Dust It Off and Do It Again | Crossroads Church

And we're talking about friendship today. Anyone excited to talk about friendship? I think this is an exciting topic. And by the way, Eugene says a lot to say about it, you know, we care a lot about friendship around here. Every single Sunday we actually close. Our service is the exact same way. We say around here, you belong here. And my friends do too. So it's about time that we dedicate an entire weekend message to friendship. So that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about deep friendships. How to get them, how to forward to them, how to spoil the message. I'm just going to cut to the chase and give you the promise of today's message. The promise in my hope is that by the end of today, you understand the key to forging the deepest friendships in your life. That's my hope. The point of today is to help you discover how to forge deep friendships that last the test of time. Not just acquaintances, not just people you have. Share interest in or people you do hobbies with like deep friendships that are with you no matter what that's the goal. So let me just pray really quick and then we'll get into it. Jesus, you care a lot about friendship. You are an amazing friend. You had good friends and the Bible has a lot to say about it. So, Lord, would you just speak to us, teach us a little bit about friendship today, help us to learn how to forge deep friendships? Amen. Well, hey, I don't know where you're at on the friendship spectrum. Maybe some of you believe that your independence is actually super power. Some of you are that friend that kind of floats between all of the friend groups. Like you're not actually like in, in with any friend group. But you are quote-unquote friends with a lot of different friend groups. Or maybe you, you're just like really independent. You're like, no, I am a strong independent person. I don't need no man. I don't need anybody telling me what to do. I am independent and it's a gift and it's a strength. Well, can I just tell you something lovingly? You're wrong. You're wrong. Your independence is not a strength.

In fact, we are better off when we are dependent on people. We are better with people. People make us better. Deep relationships make us better. And if you believe that your independence is going to make you the best version of yourself, time will tell. Time will tell that that won't actually happen. The best version of yourself is the version of you that has deep friendships. Deep friendships that you're accountable to. People who know you, you know them. They carry you in all the hard stuff. They celebrate all the good stuff with you. You are the best version of yourself with people around you. And I've learned this truth over time, the hard way, over and over and over. I've found that I'm better with deep relationships in my life. I was just reminded of it this past weekend, actually two weekends ago. I had the privilege of officiating very close friends of mine. I got to officiate their wedding. They got married and it was really special. It was an honor. Meghan and I have -- someone's excited about that. Yes, someone got married. Meghan and I have been mentoring this couple before they were even dating. We just knew them as individuals and then we were mentoring them when they started dating and then engaged. Then we had the honor of officiating their wedding two weekends ago. You may know them. Their names are Emily and Joe Yerkins. Emily is our kids club director around here. They're very close friends to us.

So after the wedding, we were like -- I was just still very moved. I was very honored. I was in my feels about officiating this wedding and being asked to be a part of their really big day. So I did what anyone around 30 years old does when there's a really big moment in our life. I posted about it on Instagram. I made a post. And I poured my heart out into this caption. I put a picture of me and Meghan and Emily and Joe. In fact, have we seen a picture of them really quick? Look at this picture of them from their wedding day. Aren't they beautiful? They're amazing. I know what you're thinking. You're like, dang, they're good looking. Thank God save a little bit of that for me. They're an attractive looking couple. They're amazing and they're a part of our uptown family. I was honored. I posted those pictures on my Instagram, pouring my heart out into the caption about how honored I was and thankful I was to be a part of their special day. I hit send. This is the next morning. Five minutes later, I hear Meghan. My wife comes screaming down the hall. She's hot. She's like, brody, brody, where are you? Now context, important context. I was on the toilet taking my morning poo. This is where I was.

