Created to Connect | Abide Series Week 1

Take out your books that you got on your way in today. We're starting a brand new series called Abide, where we're gonna help you find depth and direction and delight in being with God, and being with God, and taking what we do here on Sundays and really applying it all throughout the rest of the week. What I don't want is I don't want your entire spiritual walk to have the height of that is what happens on Sunday. I think you're cultivated to really live this out every single day of the week. And if you know me, I'm a very practical person. I don't like abstract ideas. I like things that I can apply throughout the week. So this entire series is gonna be super applicable. And you got your books. They actually work best when you're in a radiant group. How many are excited? Radiant Groups launched this week. So, and we have a small group material, small group videos. There's a ton of resources on our website to help take these services even further throughout the week, and you'll wanna get that. Also, there's a digital version of this book in case you wanna follow along that way. How many would say I could deal with a little bit more peace in my life right now? Come on, let's get hands all over the room, all right. All right, how many say I need some clarity from God

in a certain area of my life, all right? Great, great. Anybody else just to go, a little bit of wisdom would be good in this season, all right? So we all need something from God. I'm gonna tell you the key to that, the key to getting anything in your life when it comes to connecting with God and what God has for your life is this idea of abiding. And I'm gonna start a week one. This is more of a theological framework today. And then we'll get into some real practical things over the next seven weeks. But today, you can write it down in our notes, week one. We're gonna talk about how you were created to connect. You were created to connect. I want you to understand this. Your life will never make sense until you understand you were created to be with God. You were created by the God of the universe to be with him. And what we see all throughout the Scriptures is God longs to be with his people. God wants you to be with him. We get this messed up view of God that God is angry with us and he's disconnected from us. But no, that's actually the very opposite. God longs to be with us. And we're gonna look at it in the book of John, chapter 15. If you have your Bibles, I want you to turn there. And there's a key passage that's gonna be our key passage

for our entire series that I think is very significant for us. You're gonna hear this passage often over the next eight weeks. Jesus is in the upper room with his disciples. This is the night he is gonna be betrayed. He's gonna be brought to the cross. He's gonna die for our sins. And on that night, he gives a final challenge for his disciples. John 15, it gives us this challenge I think is so significant. Verse four, abide in me and I in you. A branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it, what? Abides. Come on, help me at all of our campuses. Unless it what? Abides. Abides in the vine. Neither can you unless you, what? Abide in me. The phrase over and over and over and over again. We'll get into this analogy he uses of vines and branches all of that next week. It'll be something special. But I am the vine and you are the branches. Whoever does what? Abides in me and I in him. He'll bear much fruit. I don't know about you, I want to bear much fruit

with my life. I wanna make a lasting difference with my life. And then he says this unbelievable phrase right here. For apart from me, you can do nothing, nothing. Now we think that's not true because you're like, no, I can do stuff with my life without God. Yeah, you can temporarily. You can, it just won't bear lasting fruit. Can you get in a relationship without God? Yeah, but it won't survive. Can you do something with your life and make a difference in the world? Yeah, yeah, but it won't be an eternal difference. Anything that's gonna be lasting in your life is gonna come from this life of abiding with God. What does it mean to abide? It's this phrase that's used 118 times in the Bible and it's 40 times in John's writing. It's this Greek word, mino. I want you to write it down. It means to dwell, to stay, to remain, to endure. It's the idea that I'm not just stopping by this thing. I'm connecting with it. That's why the NIV says, instead of using the word abide, it says remain in me and I remain in you. It's this idea of longevity. I don't know if you've recognized that we have way too much fickle Christians that in and out and I'm passionate one day

and then I'm not the next day. I think God's calling up a group of people that'll remain. Then it's got tough, good, remain. I'm abiding in this thing. I'm not just doing this on Sunday. I'm doing this throughout the rest of the week. This is a life of abiding. So what you're gonna learn over these eight weeks, it's gonna be something like we've never done before and here's the goal of it. Here's the goal. The goal is that over these eight weeks is that you're gonna connect with Jesus daily. Oh, I love this so much. Because we have a lot of people that. connect with Jesus on Sundays. I mean, how do you not during that worship service? But anybody can do this. I want you to be able to, if you're not doing it on Thursdays, then you're missing out on it completely. That's where real life is found. So we're gonna connect with Jesus daily. We're gonna find depth in his word. And this has been hard for some of y'all. Some of y'all read the Bible, you're like, I have no clue how to find anything. Great, this is the series for you. We're gonna find direction from his spirit. Some of y'all need to know,

