You are not made to do life alone, but are called to be established in the local body of Christ. Practice the fruit of the Spirit by engaging your culture with love and grace, even when it feels difficult.
Well, good morning. Just in case you can't tell, I am not pastor David. That's my husband. In fact, he wears many hats. He was up here on the the box drum cajon today.
So, I wanted to take a moment, introduce myself. Hi. I'm pastor David's wife, pastor Courtney. And I wanted to let you know why I know some of you are new, maybe this is your first or second time here, and why you're not gonna see him on the stage preaching every Sunday. And I I go back a couple of years ago, and I was out front greeting, like, when you're walking into the church building, and this lady walked up.
And I said, good morning. My name is Courtney. Welcome to Real Church. And she said, this is my fourth Sunday here and I still haven't heard the preacher preach. Who put sour milk in your cornflakes this morning?
It was it was a bit aggressive to just come into church like that. I was like, oh, I didn't say that. That was an inside thought. My face might have said something, but my mouth didn't say anything. So I I tried to tell her, you know, we actually have a speaking team with more than just pastor David because we believe in empowering people in their giftings to to walk them out.
She didn't know that I was hosting that day, so I came up on the stage and I was like, now I would like to introduce our speaker, pastor Chevy. And then she got up and walked out. And and you know, and and no, I'm not judging her. I mean, I'm judging her a little bit. But but if you think about it, a lot of us come to church with our own expectations of how a church should be run.
Because maybe we went to a church and they did it this way and we loved it, and then God had us move. Then we're here and it's like, this looks different. Y'all do things differently. I don't like that. And here's what I have to say about that.
We are tasked by God to do things the way that he's asked us to do it. And our role is to love everyone where they are and to run the race that he's called us to run. But the church that you came from, I bet that they've been tasked to run a race too. And as long as we're running towards the same finish line, it may look a little different from 1 house to the next, and that's okay. That's the beauty of the "body of Christ".
When we're in unity in our mission, the the end mission to know Christ and to make him known, to preach the *truth* to the world, to draw people into relationship with Jesus, how we do it might look different from house to house, and that's okay. So I wanted to take a minute to tell you how God instructed us to do it, and then, and then he confirmed it on how we do church. And we do it in these 4 4 words, engage, establish, equip, and empower. This is just the intro. This is like a prequel to our who we are series that we we talk in, I think, January, February time frame.
So our first step is to engage the culture with the love of Jesus. Every person in here, whether you realize it or not, has been engaged with the "love of Jesus" through real church. Whether you were invited to church, you were, oh, I think I need to go to church, I'm gonna Google, and then you went to our website. Maybe you maybe you saw the flags or the the truck outside for for months and were like, you know what? I'm gonna show up.
But every 1 of you were somehow, Facebook, Instagram, engaged with the love of Jesus. And then our job as leaders in the church is to then establish the believer in the local body of Christ. And if you're like, you know what? I'll go to church every now and then, but I just don't find it that important to be a part of a church. I'll be a guest, but but I'm not going to to be established in the church, you know.
I wanted to share with you a vision I had a couple of years ago that really solidified just how serious Jesus is about people being established in the body, not just doing Christianity on their own. You're not made to do life alone. You're not made to do Christianity off on an island by yourself. If you are doing that, no condemnation, and I'll say it like David says it, If I'm stepping on your toes, your toes shouldn't be there because this is scripture. I had a vision.
I was cleaning the girl's room, and it was so overwhelming that I sat down and was like, I saw a man standing before Jesus. Jesus, I finally made it. I've been waiting to be with you. I've spent my whole life in love with you. I read your word.
I devour your word. I listen to worship music, I worship you. I spend hours in prayer. And Jesus is like, yeah, you you did that with me. Yeah.
What about my church? And he said, no. Okay. So I have a relationship with you, but since it's about relationship and it's not about religion, like, I didn't think that organized religion was exactly, like, what was right because And then, the guy went on to criticize the church. There are hypocrites there.
I don't like people telling me what I don't wanna hear. I felt uncomfortable when when people told me things about me, and and I I didn't wanna change them. And so I just spent time with you because that's what's most important. Right? And Jesus says, it's very important to spend time in my presence.
But what about my church? And I could feel this holy indignation, this righteous anger coming up in Jesus that I had personally had never experienced before. And he went on to criticize her. And Jesus said, you're talk you're talking about my wife. Yeah.