And I was already in a vulnerable and compromising position on the toilet. And now my wife is screaming at me from across the house. Where are you? And I'm like, I'm in the bathroom. She goes, boom, kicks the door open. She goes, did you post about Emily and Joe's wedding on Instagram? Yeah, like, of course, you looked beautiful, babe. And over the course of our marriage, Meghan has done this thing, which she did for me in this moment, she has shown me and taught me. A lot of the secret girl codes that exist and in the like woman ethic book that exists somewhere, I don't know where that book lives, like I don't know if it's like with the Constitution in Washington, where it is, but all women I've ever met know all of the rules. And us dudes don't know any of the rules, like we never know. So Meghan told me she educated me on one of the codes of womanhood when I was on the toilet. She said, babe, you never post a picture of a bride on Instagram before she's posted a picture of herself on Instagram. And all of the girls right now are nodding because you understand, and all of us guys you're looking at me dumbfounded like I was like, OK, I didn't know, I'm sorry. So I went and I deleted it, and you know, it only had six likes, which is on par for me. So there wasn't a lot of people that saw it. I took it down, and Emily and Joe still haven't seen it.

I don't know if they have. I mean, they might be mad about it, but no take see backsies. I've already officiated their wedding. It's over. We're better together. People make us better. Deep relationships make us better. You will learn that over time. Your independence is not a strength. Your dependence on people. And that in forging deep relationship is the key to a rich and fulfilling life. And the reason that I know this is because right now I am, and Meghan and I would say we're in maybe the richest time of our life when it comes to relationship. We have a lot of deep friendships. Friendships that are really, really important to us, that they are relationships that make us better. And I know that we have it really good right now, because we haven't always had it this good. I know what the other side of the coin is like. I know how good it is right now, because I've lived in a time where it hasn't been this good. And we've had zero deep relationships. It hasn't always been this way for us. We haven't always had really, really deep relationships. In fact, there's been times where it felt like we had zero. Five and a half years ago, when we moved to Cincinnati, we're not from here.

We were both raised in the great land up north, the land of Michigan. And, yeah, boo, boo, I get it. We had friendships in Michigan in our hometown that had been forged literally over decades, because we had known these people our whole life. This is our hometown that we left to move to Cincinnati. We had friendships that we had known and had been cultivating and forging for 20 plus years. I had a group of friends, a group of guys who met a whole lot to me. They were my best friends. Deep, deep relationships with these dudes. They were all in my wedding. I stood up in their weddings. Our friends have had history. It had weathered some difficulty. And we had grown together. We had shared memories together and bonded together. These were my guys, man. Like they were my best friends. And right before we moved to Cincinnati, I made some really bad decisions with my life. I failed. I made big mistakes. And I ruined those friendships. I betrayed these friends. I went behind their backs. I made decisions in this friend group that I am still ashamed of.

Like I'm still embarrassed that I did these things. And the details of the story are a little too long to share on a Sunday morning. I would love to share them. I'm actually starting a Bible study on Wednesday for young men. I plan on getting into some of the details of this because I think it's important to talk about failure in friendship. But I failed these friends. I failed them. And here we were moving to a new city with no friends, no history, zero community. And the friends we thought we would have back home hundreds of miles away were now gone because of my mistakes. And maybe today, maybe you're in a place like that with friendship. Maybe when you think about friendship, you can't help but think of the ways that you, like me, have failed friends and have lost friends too. Because of mistakes that you've made. Maybe you're like me and you lay in bed at night and you think of those friendships and you have imaginary conversations with them and your mind thinks you wish you could say to them but you know you'll never be able to say to them. Maybe like me, you think about these friends and whenever they pop up online on Instagram and you see pictures of them, you think like, I wonder if they still talk about me.

