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NewCity Orlando Sermons
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NewCity Orlando Sermons
Vision Series | Imagine People Who Have a Future
Senior Pastor Damein Schitter continues our fall vision series, asking us to imagine people who have a future. As we recognize God as our Father and embrace His promises, it can shape our daily actions and our shared aspirations, much like a parent's hopeful dreams for their child's future.
Imagine a businessman and a fisherman, each with different visions for their future—one driven by ambition, the other by contentment. Through this thought-provoking parable, Pastor Damein uncovers the significance of having a clear and focused vision for our future. By aligning our lives with the petitions of the Lord's Prayer, such as hallowing God's name and seeking His kingdom, we find freedom, joy, and clarity. These lessons help us build a sturdy foundation of hope and purpose, enabling us to live enriched lives filled with meaning and resilience.
But transformation goes beyond our willpower; it requires a change in what we love. Pastor Damein emphasizes that God's love reshapes our desires, urging us to invest in communal worship and prayer. By fostering deeper relationships with God and each other, we share in His mission and experience the victory of His kingdom. Join us as we explore building a community of prayerful believers, guided by the vision of the Lord's Prayer, and support each other's spiritual growth.
Hello everyone. This is Pastor Damien. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, orlando. At New City, we believe all of us need all of Jesus for all of life. For more resources, visit our website at newcityorlandocom. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2:I'm Evan Peterson and I'm with the Southeast Orlando Community Group. I'm Evan Peterson and I'm with the Southeast Orlando Community Group If you would pray with me as we ask the Holy Spirit to speak into our lives. Gracious Redeemer, as we hear your word, open our eyes to your glorious kingdom and bring us life through your Holy Spirit. Through Christ, we pray Amen. Today's scripture reading comes from Matthew 6, 9 through 13. Pray then like this Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. This is God's word.
Speaker 1:Thanks be to God, good morning. Well, my name is Damian, I'm the senior pastor and I'm so grateful that you all are here and that we get to continue on in our vision series through the Lord's Prayer this month together. So it's our common practice where in the spring we do a long series in the New Testament, in the fall it'll be the Old Testament, and then in the summer we do the Psalms. And right here, right before we start our fall series, we always do a month on vision, something related to our mission and vision and at New City, our stated vision is simply this to see the Father answer the Lord's prayer. Now, many of us know the Lord's prayer for exactly what it is, which is a prayer, that is, it's a patterned prayer. It's a way that Jesus teaches his disciples to pray. It's oftentimes pray together, which is why, if you're like me, as soon as Evan started reading that scripture, you could feel the whole room almost start with him, because we've been catechized that this is a prayer that Jesus has given all of his disciples and we're so used to doing it together. Now, one of the things that we want to do here at New City is we want our vision, that is to say, what we give ourselves to the horizons and the constraints to be directed by the Lord's Prayer.
Speaker 1:Now, in many ways, every church, whatever their vision statement would be if they have one is probably going to be some elaboration of the Lord's Prayer, and we decided just to go ahead and make it the Lord's Prayer. And we decided just to go ahead and make it the Lord's Prayer. So what we want to do is we want to explore this month how is it that the Lord's Prayer functions as vision. That's what we're answering this week. How is it that the Lord's Prayer functions as vision? Well, last week I started off the series by saying imagine a people who have a father, who not only have a father but know their father and live in light of having a father. And this week I want to invite us to do this. I want to invite us imagine a people who have a future, not just a father, but have a future, a sure future. So for a moment, let's just consider how do futures and the way that we view our futures function. How do we think about a future and how does that direct our life? Essentially, a future, whatever you think it is, is what your life is oriented to, and whatever your desired future, whatever your imagined future, as clear or as vague as it is, if it really is the future that captures your heart, it is also your hope. Whatever captures your heart captures your hope, and so to say that this is our vision is to say this is our hope that the Father answers the Lord's prayer. This is true of everything in your life.
Speaker 1:Now, we actually spend quite a bit of time in our lives thinking about the future. Some of us know that. Some of us, that's a big part of our role in our families or in our organizations. But some of you might think I don't know, I don't really spend that much time thinking about the future clearly. Well, it might not be clearly, but we do spend a lot of time vaguely, and I'm just going to use just an example and then a parable to help us understand how future and hope go together.