like who am I supposed to marry? Which school am I supposed to go to? Great, this is the series. We're gonna learn how to hear from the voice of God, how to be led by his spirit, and how to know what's not God. Because there's a lot of things that people say are God and they're not God. And then how to delight in walking in obedience. Don't you want to walk around and go, it is a joy to obey the Lord, not that it's a burden to obey the Lord. So I'm gonna show you how to do that. And I'm telling you, if you live, if you'll lean into this series, then it'll change your life over these next eight weeks. So I have a question for you. Are y'all in on this thing? I need help across all of our campuses. I said, are you in on this thing? All right, so let's dive into week one. Week one, again, is gonna be a little bit more theological, a little bit more of the framework because what we're gonna do over these four points are vital for what you're gonna experience over these next eight weeks. Number one, write it down, that God created us for connection with him. When you look at the purpose of your life, you have to understand this vital truth.

God created you for connection with him. This is fascinating because if you turn to the beginning of the Bible, we're in Genesis chapter two, that's where we're gonna be the rest of the day. We see how man was created to connect with God. The Bible says the Lord God took man and put him in the garden of Eden, say Eden, to work it and to take care of it. Eden wasn't just a garden, it was the dwelling place of God. The word Eden itself means dwelling place. It's the place that God would reside. I love this, it's the exact same Greek word, so the Old Testament's written in Hebrew, but when it's translated to Greek, it's the exact same Greek word for abide. You gotta think the garden was a garden where he would abide, where God would abide with his people and his people would abide with him. It was the whole purpose of God creating us is that we could be with him. We see that, we see it in the garden at the beginning. We see it in the tabernacle where they're in the wilderness and God wants to dwell with his people. We see it in the temple where God creates this temple, where he creates this temple, why? Because he wants to be with his people. We see it through the words of the prophets, why? Was God speaking to the prophets? Because God wanted to speak to his people.

We see it through Jesus. I don't know about you, I'm grateful for Jesus. I'm grateful for Emmanuel, which means God with us, that God did not leave us to ourselves, but he wanted to be close to his people. And then he ascended into heaven and he gave us the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. You know why? Because God wants to dwell with his people. The heartbeat of the Bible is God's desire to dwell with us. I don't know if you missed it, but this entire story is God longing to be with you, longing to be with us. This isn't God that's angry and distant and disconnected. We got this messed up view of God. And the reason so many people don't abide with him is they don't think he wants to be with us, and he does. I've been traveling a lot lately and doing some ministry trips around America. So I've been taking some of my kids with me. So it's been so much fun, but I haven't been with my wife on these trips. So it's fine for a day or two. Well, this has been like two weeks nonstop, kind of back to back. And so last week my wife called me and well, we talk every day, but she called me and you could just tell it was one of those moments. And I'm like, how are you doing?

She's like, good, where are you going? I'm like, I'm going to speak at this event. She's like, well, when are you coming home again? I'm like, I'm coming home on Friday. And she's like, oh, good, good. I need you back. I need you home. And I just thought for a second, I still got it. I still got it. Boys got it, come on. Isn't that how a relationship should be? You long to be with each other. You don't like the distance. Let me just tell you across all of our campuses, God longs to be with you. The Bible says in Ezekiel, he says, my dwelling place will be with them. God's not sitting there distant. He says, I will be their God. They will be my people. This is what God longs for us. He longs to be connected with us. And that is where true life is found. Here's your second part that you have to understand. Because God created this garden, this Eden, this dwelling place, but then there was a problem. Number two, our connection with God. thrives within his boundaries. This is very important to understand, because as God puts this garden together,