Throughout the New Testament, *Jesus* calls the the church the bride of Christ. He also calls it the body of Christ. The the body doesn't do anything. Let's just think about biology. Okay?
The body doesn't do anything without the head telling it what to do. My head is telling me, pick up this water of bottle pick up this bottle of water. See, when things go wrong like that, it means there's an issue in the brain. Okay? If my head tells me to pick up the bottle of water and my hand slaps it off the table, you would think there was a problem.
You wouldn't be like, oh, that's just the way it is. You would go to the doctor to try to figure out why your body isn't doing what the head tells it to do. But if if the body if a part of the body, a member of the body is not attached to the head, then that member cannot do anything. That's called an amputation. And that foot or hand or finger or toe or whatever you are is disconnected from the head, and so it's going to eventually die.
It is essential that people are established in a local body of Christ because you are called to more than just you and sitting on an island by yourself loving Jesus. If that was the case, when you gave your life to Jesus, he would have zapped you up to heaven because the whole purpose is to be with him. But that's not the whole purpose. The whole purpose is to be with him and to make him known to other people, and we do that in a body sense. We do that corporately.
And a lot of instructions in scripture are about how to do church corporately. And if Jesus didn't want that to happen, then he wouldn't have put it in the word that the guy in my vision was saying he loved to read. Come on. So I saw all of this, and then I'm like so my I'll I'll let you into my brain a little bit. I like to take things that are spiritual and make them very practical and see how real people would would would do things.
Like, that's 1 of the reasons I like the show, The Chosen, because I'm like, oh, this is, like, more than just bible stories. I like how they expound upon it. And it is fiction based on truth. Yeah. But it it's really fun to see that.
And so I I was like, I'm gonna see what happens. Because I felt Jesus, like like protective over his his bride, his wife. Like, don't be talking about my wife like that. So I went in the living room. Do you remember this?
I don't really. Okay. Core memory for me. He might And a lot of times, I'll go in and I'll be like, I wanna paint a scenario, and he'll, like, take his AirPods out and be like, okay. Because he doesn't know what he's getting.
And I said, if somebody came to our house that had set an appointment with you and was like, pastor David, I wanna be with you. I wanna like a guy. Obviously, if a woman's like, I wanna be with you. Like, not cool. But this if a guy came over, I wanna I wanna be with you.
I wanna learn from you. I wanna be discipled by I just wanna sit in your presence and learn the things that you know. That's awesome. This discipleship. He says, come do life with me, and he walks through the door.
And then I walk in, and I'm like, hey, guys. And he says I heard I heard Tony go, who? He goes, does she have to be here? And Dave, you're like, I mean, she doesn't have to be here for our conversation, but is there a problem? And he's like, I came to spend time with you, I don't like her.
What would you say? And he said, I'd say get the heck out of my house. That's right. And that response is what Jesus says when people are like, I love you. I love you.
I love you. Oh, but I don't need the church. She's not all that great. *Jesus is coming back for his bride. She is glorious, and she's not perfect, but she is, according to scripture*, gonna grow from glory to glory to glory, and so we should love the local church.
And if if you have had bad experiences with church, guess what? How many people in the room have had a bad experience in church? A lot of us have had rough experiences in church. That's because we're people learning how to do life with other people, and sometimes I think it would just be easiest if everybody thought and reasoned and and considered things like me. But it's not that way.
We're all so different. We're lots of different parts of 1 body, and there is a lot of scripture. I can't even start to name all the verses that talk about how we are to interact with 1 another. So we're called to engage the culture and then establish the believer in the local body. And if you're not established in a body and this is where God's called you, this is your Holy Spirit kick in the butt to get established.
You can sign up for the established dinner on our website, realchurch.us. Just a plug. And then after you're established in the body, then we get the privilege of equipping you. And guess what we equip you to do? We equip you to engage your culture with the love of Jesus.
We engage, we establish you, and then we equip you to engage your culture because I don't know if you know it or not, but our culture is really dark and it could use a little bit of light. And so when you come here, it's more than just coming and sitting and getting your Holy Spirit filled, getting this head full of knowledge, and then going home and just living your life. Our goal is to equip you to go out and engage your culture, your city, your school, your job, your home. The government. Go engage.
