In today's sermon, Pastor emphasized the importance of stepping into our callings as Christians, urging congregants to recognize that every believer is a minister, equipped to serve and affect change in their communities. He shared personal anecdotes and experiences from recent gatherings aimed at uplifting children in faith, showcasing the church's mission to stand resolutely against cultural challenges. The message also focused on the necessity of collective growth through intentional community engagement, such as cadres, which are designed to promote active discipleship and radical obedience to Jesus. Ultimately, Pastor reminded us that the church's strength lies in its members' commitment to live out their faith, demonstrating love and service beyond the walls of the church.
Sermon Transcript
All right. Good morning, brave church. How are we doing today? How many of you guys feel like that's your favorite bumper video? It's got that sweet lick the whole time, just.
I was like, yes, more of that. Fabulous. Hey, listen, would you do me a favor this morning? I would really love to show some love to our campuses. Can we give just a little extra vigor today welcoming our online springs and Westminster campuses?
We love you guys. We love that you join us. We love that you're worshiping with us. We love that you're on mission with us. Thank you guys so much for being a part of everything that is going on here.
Well, I gotta tell you guys, I'm fired up. I had an energy drink today. I don't normally do that, so just buckle up. I know there's not seatbelts there, but we'll get those installed eventually. We'll figure it out.
I have spent the last four days with a bunch of you from across our campuses doing some training for our cadre resistance leaders, doing stuff with the white rose resistance. It's been a awesome. Like, God has been moving. And I gotta tell you, it is fantastic getting to see our church rise up and go out and do a work of seeing children saved in the name of Jesus, because we want to be a voice for people that can't speak for themselves. And I gotta tell you, our church is jumping up and taking that call and getting after it, and it's fantastic.
One of my favorite things, a couple of these leaders that were helping do the trainings for us, one of them is, his name is Scott and I love him. He was like, listen, we've done some different trainings. What's blowing my mind is like, where did all these men come from? Like, he's like, all of them are jacked. Like, we got to get you some friendlier shirts that say, like, jesus loves you so people don't think it's a mob.
I was like, amen. That's the stock coming out of brave churches. Godly, masculine men that love Jesus and are going to stand when others won't. And that's what I'm talking about. That's what's going on here.
I got to show you. Here's one of the pictures. I'm going to throw it up on the screen. And there was a million. I wanted to do a whole slideshow, but this picture is just one moment.
We had all these signs and we were in civic center, and we were at a couple of planned parenthoods, and we were in different places. Doing different stuff. And, guys, I got to tell you, anointed moments were just happening all over the place. Like, we'd be sharing with somebody over here and talking to this guy, and then I'd look behind me, and somebody like this would just be praying over somebody, and they'd have tears streaming down their face because so many people think, oh, these people, they're full of hatred, and they draw these lines. No, no, no, they're fine.
Finding out that people who are pro life are full of love and compassion and want to see Jesus touch all of them, that everybody would get wrecked by the Lord, that everybody would see that happening in their life. And it has been such a blessing to see these things happen. And it's been a crazy four days with banner drops and all kinds of other stuff. And I wanted to share with you guys today a little bit about my heart, because we're kicking off these next three months. We're going to be doing cadres.
We're basically doing, in the spring and in the fall, three month sprints so that you're not, like, getting married to a group for the rest of your life, but being super intentional for a little bit of time. And I was thinking about my dad. I love my dad. Great, man. But it was crazy growing up.
Like, he found the Lord in the military, and I think he just wanted to make sure that that, like, continued on in the family. Like, here's what I mean. We did the Boy Scouts before they were destroyed by wokeness and all the other things. They used to be cool. I mean, I think, you know, I think that used to be cool.
But it was crazy. We would do stuff. Like, my dad would take us out, and we would go camping in, like, 30 below zero in, like, snow caves. It was nuts. You know, you go and he's like, okay, here's what we're gonna do.
Try not to die. Like, that was the goal we did backpacking, like, 180 miles through New Mexico. I remember one time I got up in the middle of the night to use the restroom. It was the first time. The first time I ever saw a mountain lion was trying not to die at 02:00 a.m.
in the morning, you know, and I was like, this is fun. Yeah, this is great, dad. We had this one psycho. He brought a cannon. Like, it was a literal cannon that he loaded up with black powder, and he would wake us up at, like, 430 in the morning by blasting off a cannon.
And all the kids are like, what is happening? And then he would start saying, good morning, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and God is in my heart. And I was like, what is happening? You know, you just put the pillow over your head, and you're just trying not to die. That was what my father put me through as a child.
So if you see something wrong, it's his fault. That's all I'm saying. Okay, here's what I want you to see. This is important. My dad did some crazy stuff, and oftentimes I didn't like it.