where this relationship can be formed between him and man, he puts boundaries into place. Now, people don't like this, because we don't like rules. We don't like boundaries. We like to do our own thing. And the problem with that is relationships don't work unless there's boundaries involved. Okay, so let me give you an example, okay? Because there was this whole movement years ago where it's just like, we don't want rules, we want relationship with God. You remember this whole thing? It's like, no rules, just relationship. Try that with marriage. It doesn't work. It's like, oh, we wanna be married, but I also wanna do whatever I want with anybody else I want. Ain't gonna happen, ladies and gentlemen. And if it does survive, it ain't surviving for very long. Because relationships work best when rules are involved. Can I just say it this way? The relationship's not valid unless there's actually rules there. Because the validity of the relationship is that there are parameters, there are rules that make it thrive the way that God wants it to be. It's like sports.

Have you ever been a part of a team or sports where there was no rules? It's chaos. My son played basketball, you know, one of these little leagues a couple years ago. It was like a year and a half ago. And it was the most painful thing in the world to watch. Because they're all terrible. You know what I'm talking about? And they don't get the rules. There was one kid on the team. It was not my son, thank God. But this one kid on the team, he never dribbled the entire season. I mean, he would get the ball, and as soon as they threw the ball to little Johnny, Johnny would run across the court. And I'm sitting there on the sidelines going, this cannot happen. So I'm yelling out going, I'm gonna bring some order in this situation. Johnny, dribble the ball. And Johnny's just running across there. His parents are like, you're raising a weak son. It's a problem here. I'm yelling at the refs. True story, I'm like, hey, hey, call the penalty. Come on, let's do this thing. No, no penalties here. Like, this isn't a real sport.

This is an issue here. It's the same when it comes to relationship with God. People go, I'm gonna follow God, but I'm gonna do it on my own terms. That ain't gonna work out for you. This is why we have to understand, when we look at God's word, the reason he puts the rules and the boundaries and the parameters in here is not to hurt you. It's actually to protect your life. He knows the environment that works best for your relationship with him. And that's why he tells us even in advance what's gonna hurt us. So he shows us in Genesis, he puts man in the garden. He says, listen, you're free. You're free to eat anything in this garden, from any tree, but only one. One you must not eat from, that tree of the knowledge of the good and evil. If you eat from that, and he even gives us the reason why. If you eat from it, you will certainly what? Die. Which, by the way, that's why any rule that you find in the Scriptures, it's always for our benefit. It's always for our blessing. God's not trying to punish you, church. He's trying to help you set up a life that is in direct communion and connection with him.

Because listen, sin isn't about breaking a command, it's about breaking connection. This is what we don't understand. We don't understand why we don't feel God's presence and why we don't get clarity from him. You know why? Because we're too interested in following our own plan, and when we do it our own way, we break connection with God. John says it this way. We know that we have come to know him. We know that we know God. If we do what? We keep his commands. So we do not shy away from the commands of God. We not sit there and go, well, we just don't want rules, we just want a relationship. No, no, God, whatever rules you wanna give me so that I can best walk into the plans that you have for me and walk in connection with you, I'm all about that rule for my life. Because when you live inside of the boundaries, here's what you experience, and you can write down your notes this way, you experience peace instead of panic. Aren't you grateful for God's peace? Have you ever lived outside of God's boundaries for your life? What happens? You experience panic, anxiety, stress.

Why? Because you're outside of God's boundaries. But I want God's peace. I also want his grace instead of guilt. This happens when you live inside of God's boundaries. You experience his grace, his empowerment, not just to live whatever way you wanna live, no, his power to live the way he's called you to live. You also get clarity instead of confusion. I love that, I love, I wanna know exactly how God wants me to live. It gives me clarity instead of confusion. and I get fruit instead of failure, fruit instead of failure. I need this with my life. I need my life that'll actually produce something for God, that'll do something. And Jesus tells us, listen, you abide in me, I abide in you, you will bear much fruit, but apart from me, you can do nothing in your life. And if you want fruit with your life, you've got to learn how to live this life, saying, God, I wanna do it your way. Abiding in Christ teaches us to shift our focus from what do I want to what does God want with my life? This is a major shift for so many of your lives. Imagine you wake up and you spend time and you're abiding time with him, and you're connecting with him. You don't walk into it with your own agenda, you walk into it saying, God, what do you want with my life?