And if they do talk about me, do they talk about all the good times that we had or do they talk about how bad of a friend I was? Maybe that's where you're at with friendship. You've suffered some loss in friendship because of things that people have done to you People have harmed you they've taken advantage of you They've gone behind your back and now you're hurting with friendship And you don't have much much deep relationship happen in your life right now because of things that people have done to you Here's what I want you to hear no matter where you're at in the friendship thing You're in the perfect place this morning It can be easy to believe that in a place like this we all have it together relationally and that ain't true It can be extra easy to believe that the guy on stage with the microphone has it all together with relationships And that ain't true either you give me the microphone long enough. I'll tell you about all my failures We don't have it together with friendships, but there is a way there is a way There's a way that God has given us to forge the deepest friendships that I want to talk about today And there was something that happened about nine months into Megan and I living here Nine months in we kind of both look to each other and we're like Are you feeling what I feel in here like? Are you are you on the same wavelength here as me? I'm picking something up I think nine months in to a new city We have Deeper friendships than we ever had with people that we had known for 20 years are you picking that up to and she was like Yeah, I am that's crazy, right? I was like that is crazy How is that even possible that we could know someone for 20 years and in nine months other groups of friends could feel like they're deeper in their Friendship, that's the place thankfully that we've been in for the last five ish years of our life And I want to share a few things with you I want to share actually some pictures of some of these friends with you some of our closest and deepest friends These are our best friends right here. This is Caroline and Dakota Draper They're our best friends, and these are all their kids. We we make blonde babies apparently. It's just what we do

Caroline is the community pastor of our Florence Crossroads Florence location Dakota was a student pastor At Crossroads, that's how I met him. We were both student pastor buddies together and he and I are idiots Like we're idiots together and we know it and we're okay like we love it in our wives. They play this really funny game It's really cute. They like they pretend that they don't like that we're idiots But deep down they really love it like they love how dumb we are They're our best friends that these friendships have met the world to us They have been with us in some of our deepest failures of our life They've celebrated some of the greatest things in our life. They celebrated the mountaintops with us They've carried us when we were too weak to walk by ourselves They sharpened us and challenged us when we needed to move forward and we've done the same for them vice versa these friends are deep Important friends to our life who make us better. There's another group of friends that we have this group of friends We kind of call the Cincinnati misfits because there's a group of friends That's been growing for us who are like us. They aren't from Cincinnati They've moved here and they all moved here to take jobs at Crossroads So they're like kind of on the same mission. We're doing the same thing, but we don't have family here so every Easter mega and I hosted dinner on Easter and we host all these friends to our house because none of us have family in Town to celebrate Easter with so we celebrate it together and it's really really sweet And then there's another another group that I just want to talk about for a second This group you might recognize at the Reds game you'll recognize some of these people This is a group of our staff from Crossroads uptown and their spouses This is a group of friends of ours that we led a small group with too And one of the coolest parts of my life ever like one of the coolest things that I've ever been able to do When launching this church is be able to hire some of my friends like that has been really really special for me And as we've as we've launched our church together and done things together and been on mission running after things together The friendships have deepened now today is not a celebrate Brody's friendship slide show day That's not what today is about The reason that I put those pictures up there is one to say we are lucky to have them because at one point we didn't And if you don't there's a way for you. There's a way for but to maybe even more importantly I want you to understand that all of these deep friendships that we have in our life have something in common

There's a through line. There's a thread with all of these friendships, and I don't know if you caught it But I'll just tell you what it is all of these friends the deep friendships that we have we're all running after something together We are all going in the same direction together So if you're a note taker, this is the time I'm going to give you the bottom line for the talk This is the time to write something down if you're not a note taker take out your phone Maybe write this down. This is the key to forging deep relationships. You ready deep friendships are a byproduct of a life on mission Let me say that again deep friendships [BLANK_AUDIO] All of the deep friendships that we've ever experienced in our life have had this in common. But we've been on mission together. We've been chasing after things together. It's not that we're just like the same age or we have the same hobbies or the same interests, but we've been on mission together and mission forges the deepest friendships. You don't need to take my word for it though. What if we just look at Jesus' life? What if we look at how he forged friendship? Let's see what he did because he was, I don't know if you know this, maybe probably the best friend that's ever lived. He had the best friend group of all time. Jesus was a master at relationships. Jesus assembled a friend group that is historic. You might know them as disciples. Maybe you've heard that word before.