And then after we've gotten the privilege of equipping you, we get the privilege of empowering you when you're ready to live your God given purpose. And there are a lot of different aspects of purpose. So some of you, we wanna empower you to to go into the government. We wanna empower you to to go and plant a church or go on on mission trips or to go be a missionary to another culture. And for some of you, you have a gifting of rightly dividing the word and a gifting for communicating it in a way that helps equip the saints for the works of ministry.
And so that's why, like I said before, that's why you're not gonna see pastor David up here every Sunday. Because he gets like a kid at Christmas time when he sees a gifting coming out and someone has been through the process and they're ready to to share their gift, and he gets to empower them. So that's how we do church. I believe that there's more in you than you think that there is in you, and we want the opportunity to help dig it out, help walk through that process, help equip you, and then when it's time to empower you forward. So now I'm gonna give a message.
And pastor Chevy kinda gave the message while he was up here, and I didn't even tell him what the message was about. He was talking about the fruits of the spirit, you know, Galatians-5:22, like, love, joy, peace, all of those fruits. And that's what I'm gonna talk about today. But I'm gonna make a statement. Christians should "change the atmosphere" of any environment that they walk into no matter how dark it is.
That's right. I believe that Christ followers should be the most pleasant people in a room. Come on. I believe that Christ followers should be the most pleasant people in a room when they're the only person that's a Christ follower in the room. Right.
In toxic environments, in workplaces. What happens if all the Christians leave toxic environments? They're just gonna get darker. *John-1:5 says, the light shines in the darkness* and the darkness hasn't understood it. As a Christ follower, when you gave your life to Jesus, you were implanted with the Holy Spirit.
And the fruits or the the the elements of the spirit that are in you are in direct contrast to this world. In our world, there is hatred and anger. But as a Christ follower, we have love. There's anxiety, but we have joy. Or we can.
We may not fully be walking in them, but you have access to these fruits. Where there's where there's fear and worry, we have peace. Peace that passes understanding. Where people want things and they try to get them as quickly as they can and they'll fight to get them, we have patience. Where there's a general sense of of meanness, gossiping, backbiting.
We're kind. We have kindness. And the list goes on in those fruits of the spirit. And I wanna give an example of a time where where I happened to walk in the in the in the spirit. When we say "walking in the spirit", you know, I had I heard a statement.
I I didn't put it in my notes, but I heard a statement by a former pastor of ours. And she said, if the gifts of the spirit are more prevalent in your life than the fruits of the spirit, then your life is out of order. That's right. Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? You can prophesy all you want, but do you love people?
*Lord*, didn't we heal these people? We raised the dead. Look at this. There was no compassion. We can do a lot of things in the name of Jesus, but if we don't learn the the elementary skills of walking in the fruits of the spirit, then we're gonna miss out on some aspects of Jesus in our world.
Couple of years ago, we had we had just moved here and and we were kinda building our launch team to start the church. And we had an event going on downtown Clearwater, and I had my, I think my 3 year old no. My 2 year old, my 4 year old, and my 6 year old, and a 20 year old brand new baby believer that I was discipling in my vehicle. And I needed to get some ice, so I pulled into Walgreens to get a bag of ice. And I get out of the van, and I close the door, and this guy whips in, jumps out of his car, slams the door, and starts cussing me out.
And I'm talking like, was not pretty. And I'm kinda like, me? He is cussing me up and down, and then I'm like I turned to Jasmine, and I was like, lock the door. And she's a new believer, so she got a little bit of spunk in her. And I could tell she's getting ready to, like, she's getting ready to throw down with this guy.
And he's yelling, you cut me off in traffic, you blankety blank. You made me late to where I was going, and I'll tell you what my first response in my head was. Again, the first response is usually not the best response that comes through my head. My first response is, I did not cut you off in traffic at all. If you were late to go in where you went, then maybe you shouldn't have pulled over here to chew me out, and you should have hit the gas to get where you were going.
These are the thoughts that are going I'm I'm popping an attitude in my head while I'm also taking in all this information. And then he got about this far from me, at the point where most people would probably like run or call the cops. He gets probably, I don't know, 2 or 3 feet from me, and I smell him. And he smells like liquor. And then my next thought was, and you shouldn't be drinking and driving anyway, like, I'm ready to just chew him up and down.
