You are invited to stop relying on your feelings and instead build your life on the unshakable foundation of Jesus' love and forgiveness. If you have not yet been born again, make the decision to confess Him as Lord and take the public step of baptism to declare your new life. Come join this community to encourage one another as you walk forward in faith.
I love that line that she's singing, I will not be shaken. It's not it's not just like this mental ascent. I'm gonna try as hard as I can to not be shaken in my life. You know? It's not this, I mean, I put all my effort and all my strength into not being shaken, and then then, you know, like the new thing, it's gonna manifest in my life that way.
It's not that. It's no. "I will not be shaken" because I'm building my life on the love of Jesus. I will not be shaken because I'm building my life on the fact that I'm forgiven. What what we just remembered in communion.
On the fact that I'm forgiven, on the fact that his body was broken so that I could be whole in him. My life will not be shaken because it's founded on the rock of Jesus Christ. Period. And so us declaring by faith you might be in a time in your life where it feels like everything is shaking. That's a great opportunity to put into practice the truth your life will not be shaken despite how you feel about what you're going through.
We don't live by what we feel. We "live by what he says". We we we we live by faith and not by sight. By faith, faith comes by hearing his word. So we hear the fact that we've put our our our trust in him.
We hear the fact that we're saved in him if you've been born again, that we've we've founded our life on his rock, on who he is, and and our life will not be shaken because of that. So despite what you feel about how everything looks like it shaking your life, that does not matter and it does not hold 1 ounce of of of does not hold 1 ounce of truth over the fact that in Christ you will not be shaken. No matter what you feel. That's how we live. So like when we sing songs like this, when the worship team is singing, I will build my life.
For some of you, it might be, and sometimes in my own life, it's I'm I'm declaring by faith based on what he said and not what I see. Based on what he said and not what I feel, I will build my life upon your love. It's a declaration of faith. You know, this this Christian walk, it takes perseverance. Perseverance.
Oh, man. I love this man right here. I just saw Dylan. Dylan is great. Yeah.
Yeah. He's full of Jesus. Sorry. I got distracted because I love him a lot. He's my brother.
But this Christian walk, it takes perseverance. The Bible says, count it all joy when you suffer trials of many kinds, knowing that the perseverance of your faith will produce maturity. Let perseverance or patience have its complete work and then you'll be mature and complete lacking nothing. If it takes perseverance, that means you're going to persevere against some trials, against some tough stuff that comes against you from time to time. Don't think it's weird when hard stuff happens.
The Bible literally says, hey, don't think that anything strange is going on when tough stuff happens to you. This is the same stuff that happens to everybody throughout the world. Like, your situation might be unique, but it's not unique that you're going through trials and persecutions and tough stuff. *Jesus* wants to walk with you in the trial. Wants to walk you know, think about and this isn't the message, this is a whole another point.
But, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into the fire. And when Jesus appeared, he didn't make the fire go out. If he would have made the fire go out, then the fire would have been the problem. They were supposed to stand through it. Jesus stood with them and the fire didn't even cause their their clothes to smoke, smell like smoke.
It didn't touch them. *Jesus* wants to stand with you in the midst of the fire so that when the world sees you going through the fire they see Jesus. And they wonder when you step out of the fire, why did that not affect you? Why did you not lose your peace? Why did you not lose your joy?
And it's because you know you're in right standing with him so no matter what you're going through he's standing right next to you so you can stand strong with peace and joy. The emotions of the kingdom. It's what we do, man. So when I'm feeling some kind of way, you know what? I sing a song just like we just sang.
I will build my life upon your love. I will put my trust in you. I will not be shaken. Not because of my strength, but because of yours, Jesus. I reorient my focus back to him.
Because that's what we do. It's not because I'm a super Christian. I'm not. I'm David John Phillips in Christ. It's because I'm a Christian.
So we come here on Sunday mornings just to encourage 1 another and exhort, which means sometimes rebuke and challenge 1 another forward in Christ so we leave, built up in Christ so we can go shine like stars in the sky. When other people see us going through the fire they say, man, why are you not arguing? Why are you not complaining? Why are you not doing all these things? And and you can say it's because of Jesus.
Because Jesus is me. Man, he's helping me and he's walking me through this thing so that you will see him in the midst of the trial. And when you look at me, it'll cause you to want to know Jesus more. Is that not the life we live? It's the life we're called to in scripture.
And if I'm if I'm saying as I'm saying these things, it's like, well, that's not the life that I'm living right now. If you're in Christ, here's what you do. Realize that the old you, the way that maybe you've responded to some things that wasn't like what I'm saying now, *Jesus* knew you would respond that way and still died for you. So here's what you do. In Christ, that's already been forgiven.
We just declared it so when you took communion. So you *repent*, change your thinking, change the way that you you looked at those things, you get back up, and you keep walking. You when you fall, don't fall back. Fall forward into your heavenly father's arms. Get up and keep walking with him.
Because you're clean, you're forgiven, you're loved, and it's time to change your mindset back to what he says about you. Amen? Cool. So we're in a oh, my name is David John Phillips. I get to be the pastor here at Real Church.
I always wanna introduce myself just because, you know, we have many new people that come all the time and we're so glad you're here. Never want you to feel otherwise. We want you to to know that we love you because Jesus loves you. And we have the capacity to love you because Jesus first loved us. You know?