What is your plans for today? Not my agenda, your agenda. And watch how God will direct your life, which brings us to number three, when you dwell within, when you dwell with God, you find direction from God. He will bring direction into your life. Many times we are looking for what is that next step? What does God want me to do? You're gonna find direction in this series as you learn to abide with God. As you take what you do on Sundays and you apply it through the rest of the week, watch how God will lead you and guide you. He did it with Adam. Look what he did, Genesis chapter two. So he puts man in the garden, he creates these boundaries, and then look what he does. He says, and the Lord God said, it's not good for a man to be alone. I'm gonna make a helper suitable for him. And this guy gave him a wife. He says, now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the sky, and he brought them to the man to see what he would name them. And whatever the man called each of the creatures, that was its name. Now think about this. Adam must have been a pretty creative guy.

Think of this assignment. Hey, you can name all the animals, and Adam's like, hippopotamus. That's a creative dude right there. Kangaroo. Where do you get that from? Kangaroo, dog. You know what I mean? It's like, he just ran out of stuff to say. He's like, all right, blackbird. You know what I mean? It's like, I don't even know if that's a thing. Anyway, you got the idea. What happened to Adam? Adam is given this unbelievable job. He's given a spouse. He's given, basically, he's given purpose. But notice it didn't start with him getting the purpose. Lean into this. Look at the order. The order starts with this, that God created Adam. If you were gonna write next to this in your notes, I'd write the word identity. You gotta know where you come from. You were created by God and for God. And as God created Adam, then the next thing is that then God connected with Adam. This is relationship. So now he has identity. Then he has relationship with God.

And then out of that, look what happens. Now God calls Adam. And that's assignment. All right, look at the progression because this is vitally important. Everybody wants to get to assignment and purpose. But you have to see the progression. God created Adam so he knew his identity. Then he connected with Adam. He had relationship. And then out of that, God gave him purpose in his life. Don't get it mixed up. Some of you are pursuing purpose, but you don't have connection with God. You're looking for the assignment, but you don't abide. So what you're doing is you're wanting the stuff, but you don't want the source. And this is a big breakdown in our world today because listen, everything you should do should come out of those first two things. I know who I am in God and I have relationship with God. And out of those two things, abiding with him, then I walk into my purpose. Don't do it on your own. Why? It will not bear fruit. But if you do it in God's way, then it'll bear fruit and fruit that will last. This is the progression we see. And when Adam abided, God provided.

What did God give him? A wife. That's a good thing. Come on right there. By the way, be careful looking for the wife, looking for the spouse when you're not abiding because you're chasing something without having the source first in your life. And then God gave him what? A job, purpose. God gave him creativity. Notice he wasn't searching for all these things. He was just being with God and out of that it flowed. It's so important with your life, which by the way, I think that's a whole nother lesson for another day. If you are looking for a spouse, make sure they got the order right also. So listen, you want them to have a job, that's important. Right? Thank you, I was waiting for somebody, all right? You want them to have purpose, but that can't be the primary thing. You gotta make sure, do they know their identity and who they are in God? Do they truly have relationship with him? And out of that, are they walking into the calling of God for their life? And it wasn't until Adam had those first two things that God gave him the spouse. Another lesson for another day.

Look at this progression. Can I just give you this progression again to the life of David? Look what he says. He says, David says, God, you are my hiding place. What's his hiding place? It's in God. It's the abiding place. It's the place that he's connected with the Father. You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. Now, this is a very interesting shift between verse seven and verse eight in this. So when you read your Bible, you have to know the background because verse seven is David talking, verse eight is God talking, okay? Are you following this? Verse seven, God, you are my hiding place. Verse eight is, I will instruct and teach you. Hear me out across all of our campuses. Some of y'all think you're the one in charge in verse eight. I'm gonna instruct and teach my life. I'm in charge. You got it wrong. Look what David did. You know how David walked into success? He says, I'm gonna hide myself in God, I'm gonna abide in him, and then I'm gonna let him instruct and teach my life.