And and I knew now, I'm not thinking, how can I walk in the fruits of the spirit in this situation? No. I'm thinking, how can I I not make this guy more angry and just get out of it? And I didn't know what to do, but I knew that I couldn't jump at this guy because it was gonna elevate where he was. He was if I measured his level of crazy, then his level of crazy was gonna go off.
And I didn't have any protection on me, and so I didn't know how I was gonna protect my kids and this young believer. And I also knew that we just had a conversation of how she can deal with difficult people who are being unreasonable. It was a setup. So I'm thinking all of this stuff because he's still going. Like, I'm like I mean, and and I can't fight him.
He's like 20 years older than me and a 100 pounds heavier than me. I'm like, what am I gonna do? And he he calmed down, and I just in my spirit because I didn't know what else to do, I said, God, what do I do? And I felt *compassion* for him. Yeah.
I didn't think compassionately about him, but I felt when I asked God, it was, like, instant. Because I guess according to God in that moment, he needed compassion. And so I had to kinda decide, am I going to give him Jesus or am I gonna give him Courtney? So I took a breath, and I was like, okay. I need to humble myself here.
Not justify what he's doing, but also, like, I don't need to defend myself. I mean, because if we look at scripture, Jesus is our defender. Like, he's the 1 that defends us. I don't need to justify myself. I don't need to defend myself to this lunatic.
So whenever he calmed down a second, I said, listen, I'm so sorry. I didn't I didn't think that I cut you off, but if I did, I apologize. And if I inconvenienced you, I'm sorry. And in my little Disney Channel world, I thought that he was gonna be like, you know what? I lost my temper.
I'm sorry. And, like, we're gonna dab it up and go, and, like, it's good. No. He got more irate. And I was like, God, I did what you told me to do.
And so I did it again. And I know that I did this at least 2 times. It was a lot to take in. I can't tell you exactly how long this thing was. I wasn't keeping time.
I really just wanted to get out of there. And, again, I I am just like humbling myself, which on the surface you would be like, I would have hit him. Like, on the surface you would have been like, you don't have to do that. Like, he doesn't deserve that. No.
He doesn't deserve that. But we didn't deserve Jesus laying his life down for us either. So I I did that. I was like, I'm so sorry. And then and then I kid you not, I'm just gonna act out what this guy did.
You you look, you seem like a really nice girl, and I don't wanna see your kids get hurt. Just be careful next time. And I was like, yes, sir. And he walked inside and I was like, y'all good? And Jasmine's like, I was ready to fight.
And I was like, you know, that's not what it would have been good in that situation. Where he was exhibiting so much anger for whatever reason, I don't know what he went through, I had to exhibit love. Yeah. It's exactly counter to what he was doing. Where there was just hatefulness, meanness, I had to exhibit goodness, and I had to exhibit a lot of self control.
And that all happened on the inside. So what came out started from what I was thinking on the inside. How do I do this your way, God? The light shined in the darkness, and the darkness didn't understand it. But when the light that is in you pierces, penetrates a dark place, like David said, he wants people to be forced into the "valley of decision".
People are forced into a valley of decision. Do I do I just keep going or do I give in to this light? Because whether you know it or not, people are desperate for light. Have you ever been in a cave? When I was a teenager, our youth leader took us in a cave in Arkansas, gets us to like a deep dark part where there's a a turn, and then he says, let's turn off our flashlights.
We turned it off, and I'm like, I want out of here right now. This is dark. And I start automatically looking for light, any light. Why? Because where you see light, there's hope because there's an escape from the darkness.
Just imagine what people who are walking in darkness are going through. They're groping around trying to trying to find a way out, and then all of a sudden, light hits them, and they don't know what to do because they haven't experienced it. Maybe they've got a "sour taste" in their mouth for the way that people have responded to them in the past, and they're like, okay, I'm just gonna keep responding in the way that I I need to until they realize something is different here. That's what happened to the guy at Walgreens parking lot. *Matthew-4:16* says, the people living in darkness have seen a great light.
On those living in the land of the shadow of death, the light has dawned. What's the light? John-9:5, Jesus said, I am the light of the world. *Matthew-5:14*, Jesus said, you are the light of the world. A city on a hill can't be hidden, but how often do we not wanna deal with people?
Do we not wanna interact in the way that God wants us to interact because we react to them, and we hide our light. We have toddlers running around saying, it under a bushel. No. I'm gonna let it shine. Hide it under a bushel.