So we're in a series titled, who we are. Mariah did an amazing job opening it up last week. Would you guys just give a big old hand clap to honor Jesus and her? And in this series, I just think it's very important from time to time to go back to how you started. Started.
Go Go back back to to what what God God said, said. And and and raising you up or in in in starting things so that you know how to move forward. When you look back at what God has done, it gives you clarity on what the next steps are. Amen? So, you know, I'll share a little bit of a story most of you know, but it's just a good reminder.
You know, we didn't I I wasn't planning on moving here to plant a church 5 or 6 years ago. It wasn't my life's long dream to plant a church in Clearwater, Florida. Just wasn't. I was living my my dream in Windsboro, Louisiana, traveling the world with my dad and getting to do pastor's conferences with him, learning from him, you know, and and, getting to work at the church that I grew up in. It was it was great.
But then God changed things. And now there's no place I'd rather be than right here. I met a guy named Dre, who was on drugs and and who had been on drugs and and involved in gangs in Clearwater, Florida area. I had no idea where Clearwater was. But he ended up going through Fresh Start, which is a drug rehab, 1 of the largest faith based drug rehabs in the state of Louisiana.
My dad started it. My best friend runs it. And praise the Lord, in Jesus' name, we're gonna start 1 and run 1 here whenever *God* gives us the money to do it. Dre ended up going through there, and God completely changed his life from the inside out. And then, when he graduated, got out, he asked me to be his mentor.
And I was like, Trey, *Jesus* is your mentor, man. I'll be your friend, teach you what I know. And so I pulled him into ministry with me. Believe it or not, he pulled me into music with him. And I started rapping with him.
Yes. Your pastor has rapped before. It's part it's part of it. I'm not gonna do it today. Maybe 1 day you'll pull it out of me.
He asked me to start praying for some friends of his back home that were struggling with the same stuff he used to struggle with. So I began praying. A lot of times God uses you as part of the answers to your own prayers. A lot of times he waits to do what he wants to do in the world until his body prays his will. So I started praying for his hometown, not knowing where it was.
And then, I'll share more of the story, specifics of it and establish, which I think Courtney will talk about. But through some miraculous amazing God stuff, God told me to pick my family up, move to Dre's hometown wherever that was and plant a church. And he confirmed it over and over and over. So after all of the amazing cool confirmations, once again, ask me anytime or come to establish, which Courtney will tell you about. I went home to my wife, told her that I believe God is calling us to pick up our family, move to Clearwater, plant a church.
This was in 2016. And, I told her how God had confirmed it over and over, and she said, baby, this is God. We're going. Where's Clearwater? I said, don't know.
So we Googled it. True story. And, you know, when you say yes, Lord, it's just just you don't have a choice. You know, you just he's your Lord. Right?
But then you also realize that if he created you on purpose for a purpose, then the things that he's leading you to in into are are really gonna be more fulfilling than if you were just doing it your way. And so, we began to prepare and, went through this church planting organization that helped us get started. Very thankful for them. It's called the Association of Related Churches. And they had planted many churches before we never had, didn't know what we're doing, needed needed to learn, you know.
And so, through the process, 1 of our homework assignments, and of course they checked our credit background and checked all of our finances and, you know, checked our references, checked our pastors. Just making sure that we were ready, you know, character wise to plant a church. And 1 of the homework things was they had us write out the vision statement, mission statement, and values. And so I'm I remember sitting down. I think I was sitting I think I was sitting on the steps of our home at the time.
Just praying God, you know, what do you want this church to look like? And the vision statement and for those of you that have like a leadership background or studied leadership, there's different thoughts about what a vision statement is and what a mission statement and what a core values are. I'll just tell you the direction I went. Vision statement is your why. Your mission statement is how you accomplish the why.
And your values are kind of like the the behaviors that are that are natural to make that happen. Okay? We'll go through all of them. But I wrote down the vision statement. It's just it all started coming to me, you know.
So, I'm writing it down. I'm excited. Whatever it takes for you to know the love of Jesus and live out your "God given purpose". That's our why. You wonder why do we set up all this stuff?
Why do we why do we we do this? Why do we we broadcast online? Why do we put up the signs and everything? Because we wanna do whatever it takes for you to know the love of Jesus and live out your God given purpose. And we know that if it was trashy and you'd never walked through a church before or or whatever the, you know, whatever your past experience is is, I mean, you walk through the doors if it looked like we didn't care about it, you probably wouldn't either and you wouldn't stay.
We want you to stay as long as you possibly can so that we can continue to see the love of Jesus in your life so every aspect of your life changes. Why do we do mentorships at at Oak Grove Middle School? Because we want do whatever it takes for you, for them, whoever's put in front of us to know the love of Jesus and live their God given purpose. Why do we send out teams into the into the city to knock on doors and pray for people, invite people to church? We want to do whatever it takes for you to know the love of Jesus and live your God given purpose.
Why do we show up on a Friday night in order to set all this up? Because we want to do whatever it takes for you to know the love of Jesus and live out your God given purpose. Why is it whatever it takes? Well, because 1 John-4:3 10, I think it is. It says, this is how we know what love is.
*Jesus* laid his life down for us. And we should do the same for 1 another. We're to be imitators of God as dearly loved children. And because Jesus laid his life down for us, we lay our lives down for each other so that they can see the love of Jesus in us because we're supposed to shine his love. Whatever it takes for you.
