text of the Bible and helps us find truth for the life we're searching for.
Thank you so much for being with us this morning.
I want to ask a basic question for everyone in the room today, and that question is, who
are you?
That's an identity question, obviously.
It's a question that everyone needs to know the answer to really well, and they need to
know the answer to that in light of what the Bible says about us.
And so today, I want you to take your Bibles and turn to Romans 14 today, and beginning
in verse 17, we're going to answer the question, who are you?
Now, over the next two or three weeks, I'm going to share some pretty personal messages,
this one being, who are you?
Next week, a question that answers the why of life.
Why am I here?
And I'm going to share with you some things that I went through this year through some
health challenges, through cancer surgery, and on the other side of that, just some things
the Lord taught me, some things that took place in my life, and really answered the
question of why.
Why am I here?
And you want to know the answer to that too.
And then one of the most important texts that I ever teach or preach is in Galatians 2.21,
two weeks from today, how do I live this life?
How do I live this life?
And you may know what that passage is.
It's a great, great text of scripture.
So the pretty personal next two or three weeks, beginning with, who are you?
Please stand with me, and we'll read God's word together.
Romans chapter 14, I'm going to pick it up in the middle of a text.
This text deals with the issue of a conscious, you're conscious before God.
It deals with a section that talks about how to walk without being a stumbling block to
other people, how to put first things first and not be divided by secondary issues.
But it really at the heart of it has these three verses that talk so much about how we
understand ourselves to be before God.
So here we go, beginning in verse 17 of Romans 14.
Scripture says, for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness
and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Now the argument has been one person eats meat sacrificed to idols, another person does
this, which one of us is right?
And Paul really cuts through all that and says really the heart of it all is your connection
with God, regardless of how religion plays out, what somebody else says or what somebody
else does.
So he starts with this, the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness
and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
For he who in this way serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men.
So then we pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.
Let's bow together in prayer.
Father, I pray that you'll take this text today and help us to see the several layers
of meaning, but the application for our lives today and helping us know who we are.
Father, I pray for every person in the room that has struggled with who they are and what
you think of them, what others think of them, what they think of themselves.
And Father, I pray that you will bring them to a point, a moment, even an experience where
they hear you whisper to them, this is who you are to me.
Father, let us hear your voice today.
I ask this in Jesus' name.
And all God's people said, amen, amen.
Please be seated.
I have probably shared this with you before, but years ago I read an article that I clipped
and kept in a file and I pulled it out every once in a while to remind myself of what it
looks like when you get a good piece of advice.
So what I'm going to read to you is how to survive an anaconda attack.
Good piece of advice.
Never know when you're going to need it.
And this actually is from the U.S. Peace Corps manual for its volunteers who work in the
Amazon jungle.
Now I've been to the Amazon, haven't wrestled with an anaconda, but nonetheless it would
be helpful to know if you're ever attacked by an anaconda.
Now you need to know, some of you are saying, what's an anaconda?
It's the largest snake on the planet, growing to 30 feet long, up to 800 pounds.
And I mean, there's just nothing bigger to attack you with.
And also you may have nightmares tonight.
I don't know.
Ten steps I want you to remember, okay?
Number one, if you're attacked by an anaconda, do not run.
The snake is faster than you are.
Number two, lie flat on the ground.
Put your arms tight against your sides, your legs tight against one another.
Number three, tuck your shin in.
Number four, the snake will come and begin to nudge and climb over your body.
Number five, do not panic.
Good piece of advice, sir.
Do not panic.
Number six, and this is actual, I didn't make this up.
This is an actual set of instructions to the Peace Corps in Amazon.
Number six, after the snake has examined you, it will begin to swallow you from the feet
end.
So you'll read it in verse.
Permit the snake to swallow you to your feet and ankles.
Do not panic again.
Number seven, the snake will now begin to suck your legs into its body.
You must be perfectly still.
This will take a long time.
Number eight, when the snake has reached to your knees slowly and with as little movement
as possible, reach down, take your knife and very gently slide it into the side of the
snake's mouth between the edge of its mouth and your leg and then suddenly rip upward,
severing the snake's head.