I wasn't a fan. It was uncomfortable. It was frustrating. But he was preparing me not to be a loser. He was preparing me to be a mandehead.
He knew that life wasn't found in just the easy moments where you sit and you chill and you just relax and don't do anything. He understood that it was his job to call me into adventure, to teach me to walk into the storm, to teach me to actually stand in the midst of the difficult things. He wasn't going to leave me at home and say, you're too young. His heart was, come with me, because I don't want you to stay a child. I got to raise you to be a world changer.
I gotta raise you to be a man. And it's so important that we get this. Yeah. Praise the Lord. It's so important that we get this, because so often, I think in our christian walk, we get messed up like, we're supposed to be taking steps of faith, but it can feel scary.
We know it's an adventure, but we'd rather not have to deal with the cannon going off in the morning like, yes, Jesus, I want to serve you, but I don't really want to leave the neighborhood. Right. And I just want to encourage you guys. The christian faith, what God has called us to, is to grow up to become adults, mature adults in the faith. And God's not calling you to something safe.
He's calling you to himself. He's calling you to be a mature adult in the faith. And there's so many good things that can happen when we do that. But if we don't, we'll become the frozen chosen. We'll become those who talk a lot about good things, but don't.
And I feel like we can be afraid. Our culture's a little bit crazy. This is what RJ Rashtuni said. I love it. He said, this is indeed a difficult era, but it is a time of great change and opportunity and under God, a glorious time to be alive.
Can I get an amen? I want us as a church, to embody that and say, yes, it's crazy, it's dark. And God put me here for such a time as this so that I would grow up into the faith. And by God's grace, we would see the world change. So I want to take us to a text today that should be somewhat familiar for some of you.
Some of you may be new. Ephesians four. And we're going to go through verses eleven through 16 today. Eleven through 16.
All right, let's go ahead and read it. And he gave some his apostles, and some as prophets and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the service to the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming, but speaking the truth in love. We are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. Will you pray with me, Father God?
I pray today that you would use this text. You would use this scripture, Lord. You would use this moment that you've given us, where you woke us up with breath in our lungs and an opportunity to be transformed by your kingdom, to be filled with your spirit anew, to be grown up in the faith, Lord, and to walk out of this place ready to put a dent in the kingdom of darkness. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.
All right, so what's really important about this text to frame where we are is that this text comes after three straight chapters of Paul telling you about the gospel. Ephesians is this hilarious book, because some other epistles, he starts out and he's like, hey, guys, here's what's going on. Here's what I need you to do. Here's what I need you to change. And you get into the book of Ephesians, and it's three chapters of him saying, and then God did this for you, and then he did this for you, and then he changed this, and he's given you this, and he's blessed you this way, and he's given you the church, and here's how it's supposed to work.
And this is all the inner workings of what you need to know about how God has blessed you. And then he gets to chapter four, and he says these words, I want you to get this in your bones. He says, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling that you have received. Turn to the person next to you. Tell them you've been called.
Turn to the other person. Tell them you've been called. What I want you to see as a saint, as someone who has received the gospel, you're not neutral. You've been called into the kingdom of Jesus Christ to be a world changer. As a Christian, you don't have to sit back and watch the world go to hell.
You get to go to war with the gates of hell and actually prevail against it, because that's what Jesus said would be true of those who are called. My concern is that as christians, we forget this sometimes and live from a place of defeat instead of a place from victory, and we stop growing. I want us to be able to take some steps of faith today and see everything that God could do through us if we walked the way God called us and challenges us to walk. And I hope for you today that you would see how brave church we as a church are, trying to position you to own your calling, put a dent in the kingdom of darkness, and grow into the fullness of everything that God has called you to. And listen to me.
It's not going to feel like getting up and eating Cheetos and asking a miracle from a couch. It's going to feel like a cannon waking you up and me needing to step into something uncomfortable and looking back on it one day and saying, I can't believe I got to do that. I can't believe I got to be a part of that. This is glorious, and it is a work of the Lord. Amen.
So here's what I want to share with you guys today. The first thing is this. You start to grow up in the faith when you realize that you are the minister. You start to grow up in the faith when you realize that you are the minister. Here's what it says.
And he gave some his apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as pastors, and some as teachers, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ. Here's what I want you guys to see. Everyone is called to ministry you may not be called to ministry inside of the church, all right? There's some unique stuff that God does and positions and anointings that he puts on people in the church. But if you are a saint, you were called to the service, and God gave those different positions in the church, not so that they would fill the bench and fill all those positions, but so that they would uniquely be equipped to train you, so they would uniquely be able to pour into you, so they'd be able to call you into the adventure, so they'd be able to wake you up and call you to more and show you not hoard all the power for themselves and all the information and look at people and say, listen, one day when you grow up, you're going to do a great job, but for now, you're just a stupid kid.