Anybody God puts in front of us to know his love. And you can't live out your God given purpose without knowing knowing the love of Jesus. Because without we love because he first loved us. So without knowing his love, everything we do will be for us instead of for others and for him. So that that's our why.
That's why we're here. That's why we do what we do. How? Mission statement. I'm not gonna tell you that.
My wife is. She's gonna I'm tag teaming with her. She's gonna preach the rest of this message. She's amazing. But I will tell you this.
I wrote out the how we accomplished that. Just so you know, it's not optional. Our how, it's our DNA. It's who we are. Like, I want you to look at it.
I want you to think about it. And the way that we that way that we do this, if if you don't agree with it, I mean, that's that's okay. There's many other churches that are great that maybe you agree with their mission. *God* specifically gave this to us. We're not deviating.
Our mission, I wrote it out. And as I wrote out the mission, this is 6 months before we moved here. Like, I wrote it out word by word. I understood where it was all coming from. It was it felt supernatural.
It did. It felt like this was a God thing. 6 months later, we pick up our family. We move here. 3 days after we get here, we are church planters in an area.
We need to build relationships. We need to get to know people. We need to we wanna tell people about the love of Jesus. We wanna pray for people. So we we take our family to Highland rec center.
And we're sitting in Highland Rec and our kids are playing and I'm sitting by this guy. Of course, I'm gonna strike up a conversation with him. *God opens a door, maybe share Jesus*, maybe pray for him. It's what Christians do. Right?
And, so I strike up a conversation. Hey, man. What's your name? My name is David. He goes, really?
My name is David too. It's cool. So we get to talking, you know. He tells me he had a drone business that he was starting up and some other things. And somehow another, my middle name came up.
And so I said, my name is David John. He said, my name is David John too. I said, that's odd because most people are John David. You know, I don't meet many David Johns. I don't think I've really met any other than my dad, myself, and my son.
Because I'm a junior, my son's David John Phillips the third, trip for triple. Come up come to find out he's a Christian, following Jesus, disciple of Christ. Finds out we're planting a church. And David John, the guy that I met 3 days after we moved here, same name, he says I got a book you. And he puts a book in my hands called "Wiki Church".
I read Wiki Church. Went home and read it. Exact this is the exact same mission statement that God gave me 6 months before. Right after we moved here. A year before we planted the church.
And it's a mission statement that's been lived out over 20 years in The Philippines by an American missionary that accidentally went there to plant it. And it shows that this mission statement works not only with our culture, but with international culture in in The Philippines as well. So if you wanna see what our church will look like in 20 years, read Wiki Church by pastor Steve Morell. I mean, it's our mission statement lived out. Exact.
To a tee. It's awesome. I'm gonna invite my wife. She's gonna go through it with you because it's applicable for your life, whether this is your church or not. And she's beautiful.
Will you give her a big old hand? It's the mother of my children. We've been married for 16 years. Almost. Almost 16, 15 and a half years.
Dated for 3 and a half years before that. She's amazing. So
As he's getting my computer I grabbed his bible. I have my bibles written my bible verses written out on my laptop. But, this was laying open. This is actually so the the bible that your your pastor uses is a kid's bible. It's kids, k I d z.
It's n I v. So when you see him up here with this bible, it's a kid's bible. And he got this so that he could share it with our 10 year old son. And I haven't looked through it because he's either he's got it on him or trip has it on him. And I don't I don't know if y'all can see this.
But in first John, you know, he's talking about first John, literally scribbled in every margin of this says, done. Done. Done. Done. Done.
Done. And then I went to the next page in his little 10 year old handwriting. Scribbles and done. That'll preach. "It is finished".
Tetelest time. My 10 year old gets it, man. That's really cool. I just wanted to share that with you. Okay.
Oh, yeah. Okay. So I love this church. I love my church family. I it grease my heart when I hear of believers who don't have a church home.
I'm like, how do you function? Like, how do you get through tough times just by yourself? And so a really good picture of that was this week. I didn't have a rough week. Like, it wasn't a bad week, but I had a couple of bad days where I didn't feel well.
I had a really bad headache. Headaches are foreign to me. I don't know if that's why it was so intense is because I'm not used to it kinda like a man cold. Like I think so I don't believe that men are weak, but I think that they're not used to going through some of the things that we go through as women, and so it makes things more difficult. So I'm saying I feel like I felt that this week.
And so I told David and he was praying for me, and and then I just was like, man, I need to reach out to my sisters. And I opened up my phone and I was put in this text group that, someone, I don't know who titled sisters. And I was like, I'm gonna text them. There's some sisters in the church. And I texted them and told them, hey, I don't feel good and I want you to pray for me.
And immediately, they were flooding me with with just encouragement. We're praying for you. Within 20 minutes, my headache that I had had for 48 hours was gone. And I was like, well, that's a miracle. Thank you, God.
And then within 30 minutes, God had done a whole bunch of other stuff. But I couldn't really focus because my head hurt before. And so I reached out to my sisters and they just, you know, they "came in clutch". You know what that means? Like, they came in when I needed them.
Like, they were ready and and ready to fight spiritually for me. And so that was so cool. And then Friday, 1 of them calls me and is like, I know you were having a bad bad week. Can I can I bring dinner to your family? And I was like, I know, oh, that's so sweet.
But that's what it is being a part of a family, whether you're you're related family or your church family. And I'm so grateful that I have this church family. I wanted to start out with kind of a funny story. I didn't plan on the bible thing because I just saw it backstage. We're in a series called who we are.