Speaker 1:Think about this If you're a parent, or if you imagine being a parent. Think about how much time we spend thinking about our children's education. Right, I mean, let's be honest beyond reading and writing and arithmetic, why do we care so much about our children's education? Why do we care where they go to school. Most schools aren't that different, no matter how much money you pay for them. So why do we care so much?
Speaker 1:Well, we might say, well, we want our kids to be prepared. And we might say, well, they're in third grade. Prepared for what? And you would say, well, the future, okay. Well, what's the future? Well, when they graduate, I really want them to be able to go to a college or university that they really like. I love that. That's great For what? Well, if they go there, then they can get a good job. They can get a job that they like. Great For what? You see, we can keep going, we can keep asking the question, and underneath there somewhere, is a vision of the future, it is a hope. You have a hope for them. You have hope for the type of person they're going to become. You have a hope for the types of things that they'll learn to love. And the clearer we get on why we want a certain future for our kids, the clearer we'll get on what our true hope for them really is.
Speaker 1:Think about it this way a parable, a short story. It's adapted from an early 1960s German short story. We're adapting it to make it more of a parable. Okay, so I read this in a book recently. There was a businessman. He was sitting on a beach, he was on vacation and he sees a fisherman. He's in a fishing village and the fisherman approaches the shore with his daily catch and the businessman looks and he's impressed by the quality of the fish. And so the businessman works his way over to the fisherman and he says hey, how long did it take you to catch these fish? And the fisherman replies not long, just a short while. And the businessman then said well, if it took you a short while, why don't you stay out a little longer to catch more fish? And the fisherman said well, because this is all I need. And the businessman, getting perplexed, then says but then what do you do with all the rest of your time? And the fisherman says well, I sleep in, I catch a few fish, I go home and play with my kids most of the day, I take a nap in the afternoon with my wife and then I join my buddies in town to talk and drink wine and play our guitars.
Speaker 1:The businessman at this is not only shocked but frustrated and he sees an opportunity and he says okay, listen, I have an MBA and I'm a successful business person. And so how about this? If you follow my advice, I think you could grow this into a business. And if you grow this into a business, you could have a bigger boat. And then you could use the proceeds to open your own cannery. The fisherman looks and says and then you could use the proceeds to open your own cannery. The fisherman looks and says and then what? Well, the businessman thinks about it and he says well, okay, then you could expand your business internationally and eventually you could take this thing public. And when the time is right, the businessman says you can sell all of your shares and become very rich. And the fisherman looked at him and said okay, then what? And he says well, then you can retire, you can move to a small fishing village, you can sleep late, you can catch a few fish, you can play with your kids, you can take naps with your wife, you can join your buddies in town to drink wine, talk and play guitar. The fisherman smiles at the businessman and just walks down the beach. You see what was this? This was a man, this fisherman, that was oriented toward a clear destination. He knew what his hope was, he knew what his future was. He knew where he was oriented.
Speaker 1:So many of us feel like we're tossed to and fro because we always need more. We always want more, but it's not really more that we're after, it's clarity that we're after. We're just not sure what our hope is in, we're not sure what we're aiming at, we're not sure what our future is and therefore our heart is captured by opportunity. But as Seneca said, the great Stoic philosopher, if a man knows not which port he sails, no wind is favorable. Think about that If you don't know your destination, it doesn't matter how great the wind is. You don't know where you're going. You're just being tossed to and fro. How do you call that a favorable wind? How do you call that a good business opportunity? How do you call that a great neighborhood to move into?