That's not the goal. The goal is to invite people in and say, listen, get up. Come with me. I want to show you this. I want to walk with you.
I want you to be a part of what's actually going on. This is so important. I got a slide up here of some bad leadership, and what we're not shooting for. Can we put up Darth Vader? There he is.
Vader literally means father. So I felt like it was appropriate. Strong people don't put others down. They lift them up. Okay, this is funny, but it's not funny because this is what happened to me when I got saved.
I'm not gonna lie to you guys. I came to Christ. I got, like, crazy saved. I was eating through Edwards and Spurgeon and Charnock and people you probably don't care about and haven't heard of. And the first thing that happened in me was anger.
I got mad. I felt like I had been lied to. I was like, how come nobody showed me this? And how come the church isn't doing this thing? And how come they're not walking this out?
And how come more people aren't telling them? And it took my wife telling me. Do you realize that that's your calling, that's the grace of God on your life? Not everybody has that. Why are you using it to look down your nose at people instead of lifting them up and helping them?
And so often I think we think about this in our jobs and our families, and God's given you gifts. He's given you abilities. He's given you a ministry. And instead of building other people up and helping others, we can look down our noses and say, how come they're not more put together? How come they're not doing what I'm doing.
That's not the goal of your faith. Our goal is to call people up and say, listen, I'm going to put you on my shoulders. I know you're not there yet. I know you don't get it yet. And sometimes it's going to feel like fighting against somebody, but the reality is you're not fighting against them.
You're fighting for them because you want more for them than what they want for themselves in that moment. And that's okay. I needed to learn that God was doing something unique in my life, not so that I could crush other people and keep them out of ministry, but so that I could help equip them to be a minister of the gospel. That's what it should look like for all of us. How is God using you?
Are you looking down your nose at people because they don't know as much or they're not as put together? They dress this way or act this way? Or are you using the grace that God has given to you to minister and build other people up? See, the goal of raising our kids is not for us to stay an adult and for them to stay children. That would be weird.
The goal is to help raise people up. Those people who are called to minister are called to pour into other people so that they would minister. It's this cycle, and if you're wondering whether or not you have permission to do ministry, to build others up, to be built up, to grow up in the faith, the answer is a resounding yes, please. I had somebody ask me the other day, Justin, when do you know God is telling you to pray for somebody? He is.
He is. Okay, listen, though, not a stupid question, because I think that's some of the tension that we've been sitting in. There's been a distance between the pulpit and the pews that has to close. We gotta remove it because people think, oh, that very holy man who wakes up at 04:00 and floats around the room and speaks in tongues. He's the one who does ministry.
And the rest of us, you know, we're just catching the light coming off his sails. That's not it. That's not it. God has called you to be a minister wherever you find yourself. This is what we're trying to do through the internship here at brave church.
This is what we're trying to do through core. This is what we're doing through cadres. As a church, we have a responsibility to equip the saints, to wield the sword against the darkness. This isn't just a suggestion from the word. This is our purpose and command throughout the history of the church.
This is Genesis two, right? The picture, he's like, go. Take dominion of the world. Multiply, subdue it. Where there's darkness, bring light.
Where there's brokenness, bring health. Where there's chaos, bring order. That's the call of the church and the people of God in every generation. Where it's not working, you go be the change in the name of Jesus. It's the same thing we see in Matthew 28.
Right? Go into all the nations. Jesus is saying, all authority is mine, and by proxy, I'm giving it to you. Now. Go wreak havoc on the kingdom of darkness.
Go equip others. Teach them how. Wake them up. Tell them to grow up and send them out. That they would raise up nations that would stand for righteousness instead of darkness.
First, Peter two nine says this. You're a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. God has not called you so that you would sit back. God has called you so that you would proclaim the excellencies of his marvelous light so that you would be a representation of Jesus. Now, I told you earlier that my dad took me on all these crazy trips and things.
One of the things that you have to do if you're going to sleep in a snow cave at 30 below is you have to learn how to treat people for hypothermia, right? And I remember this training. There's different steps in the process of hypothermia. But one of the steps, a couple of the steps through this process is this. People who are starting to become hypothermic or pre hypothermic, stop wanting to move.
They don't really want to exercise. They don't really want to move around. They don't really want to do stuff. They're just, they get lethargic. They start like, I'm just going to sit.
I just want to warm up this or that. And then the next step is they get incredibly sleepy. And if they fall asleep, they don't wake up. And unfortunately, I feel like that's happened to a lot of churches. They started getting lackadaisical.
They just didn't really want to move. Not really interested in doing that. I don't really want to do this. And then they fell asleep and the doors closed, and I want you to see that the church isn't made up of the church. The church is made up of saints, people.