Number nine, be sure you have your knife.
Number 10, be sure your knife is sharp.
That's a good piece of advice, isn't it?
You remember that the next time you go to the Amazon.
But I want to give you a statement today that's probably the best advice you can have.
I've shared it many times.
And I learned it almost 40 years ago from a seminary professor who made this statement
to me in a classroom and said, you will never forget this statement and over your life you
will realize the importance of it.
And he made a statement that I wasn't impressed with.
I didn't think it would be something that I would carry with me all my life, but now
40 years later I'm looking back and going, hey, that statement means something.
And here's the statement, the most important word in the English language is relationships.
The most important word for you and I is relationships.
Every bad thing that happens to us happens through the context of bad relationships.
Every good thing that happens to us happens through the context of good relationships.
Relationship is a key word in your life.
Everything you have from God comes through not religion, but relationship.
Everything you will ever come to know about Him comes through knowing Him personally and
then knowing about how He works in your life.
Relationships again.
So I'm going to talk to you today about relationships and I think relationships are probably in
danger more than ever before.
I mean I look around me and I see all kinds of dysfunction in relationships in life in
general.
People are not relating properly to each other.
They don't relate properly to marriage partners.
They don't relate properly to themselves and in many ways we struggle with relationships
all the way around and certainly many people do not have a right relationship with God.
But I will make this statement to you over and over and you'll hear it from me over the
years, people who succeed in life will succeed through relationships or they will not succeed
at all.
To neglect relationships in your life is one of the most dangerous things you can possibly
do.
Now this advice that we're going to look at from this text comes out of a larger context
that I've shared about how a Christian lives the life to please God.
How he does not get trapped up into secondary issues and how he does not let another person
get them off track, but how to live in peace with God and with each other.
How to have the proper framework and perspective for life and answering the question, who am
I?
Who are you?
And we have the help of scripture to do that.
And with this text we're going to answer three questions.
The first one is who fulfills me?
Where do I get my fulfillment in life?
People or things, goals I put in front of myself, where do I find fulfillment?
The second question is the title of the message, who am I?
Who do I understand myself to be?
Am I who people say that I am?
Am I who my parents say that I am?
Am I who I just feel like I am?
Who am I really?
And the third question is who do I live for?
Do I live for myself, others, God?
So my challenge is for you today to focus on those three questions as they pertain to
your life as I bring out these verses to you.
First question of course is who fulfills me?
Take just a few moments and think about what is it that fulfills you in life the most?
What gives you the greatest thrill, the greatest joy?
What gives you the greatest sense of satisfaction in life?
And I want to answer that question, who fulfills me from the perspective of scripture?
Let's go to that first verse we read, verse 17.
As Paul communicates what I call the gem of a passage for us today, and I begin by saying
for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking but righteousness and peace and joy in the
Holy Spirit.
Now this is the God factor that Paul is bringing into every person's life.
The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking.
It's not about religious practices of one person or another person.
It's not about abstaining from one thing or another, but it's about a relationship that
yields righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
This reminds us that we're truly spiritual people.
Now you are physical, you're here today and you have a body, so you're here with your
body.
You also have a mind, so you're here with your mind.
However healthy or unhealthy it is.
Some of us may feel like we're really healthy physically and really healthy mentally, but
if you ignore the spiritual factor, you're going to miss the fulfillment and the joy
that God has for your life.
And that's why we take a step back and say, okay, what fulfills us?
Because what fulfills me physically or what fulfills me mentally is not the question we're
asking today.
We're asking the question, what fulfills you completely spiritually, physically, mentally
and every other way?
And more importantly, who does that for us?
I want you to look at those three words there, righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy
Spirit.
Those are fulfillment words.
If you know you're righteous before God, if you know you have incredible peace with God
and with others, if you know that you have an incredibly high level of joy, those are
fulfillment words.
Those are satisfaction words.
Have you ever sat down at the end of a day when you've done what you've been designed
to do, when you walk with God in some degree of harmony and with others with a degree of
harmony and sit down at the end of the day and say, well, man, I may be tired, but man,
I am satisfied.