Speaker 1:If you don't know why, if you don't know what you're hoping in, if you don't have a future that's directing you, then we are disoriented. You see, our dreams, for the future reveals our hopes. Our dreams reveal our hopes, and the Lord's Prayer orients the Christian hope to what is eschatologically ultimate. That's a $10 word. That basically says the Lord's Prayer orients the Christian hope to what matters most. That's what the Lord's Prayer does, and we, as a church, we want to orient ourselves to what matters most. This is why we've made the Lord's Prayer our vision, particularly wanting to see the Father answer the Lord's Prayer. You see, when we are locked on with clarity to a future hope that is ultimate and sturdy, we will experience more freedom and more joy, our priorities will become clear to us and our lives will be filled with more clarity and courage. And who doesn't want that? Who doesn't want more joy, more clarity and more courage that even suffering can't steal? So, as we think about this, what the Lord's Prayer does in orienting us is it actually gives us the three main pillars of the Christian hope. Okay, the three main pillars of the Christian hope, and these are the three pillars the hallowing of the Father's name, the coming of the Father's kingdom and the accomplishment of the Father's will. These are the three pillars of the Christian hope. I'll say it again, because these are our three points today the hollowing of the Father's name, the coming of the Father's kingdom and the accomplishment of the Father's will.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we think about the Lord's prayer, we think about it as vision, we think about it setting our future, and we think about it capturing our future and we think about it capturing our hearts. So how does praying for the hallowing of the Father's name do that? Well, if we look at it, we already know it. But Jesus starts off the prayer where we did last week our Father in heaven. Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done. So these are prayers, these are petitions that Jesus teaches us to pray for. Jesus starts with these petitions before the second half that Ben will take the next two weeks, where God shows us that we have enough because he'll provide for us, and we have protection because he'll protect us from evil. So just think about this. Imagine a people, by the way, who have a father and a future and enough and provision and protection. Wouldn't you want to be part of that? And this is what Jesus offers us.
Speaker 1:The first thing that we learn here about the Lord's Prayer as vision is, if it's properly our vision, it can't be about us. You notice that the first place Jesus starts is how it would be your name, not how it would be my name. You see, it can't be about us. We cannot be at the center, and that's one of the beautiful things about a vision that can capture your imagination anyway, is that you and I are not at the center, but there's something greater than us that we long to see happen, something even beyond our own power that we can bring about. Ji Packer in his little booklet Praying the Lord's Prayer, and I would recommend it. I would recommend it strongly. It's just a little booklet, it's taken out of a. It's an excerpt from a larger book that he wrote, but as he's exploring Hallowed Be your Name he says this quote every school of Christian thought insists more or less clear-headedly that the praise of God, as distinct from promoting of ourselves, is the proper purpose of a man's life.
Speaker 1:In other words, the proper purpose from a Christian vision of the world is that you and I are not at the center of our lives, but God is actually at the center of our life. And then if we don't de-center ourselves, that we will not have true purpose, we will not have lasting purpose, we won't have purpose that can withstand suffering. We won't have purpose that can withstand loss. We don't have purpose that can withstand injury and illness and cancer and death. You see, if we are at the center, we are finite. We can be removed. Like that, we can be replaced like that, but God cannot be removed. God cannot be replaced. So God must be at the center of the Christian vision. And going further.
Speaker 1:To ask God to make his name holy is actually to make everything about his praise and his honor. Not just some things, but everything. So what I love about this is it demands that we look at all of life from this point of view. It demands that we view all of life comprehensively as primarily about God and his name. So before you start thinking about things that fit in the spiritual bucket, if we say all things, then we need to know that to pray this in the Lord's Prayer demands that we look at beauty this way God gets to define beauty. We look at sex this way we look at nature. We look at children and arts and food and games and, yes, of course, theology and church things. But everything that is created by God is created that he would be made much of, and therefore our enjoyment and gratitude for those things are not true enjoyment or true gratitude unless in that enjoyment and gratitude we actually look to God.
Speaker 1:We all know what it's like to hold our child or something dear to us, someone dear to us, and then have this thought, this flash, this fear that something bad is gonna happen. We all know what that's like. We've all experienced that Happened to me this week and in that moment some people call it foreboding joy In that moment we're filled with fear, our mind goes in different ways what if? What if this happens? What if that happens? Well, in those moments, let me invite you to turn your heart to the goodness of God, to turn your heart to the glory of God, because in those moments, what happens is that our vision gets so myopic we forget that actually, all of this is a gift from God. It's a gift that we don't make this about us. It's actually about glorifying God. And therefore the fear begins to dissipate because we recognize all things that God does. He does for his glory.