And I was like, how do I get across who we are as a church, but have something funny in there too. And yesterday, it all just came to me. Back in June, we took a few of our staffers to Louisiana to a conference called the destiny leadership conference to get encouragement, learn how to serve you guys better. And, so it was David, myself, Kevin, and Deasia. Kevin leads our first impressions team, and Deasia leads our kids team.
And so we get there, and what you might not know about me because of how I come across here is I'm actually extremely introverted. When I know this is like, no, you're not. I am. When I'm in a crowd of people where I'm not I don't know everybody or I don't know a lot of people, I kind of like shrink into myself and I kind of step back like, does anybody wanna be my friend? You know?
And so I get uncomfortable in group settings. And so we go to this conference and our first night, there's this dinner and we're in a a conference hall and it's the 4 of us and David said, okay. Here's here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna break off and we're gonna network. If you're an introvert, this is a nightmare.
When I was in college, I had to I was the networker. I was a representative of our school and they were like, okay, you're gonna network. And I failed miserably all the time. My my leader kept telling me like, you're really bad at this. And I'm like, I know.
I don't like networking. I like my comfort blanket of my friends. Like, I like having people around me that I know. I like familiarity. And so he's like, we're gonna network.
So we go into this building with hundreds of what I would say are heroes in the faith. People who've been doing this thing a lot longer than we have. And David's like, okay. It's like a a football huddle. It's like, ready, break.
And David, you know, he bebops on and he's making friends with everybody in the room. Kevin, bless his heart, I love him but I don't understand the extroverted nature to the extent that Kevin is. He is the perfect person to lead our first impressions team. He leads the greeters. Those that first impression you get when you walk in the church of good morning.
Welcome to real church. He's leading that team. He is like 1 of my mom's goats when they see something shiny and they're like, oh boy. He's like, this is my place. This is where I belong.
And so De Asia and I are are a lot alike. And we found this out. Kevin this morning was saying, I saw a side of Courtney I'd never seen. This introverted like like kind of retreated back version of myself. So me and Deasia are standing there and it was I it I have in my head like these 2 kids on a playground at a new school looking around terrified because there are all these people and we don't know what to do.
And so she's like, okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna find somebody sitting by themselves and we're gonna go sit with them and we're gonna talk to them. And I was like, no, we're not. That's scary. That's weird.
I already can be very weird when I'm talking to people. I feel like I am. I feel awkward. Say weird things to kind of break the ice, know. And she's like, well, that's what we're gonna do.
And she drags me. So we go and we find this lady and we sit down and for half an hour, we just pick her brain and we learn and it was wonderful. So when we're done, we all reconvene at the bayou because we're in Louisiana. Dave says, how does it go? And me and Deasia are like, yeah.
We met this 1 woman and we met with her and and we got so much information. It was so good. And he was like, yeah. I met these people. It was so good.
Kevin, how did you do? And Kevin was like, so I connected with between 15 and 20 people. I got their phone numbers and I met this person and they like this. And I met this person and they're from here and they're involved in this ministry. And me and Deasia are just sitting there flabbergasted like 15 to 20 people.
And not only that, the next day, he remembered them all and introduced us. It amazed me. But the cool thing about that is we all have different giftings, different abilities, and that's why it's so important to be a part of the body of Christ because your gifting, I need it. My giftings, you need it. And so that's a part of the body.
I have a couple of verses I wanna read. *Romans-12*, just as a body, though 1 has many parts, but all its many parts form 1 body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by 1 spirit so as to form 1 body. Whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free, and we were all given the 1 spirit to drink even so the body is not made up of 1 part but of many.
I believe that's actually first Corinthians. I've got my verses a little mixed up here. If they were all 1 part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts but 1 body. "No man is an island".
We need each other. And what I'm talking about today is you knowing who this body, this this organization of believers, real church is, and how we're going to accomplish the mission that God has given us. And what's interesting is our mission, the the task that God has given us as a church is no different than any other Christians or church's mission. It's really simple. You know, we we try to over complicate it and we do a lot of things to accomplish this mission but the end goal is discipleship.
*Discipleship*. Is helping people come to know Jesus and then helping them follow him and then helping them to help other people know Jesus. That's it. So everything that we do that is our end goal. And so if you wanna be a part of that, I encourage you to stay tuned today because I'm gonna tell you how we're gonna do that, which he kind of alluded to earlier.
*Matthew-28:19* through 20, Jesus, it's a very common verse. It's the great commission. Co mission. We're on mission together. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I've commanded.
Behold, I'm with you always until the very end of the age. This is what Jesus he left the church and he said, okay. You guys, Christians, here's what I want you to do. If you follow me, I want you to share me with other people and help them follow me with your life. A disciple is simply a follower of Jesus and discipleship is the process of making 1 become like Jesus.
And that is what we are about. And the beautiful thing is there is only 1 prerequisite to do this. You don't have to have a seminary degree. You don't have to, have all of the answers to defend the gospel or to defend God. God's a big boy and he can defend himself.
You need to follow him and share him. That's right. That's it. We are all ministers of the gospel. It's our job as church leadership to equip you to be ministers of the gospel and us as believers to be ministers of the gospel.
And if we're all doing that together here in this body, just imagine the impact we're gonna have in this community, but then imagine expanding all of these individual parts out into the community doing that. We're gonna rock this county for Jesus. Right? And so you are equipped to be a minister of the gospel if you are a follower of Jesus. I wanna use an example of someone.