We fall asleep before the whole church falls asleep. We stop moving before the church stops moving. And here's what I got to tell you guys. People who are experiencing the early symptoms of hypothermia love to tell you that they're not. They love to fight with you and say, I'm fine.
It's totally fine. It's not a big deal. This isn't an issue. And you have to sit there and convince them, no, listen, buddy, if you don't get up, if you don't start moving, you're going to die. It's not warm out here.
We got to get you going, or you're not going to make it. And I want this reality should stir in us, this reminder that we got to keep taking steps of faith, or we'll become lethargic and we'll get sleepy, and God will close the doors on any church that starts to walk that direction. If you don't have an urgency to take steps of faith, maybe the spiritual hypothermia is setting in for you. And I just want to encourage you in this, because we should have an urgency and a desire to move. One of my favorite saints is Saint Jerome.
He translated the Latin Vulgate, and he wore this crazy outfit. He wore a human skull in a chain around his waist. He wore this skull to remind himself to finish his work before he died. He knew that day was coming. He knew there was going to be a day when he closed the book and he was done and he had nothing more to give.
He was going to breathe out and give up and would be done. And he said, I've got to finish this work before that day has come. I need to keep this in front of me. And this is important, because what made Jerome's work so valuable is not that the Bible is translated, but that people could read it. His ministry wasn't to be a scholar for the sake of being a scholar.
He wanted to give people the word of life. Before I die, I need people to see Jesus. Before I die. I need people to know who he was and how many of us have bibles at home collecting dust that we don't open. And I want you to know how much blood is on those pages from men and women that gave their life translating and trying to get it into your hands so that you would be equipped for ministry, not just hear the gospel, but be transformed by it and live a fundamentally different life.
I had a unique opportunity to go to Ireland earlier this spring. It's one of me and my wife's favorite places to go. We love it. There was this 800 year old abbey that we got to visit. Here's a small picture.
This was kind of right in the courtyard. It was built around like this. And in the middle of it was a graveyard. And in this graveyard, there was these tombs of these different saints. And it had notes about what they had done and how they had lived.
And there was a plaque right up on that wall. You can see it. I'll give you a close up. Here's what it says. Remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth.
And what he was trying to put forth, what they were trying to communicate, is, do you see this graveyard? You're going to end here. Before you end here, remember that God has called you. Do something with your life. Allow Jesus to use you, because you're going to end in this dirt.
You're going to breathe out. And before that day comes, will you have said, I was wrong out for the gospel. I got out of bed. I joined the fight. I did something that actually mattered.
You're going to end up in the dirt, taking the easy way, saying, you know, I just didn't want to live that way. It was a little too scary. I didn't really want to leave the cul de sac. The future of this church, it's really important that you get this in every church really will not lie in the hands of the pastors, but on the parishioners that did what the pastor actually said. The life of the saints is the testimony of the church.
We have an amazing bible teacher here. We have an amazing, gifted, godly senior pastor. And his ministry will not matter if we don't do anything with it. Just being honest.
The question for me at brave church is, how are we equipping the saints to walk that out? How are we doing that at brave? We're doing it through cadres. That's the whole point. Listen, I've had people ask me, Pastor Justin, why are you not planting your own church?
Why are you not going out and doing your own thing? Because I believe in what God is doing it brave. I'm here because I believe in what we're doing, that we want to put people on mission, that we want to actually call people into more. I get to work at brave church and help equip the saints for the ministry that they're actually called to. I wake up for that.
I breathe that I love that I want to do that and one of the things that we do through cadres is this process called maid. M a d e model, assist, deploy, entrust. It's like teaching somebody how to ride a bike. First you show them, hey, this is what it looks like. Let me show you how this works.
You kind of show them. And then I've been teaching kids how to ride bikes recently, so this is fresh for me. Then you start from the side. All right, this is the assist portion. I'm going to get you on the bike, and I'm going to kind of walk with you, and I'm going to teach you how to do this.
And then at some point, you guys know what happens. You shift to the back of the bike, right? And you start walking with them. That's the deploy. And then trust is when you actually let go and they plow into your mailbox.
Right. I'm kidding. But that's the process. This is how we learn. We call people into something.
We don't just say, good, go do it. We walk with people and teach them how to learn to do it themselves so that they're not just being ministered to, but learning how to minister and take care of others. And this passage says, this is going to take a long time. Here's what it says. Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.
What is he saying here? Until you're all grown up, until you get to stare Jesus in the face, we're going to be calling people into ministry. Until you get to meet your heavenly Father. You are to father the people around you and allow them to help father you. You're to call people into this and allow them to call you.
It's this process of teaching each other how to grow up into the fullness of what God has for us. And listen, I want to die with a sword in my hand, right? Fighting for everything Christ has called us to. But more than that, I want the people I've spent my time with be able to pick up and continue the fight and pick up that sword long after I'm gone. If you've bought into the lie that being a Christian means believing things that don't actually change your life or.