Speaker 1:You see, what happens is we'll have a deepening understanding that all things point to him, whether it's our fear, or our hopes, or our dreams, everything in our life. He is the purpose, he is what it's to point to. We're to pray hallowed be your name in fill in the blank. So all things in creation are to point to him, but also all things in redemption. What I want you to do is I want you, just for a moment, to reflect on how God saved you and is saving you. If you've never experienced that, what I want you to do is I want you to reflect on how it is that you found yourself here this morning. How did your steps become ordered in such a way that, through a relationship, through an invitation or through some other means, you end up here, whether you don't know Jesus or you know him?
Speaker 1:To pray that God's name would be hallowed is actually to see God's spectacular wisdom and love and justice and power and faithfulness in saving us and making us his children. We see that God, by his wisdom, found a way to justify the unjust, justly, as one author put it. What wisdom can do that? What wisdom can complete that? He did it completely on his own. We did not save ourselves in any way. Own, we did not save ourselves in any way, and so to know that is to know that life is not about us, but it is about God.
Speaker 1:Now I want to conclude here with a quote from an author, tyler Staton, and he wrote a book on prayer and he has this really helpful section on praying, this very petition, so I'm going to read part of it here. He says, in order for our prayers to have a sense of coherence, we need to start by hallowing God's name. Why? Well, because subconsciously, we tend to believe that the world is a neutral place. But it's not. The world is a contested place. We're almost always a name other than Jesus is being worshiped.
Speaker 1:When you and I open our mouths and begin to pray, almost certainly another name is being hallowed in our hearts the name of accomplishment, success, productivity, approval from another person, comfort, easy execution of our own plans, self-will in all its destructive varieties. You see, when we pray, we step out of the fundamental reality of the world and into the fundamental reality of God. So we must begin by inviting God to reorder our affections. You know what it's like. You know, if you just want to say it simply we know the remarkable selfishness in our prayers. We know how we're so prone to start and end with us. To start and end and pray not in Jesus's name or not from the heart, that God's will be done.
Speaker 1:But, as he says, we really are praying because we want to accomplish something, or we want to be successful, or we want accomplish something, or we want to be successful, or we want to be productive, or we want to be comfortable, or we want easy execution of our own plans and we're just asking God to bless those things. Now we're going to get to the real invitation to trust God and ask him for what we need. We're going to get to that in the next two weeks. But we start here because this is the pillar that orients our hope. Do we hope in God giving us our kingdom or do we hope in God making us a part of his kingdom? And that's the second pillar, that's the second point the coming of the Father's kingdom. Father's kingdom. So Jesus says here in verse 10, your kingdom come, your will be done.
Speaker 1:So I want to make a distinction here between the kingship of Jesus and the kingdom of Jesus. Okay, the kingship of Jesus is just that God as creator is king of everything. He always is. He made everything, he sustains everything. God is always king. He's never more or less king. It doesn't matter if we acknowledge that or not.
Speaker 1:But when Jesus comes on the scene the beginning of the gospel of Mark and says that the kingdom of God is at hand, what he's saying is he's not talking about the kingship of God, he's talking about the kingdom of God a very particular way in which God reigns, and ever since the fall has entered the world, anywhere God's grace comes in a person's heart or in restraining of evil, it is God's kingdom pushing back the darkness of that kingdom, that is to say the kingdom of darkness. And so what we have here is that the kingdom of God that Jesus is referring to is God's action as redeemer by grace, to restore and renew all things, to redeem, to repair and perfect what sin has damaged. And so what happens is is that we actually get a reorientation. This orients us with vision, because it's the thing that assures us that we are invited into something so much bigger than ourselves. You see, by praying, god's will be done. We've been de-centered, but where do we belong? We belong being caught up into the kingdom vision of God.
Speaker 1:You see, to pray that God's kingdom would come is actually a personal challenge, because when you and I pray that God's kingdom would come is actually a personal challenge, because when you and I pray that God's kingdom would come, as Martin Luther adds, we must start by saying bring it in me first, lord. You see, to pray this your kingdom come is a call to self-denial, to be oriented to God's kingdom rather than our own. And I think this is a direct challenge to what comes most naturally to us. We're so aware primarily of our own kingdom. What would build our kingdom, what would threaten our kingdom? And so this is relevant to you and I. It's also relevant to a church, because we could make this church about us and about making life easier and better, simply for our people, whoever they are.