I I actually texted her last night to make sure. It's miss Jasmine. Jasmine had been coming to church for a little while. We got to meet her a couple of times, meet her little boy Mason. He is a doll.
And she went on our website 1 night. It was in the middle of the night, wasn't it? She's like, I'm done. I'm done. Like, I'm done.
She emails us, I'm ready to be born again. So David called her the next day and what's what's cool is she had already made the decision to follow Jesus with her life. It's not the prayer that David led her in that saved her. She made the decision when she sent that email and said, I'm ready to be born again and to follow Jesus. So David tells her, okay.
Here's here's what that means. She already knew what it meant. I'm done. I'm ready to give up my life and follow him now. And so she gives her life to Jesus and she's like, okay, what's next?
Oh. When someone comes to *Jesus* and then they are humble enough to say, what's next? With a with a child likeness, like Mariah talked about last week. Like what's what's next? I need to know.
I need help. David's like, well, it's time to get baptized. Okay. When and where? I'm like, yes.
Like, because he gets off the phone and he's like, I gotta tell you something. He was so excited. He's like, she's ready. And then she shows up and we baptize her. That is so cool that a new believer, not only she's like, I need Jesus.
I recognize I need him. I need to know what my next step is. She texts me a couple of weeks ago out of the blue. It was on a Friday night. We were actually at my daughter's birthday party.
She texts me, brand new believer. I just prayed for someone and it came so naturally. New creation. New creation simply saying, I don't have all the answers because she doesn't. I've been following Jesus a lot longer than her and I definitely don't have all of the answers, but she was just a willing vessel to say, I'm gonna share Jesus with somebody.
That's what we're called to do individually and as a church. *John-3:3 says, I tell you, no 1 can see the kingdom of God* unless they're born again. When people come to know Jesus, they're like a like a newborn baby. And that's okay. That's a good thing.
You know, if you hang around long enough, you're gonna see that we are inviting in people that don't know Jesus. Right? If we're just a country club of a bunch of Christians, then what are we doing for our community? We're inviting in people that don't know Jesus so that we can love them to Jesus so that they can do what Jasmine did. But something that we have to wrap our heads around as believers and hey, if you would say, you know, I'm not really a follower of Jesus.
I'm just checking this thing out. That's okay. I encourage you to listen and learn who we are and why we do what we do and I hope that that draws you into a relationship with him. Something to know about babies, physical babies and spiritual babies, just like Mariah talked about last week is they are messy. Messy.
I have a baby. She's 1 year old. She's 12 old. And I when she was 6 months old, you know, she had been nursed for 6 months. When she's 6 months old, I started a feeding program called baby led weaning.
Is anybody familiar with it? Not a lot of people. It's not really a new thing. It's actually an old thing, but it's kind of a newer thing now. Like it kinda was obsolete because we were feeding our babies purees, which is there's nothing wrong with that.
I was just like, I've got 4 kids and I don't wanna feed her with a spoon and so I'm putting food on her tray and letting her figure it out. That's baby led weaning. And so when she's 6 months old, I put her her toast or her her pickle. She likes pickles. I'll put things on her tray.
And what does a baby in their high chair do when you give them a plate of spaghetti with red sauce? It is everywhere. It's in her ears. It's in her hair. It's in her diaper.
Don't even know how it got there. But joyfully, not that I enjoy cleaning up the mess, but joyfully, I get down and I wipe her up and I give her a bath. Because it's expected for a baby to make some mistakes as they're learning how to do things that we already know how to do. And spiritually, when we have believers in our lives, new believers who are just coming to know the Lord, they might be screwing it up royally, and you know what? We can have *joy* as we are helping them clean up their messes.
Right? So River was a year old. There is a point where we we grow beyond that or it's proper that we grow beyond that. When River She turned a year old a couple of weeks ago and and last week we had taco night. So she's a year old.
She's kinda learned the ways of eating. Right? So she knows what she's doing. She knows how to get the food to her mouth. She still makes messes.
Well, the other night we had taco night. So I had ground taco meat on her on her little plate. For some reason, they make baby plates with 3 sections, which is the most stupid thing I've ever seen because it's all gonna end up in the same place. So I put the taco meat in 1. It's for the they do it for the gram.
Right? Do it for Instagram. Do you know what that means? To take a picture of it before. Nobody takes pictures of the after with food everywhere.
So I put the ground beef in 1 section, the Mexican rice in 1 section, and the black beans in the other. And this sweet little cute baby takes her plate and she sees that she has all eyes on her at the table. She takes it and she holds it above her head and she goes, yee and she shakes it. And all these tiny little pieces of food go everywhere. And our whole family dies laughing like, oh my gosh River.
And so River's like, oh, I have an audience. And so I pick up some of the food and I put it on her plate and I'm like, okay River, it's time to eat again. And she goes to do it again and everybody laughs and I'm like, alright guys. Now, it's time that we we teach. Now, she's not doing it because she doesn't know better.
Now, she's doing it for the wrong reasons. She's doing it for attention. And so, it's proper that we help her learn that this is an appropriate behavior. I'm not going to spank my 1 year old for doing that. She doesn't know any better, but I am gonna help her.
I'm gonna help her learn. Training is intentional. When we have believers, new believers coming into this place and maybe they don't know what they're doing. There is a process to training them to go from infants that are making a mess with their taco meat to eating properly with a fork and a spoon. Right?