Or saying, I'm called, but not actually living out a calling, I need you to consider seriously that you've stopped growing, that you're not in a healthy place. And it's important we recognize this because of the next verses read 14 through 15 with me. Here's what it says. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine and by the trickery of men and by the craftiness and deceitfulness, scheming but speaking the truth in love. We are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ.
You start to grow up in the faith when you care about results. You start to grow up in the faith when you care about results. And I know that sounds crude at first because some people are like, no, it's about who I am and who God made me to be and that, you know, I'm a wonderful, beautiful creation. I'm like a snowflake. I'm one of a kind.
Yes, that's true. And that's what makes it so much worse. If you don't walk in a manner worthy of the calling that you received, Jesus said he would know us by our fruits, right? If we're living our life differently, different things happen. It says as a result, we're no longer to be children.
As a result, we get to grow up. We're not tossed here and there. We're not shaken the way that we used to be because we're actually walking in the ministry that God has called us to. Now, there's two important things in this text I want you to get here, okay? One is orthodoxy and two, is orthopraxy all right?
Orthodoxy is right teaching. It's the right beliefs, the things we should know. And orthopraxy is actually doing those things. This one's harder. Most of us know, yes, I should live that way.
Yes, that's the right thing. Some of us are incredible at picking out false doctrine and even worse, in this area, at walking it out in our own lives. We have to be people who are saying, what is the result of my faith? What's happening in my life because of the work of Christ? What's going on because I'm a Christian.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote this book called the Gulag archipelago. There's probably three nerds in this room that have read it before and I'm proud of you. All three volumes. Anybody? I don't see you, but God bless you if you did.
Yeah. The book is interesting because it follows Stalin's Russia, what happened roughly from 1918 to 1958, depending on whatever years you want to look at. And he was trying to answer the question, how did a whole nation get to a place where it was okay with systematically killing millions of people. How did that happen? How did they allow that kind of thing to happen?
And then he zones in on churches specifically, and he says, how come they didn't do anything? How come they didn't stand against it? And he said, what happened is that people became totally okay with separating their beliefs from their actions. He said, people would say, I am a Christian. They would functionally communicate with their mouths, yes, I know the right things.
I believe the right things. And then they would go out and they would look like secularists in every other sense. And it became like the frog in the boiling water, because things kept getting worse. And they were in this place where they're like, it's okay because I know the right things. It's not okay because when the moment came, when they started killing people, they kept telling themselves that it was okay, and it wasn't okay.
Why we were out the last four days trying to save children is because what's happening in our nation is not okay. It's not okay what's going on. And we as a church are supposed to do something about that. We as a church are not supposed to say, yes, I know the right thing. So it's fine.
It's not. There is a profound difference between knowing the right things and living out your faith in Jesus. I brought up hypothermia earlier, and I learned something. There's these group of seals, Navy SeAls called the Kodiak seals, and they have this special training. See, normal seals, they teach you how to train for hypothermia, how to take care of that.
Kodiak seals, they take you to Kodiak island in Alaska, and they put you up to your nose in water until you're hypothermic. And then when you come out of the water, they say, good. Now treat yourself for hypothermia. And they never forget how to treat for hypothermia, because if you've had to walk through that, it's in you for the rest of your life. There's a profound difference between knowing and doing.
One sticks with you and changes you forever, and the other you're likely to forget and likely will have no impact at all. Charles Spurgeon said this. If your theology doesn't change your behavior, it will never change your destiny. CS Lewis had this wonderful quote where he said he changed the way that he prayed. The Lord's prayer, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
And then he said, I started adding to that by me right now because he didn't want to pray prayers and ask God to do things and then expect none of it to happen through him. See, he understood the glorious truth, that God isn't just doing things. He's doing it through you. He's doing it through us. He's doing it through the church.
And we're up against a wave of people right now who deny basic truths, reject basic morality, remove basic rights, and then demand that you're the crazy person. Demand that you're insane because you think biblically, because you have a christian epistemology. GK Chesterton spoke of the future postmodernism that we live in now that has become a reality. In his book Heretics, he said, fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in the summer.
We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage we shall be of those who have seen and yet believed. He understood that people were going to deny basic, fundamental truths so that they could continue to live their life in a way that didn't reflect truth. Woe to those who call good evil and evil good is what Isaiah 520 says. And it's important that we understand this, because the point that I'm trying to make getting into this, really, is that over the last 50 years, the outcome of evangelical Christianity has been really a story of the world changing the church instead of the church changing the world. Because somewhere along the way, the average Christian decided as long as he believed the right things, his lifestyle could look like everyone else's.