I am fulfilled.
I am where I need to be.
I want that for you.
And some of us never had that opportunity.
We never understand how to get there.
Righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Now as we dive into this subject today, keep in mind that all the way through the Bible,
God has desired a relationship with people.
I'll be specific, he wants a relationship with you.
Jesus talked about this often.
In fact, his three years of earthly ministry showed us all kinds of relationship connections
with his disciples, with others.
I mean, Jesus showed us that you can have amazing relationships with other people.
He showed us how to do that.
He showed us how to live life in relationships.
And of course, his loyalty, his devotion to those disciples was amazing.
His devotion to the law was amazing.
I mean, who else dies on the cross for what other people need but don't even know they
need but Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
So everything that Jesus says needs to be couched in this understanding of a relationship.
John chapter 10 verse 10 is one of those passages that I'm reminded of.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy, but I came that they may have life
and have it more abundantly.
Jesus said, I want you to have this abundant life that has righteousness and peace and
joy and satisfaction and everything else.
Then there's this, John 17, three, one of the greatest passages, greatest statements
Jesus ever made.
This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you
have sent.
That tells me in a nutshell that eternal life is not about just doing things, just doing
a set of regulations and rules and religious acts.
That's not what eternal life is.
Eternal life is knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
You can't know someone apart from relationship.
When you have a relationship with God through Jesus, you have this understanding of who
fulfills your life and He is the one that can fulfill your life and He's the only one.
You ever heard anybody talk about the God-sized hole that we have in our heart?
We try to fill it with all kinds of different things.
We try to fill it with money.
We try to fill it with possessions.
We try to fill it with people.
We try to fill it with self-improvement and all different kinds of things.
And at the end of it all, there's a little bit of excitement when we feel like we're
making progress and then we take a step back and look and say, that didn't do it either.
And that person didn't do it and that car didn't do it and that house didn't do it
and that job did not do it.
No amount of self-improvement, no amount of possessions can fulfill your life the way
your Creator can fulfill your life.
The Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking but righteousness and joy and peace in the
Holy Spirit.
Let me tell you a story about my wife and I.
We were both believers when we got married and I knew I was called to the ministry and
so I began to go to graduate school seminary and we'd been married just a few years by
then.
At the seven-year interval of our marriage, we began to have problems and those problems
were compounded by just our schedule.
I was working several jobs as well as being a student pastor in the church as well as
going to seminary and I'd get up very early every morning and be gone until very late
at night.
She was at home with our two children.
By the time we'd been married seven years, we had two kids and they were very alive and
very active and very demanding in the sense of what it required of her.
So she wanted me to be home more to help her and I wanted to be home but couldn't be and
so we just reached this point of decision where we said, is this going to work?
One day we sat down and had a really, really important talk at seven years of marriage.
By the way, this is why she calls the first seven years of our marriage as the seven years
of tribulation.
She actually does that.
And in that conversation that we had at that crossroads, we said that we cannot fulfill
one another.
I can't perfectly fulfill Kim and Kim said that she can't perfectly fulfill me.
We just came to that understanding that we're always going to be, even though committed,
we'll always have some inadequacy.
Some of it's circumstantial, some of it's in other ways, but the truth is if we were
just looking for the marital spouse to fulfill us completely, we would be destined to fail.
We learned that at seven years.
I said, what's the solution to that?
Well the solution is kind of a trite cliche that some people kind of quickly brush away
but it changed our lives.
And the solution was we would find our complete fulfillment in Christ and then as fulfilled,
satisfied people, we would have this relationship with each other and we would simply grow together
over whatever challenges we were facing.
That was at seven years of marriage.
We've been married 47 years now and have an incredible degree of fulfillment together.
So we had to come to the place of understanding that our fulfillment doesn't come from each
other but from God.
If I could say anything to you today about your life, I would say find your satisfaction
in Christ.
Find your satisfaction in the one who created you, the one who died on the cross for you.
Find it there and no other place because he alone can fulfill you.