But there's a patience in helping them do that. *Hebrews-5:13* and 14 says, anyone who lives on milk being still an infant is not acquainted with the teachings of righteousness. But solid food is for the mature who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish evil from good. There's there's a training process and we get to have the grace just like God has given mothers a special grace to take care of their babies. I believe that wholeheartedly because some people, maybe if they don't have kids or or or maybe they haven't had kids for a long time and they see kids making that kind of mess, it's like, oh, that's so much mess.
It's not really there's not a lot of joy in cleaning it up. It's kind of a a hassle. But God's given mothers a special grace, and God has given you as disciple makers a special grace to help people in their relationship with the Lord. To help people go from drinking milk to eating solid food, But it is intentional, and if you have ever trained an animal or a child, you know that it must be consistent. And so if if you haven't been doing this in your life so far, if you haven't been discipling people in your life, if you don't have people that you are teaching how to follow Jesus, there is such beauty and humility in recognizing, I haven't been doing this.
*God* has commanded me to do this. How can I do this? And then just like a child has to get to a point where they say, I need some help. That's a good thing. That's not a shameful thing.
*1 Corinthians-13:11* says, when I was a child, I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child, which is which is appropriate. It's a pro there's no shame in River being a baby. It's who she is. When I became a man, put the ways of childhood behind me.
We are to have a child likeness with God at all times. And I encourage you, if you didn't hear Mariah's message last week, go online, Facebook, realchurch.us, YouTube, and watch it because it was so encouraging. There is a beauty in child likeness that Jesus calls us to, but childish ways, there's a point where we have to grow beyond it. But we have to recognize that that we're there so that we can grow. I've been I take a lot of side stories.
And just so you know, I give the longest intros and the shortest messages ever. So we're still kind of in the intro, but but I'm not gonna hold you here, not gonna hold you hostage all day. Several weeks ago, Mariah taught and she she shared about watching judge Judy. Do you remember that? So so I was on Facebook and you know Facebook listens to what we say.
And, so a video came up judge Judy. Y'all, when I am in the room with the baby and I wanna pass some time, like I've been watching judge Judy. I really enjoy it. But then on Facebook, when a video goes up, a new video shows and I am not a fan of this show. But it did pop up and I I listened to it because I think I was changing the baby, but it was doctor Phil.
And no of no offense towards him. I don't know. I just don't watch the show, but it was about this man child. He was 27 years old living in his parents basement getting an allowance and playing video games 24 hours a day, and the goal of doctor Phil was to just get this man to realize this is not appropriate. You need to man up and you need to go get a job and take care of yourself and get out of your parents basement.
I love you guys, but men, if you're 27 years old and you're this is just a side note. This isn't in my notes. If you're 27 years old, you're living in your parents basement, your parents are giving you an allowance and all you're doing is playing video games and eating Cheetos all day and night, you need to grow up. But there is a humility that's a side note. That was free.
There's a humility in recognizing that I I do need to grow up. And there's beauty in that and that's the beauty of the body. We wanna help you in your next step. We wanna help disciple you so that you can start eating solid food and feeding feeding others the word of God. Amen?
It would be inappropriate. So River is still nursing part time. It would be highly inappropriate if she's got her little pigtails in her hair and her backpack on. She's going to kindergarten. I just have this picture that's been rolling in my head of how ridiculous this would be.
And she's like, okay, mom, I'm ready to go to school. Can I nurse first? I'd be like, go eat a dang sandwich. This is inappropriate. You were too old for this.
So there's a beauty in growing beyond that. So I my hope is that you will recognize the *disciple discipleship* process can be messy. You are somewhere in the discipleship process, believe it or not. Either you're a new you're a non believer that's getting exposed to the love of Jesus through this church, and you'll come to know Jesus or you'll reject him, or you're a believer that is new and you want to learn how to follow Jesus more closely, or you're a seasoned believer who's maybe immature and needs to grow up, or you're a mature believer that still needs to grow. We are all in the discipleship process learning to be more like Jesus.
The bible says that the church will grow in ever increasing glory, man. We're gonna continue becoming more like *Jesus* as time goes on if we choose to. And to do that, to become mature, we have to through constant use recognize our standing with the Lord Jesus Christ so that we can recognize, like David said, he's standing with us so that we can move forward. So I'm gonna share who we are as a church now. Our mission, like I said, is very simple.
Our mission is to disciple people. Is to show people the love of Jesus, invite them into a relationship with Jesus, and then help them follow him for as long as they'll have us do it. So you're gonna find yourself somewhere in this process, and you're invited to be a part of this. Not just us sitting on the sideline, not just a cheerleader on the sideline. Go real church.
You guys are great. The church is called to be together and work together to carry out the mission together. It's a co mission. This is not an individualized religion where you do your thing and you do your thing. We are called to do it individually and together.
And so our mission statement is simply this, and I'll expand on it. Engage, establish, equip, and empower. We're gonna "engage the culture" with the love of Jesus. That's first. That's our first step in our discipleship process.
That means that we are not trying to engage church culture. Can we can we agree with that? We are our goal, our mission is not to engage church culture. We are not attempting to go and find other Christians to pad our seats with more Christians. We want we want Christians who are called to this ministry to be here, and we wanna go out into the it's the old Louisiana say in the highways and the byways, and we wanna bring people in, show them the love of Jesus, engage them where they are.