I'm not getting it backwards. I'm not instructing and teaching my life. I'm finding my connection with him, and that's how you're gonna find direction with your life. So if you want clarity in this season, this is the series for you because here's what I've realized. The more connected you are, the more clarity you'll have. God will instruct and direct your life, but it starts with you not pursuing clarity, pursue connection, and that's a good place to say amen. We see it all throughout the Bible. Moses spent time with God in the desert, and what does God do? God speaks to him. Samuel, he's with God in the temple. He hears God's voice and hears that calling on his life. Where did it start? It started with abiding. Paul, while the church was in prayer, God speaks to set apart Barnabas and Paul for the work of ministry. Where did it start? It started at a time of prayer and abiding. Jesus, Jesus only did what his father told him to do. All of Jesus' ministry flowed from abiding with the Father. We see it in church history. Martin Luther, while he was meditating on the Scriptures, look at this, he's in a moment of daily abiding with God, and God reveals this phrase, the just shall live by faith.

That one phrase changes the world. The just shall live by faith. Where did it come from? Abiding. Mother Teresa, while on a train in prayer, having a moment with God, God calls her to the slums of India, and she served the least of these the rest of her life. The world was changed because one person abided. I'm telling you, you have no clue what God can do through your life if you'll abide with him. He'll bring direction to your life. He'll bring clarity to your life. Here's your last one. So what happened to our story today? Adam and Eve are put in the garden. They're given clear boundaries. They're given direction from God, but then they disobey the boundaries. We know they ate of the fruit, they disobeyed God, and in verse eight it says, and the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord as he was walking in the garden in the cold of the day. Many scholars think this was their daily routine where God would come and walk with him daily. So God's coming down to do the walk with him. Hey, this is what I created you for. And look what Adam did. They hid from the Lord. Do you remember the verse about David?

David was hiding, was finding his hiding place in God, whereas Adam was hiding from God. Let me just say it this way. You're one of the two. You're either abiding with God or you're separated from him. You're either connected with him or you're disconnected from him. And Adam, in this moment, they're disconnected and God is walking amongst the trees in the garden. And the Lord said to the man, where are you? When God asked that question, he was not asking it because he was confused. God knows where you're at. He was asking to figure out, does Adam know where he's at? Because sometimes we don't know how lost we are until we have a moment like this of self-reflection and go, this is not what I was planning. This is not what I thought. I thought I could break the boundaries and get the good results and my life is a mess. And if you're at that place where your connection with God has been broken, I have good news to you today, which brings us to point number four. What Adam lost in the garden, Jesus restored on the cross. Come on, church. This is the good news of the gospel because Adam lost that connection with God.

And throughout history, Man has tried its hardest to find that connection yet again and they failed time and time again. And hear me out. If you don't get anything else, please lean into this. What I don't want is for you to go in this series, in this abide time, and get all of these practices that we're gonna talk about and these principles that we talk about and go, oh, I can apply that to my life and then I can be connected with God. Those things do not connect you with God. Only Jesus can. You can't meditate enough and find peace in your life. Only Jesus can. You can't buy the right crystals, try to figure that thing out and go, I'm gonna connect it with God again. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. All those things will fail you. The only solution for our disconnect between man and God is Jesus Christ. That's what Romans 5 says. Look what it says. It says, for if while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son. How were we reconciled? Through the death of his son, through Jesus. Can we just pause for just a second? Aren't we grateful that while we were yet in our sin,

Jesus reconciled us to God. Come on, we can give him better praise than that today, church. Put that verse back up there. And it says, how much more have you been reconciled? Shall we be saved through his life? I don't know what's broken in your life, but I know the solution. The solution is always Jesus. What a beautiful picture we have. In the garden, man is created to have unbroken fellowship with God. But man breaks that relationship because they choose their own way, like we all have done. Some of y'all are like, well, when I get to heaven, I'm gonna have a talk with Adam because, man, he really messed up. Let's be real, we've all messed up. If nobody else throughout history would have blown it, you would have blown it. We've all messed up. Because we all choose our own way. We've all screwed up. The idea of the garden throughout Scripture is so beautiful, a dwelling place. So God creates the Garden of Eden as a dwelling place, man blows it. But then our passage today in John 15, where he says, abide in me and I in you.