The vacation bible school people know what I'm talking about. How dare we hide the light of Jesus in our lives when a broken and dark world are desperate for it? I'm gonna tattle on David and I a little bit. 0. 0.
0. You know, a lot of times when we communicate, and I'm not just talking about in marriage, I'm talking about with 1 another, with other believers, with non believers, with people in general. A lot of times, we resort to old habits. And and a couple of months ago, I asked David, like, hey, can you he he does yard work. I said, can you clean out the area behind your office?
And he was like, I I can't today. No big deal. I couldn't either. It didn't get done. So a couple of weeks in a row, had asked him, and and 1 week I asked him, this was, I don't know, a month ago.
I said, you clean it out? And he said, can't today because he he just didn't have the time. I said, okay. I needed it cleaned out because I got plans. I'm gonna build a bike rack, get all of the junk off our front porch, put it like, I've got plans, but the first step in the plans is to get it cleaned out.
He couldn't do it, but that day, I had the time to do it. So for me, when he said he couldn't do it, it was the end of it. Like, David can't do it. No big deal. I'm gonna go do it myself.
So I did it. And he he sent me a video or Instagram reel 1 time, and, it was this woman, like, pushing a couch up the stairs. And it said, men, make sure, you are very secure in your manhood if you marry a strong woman because she don't need you, she wants you. And David's like, that's you. I'm like, yeah.
Amen. So so I cleaned out the area and he came home and the stuff was on the curb for the the claw truck to pick up. And he said, why did you clean it up? So we're we're both at, like, a level 1 on communication here. Like, we're we're not elevated.
He said, why did you clean it up? And I said, well, it needed to be cleaned. To me because to me, that's a very simple answer. Like, I cleaned it because it needed to be done. I was able, so I did it.
And then he said, well, I was gonna do it. And I said, but you said you couldn't. And he said, well, I know that you expected me to do it. Now, This time, it wasn't inside thoughts. My inside thoughts came out before I realized I should probably ask the Lord how to respond here because my emotions rose up.
And I said, first of all, I didn't say that I expected you to do this. I asked you if you could. So when you said that you couldn't, I took you at your word. Well, now, I'm at like a 3. Well, David wasn't walking in the spirit either.
And so David had to win. If you know, you know. So then he's like, well, just don't be like a lot of women and get mad at me for not doing what you expected me to do. Me and all my holiness. I told you I didn't expect you to do it.
So now we're both at like a level 10. Now the point of arguments. Okay? Any argument, the bible the bible says what causes quarreling and fights among you is because 1 of you wants and you don't get what you want. Like, both of us are trying to prove a point.
And we are like marking our territory like, this is my point and nothing you say will get me to move from this point. Y'all, we were making the same dang point. David didn't do anything wrong. So we go our separate ways. And then I come in and I sit down on the couch, and I'm like, bro, that was so stupid.
He's like, I know. You know, we hug it out, it's all good. But at the same time, like, what were we doing? We were not walking in the fruit of the spirit. We weren't thinking about 1 another.
We were thinking about proving a point. But it's so funny, a lot of times, we're trying to prove the same point that other people are proving, but we're too busy fighting for ourselves and defending ourselves. And the second that someone I'm telling you, the second that someone feels like you are defending yourself, they get defensive. Like, oh, you're taking care of you. Okay.
I'm gonna take care of me. It is something inside of all of us. It's something inside of believers and non believers. And in this, both of us had a weak moment where we decided to respond to the other person's I don't even respond to the other person's level of intensity because of emotions, react instead of say, I probably shouldn't be upset at this. What am I upset with?
I'm I'm upset that I did what I wanted to get done? Like, it doesn't make any sense. A lot of times we get used to how people respond and we forget that we're, as believers, new creations. A lot of times, we forget that not only I forgot that my husband was a new creation and I could I could just talk to him, I decided I need to defend my position here and make a point instead of loving him. *Colossians-4:6* says, let your speech always be gracious, **"seasoned with salt"** so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.
The purpose of salt is to enhance the natural flavor of what you put it on. What is natural? Fruits of the spirit if you have a new nature. But a lot of times, I think we forget that we have this. Listen, this is not like super profound.
This is elementary things that I think that we need to go back to the foundations of how to love 1 another and how to walk in the spirit so that we can be effective at doing what God's called us to do. Amen. Y'all see I have my my props. I'm not cooking. Aw.