We have Jerry who leads a ministry called Belong and he's begun going out into the neighborhood. Some of you are here because of that. He goes into the neighborhoods, he knocks on doors. He's not soliciting anything but saying, hey, can I pray for you? Not trying to get people to to be just in the church.
He simply is going out to show people the love of Jesus, engaging them right where we're at. Right where they're at. Our children's ministry is engaging those kids with the love of Jesus. You know, I've I've been asked or I've been told. I haven't been asked.
I've been told churches don't need children's ministry. Children need to be in the service. I'm like, absolutely. We welcome children in our service. And the reality of our culture today is most kids are not being discipled at home.
And they're definitely not being discipled at most schools. And so that's why we have De Asia leading this children's ministry with an incredible team that's engaging kids on their level, helping them learn to follow Jesus. Mariah had a vision a couple of weeks ago and she saw Jesus walking through the church and instead of coming here, he went to children's church because they're having a lot of fun in there worshiping Jesus. I think they need to come in here and teach us how to jump and dance and have fun with the Lord because that's what we're gonna be doing in heaven. Why can't we start now?
So she pictured Jesus going there and I'm like, yeah. I get it. They're engaging them with the love of Jesus on their level, teaching them how to follow Jesus as children. That is a beautiful thing. We're engaging people online.
We have all of this fancy electronic equipment. I'm not in the production stuff. It's really cool, but like it's cool to watch. To me, it's not cool to put together. So this stuff is all here to engage people online who maybe they can't come to church or maybe they're just trying to figure out if they wanna come to church.
We engage people online. We engage people at the doors with gift bags. Hey, we love you. We hope that you know that you're welcome here and you're loved. We engage the culture with the love of Jesus.
And as people come to know Jesus, the second step in our discipleship process, in our in our mission statement, in our mission process is to "establish the believer" in the local body of Christ. Just like I said at the beginning, it is essential for believers to belong to a local church body, And you are welcome to join here. We don't have a technical membership process, but if we did, here's where it starts. Could someone pull up the the QR code? Is that possible on the screen?
It's up there? Cool. So we have something once a month that is starting called established. It's gonna be a monthly informational dinner. I believe that you need to know the church that you're getting involved in.
You know, lot of people do more research on finding a computer on Amazon than they do figuring out the church that they're getting involved in. And we have no secrets. We shouldn't have secrets on how we run things. We just don't have time to share it from the stage. And so if you scan this with your camera, you're gonna have a couple of options.
You can also consider this a digital connection card. If you have questions, if if you if you wanna reach out and pick our brains, it'll take you to a form that gives you 3 options. Number 1 is text me. If you're like me, you'd rather text than talk on the phone anyway. Number 2 is call me.
And number 3 is RSVP for establish. This is a dinner. We're gonna provide childcare, yummy food, and you're gonna hear the full real church story and more of who we are and how we do things. And so if you want to become a part of this local body and you haven't gone through, we used to have something called next steps. And so if you want to go through this, like I I highly encourage you to scan this, get connected.
There are also like signs and all of the team has lanyards with the QR code on it. You can grab 1 of them and scan it if you want to. They won't feel weird about it. We've already told them people might grab your lanyard and take a picture. So so it's okay.
So we engage the culture with the love of Jesus, which really goes back to our vision. We'll do whatever it takes for you to know the love of Jesus and live your God given purpose. We establish the believer in the local body of Christ, and then we equip the believer to engage the culture with the love of Jesus. You know, step 1 is we engage them. We bring them in.
Let them be a part of what we're doing, and then we equip them to go do what we did. Equip the believer to engage the culture with the love of Jesus. We're doing this in all kinds of ways. In fact, our teams are doing this. We have served teams that are equipping the believer to engage the culture in various ways in our church.
We're equipping people through like I said, Jerry has this ministry called Belong, equipping people through the discipleship process. Our small groups are equipping people to engage the culture with the love of Jesus. We want you to be involved so that we can help you. That's disciple shit, man. It's so good.
And then the fourth 1, which David I'm gonna go ahead and invite you up. David, this is his bread and butter, is to empower the ready to live their God given purpose. And you, whether you know it or not, you saw this if you've been here for a little while, you saw this process play out. I've already asked her if I could refer to her in Emily. Emily is the young lady that was leading worship up here.
We engaged her with the love of Jesus. I I think she got either a a card or saw us online or whatever. And her family started coming to church. They liked it. They got established in the church like, hey, I wanna get involved.
They they serve faithfully. So cool. And then and then we equipped her. We saw that she had some giftings that she could use in the kingdom, some videography things. And and so we started equipping her and training her and and and she ended up like we we hired her a staff and continued equipping her and training her, and now we're getting to empower her.
And you saw, man, leading worship today. She was leading. She was leading us into a place with God that's so sweet. And we've been able to empower her to do that and now she's unfortunately, it's bittersweet. She's gonna be leaving to continue to be equipped at Jesus school, Jesus image in Orlando so that she can further the gospel.
Y'all can clap. That is good news. So this is our mission statement. This is how we disciple people and you are invited to be a part of it. And we hope that we hope that you will prayerfully consider if this is your home church, and then don't stand on the sidelines.
Get involved, man. I'm gonna pray. Oh, Lord. Thank you so so much for your church. The church that you died for, the church that you rose for, and the church that you continue to empower to bring people into a relationship with you.