Speaker 1:But to ask God to bring his kingdom first in our hearts is not only to decenter us that his will would be done, but it's also to follow him wherever he would call us. And today he's actually calling you to surrender in that way that you would follow him wherever he would call you. And God is calling us to much more than merely surviving. He's calling us to a life where we can thrive even in the midst of suffering. But again, in order to do this, we must de-center our kingdom and orient ourselves to his kingdom. This is what Jesus tells us in Matthew, chapter 6. He says seek first the kingdom of God, and the rest will be added to us. You see, to have a future is to call us to step out in confidence.
Speaker 1:And what I want to do is I want to speak to a couple of things. I know that there are people here today that you don't like the way that you are. There are people here today that wish they had different gifts, they wish they had different circumstances, they wish they had a broader set of responsibilities. There are people here today who constantly struggle with self-righteousness, who look on others, like the tax collector did, who thanked God that I'm not like those people. There are people here today who are wrestling, who are struggling with being underemployed, being unemployed, being ill-fit in their employment. That is to say, you wish that you were doing anything else. Listen, this is. It can be seen as just church talk, but all of this both invites us and confronts us in our real lives right now with what we're struggling with. What does it mean to follow Jesus, to be decentered, to have a future and a hope where the first two pillars that is, that God's name would be made holy in our life and that God's kingdom would be what we are after this is real stuff.
Speaker 1:As I was praying about this point in the sermon this week, this thought came to me, and that is that there is someone here, people here, men and women, that your desire is to start a business to the glory of God and you dream to see God's kingdom come through it. And you dream to see God's kingdom come through it and you want to see this enterprise to be a display of God's sovereign grace through this business, through this service. And you want to see problems addressed, real problems, problems that your heart is burdened for. You want to see needs met. You want to see evil restrained. You want to see God providing good in this world through the product or service that this enterprise offers. All of this is a further spelling out of you praying Lord, would your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven? Would your will be done? Would your kingdom come? Would it come in me and through me?
Speaker 1:Because here, here's the thing is that, young people, you can listen, but really all of us, because we all are here don't. Don't look for your passion first, people who tell you that we said this before they're already rich, they're already successful. The way that they very, very, very few people have any idea what they're passionate about, the way that very, very, very few people have any idea what they're passionate about. Your interests change, your passions change, but here's the thing when we begin to decenter ourself, to pray that God's kingdom would come in us, a few things are gonna happen. One is, you're gonna become aware that you have talents that God has given you and that you can steward those talents, you can develop those talents. So then we begin to pray God, show me problems in the world that need to be solved, that my talents can solve, that I find. Give me problems, help me see problems where your kingdom can come, and then, once we align ourselves and give ourselves with our own talents toward those problems to God's glory, we will become passionate about that thing. This is the way that it works. So if this is you, you're discovering these things, you want to discover these things. I'm telling you there are men and women in this congregation who can help you Fathers and brothers, mothers and sisters who are ahead of you in the faith. And if you want to know who these people are, come, talk to me and I'll connect you with them.
Speaker 1:To pray God's kingdom would come is not an invitation only to death, but to new life, not only to de-center yourself, but to center God, which then catches you up in something way bigger than you, way larger than us. This is the beauty of the vision of the Lord's Prayer. These are the types of people that it forms. So the first pillar is that the Father the first pillar sorry is that the father would hallow his name. The second pillar is that the father's kingdom would come. And the final pillar of this vision is that the father would accomplish his will.
Speaker 1:So you look here. Jesus says your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Listen, to pray that God's will would be done on earth as it is in heaven is to pray that everyone and everything would be obedient to God's revealed will. That's what it means to pray. God's will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. It's that everyone and everything would be perfectly obedient to God's will. What does obedience look like? Well, the sun comes up every day, just as God said the son's being obedient to God's will. Eventually, when God fully brings his kingdom, everything and everyone will be perfectly obeying God's will.
Speaker 1:Now here's where this gets tricky, because as things become clear, we'll learn that the purpose of this prayer is not that God would do our will, but that God would bring our will into a line with his will. That's actually what this prayer is, but somewhere around 18 to 36 months, every single one of us learned the power of asserting our own will, didn't we our own will, didn't we? And if, power is, in part, the capacity to influence, 18 to 36 month old, so we're just going to call them toddlers. Don't underestimate the power of a toddler. They're learning the power of asserting their will, and so, really, in a sense, the Christian life is a journey of learning how both first to discover your will and then learn how to lay it down.