We call them the disciples, but really they were Jesus' closest friends. They were his buddies. They were his deepest relationships. We call them disciples or apostles, but to Jesus, they were friends. And Jesus, when he was assembling this friend group, did something really interesting. If you read in the Bible, you'll come across some of these passages of the Gospels where Jesus is calling these people to be a part of his life. And he says something similar in all of the accounts of the gospel. He says something like this. Andrew, which is one of his friend's names, Andrew, come follow me. Or Philip, come follow me. Or maybe you've heard this one before. This is a famous line of Jesus. Jesus approaches these guys and says, lay down your nets. I will make you fishers of men. He was talking to people who were fishermen by trade. And he says, if you follow me, I'll make you fishers of men. Jesus did not invite these guys into a friend group. He invited them onto mission. Jesus invited these guys onto a mission. And Jesus was on one himself.

His mission was to come to the earth and save it, to save you and me. And he invited his friends to follow, to be a part of it and to be on mission. And there's a turn that happens, an interesting turn that happens in Jesus' friend group. He doesn't invite them to be his friends, but something does happen. This is John 15, verse 15. These are Jesus' words. I want you to read this. Jesus says, no longer do I call you servants, which originally he was like, come follow me. Come serve the mission that I'm on. Come serve. He says, no longer do I call you servants. For the servant doesn't know what his master is doing, but now I call you friends. For all that I have heard from my father, I have made known to you. It was only after the disciples and accepted the mission of Jesus that they forged deep friendships. And by the way, these deep friendships that the disciples formed changed the world. Did you know that? We are sitting in a church that is 250-ish years old. We are reading from a Bible in a message that's 2,000 years old about these same guys.

There's an underground church revival happening in China right now. People are baptizing our church left and right now. Why would that happen? Why does that happen? Because these 12 dudes had deep friendships that changed the world. The friendships that they forged were strong enough, not only to like outlast difficulty, to outlast hardship or tension or disagreement, but it was strong enough to change the actual world. And that is the deep friendship that God desires for you and me too. Friendship's strong enough to change the world. There's a story, a story of a guy in our community, whose name is Joshua. And his story of finding friendship is it perfectly encapsulates this idea of pursuing a mission and deep relationship being a byproduct of it. I want you to hear Joshua's story. - Every one of these seats has a story about what God has done. This is Joshua's story. When I moved here, I didn't know anyone. I just looked up Cincinnati. Like, what's in Cincinnati? What can I do out there? Checked out Oakley. And first time there was definitely all-ing.

(laughing) Walking in, I was just like, wow, this place is huge. During service, they were like, how to have announcements, join a small group, get to know people, which I've now found that at Crossroads, you really can't have intentional relationships unless you do that. Just because of how big Crossroads is. to really get to know people. They said go to Welcome Center if they're new here, they'll hope you get plugged in and meet new people. And I was like, I need to meet people in this, not only this big church, but this new city. I met a Emmanuel Montgomery at the Welcome Center and he directed me to a young adult event at Uptown. The funny thing is, he wasn't going to be there, so he told me about a friend of his who he knew would be there and he was like, hey, when you get there, ask for this guy, tell him that I told you to go and he should be able to help you out. I just kind of walked in and found his friend and that from there kind of just got bounced around, being introduced to a bunch of different people. I started volunteering at the Welcome Center and I was just like, fine, I was just in terms. To me, it was just another opportunity to hang out with people. You end up serving with the same people pretty much every single time. It was just being with communities, just hanging out. I showed up to the Bible study on Tuesday, saw a couple familiar faces that I had met. I felt like that was what kind of took me deeper. Being vulnerable in that group had meant a lot because I didn't have to hold in the thoughts or emotions that I was experiencing from one in a fresh start. Being in a new city, trying to find a community, trying to rebuild my relationship with God.