I'll cook you something. I have the blessing and the not so great blessing of coming from a long line of really good cooks. I'm from North Louisiana, and people know how to cook. And my mom had a gifting. No matter how busy she was, she would always make sure that there was a hot delicious meal on the table at the end of the day.
Always. My entire life. So growing up into adulthood, I never learned how to cook. I didn't have to. I didn't see a need.
And then we go to college and our meals are taken care of because of scholarships, but then we get to mine and David's senior year. We had gotten married. We're we're newlyweds. We got to our senior year, and I was like, oh, the scholarship's gonna end, and my husband's not gonna have anything to eat. Because the only thing I knew how to cook were scrambled eggs and grilled chicken on the George Foreman season with some Tony's.
That's all I had. So David had mentioned his favorite food was his nanny bet's Sunday pot roast. So I went to nanny's, and I was I was at nanny's house, and and she wasn't cooking pot roast. She was just in the kitchen. Now understand that when I say I watched her seasoning something, she wasn't seasoning something.
She was, like, making a brine or something. But I walk in, and this is what I see. She's got her gumbo pot on the counter. That's what we call this. And this is what I see.
That's what I see. So now, I'm thinking, oh, I know her secret to nanny's good food. And I said, nanny, will you teach me how to make your Sunday pot roast? I wanna learn to make it for David. And she said, it's the easiest thing you'll ever do.
You get you a you get you a pot roast from the store, you season it, put it in the crock pot with your broth and your vegetables, turn it on, and you'll have dinner at the end of the day. I was like, that sounds like witchcraft. Because I know that my momma spent hours in the kitchen cooking for us. So I'm like, oh my gosh. Well, we're newlyweds, so I had a crock pot like a good southern woman in a box that I didn't know.
It was just a gift that somebody is like, you have to have this, because in the South, you have to have a crock pot. And I didn't know what to do with it, and now I'm like, oh, this is magic. This is a new this is the new version of crock pot, but at the time I had the old ceramic 1. This is what we got right now for the for the purpose of the story. So I am so excited.
1 morning, David had left. I was headed to a long day of clinicals, and and so I'm like, I'm gonna make David a pot roast. He's gonna be so excited. So I get my pot roast, and y'all should understand why it's wrapped in plastic wrap right now. Because I was like, okay.
Okay. First, I season my roast. And then I put it in the crock pot with my vegetables and my broth, and then I turn it on and magic. We get home at the end of the day and that kitchen smelled good. Do you remember?
It smelled good. And that pot roast just we took the fork and it was so tender. And we sat down to eat. Tasted like the ocean. And I'm like, I did what Annie told me to do.
I seasoned it with salt. I seasoned it the way I saw her do it. So then I called nanny, and she's like, oh, court. And she tells me it's there's more to it than salt, and also, you season things differently. I hadn't learned how to use salt properly.
So for years so we've been married almost 18 years. So for years, every meal I cooked for David, he would taste it like this. And every meal, I got a little bit better and better and better at seasoning with salt and other seasonings. It took practice. It took a lot of failure.
But he had a sour taste in his mouth about the way that I had been cooking. The world, unfortunately, has a sour taste in its mouth about how people have responded to them, and they are desperate to see people walk out the fruits of the spirit in front of them. They are desperate for **light to pierce** into their lives so that they can see the out of the darkness, and they can see hope. I worked at and again, y'all know me. I tell stories.
This is how I communicate. I I worked at Olive Garden early in our marriage, and I remember this guy. He was so sweet, but he his how he told his identity was, I'm a super gay drag queen. That was just that was who he was. And he was a really nice guy.
He was so sweet. And we worked for a while, and then 1 evening, there were a bunch of us at dinner, and I I didn't know the people at the table. The only thing I knew about him was that. So I wanted to know more than that because I'm sure there's more to him than that, you know? So I'm getting to know the people at the table, and he said, you know, when I found out that you and your husband were Christians, I automatically didn't like you.
And I'm like, why? And he said, because I've got such a sour taste in my mouth about Christians because I'm a Christian in the South, and I'm gay, and I've been treated awfully. And you know what happened? We ended up having a really great conversation. As a a big sister in Christ, I got to, in love, get to exhort him.