Speaker 1:This really is the growth of maturity is to have a will and choose to lay it down, as Jesus says that we are to love our neighbor as ourself, we're to lay our life down. Well, if you don't step into maturity and own your own will and then choose to lay it down, that's not maturity. If you don't know that you have a self, there's no glory in denying it Because you've never chosen to take it up and lay it down. Glory in denying it because you've never chosen to take it up and lay it down. If you don't properly love yourself, there's no glory in loving your neighbor as yourself because you don't even know how to love. You see, there's something beautiful about learning that you have a will that God's given you, learning that you have agency that God's given you. But then the invitation to maturity in the Christian life is to properly embrace it, properly deploy it and properly lay it down. And it's the Lord's Prayer that teaches us how to do these things, because the most natural prayer would be my name be hallowed, my will be done.
Speaker 1:There's a Christian psychologist I'm always helped by his name's, david Benner, and he writes this quote intuitively. We believe the lie that the route to personal freedom and fulfillment is through self-assertion and self-determination, through grasping and control. This is what we have to relearn. So you see, the way to truly obey God's will from gratitude is to have our wills shaped to want god's will. I'm gonna say that again the first step in doing god's will is wanting god's will.
Speaker 1:You realize how hard it is to do something you don't want to do. You ever tried that. I can do it longer than most. Some of you can do it longer than me, some of you aren't very good at it, but it's all like trying to jump over the Grand Canyon. It's like you know, maybe I can run faster than you, I can jump farther than you, I might get farther than you, but in the grand scheme of things, know, maybe I can run faster than you, I can jump farther than you, I might get farther than you, but in the grand scheme of things, we all die right. So if doing God's will requires desiring God's will, our willpower, and how much we will God's will in our own strength, it's really immaterial. What God wants in the Lord's Prayer is to shape us, to soften us, to make us the type of people who want His will, so that we will do His will. You know that you do what you want. That's the easiest thing to do. So we need God to change what we want. And you see where this comes from is it comes from gratitude, because we know, as one author says, apart from threat and fear, nobody voluntarily submits their will and surrenders their autonomy for any reason except love.
Speaker 1:Love is the only thing that reshapes what you desire. You start wanting different things when you start having different loves, don't you? Some people? I was like this. You have your first child and you think, how am I going to love this child and then? Or how am I going to take care of this child? And then, all of a sudden, you experience a love you've never experienced anymore. And then you think, well, how am I going to love the next child Like now? I'm nervous. And then you have that child and all of a sudden your capacity expands. Why? Not because you got stronger, not because you willed it more, but because your love was expanded. And then you think, the next child?
Speaker 1:Listen, the only thing that reshapes our desires is a new love. You may think I don't want to give up my freedom. I don't want to give up my freedom to do what I want, to stay out as late as I want, to travel wherever I want, to not have to spend money on anything except myself and what I want. And then what happens? You find someone and you love them, and then, all of a sudden, it's nothing to share a bank account, it's nothing to sacrifice for this person. Why? Because a new love gives you a new will, it gives you new desires, and then, all of a sudden, the things that you desire you naturally do. This is what the Lord's Prayer is meant to cultivate in us, and I love that Jesus invites us to this. He invites us not to a new list of things to do, but to him. He invites us to receive his love, to have our loves expand what we desire, to change what we desire.
Speaker 1:As one author says, jesus is inviting us in the Lord's Prayer saying listen, I've come to inaugurate the kingdom of God and bring a reign of love to the world. I will conquer everything that afflicts you and the world Disease, sin, suffering, injustice, poverty, ignorance and even death. Come and join me so that I may first lead you to the Father's healing love and saving grace. Then take up your place beside me, sharing my labor, sharing my suffering and sharing the victory. That is certain. This is what Jesus has laid down his life for. He's laid down his life so that you can come to the Father. He's laid down his life so that you can be healed by the Father, so you can be adopted into the family. He's laid down his life. So now his mission, his joy, his glory, his desires can become your mission, your joy, your glory, your desires, and there's nothing you did to deserve this and there's nothing you could do to deserve this. This is the beauty of the Christian hope Not our kingdom, but God's kingdom.