One of the guys I was in Bible study with, he had a group of friends, which we called Backforge Crew. We would hang out randomly. I actually met one of my groomsman and that group also met my future wife, which is pretty nice too. Another one of my groomsman, he was like, let's all go to me and camp together. It was amazing experience. I feel like it really helped me understand who Christ is and how he loves me. I'm not a huge cryer at Man Camp, I cried a lot because that was pretty much marked one year as Cincinnati. It was kind of just full circle moment, which is being grateful for everything, grateful for community, grateful for brotherhood, for the guys I was there with, the relationships I have been doing because if they weren't here, my story definitely wouldn't be what it is. Anatica's story. The best part of that story is that Joshua and his now wife, Marissa, got married on this stage less than 24 hours ago, isn't that awesome? We're talking about friendship today, but we've weirdly referenced marriage around here and getting married, finding your spouse, I don't know, maybe, the person you're sitting next to, you might be married to if you keep coming around. Okay, listen, Joshua's story, I love it. I love his story because I think it highlights this idea perfectly. In fact, Joshua did the opposite of something that I think you and I can easily fall into when it comes to church. We easily fall into this idea that church is a factory for friendship. If we just show up here and we just sit in the seats and we get plugged in and we attend service, then the church is going to manufacture friendship for us and we're just going to have it. It's going to be awesome and our lives are going to be way, way better. But Joshua's story is not that story. That's just not the story of friendship in general.

It's not the story of the church either. Instead of coming here hoping that this is like a factory for friendship, this is a place where you can come and get charged, get trained, get geared up to go on mission with other people and change the world. That's exactly what happened with Joshua. Joshua just took some steps towards God. He's like, "I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know anybody here. Maybe I should go find some people who do." He met D-Man. What D-Man do? Why don't you come to this thing? Why don't you come follow me? Why don't you come beyond mission, on mission together and the world has been changed. You might hear that and go like the world hasn't been changed. Nothing's different. When you say, "God wants to change the world through me and my friendships," like, "Come on. That's just hyperbole." It's not. It's not. Because guess what? Joshua's world has changed. D-Man's world has changed. His now wife's world has changed. Their future kids' life has changed because of the decision they made to be on mission together. That is where the deepest friendships are forged. Now, any mission, I believe, any mission could forge some good friendship for you. Any mission at all can forge good friendship.

Now, I don't know if we have any athletes in the room. If you played a sport in high school like me, raise your hand. I'm just curious. Okay. Good. Now you don't know this by looking at me, but I was I did play sports, yes. I did have to wear youth sizes for my shoulder pads, but I did play football. If you've played sports, you get this idea, like you know what I'm talking about. Your teammates, come on, like those friendships, the locker room, those friendships are awesome, man. You guys are locked in together. There's a reason why retired athletes, when they retire from their sport, decades later when they talk about their sport and they reminisce on it, you never hear I'm talking about, man, I really miss the fame, or I really miss the full arenas. What do they say? They say they miss their teammates. They miss the camaraderie. They miss the locker room. Why? Because they were on mission together. They were going somewhere together. And those friendships that are forged when you're on mission are just way deeper than anything else. The military, military is a great example.

This one's like extra intense. You're literally putting your life in the hands of somebody else. Shared mission, same purpose. Every veteran I've ever talked to, they say the deepest relationships they've ever had were their military bodies. And like the military, I have a very serious mission and purpose. I play map tap every day. And I don't know if you do, it's a game on your phone. If you're not playing map tap, you should start. If you are, get on my level. I'm like mid to high 900s every single day. I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good. And I'm in a group chat with these guys. It's a very serious mission. We are trying to be the world's best geographers. And I'm in a group chat and we play this game and we send our scores to each other. And guess what? It's really stupid. It's really stupid. You would not like this group chat. It's boring. It's dumb. We just send our scores and we make fun of each other. But I feel like close to these guys. I feel close to them.