Like David had said earlier, we I think you said it in the dream team service, how when we see someone that's in sin, we we gently restore them. And I got the opportunity to minister to him in that, and we walked away from it agreeing to disagree. But he told me this later, he said, I haven't had any conversations like that before where someone genuinely loved me enough to talk to me like that. Not talk down to him. I have nothing to talk down to.
I've I've I've been saved by grace myself. But walking in the fruits of the spirit, and even when it felt like it was getting tense, realizing, oh, everybody at this table needs some Jesus. They need some fruit. What are you telling? About what?
About that. How the conversation About living in sin. Well, I told him, I mean, if you're a Christian, I'm sure that you know that walking opposed to the way that God wants you to walk is sin. And it's gonna cut you up and eat you up. If you claim to be a follower of Jesus, then you say, yes, Lord.
And when he was like, yeah, I'm born this way, we kinda went through the whole, you know, when you come to Jesus, you're a new creation, "born again". And so how can you continue walking in sin willingly? I mean, I'm not saying everything's gonna change instantly, but how can you continue "walking in sin" willingly? And I've had this conversation with many people in many different walks of life. But he his response was, I, this is just who I am, and we left the conversation that way.
We left the conversation with this is just who I am and I'm not changing. And while I was sad about that, I was also sad that his experience with other believers were coming at him from a place of piousness. Like, I want you to walk in freedom because it'll make me feel better if I can win you over to change you from gay to straight instead of loving him where he was. Showing him the fruit of the spirit. When I wanted to when I I have a righteous anger towards sin, I don't have a righteous anger towards him.
Come on. It's good. I hate that sin. I hate all sin because Jesus bled and died to forgive us of that sin. And I'm like, oh, you're spitting in his face and you don't even know it and you don't even care.
Right. Come on. That's good. We need to practice walking in the spirit. Just like I needed to practice learning how to season with salt so that the flavors of food could be enhanced.
The flavors of what Jesus put inside us, the fruits of the spirit can be enhanced. We have to practice, and I'll tell you, a church is a great place to practice because there's a lot of grace here. I mean, just like David and I have been following the Lord for a long time, many many years. We still screwed it up recently, and then we fall forward. Man, that was wrong.
That was dumb. Let's keep moving forward And learning as you go, but not succumbing to, well, this is the way that I am. My family always said, I've always worried, so I'm just always gonna worry. If you're a believer, you have the fruit of the spirit. Oh, I'm just person.
Like, I don't really like people. I If you know the story of Heidi, many of you have heard it. She came in the church saying, I don't like people. And I mean, within a couple of weeks, she's like, I love people. Because she recognized what God had implanted in her.
It's a beautiful thing. We need to learn to walk in these fruits of the spirit because our world is desperate for it. It is dark, and we can tell that the world is getting darker. But you know what? Where the darkness is the darkest, the light can shine the brightest.
So, I'm about I'm about to close. I'll go ahead and say those who are getting baptized can head out. Pastor Chevy can come up, get ready for closing us out. So what is the what is the solution? Like, how do we do this?
How do I learn, like, a practical step that I can learn how to walk out these fruits of the spirit you're talking about because they don't come naturally? I disagree. You just have to recognize your new nature. And how do you walk them out? Well, I'll say how I walked it out with that guy in Walgreens is before I reacted to his actions, I said, God, what do you want me to do?
What would have happened when I felt myself feeling some kind of way when David said what he said? What would have happened if I would have been like, how should I respond to this? Very simple, not very profound. pray before you speak. It's not very profound, but I think a lot of us get focused on what we're doing and what we're trying to prove instead of taking a step back and saying, Lord, how do you want me to respond here?
Let's pray. An altar team, y'all can head up to the stage. Oh, God, we love you. I love your your spirit. I love how you're so gentle with us.
You're so loving. And I love how you want to walk hand in hand with us in in walking out this life, Lord. Lord, I pray that everyone in here will learn what it looks like to hold your hand while navigating this life with other people. Lord, I pray that this church, that every person that calls this church home will choose to be a light that penetrates the darkness when they leave this place, Lord. That when they go to lunch and they have the opportunity to get angry at their waitress and not tip them, that they overcome them, they overwhelm them with love, Lord, and tip well.
Very simple ways that we could show your love to the world. Lord, I pray that we will learn to react in your ways and not in our old ways, Lord. Lord, I pray that every person that we interact with today, you will already soften their heart to be penetrated by the light of your love, God. And in Jesus' holy and precious name, pray. Amen.