Speaker 1:So, in conclusion, what I want to say is how do we become these types of people? And at New City at minimum. What we've done is we've said there are three primary environments whereby your engagement and participation, you can become these types of people. First of all, you can't do it on your own. These have to be formative and communal environments. First is, right now, congregational worship. My prayer is that something happened in this moment that only the Holy Spirit could do, that shapes you, that changes you.
Speaker 1:And it's good that you can listen to the podcast. It really is, but this is much better. This is much different. What would it be like? I want to invite you, I want to challenge you even to be here three times a month. Now, listen, I understand there's life and there's travel and all those things, but the average Christian in America currently attends gathered worship 1.8 times a month. And I'm telling you, something happens here, something shapes you and forms you here. So I'm inviting you to prioritize this place. How we become these types of people.
Speaker 1:The second way is we need more than this. We need a community. We need communities of people that we gather with. Listen, if you want to become a better prayer, the only way you're going to do that is to get around people that teach you to pray. Apprenticeship is how we learn everything. Now we can read books. I've read lots of books on prayer. Where I've learned to pray in the last two years more than I've ever learned to pray before, are prayer meetings Prayer meetings with pastors and Christians around the community. We have prayer meetings on Monday. I go to a prayer meeting on Wednesday. We had prayer meetings on Friday and these brothers and sisters have taught me how to pray in a way that I've never known how to pray before.
Speaker 1:If you ask Jason, he'll say the same thing. If you ask Ben, he'll say the same thing. If you ask Sarah, she'll say the same thing. If you ask Ben, he'll say the same thing. If you ask Sarah, she'll say the same thing. You ask Ryan and Kenny, they would say the same things.
Speaker 1:We all decided we need to be able to pray so we can model that for other people. So how do we do it? We said we better get some people around us that know how to pray better than us and invite them in and let's pray together. That's how we're going to learn how to pray. We need to do that in communities and we need to do that in circles. Listen, you need a place where someone is saying let's do this, let's read this, let's reflect on this, let's share this. And some of you are going to learn this semester, this year, what it's like the beauty of pouring into other people, the beauty of saying let's, let's be together, let's grow together, let's learn how to pray together, let's engage better in gathered worship.
Speaker 1:A few years ago, I didn't know, like, how do I prepare myself for gathered worship when I'm not preaching? How do I prepare myself for gathered worship when I'm not leading up front, because my mind's there, but when I just come and participate, I'm like man, this is kind of lame, I mean, compared to me thinking about it all week, like everything being directed. And so what did I do? I began to ask other people who had been pastors longer than me, or used to be pastors and aren't now, and I said teach me how to prepare my heart for gathered worship when I've just been living life all week beautifully, I hope, but still not thinking about gathered worship and listen. That's all of you.
Speaker 1:And so if you want to learn how to be prepared more for this place, find someone who does it well, find someone who's been doing it for a long time and say what have you found? What did we do the night before? What did we do the morning of? What are you thinking about? How do you redirect your attention? The way that we learn these things is in community by asking and being together.
Speaker 1:And lastly, what I would say is how do you become the type of person who knows how to go to the word of God in prayer in a discernment process, not simply looking at only finances, your gifts and the opportunity itself? What does it look like to go to the word of God in prayer in your parenting? What does it look like in your all discernment processes, in your frustration, in your hopes, in your joys? You're not going to learn how to do this on your own. You have to be with fellow travelers, you have to be with people who have committed themselves to the same things, and this is why we have formed and are filling these environments of congregations, communities and circles. So how does the Lord's Prayer function as vision?
Speaker 1:Well, so far we've learned that we become a people with a father, we become a people with a future and next week we'll learn we become a people with enough. Let's pray, father. We thank you that you interrupt us. We thank you that even this morning maybe this morning was an interruption you protect us from ourselves. You don't keep us as orphans. You send your spirit, you've given us your community and I pray that next month, as communities and circles begin to launch, that we would become a people together who know what it means to have a father, that we would become a people together who know what it means to have a father, that we would become a people together that lives in light of this future. And it's in Jesus' name we pray amen.