And that worked for a while, like, in a world that was birthed in Christianity, that ground would hold. But now we don't even know what a woman is now. We don't even know basic truths. We've floated away. And I'm sick of that mentality.
I hope you guys are, too. This text tells us. Yeah, praise the Lord.
This text tells us that the result of our faith is ministry. Service to the church, service to the kingdom, service to the king of kings. The result of our faith is ministry. Is that happening for you? Are you being a minister?
Are you doing that? Are there results of that? This text is telling us that you are the resistance against the trickery of men and against the craftiness of deceitful scheming. These words are always associated with the satanic kingdom, always associated with the kingdom of darkness. You're not up against something super powerful.
You're up against lies that have perverted an entire nation. And we, as the church, are the only ones who have the truth. We're the defense against these things. We are the resistance. And that doesn't happen purely by knowing the right things, but by being at war with those dark things, with our actions.
If your life, by and large, is indistinguishable from an unbeliever, something is deeply wrong. Cadres at brave are designed to help you not just think thoughts of faith, but to take steps of faith. And if you don't know what a cadre is and you're new to brave church, it's a missional community. We don't want to do mission or community just for the sake of getting together. We want to gather together because we believe that if we're on mission together, the tightest bonds and the greatest impact has had when we come together for a fight for the things that matter, to grow together.
The whole point of these next three months at brave, whether it's in the spring or the fall, these three month sprints, is to help equip the saints for radical obedience to Jesus Christ so that we would look different than the world and begin to see the fruit of obedience in the church affecting the world around us. Not being pushed around by the world and tricked by nonsense, but steadfast like Jesus, because the results of our life reveal what we truly think, who we truly serve, who we truly are. And if we were truly called, that's the reality of where we're at. So I just want to encourage you guys. Results matter, and we should be reflecting in our hearts as a church.
How are we walking these things out? And you may be saying, Justin, okay, what does that functionally look like for me? And I want to share with you the next portion of the text. You start to grow up in the faith when you become convinced that you were made for this. Let's read this first portion of 16.
It says, from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies according to the proper working of each individual part. Every single part of the body matters. If you are in Christ, you are part of the called, you're part of the saints, and we're to grow up together into the fullness of what God has called us to. And I want to be clear. It's not like there's a body of Christ and then there's you.
No, you're part of the body. You're part of everything that's going on here. And if you're not actually involved beyond just consuming, you're missing out on what you were made for. And you're going to miss so much of the calling God has on your life. Now, imagine getting out of bed in the morning and your, let's say, your left leg, deciding that it just doesn't want to participate today.
This illustration might hit home for some of you in a bigger way if you're over 50. So I'm just telling you, imagine getting out of bed and your back's just not having it. All right? But sometimes that's how the church is. I don't need to show up today.
It's fine. I'm gonna go do this. I'm gonna be a part of that. I got other stuff going on. No, no, no.
You don't understand. Yes, you'll be able to get out of bed. Yes, you'll be able to figure it out. But it's all of us working together that actually makes the thing strong and viable in difficulty. And we need that now more than we ever have as a culture, because things are happening right and left.
The rest of the body can continue on, but the reality is we are better together. We need each other. We have to come together. Here's another, you know, example for you. Just imagine if there was some weird fake pandemic and the whole world was freaking out, and instead of the body of Christ, you know, splitting and freaking out, what if we all pulled together and said no to the nonsense and just rallied and said, no, we're gonna serve Christ.
All of us are showing up. All of us are gonna be a part of this. We're not saying no to Jesus anymore. We're saying yes to him. And we're all showing up together to be a resistance against the nonsense.
We want that. We wanna be those people. And why this matters? Why this matter? We get this illustration because it happened.
And it was so sad to see churches closing doors and just. They didn't know what to do. Man, I get it. I mean, the United States really hasn't faced serious resistance for, like, hundreds of years. And we started to face it, it was like we folded because we didn't totally know who we were.
But the reality is that stuff was happening in the spirit before it happened in our reality. And some of us think, when that happens again, I'll be different. When that happens again, I'll change. No, no, no, no. That starts right now, because you don't magically become someone else later.
You rise to the level of your training. And what I mean by that is you rise to the level of the calling that you've been walking out in your own life. And if you haven't been walking it out right now, you're not going to make that big decision later. You just won't. We have to start right now in our life.
Listen, you were called to this. You were called, turn to the person next to you. Tell them again. You were called to this. Hopefully you've heard it a lot today.
Cadres are our way of engaging the whole body with its different gifts and abilities to help people walk in obedience and grow together. Now, lots of people have asked me about different groups and ministries and things, and I got to tell you guys, I love all of them. There's so many cool things that are going on. Christians are doing cool stuff in different places. We just can't commit to everything.