It's this beautiful garden terminology that we'll get into next Sunday. And then Jesus leaves from there. And guess where he goes? He goes to a garden, the Garden of Gethsemane. And it's at the Garden of Gethsemane. He just told them, hey, abide in me, apart from me, you can do nothing. And guess what? They can't make it happen on their own, but it's in the garden where Jesus says, is there any other way? And then he says that phrase, but not my will, yours be done to the Father. And he submits himself to the cross. And it is at the cross that Jesus restores, reconciles, as Romans says, us back to God. And here's the good news, is that Jesus didn't just fix our sin problem, he fixed our separation problem. So we don't have to be separated from God any longer, that you can now live in a daily habit, a daily lifestyle of boldly coming to the throne of grace, of boldly connecting with God, why? Because you don't have to stay distant anymore. It's not because of your good works, it's not because of how you've got it all together, it's because of the finished work of Jesus on the cross that we have been restored,

they made right with God, and now we can abide with him. Can I give you a cool little Bible nugget here as we close this out? The book of Revelation ends the entire Bible with all of us, with Jesus, in a garden. The whole thing works together. Crazy, only God could have wrote this over 1,400 years with all these 40 different authors. And it starts with a garden, it's redeemed in a garden, and then it ends with us in a garden, why? Because you are created to connect with the God of the universe. Don't settle for anything less. Come on, we can give a better praise today, church. If you're getting baptized today, we're so proud of you. Baptism does not save anyone. It is a outward expression of an inward decision to say I have submitted my life to the Lordship of Jesus. I'm not the Savior, He is. And if you go into that tank, you're showing the world I'm dying to myself and I'm being resurrected because I'm gonna live my life connected with the God of the universe. So if you're getting baptized today, you can be released. We'll get you ready to go. Come on, let's celebrate at all of our campuses. All of those who are getting baptized. I know we have a bunch in the service. Oh, come on church, that's a big deal.

As we close out this series, as we close out week one of this series, let me just say this, lean in these next eight weeks. Watch what God will do when you connect with Him. How you'll find identity in Him, relationship with Him, and you'll discover the calling on your life when you truly lean in. But here's my challenge for you, go all in. Here's my issue. I think many people treat their relationship with God the way I treat my taxes. Stay with me, okay? So it's tax season, we all have to do this, pay taxes. So I don't know about you, when I get around to tax season, I'm not excited. I'm not sitting there thinking, oh man, I cannot wait to give the government money. You know, what do you do during tax season? You submit to the authority above you and you go, okay, I gotta pay my taxes. And then you do what we all do, you figure out the bare minimum you have to pay. I don't know about you, it's during that season I'm very grateful for my children, I got five kids. I look at all five of them, I'm going tax credit, tax credit, tax credit, tax credit, come on, thank God for all my children, amen. And then here's what I do, and then I submit the form and I either begrudgingly pay the government or surprisingly, the government pays me.

I'm happy about that. And that's how some of y'all treat God. You've really never given Him everything because you treat God like your taxes. You understand He's your authority, you begrudgingly give to Him and you find out the bare minimum that's necessary so that you can get at least a ticket into heaven and don't go to jail. And you hope that as you give your bare minimum that that's enough, or maybe just maybe, when you go to give to God, He'll give you something back in return. What a sad way to live. That is not how God has called you to live. We are called to give our life fully, submitted to the God of the universe. This is not our taxes, this is not the government, this is the God that died for our sins on the cross. And when you fully submit your life to Him, that's where real life is found, that's where peace is found, and that's where true fruit comes out of your life. As you abide in Him, and He is in you, and apart from Him, you can do nothing, but with Him, all things are possible. Just close your eyes all over Tampa Bay. What's the Holy Spirit speaking to you about? What is that word that God has for your life? What is the application of today's message?

Just ask the Holy Spirit, what is that area of your life that you've disconnected from Him? Maybe there's an area of your life that you've lived outside of His boundaries. Just take a moment right now. Repent, have a moment to say, God, I wanna live in unbroken fellowship with you. Forgive me for when I put my preferences, my ways above your ways. Help us throughout this series, I pray it over your church, that we would live fully submitted to your plans and your purposes, to truly find depth, direction, and delight in being with you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.