And that's a journey to be on.
It's a learning experience.
It doesn't happen overnight but it is possible for you to live in such a way where you find
your complete fulfillment in Jesus Christ.
And let me say this to you, He will never disappoint you ever.
He will never abandon you.
He will never hang you out to dry.
His love for you has already been demonstrated.
So the first question is, who fulfills me?
The second question is, who am I?
Who do I understand myself to be?
And in this next verse, verse 18, we read this, for he who in this way serves Christ
is acceptable to God and approved by men.
Now Paul is writing to Christians who have already been made right with God through Jesus
but he's encouraging them to live life in such a way as to focus on the important relationship
with the Father and not the religious externals and then to understand that when you live
that way in the blood of Christ and in faith in Jesus Christ, he who in this way serves
Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men.
So I want to talk to you about that for just a few moments because I believe that's one
of the most important things that you and I need to learn to practice.
I think we struggle with this.
I think people everywhere struggle with this.
If I were to ask you the question that I have been posing today, who are you?
You might answer it in a lot of different ways and you might find that you are trying
to get that answer in a lot of different painful directions.
For example, you may try to look to other people to answer that question, who am I?
By saying, who do you think that I am?
How do you perceive me in this life?
Then some of you struggle because you're trying to answer that question based on the way you
feel.
I know I'm this way as far as I can see but I feel very differently inside.
And I'm not really sure that I'm whole.
I'm not really sure that I am where I need to be.
And so we ask that question and get some mixed answers.
So some people look to other people to find out who their identity is.
Some people look within themselves to find that identity.
But wherever you turn, your feelings will go up and down, back and forth and never be
a reliable indicator of who you really are.
And people are the same way.
They're hot, they're cold.
Some days they'll love you and praise you.
Some days they will hate you and disown you.
You cannot let people, you cannot let feelings determine who you see yourself to be.
You have to see yourself the way God does.
That this verse he uses in this way serves Christ is acceptable to God and to prove that
man.
Man, I just love that line because that line rescued my life.
Some of you know my story.
I grew up in a great home but I lost my hearing when I was a young boy.
And so I have a profound hearing loss till due to this day.
I am 95% deaf.
So that means I hear only about 5% of what goes on around me.
That means I only hear 5% of the criticism directed my way.
So that's a good thing.
And in reality, the truth is, the things I don't hear I probably don't miss anyway.
There's a lot of noise that goes on, right?
You don't really have to hear it all.
So I'm a lip reader.
And over the years when I grew up, I found myself in school situations normally where
I was the object of ridicule.
Grew up in a small town.
The town had 700 people in it.
I was the only deaf person in the town.
So it didn't make any sense to learn sign language.
There was no one to sign.
And my parents just said you're going to have to learn to read lips.
You have to just depend on good teachers to help you through this.
And I had some phenomenal teachers.
But I also struggled with my identity when I didn't measure up to what other people were
doing in the classrooms.
When I couldn't hear when the joke was being told.
When people would maybe ridicule me almost to my face but I couldn't understand what
they were saying and they could get away with it.
So I grew up with some real identity issues.
Shame.
Questions like why did God allow this to happen to me?
I didn't have a good view of myself.
When I would be asked a question, who do you see yourself to be?
I wouldn't have a good answer.
I would say flawed, broken, not able to do what everyone else could do.
And I would spend hours contemplating what's wrong with me?
Why does God not fix me?
It was a vicious cycle and had a lot of spirals in it.
But the scripture says that God sees me differently than I thought of myself.
And that other people saw me.
And I really didn't come to grips with this until I was a freshman in college.
I remember the day, I remember the moment.
I remember being in my car in the parking lot of my university.
And I remember struggling with God and struggling with myself and struggling with my self-identity.
Who am I?
Am I going to be in the future?
I have no idea.
And I remember God posing the question to my mind.
I did not hear him audibly, but he basically said to my heart, my spirit, he said, I love
you unconditionally.
Is my acceptance not enough?
And I stopped when I understood what he was communicating.
I knew I had to make a decision.
And I made that simple decision that day.