We have to choose. We have to put our wood behind one arrow and say what is going to magnify Christ, multiply disciples and help prepare the next generation for taking the fight to the kingdom of darkness. We have to think through that. We have to be calculated about it. And I was laughing because the other day somebody was telling me, it was a good conversation.
He was telling me, he's a newer believer who's recently come to Christ. I was like, man, have you jumped in a cadre yet? Have you been a part of that? And he was like, no, no, no. Those are for, those are for grown up christians.
Those are for older christians. And I was like, okay. I mean, kind of the whole point of them is to help us grow up in the faith. And he was like, yeah, I'm in a group that's helping us get to a better place faster. And he was funny.
I asked him, I was like, so what are you studying through? And he said, we're doing eschatology in Daniel. Cool. So good place to start in your faith is the labyrinthine, esoteric, mystical world of eschatology to kick you off in your faith. Okay, it's funny, but it's not funny because I think a lot of christians think that way.
Well, I have to know more. I have to get more before I can actually do that. How many of you guys have had to get to a place where you show your kid you just can't teach him anymore? Like, I can tell you till I'm blue in the face, but you're not going to get it until you do this. You got to go do it.
You got to go do it. And so often we think, if I have more knowledge, I'll get it. Or we say it this way when we're grown up, knowledge is power. No knowledge that you act on is power. Knowledge that you do something with is power.
And so often we're so saturated with information about Jesus that doesn't change us because we're not acting on what God has called us to. And I want you guys to know, I know you guys are in different places. Some of you are like, Justin, I love the Lord. I'm not going out and sharing the gospel right now because my marriage is a wreck. Praise the Lord.
That's your next step of faith. Then that's what you should work on. Work hard at that. Justin, I'm just not that man. I don't even know how to pray yet.
Praise the Lord. Let's start there. Let's take a step of faith. Justin, I'm still trying to figure out just how to be a man. Yes.
Then that is your next step of faith. I need you guys to understand this. When we say mission at brave church, we're not saying evangelism. We're saying obedience to Jesus with your whole life, it's way more intense than evangelism. It's way more than that.
It's not less than that, but it's way more than that. Why? Because Christ isn't asking for you to go do something. He's asking for all of you. And he's going to give you all of himself.
That's the glory of the gospel. Not that you're saved from hell and go tell people about it, but that Christ has given you everything that he is so that he would radically transform all that you are. So we have men's cadres to position you to take steps of faith with your brothers in Christ. Some of you are like, man, I just. I gotta grow in this great.
We have women's cadres to unite women, daughters, mothers and wives in this church against a culture that hates biblical femininity. We have global cadres that are sending people to Tanzania and all over South Africa to work with churches there to extend the gospel there. We have local outreach cadres where we're bringing meals to people, where we're pouring into people right here in our own community with the love of Jesus. We have resistance cadres to oppose the darkness and abortion that's so prevalent in our culture. We have cadres teaching people how to be empowered in prayer.
You guys ever ask yourself the question, how did the people in the Bible do all of that? What would it look like? How do I do that? They started in prayer. They were growing there before they took anything else.
We have marriage cadres pushing you to fight for your marriage in a world that's against it. We have cadres specially designed for men to learn to take back their identity and family and community. And, God willing, in the future, I'd love to see cadres forming in prisons here in Colorado where we could pour into them. I have a bunch of ideas. We don't have it all put together yet.
Everything's not perfect. But the reality is we're trying to give everybody an opportunity to take a step of faith and grow together in a missional community. And hear me on this. I'm not asking you to individually change the world. I am telling you that what the church acts.
Telling you that when the church acts like the church, they will wage war with the gates of hell and prevail. There's so much opportunity, guys, over the next couple of weeks to get signed up for a cadre and do some work for the kingdom of God. I'm going to show you a picture right now of what's called Death Valley in, this is on the Nevada California border. That is a ridiculously hot place. Like, they go out to get the mail and die kind of environment, but every seven years, they see rainfall, and then it looks like this.
See, what's crazy is that all the seeds were already there. Everything it needed to grow was already there. It was in the wrong environment. It needed to be put in an environment where there was an opportunity for that growth to happen. That's so many of you in here.
I'm going to show you another picture of a brother of mine. His name is Isaiah. See if I can put it up on the screen. Oh, that's a good one, too.
That's all right. We might get him up here on the screen in a second. He's about a 300 pound black man. Here he is that loves Jesus. And, I mean, you hug him and you just disappear.
You know what I mean? And this is him kneeling down, sharing the gospel with a big old smile on his face through this window. And he. I'm telling you, he's probably there for ten minutes sharing the love of Jesus with this guy. Normally you see Isaiah and you're like, oh, man, he's a little scary.