*God*, we honor you in this place. God, help us to focus our attention on you and on helping people follow you more closely. We love you and in Jesus name I pray. Amen.
No. Leave that here. She's got another verse on here. It says Hebrews-10:24 and 25. And let us consider how we may "spur 1 another" on toward love and good deeds.
Not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit. Everybody say habit. Habit. As some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging 1 another and all the more as you see the day approaching. All the more.
So, we're actually supposed to meet together all the more as we see the day approaching. Encourage 1 another all the more as we see the day approaching. And so it's very important and it and it becomes a habit. Whatever you do consistently becomes your lifestyle, becomes your habit. And is your lifestyle showing that you are a "disciplined follower"?
That's a disciple. A disciplined disciplined follower of Jesus. A disciplined follower of Jesus is 1 who has been born again and is laying their life down to help others to be disciplined followers of Jesus. Amen? Amen.
Alright. So I'm gonna I'm gonna end. And I'm gonna end with this. Maybe this is your first time. Or maybe you've been coming for a while.
And you've never been born again. Like this is that's the question I ask people all the time. I'll talk with people at the gas station, at the at the, you know, Publix and just as you go. Like in in my daily life. I'll get to talk with them, pray with them, and ask them if they know Jesus loves them.
They'll say, yeah. They say, they say, I say, you believe? They say, yeah, I believe. I say, that's great. Have you been born again?
And many people say, no. Why do I ask it like that? Because there's a lot of people that believe Jesus is real and existed. But not everybody who believes Jesus is real and existed has been born again. And as Courtney read in John-3, you can't see the kingdom of *God* unless you've been born again.
Like, even demons believe Jesus was real and existed. Right? But Jesus demons are not followers of Jesus. What does it take to be born again? Believing that Jesus died for your sin.
He didn't just die for your sin. He died to make you new. He died to restore your created value. What was lost by sin. Okay?
So believing that he died on a cross, the son of God died on a cross for your sin, And then rose again 3 days later so that you could receive that life. Now, it's not just believing that though. Because even demons believe that. They just don't want you to follow him. Right?
So we believe that. But then there's a confessing him as Lord. Confessing him as Lord means, I've been living for me, but I'm not gonna live for me anymore. I'm gonna live for you, Jesus, as my Lord. Which means when you tell me something I don't wanna do, I'm gonna say no to me and yes to you.
Because you are my Lord. And like a 1 year old or a 3 year old or a 2 year old, sometimes I might pitch a fit and not do it. I ask you to discipline me and teach me what it looks like to follow you. Because I know you know when I'm gonna pitch those fits. And I I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna keep moving forward by your grace and your mercy.
You don't have to say all of that. I'm just explaining them to you. Basically, you have to do is believe in your heart he died and rose again. And then confess with your mouth that he's your Lord. You're gonna follow him.
You'll be born again. Make that decision in your heart and then tell somebody. See, Jesus said if you deny me before men, I'll deny you before my father. Why? Because you'll only say what you really believe.
You don't really believe he's your Lord and Savior, you won't tell people about it. But if you really believe, you'll tell him. Because like what whatever you're excited about, whatever is super important to you, you talk about. Right? You're a super, like big bucks fan, you don't talk about the game last night because they lost.
But when they win, you're like, man, did you see that Tom Brady threw that pass? And then there's this. It was awesome. Because you're excited. When you know Jesus, he's something to be excited about.
You talk about him. Why? Because he's real and he's your Lord and you believe it. A lot of times we just get all head knowledge and check the box and don't talk about it because we're not really excited about it because we don't really know him. Or maybe we do know him, we just got out of the habit of being together with others and being encouraged and then following them as they follow Christ because they're a little further along than we are.
So I encourage you, get get around believers. And man, this is a great local body. You're invited to be a part. Come to establish. And let's encourage and spur 1 another on in Christ.
And if you gave your life to Jesus or you you you choose to do that today, man, I wanna baptize you. Baptism's important. It's a part of the gospel. If you've given your life to Jesus, you hadn't been baptized, please do the established thing, text us, and we'll set up a baptism just for you next Sunday. 1 person, it's enough.
We gotta bapt look, I'll I'll I'll roll a hose out whenever we do it, fill it up just for you. Because baptism is is saying that I'm no longer living for me anymore. As a matter of fact, what everybody else always said about me, even what I felt about myself. If it's not in you, it's not in me. So when I go into the water, I'm dead to all of that.
And when I It's like being buried with Christ. And when I come up out of the water, I'm raised to new life in you. Your life credited to my account, so I can follow you with your power. That's so cool. That's baptism.
But it's also discipling you. Baptism is discipleship, helping you to not be private in your religion. Actually, it's not religion, it's relationship. It's walking with him. To not be private in your relationship with him.
It's a public act on your first little baby step of learning to share the gospel because just by being baptized, you're sharing the gospel with everybody that's watching. And then when you tell people about it, it's just that good. Amen? Alright. Well, praise the Lord.
You're dismissed. Thank you for tuning in today to the Real Church podcast. I pray that you walk away from today encouraged and with a deeper understanding of how much God loves you. If you'd like to connect with us, we can't wait to reach out to you and pray for you. You can go to www.realchurch.us/connect.
And then also, if you would like to give to what God is doing in and through our ministry, you can do so at www.realchurch.us/giving, or you can text any amount to 84321 and then just search in the link that comes up search.