Yes.
Your love is enough for me.
Your acceptance of me is enough for me.
I trust that you have a plan for me.
Even though I'm flawed, I trust you for this.
And my life changed at that moment.
Now, don't get me wrong.
I was already a believer.
I trusted Jesus as Lord and Savior, but I was struggling like many believers do with
what about my life and how I live this?
And when Paul talks about this, he says, he who serves Christ in this way is acceptable
to God.
He's saying, I want you to know who you are to Christ because it'll help you in dealing
with everything else you deal with in life.
So let me give you some examples of that.
When I began to read the Bible after that moment, and I, for example, read in Ephesians
chapter one, verse six and seven, that I was accepted in the beloved or accepted in Christ,
that I realized, okay, I'm going to start believing that.
Others may not accept me.
I may not even accept myself.
But if God says He's accepting me based on the love of Jesus Christ, then I'm going to
walk around with a sense of acceptance.
I'm going to walk around knowing that I don't have to be accepted by anybody else.
I'm accepted in Christ.
And it gave me the ability to accept other people.
And then when I read in the Bible what it says that first John one nine, which we mentioned
earlier today, if you confess your sins, He's faithful and just to forgive you of your sins
and cleanse you from all unrighteousness.
I realized I am also forgiven in Christ.
I'm accepted by God through Christ.
I am forgiven in Christ.
And all the things that I have done that are sinful and harmful, all the things that I
didn't try to stuff my hole in my heart with, I was forgiven of.
That I learned I'm forgiven in Christ.
You know, you walk differently when you know you have a sense of righteousness and peace
and joy with God.
I had a sense of freedom and also had the ability to forgive others.
What an important thing to do.
You know, you really can't forgive others until you know you've been forgiven.
And when you understand the level to which Christ has forgiven you, you can forgive others
in amazing ways.
God set me free there.
John three sixteen reminded me that I am loved in Christ and that gave me a sense of value.
How come the eternal God loved this young guy that has so many problems?
How could that eternal God love me?
I don't know, but he does love me and he proved it by allowing his son to die on the cross.
And it gave me the ability to love other people unconditionally as well because I was loved
unconditionally.
When I read in John chapter fifteen verse sixteen that we didn't choose him, but he
chose us and called us, then I realized I was called in Christ.
The God tapped me on the shoulder just like he taps every believer in him on the shoulder
and you are called to a greater calling than any other thing that you might be able to
imagine.
That gives you a sense of purpose in life.
And I had that purpose from that day forward.
And when I read John ten twenty eight and twenty nine about how I am in the grip of
Jesus, in the palm of God himself, I learned I was secure in Christ.
And that sense of security, that sense of confidence, I couldn't get anywhere else.
And it allowed me to deal with failure, rejection, disappointments and everything else in life
because that stuff may happen to me from time to time, but I am absolutely secure in God
and in Christ.
Now think about that.
Living that way changes everything about your life.
When I accepted who I actually was, it changed the way I dealt with sin.
Instead of running from God when I sinned, I began to run to God because after all, I'm
loved, I'm accepted, I'm forgiven, I'm called, I'm complete in Christ.
I'm going to run to him every single time just as you should run to him every single
time.
That doesn't mean that we belittle sin, it just means that we run to God because we know
he's the forgiver and he loves us enough to forgive us.
Right there is a good place to say amen, by the way.
Have you ever had to do that?
You ever run from God and realize you need to be running to him?
So understanding myself the way the scripture says that I am helped me in dealing with sin.
It also helped me in relating to other people.
For the first time, instead of looking for something from people, acceptance, favor,
whatever it might be, I realized that I did not need to seek the approval of people and
I could impart something to them.
Instead of running from God, I ran to God.
Instead of trying to get something from people, I began to realize I was here to give something
to people, something good.
It changes your game.
It changes your life to know who you are in Jesus Christ.
It set me free spiritually and changed my whole attitude in life, my whole perspective
in life.
Look at that line again in verse 18, for he who in this way serves Christ is acceptable
to God and approved by men.