And what's happening through cadres and what's happening through brave church is men are getting down on their knees and lifting other people up with the gospel of Jesus Christ and showing them that Jesus loves them and cares about them. And here's what I want you to know. That encounter doesn't happen if he doesn't show up that day. That encounter doesn't happen if he doesn't change his environment and go to a place where God wants to actually use him. Those things matter.
Your environment matters. The last thing I want you guys to see today, you start to grow up in your faith when you see that it's bigger than you. You start to grow up in your faith when you see that it's bigger than you. It says this. It causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
Listen, none of the stuff that we're doing is ultimately about us. It's about building up the church so that people would see Jesus. It's about making a statement of faith together. And I need you guys to understand this. I want you to take a second and I want you to think about the happiest moments of your life, and I would wager that all of them are not when you are focusing on yourself.
Maybe the happiest moment for you was when you were like me, holding my little daughter for the first time. And it's awesome. And you realize, oh, this is so much bigger than me. Maybe for some of you, it's when you met your beautiful spouse and you knew in that moment, this is glorious, this is beautiful. Maybe it's an amazing friendship that you have with a brother or whatever, I don't know.
But I know this. When we look inward, it's dark. It's not good. We weren't meant to do that. God has called us to look outward and to do a work for him.
And when we turn our gaze instead of on ourself and what we think we need in this self help culture that is sending people down the toilet, when we look outward and trust Jesus, we actually experience joy. Amazing things happen. God starts to move in glorious ways. We come together in unity and fellowship. When we stop focusing on ourselves and lift up the name of Jesus together.
One of my favorite stories I want to share with you guys is from Westminster. It was back when it was the Broomfield campus. There was this creepy hallway you would walk down into, like what looked like a bat cave. Like it's a miracle that anybody got saved there at all. One of my dear friends, Kevin, he had come in one day off the street.
He had a plan to take his own life. He had it all scheduled, how he wanted to do it, how he's going to do it. And a couple of greeters met him and dude gave his life to Jesus before the service even started. It got radically changed. He's on our prayer team down there.
He goes now down to 16th street mall and hands out burritos and shares the gospel with people in rooms where he used to be part of a lot of the nasty things that were going on because somebody reached out and changed his life. And I need you guys to know this. The most important part of the church is not the message on Sunday morning. It's how the saints are being transformed by that message and changing other people. What we do when we hand somebody a cup of coffee at the door, what we do when we invite somebody into our homes, that's the stuff that's actually transforming lives.
It's not just Pastor Jeff, it's you, it's us. How are we being ministers? How are we walking this stuff out in our own lives? The reality is technology has radically changed the social structure of our world and not necessarily for the better. Kids stand in rooms now, instead of walking up and talking to you, will text you from like 2ft away.
How many of you guys have got a text from somebody in this room right now? Like, this guy's going long? Yeah, good. It's funny, but it's not funny. Sorry.
Social anxiety is crushing real community and keeping us from doing life on life and growing with one another in missional. And unfortunately, the church is not immune to this. We're seeing it impact us in a big way. We're going to be gathering together on Wednesday nights at every single campus, and we're going to be creating neighborhoods of cadres together right inside of our buildings to be able to grow and change together and take steps of obedience together in the name of Jesus Christ. We're going to be doing that.
We got care for small kiddos. We got stuff for students, we got stuff for kids, we got stuff for men, we got stuff for women, we got stuff for people who want to go take the gospel out. We've got stuff for people who are trying to grow roots deep. We have things for you. And we're calling you guys to come together for the next three months and say, I'm going to trust Jesus, I'm going to follow him, I'm going to be radical in my steps of obedience and walking with him and partnering with the rest of us here so that we don't become cold, so that we don't become hypothermic.
We're going to listen to the cannon, we're going to allow God to wake us up, and we're going to take steps of faith by the grace of God, so that when the fight comes in a bigger way, and it will, we, as a church would be strong and community strong with love for each other and embracing the ministry that God has called all of us uniquely to together. Amen. All right, let me pray for us. You can go ahead and stand and we'll begin to worship in just a minute. Father God, I just want to pray.
An anointing on every single person here. Lord, over the next couple of months, I see opportunities that we're going to have to bring the gospel to people that have never heard it. I see broken homes, Lord, broken marriages that are going to find that there's hope in Jesus Christ. I see people developing relationships with you in prayer because they're finally taking time to take that step of faith to do it. I see men taking back their identities and walking the fullness of what you've called them to.
I see women gathering together and growing in biblical femininity and learning how to be defined by who you say they are, not who the world says they are. And I pray that you would give us the courage, God, across every campus, to link arms and take steps of faith and obedience. That we would see that super bloom, Lord, that we would see flowers grow in the desert right here in Colorado. We pray these things in Jesus mighty name, and everybody said, amen. Amen.
Let's lift up some praise to the Lord.