And I learned something, I learned something that all those people I wanted approval from
later on respected me because I didn't need their approval anymore.
They understood that I knew I was on a mission, the mission that God gave me just like he's
given every one of you a mission and I was focused on that and strangely I began to find
approval of the people that I really wanted but it didn't really weigh as much anymore.
It changed my perspective, it changed my attitude about life.
Chuck Swindoll said something a number of years ago about our attitude and I want to
read it to you.
It's kind of a long paragraph and it deals primarily with attitude but it has a lot to
do with perspective as well.
And it applies to what we're talking about here because there's one thing that you can
absolutely control about your life and that is you can control how you understand yourself
to be in Christ.
You can know who you are in Christ and control that and have that perspective.
Now you can't control others and you can't control circumstances and situations but you
can understand who you understand yourself to be, you can control that.
Here's what he said about attitude or perspective.
He said the longer I live the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.
Attitude to me is more important in the past than education, than money, than circumstances,
than failures, than success, than what people think or say or do.
It's more important than appearance or giftedness of skill.
It'll make or break a company, a church or home.
The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude.
I'm also using the word perspective here.
The perspective we will embrace for the day.
We can't change our past, we can't change the fact that people will act in a certain
way.
We cannot change the inevitable.
The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have and that is our attitude or
perspective.
I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.
And so it is with you.
We're in charge of our attitude.
And again, I add perspective.
If he's right, instead of focusing on the 10% of things that happen to us that we absolutely
get monopolized by and overcome by, why don't we focus on our response every time in the
sense of I'm accepted, I'm loved, I'm forgiven, I'm called, I'm chosen by God, I have a purpose,
I'm going to deal with all the things I face that way.
Instead of trying to correct everybody else's treatments of me, good or bad.
That question, who am I, affects everything.
And then there's a final thing that I would say, the final question out of Romans chapter
14 verse 17, equally important is who do I live for?
Who do I live for?
How exactly am I going to live life?
And Paul sums it up in this verse in verse 19, he says, so then because of all those
things, so then we pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one
another.
In other words, when I am walking in a balanced walk with God through Christ, I need to pursue
the things that make for peace and the building up of one another.
Now, if someone were to ask you the question, who am I living for?
You might very quickly say, well, I'm living for Christ, I'm living for Jesus.
But this gets more specific about what that looks like.
We don't always define it well when asked that question.
This verse helps us know what that looks like.
I've kind of learned, by the way, that there are two extremes in life when it comes to
how we live.
And maybe you see this too.
Some look for relationships as a way to get something and others have relationships in
order to give something.
You ever notice that?
You know, anybody around you that just in a relationship, just to get something from
you, raise your hand if you've ever experienced that.
And yet there are some that stand out from the crowd, very different from everybody else.
They're in it to give something.
They're in it to invest in your life.
They're in it to help you in your life.
One is reactive.
If I am living life as a way to get something, I'm just reacting to everything that anybody
else does for me.
But the other is proactive.
If I'm in life in order to give something, to invest in someone else's life, I take a
step back and say, what time do I have and who's around me that I can invest in to help
them in the future?
And that was the first part of that verse again, verse 19.
Pursue the things that make for peace.
I'm aware we live in a very divisive culture, but let me just say this.
We can't always make peace, but we can always pursue it.
We can always pursue it.
We can't make people respond like we want them to respond.
And have you learned yet that people won't always do what you want them to do?
That'd be a good lesson to learn if you haven't learned it yet.
But you can control how you respond to them.
You can pursue peace in whatever angle you can.
That's really what the text is all about.
Sometimes we only control our part of the conversation, but it's still important to
do it.
Paul even says this in Romans 12, 18.
He says, if possible, I like the way he works this, if possible, insofar as it depends on
you.
Be at peace with all men.
I think he said that because sometimes it's impossible.
And sometimes you can't affect how others speak, say what they do, but you can determine how
you respond.
If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.
That's a really, really important principle.
Look at the last part of that verse.
Do the things that make for peace and the things by which one may edify another.
In other words, this means that I'm supposed to be looking around me at how I can better
somebody else's life having been changed by God.
It means I'm looking for a way to make a difference in somebody else's life.
And that's true of you too.
God has done something in your life.
If you are a believer in Jesus, then he enables you to invest in other people.
The things by which one may edify someone else.
Jesus did that.
Mark chapter 10 verse 45, Jesus says, for even the Son of Man did not come to be served
but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.
And he followed that through to the completion.
Did you know you're a product of people that have gone before you?
Sometimes they've invested good things in their life.
Sometimes they've invested bad things in their life.
But all the good that you've had invested in you has been often from people that have
come before you.
We're about to celebrate the 120th anniversary of our church and we're looking through all
the arrows and all the pictures and all the slides and all the tapes, cassette tapes and
everything else.
We're looking through all that.
And we're going to show some of those things to you on September 8th.
But one thing that strikes me as I look through 120 years of history as a church is this.
We stand on the shoulders of people who went before us.
Somebody made an investment on our behalf and we are recipients of that.
Whether it's the gospel, with the church building, whether, whatever it might be, somebody understood
how to live for the cause of Christ in giving to others, in helping others.
They set themselves up to serve.
And now it's our opportunity to serve in such a way where the next generation stands on
our shoulders.
Paul said, that's what I called you to do.
That's what Jesus has called you to do.
So begin now to reinvest.
Teach kids, teach preschoolers the truths of God's Word.
Volunteer to stand at the door and greet somebody.
Step out and be a different kind of person in your school or your culture, wherever you
are and emulate Christ.
Demonstrate love.
You've been loved.
You can love others.
You've been forgiven.
You can forgive others.
Be different.
Invest in other people that way.
Apply your gifts to making a small group thrive.
Take time to go on a mission trip and share Christ.
Raise money for the hungry or gather food for them, whatever it is.
Find a way to invest in somebody else's life in such a way as to make a difference for
them.
And by doing so, what you're doing is you're making relationships count for other people
the same way they counted at some point for you.
Let me leave you with this last line, this last statement.
And I hope you'll take a moment to read this and kind of capture it in your heart.
Your relationship with Christ can bring you fulfillment, identity, and purpose in life.
Find them in Him.
And I would also say, why look anywhere else, you will be perpetually dissatisfied.
Find your fulfillment in Him.
In just a few moments we'll close the service and I invite you to three different things.
First of all, there's decision stations that are positioned at the rear side, the rear
part of our church as you make your way out towards the commons area of the lobby.
You'll see those decision stations lit up with people behind the tables ready and willing
to talk with you.
Maybe today a good topic of conversation is, how do I find complete satisfaction in Christ?
How can I find complete forgiveness in Christ?
How can I know I'm fully accepted by Him?
And they're ready to help you answer that question.
Secondly, I invite you, if you're a guest, to our guest reception room right outside
the center exit doors and across the hallway.
We'd love to talk to you about Cross City for about 10 minutes and get you on your way.
But we'd love to give you that information so you'd know more about our church.
We certainly want to welcome you and get to know you more.
And then thirdly, I want you to come back next week.
Bring somebody with you.
The Bible is so clear on purpose.
Just before I was about to go into my surgery earlier this year, God really brought a powerful
verse to my mind, the Philippians chapter one.
And I'm going to talk to you about how He spoke to me about what He was about to do
through that several month long thing.
And I will tell you, He was present.
He was powerful.
And He showed me Himself in great ways.
So I want to share that story with you next week.
Bring someone with you who needs to hear it.
Let's stand together as we pray.
Father, I am so thankful for every person in this room.
And I know that each of us need to think through what it means to get our identity fully from
You.
And I know many struggle with this in the room.
I get that.
I understand that I have been there.
And Lord, I just pray for victory.
I pray for freedom.
I pray Father today that someone in this room will believe what You've said about them because
of Your love for them.
And so I would let that be the dominant thought that guides them in the days ahead.
Father, I pray that every decision that needs to be made today will be made.
Every next step will be taken.
And God, allow us to fully grasp who we are in You.
Thank You for loving us so much.
We ask this in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
God bless.