Why? Because even a stupid silly mission, like being the best geographers with a dumb game can unite you with people in relationship. Mission can forge deep relationship, but not every mission is worth giving your life to. Not every mission will forge the deepest friendships that you could hope for. In fact, the most fulfilling life, full of the most fulfilling friendships, will only happen if the mission of your life is about something bigger than yourself. If you want a fulfilling life full of fulfilling and deep relationships, it will only happen if the mission and goal of your life is about something bigger than yourself. And if it's not, if the mission and the goal of your life is about you, maybe you don't even know that. Maybe you never even thought about that for any amount of time. You never thought about your mission. But the more you think about it, you're like, wait a minute. Most of my life is about me. Most of my life is actually pre-dank selfish. I'm the same way, by the way, my favorite person on planet Earth is Brody. Like I love Brody, he's awesome. Your favorite person on this Earth is yourself. We rub up against this thing constantly. So most of the time, when I'm careful, the goal and the mission of our life, it puts us at the center.

It's like it's about my greatness. It's about my accomplishments. It's about my career or the goals that I have. The person that I want to marry or the family, that we want to build, it puts us at the center. And even if it sounds really good, it sounds really like churchy maybe, like, no, no, no, no. I just want good, godly friendship. You're still at the center of that. It's still about you finding your people. And if you have yet to find deep friendship in your life, chances are it's because you haven't had a mission in your life that's bigger than yourself. A mission that's more than just yourself. Because the deepest friendships and the most fulfilling life only happens when we have a mission that's bigger than ourself. And that is the mission of Jesus. It's exactly what he invites us into. It's a mission way bigger than ourself. It's a mission that's that last way after you and me are done with this life. It's a mission that carries. It's a mission that Jesus has closed his friends understood. And guess what? We're still talking about them 2,000 years later. It's the mission of Jesus. It's bigger than yourself. And it will yield the most fulfilling friendships that you could ever hope for. I know this is true because I've experienced it.

And this is the thing that Meghan and I, for a long time, just didn't get right. We had a mission about me or her or us or whatever. And it wasn't until we stepped outside of that and accepted a bigger mission that these deep friendships began to be forged. In fact, I think some of the friendships that I lost because of my mistakes. If we would have been on shared mission together-- That's friendship that God desires for you. That's friendship that I want for you. That's friendship that you should want for you. Is friendship that strong enough to weather even you messing it up? That is the friendship that God has designed you for. Deep, deep friendship. Now, Meghan and I, we've given our life to this mission of Jesus, and because we did this, we just wanted to put some things up in our house to help her and I remember. Like, this is the mission of our family, because it can be easy to step out of the mission and step back into mission Brody, or mission Meghan. We need some reminders that like, we're in on a mission bigger than ourselves. So we put some things up in our house for her and I, but also for our kids too. Because once you become a parent, you'll learn this. When you have little ones that you lead, all of a sudden it kind of hits you in the face, you're like, oh, where am I leading them? Who am I leading them to? Am I leading them to Me? I hope not. Because Brody doesn't have everything that my kids need. Or am I leading them to something bigger than Me? Am I leading them to Jesus?

So we have this thing hung up in our house. I just wanted to share with you. It's our best stab at what I believe the mission of Jesus, a mission bigger than ourselves, a mission that Jesus invites us into, what it's all about. And this is, this is at least how we put it in the Schrader house. We say, the mission of our family is to run towards Jesus and bring others with us. So we've got that in a mirror in our house. And we see it every morning and we just remind ourselves, this is our mission. This is our mission, run towards Jesus and bring others with us. It's not hard. It's really not hard. It's simple, but it's bigger than ourselves. This mission is exactly what D-Man was all about. It's exactly what Josh is all about. In fact, I think in the seats right now, some of you are Josh's. You're Josh's. You're here because you're just taking a step towards God. Maybe you showed a church because you're like, I think I want more of this or they're talking about friendship. Maybe I should go. And some of you are D-Mans. Some of you are D-Mans. Your job is to start bringing other people with you. But this mission of Jesus is really simple and it's the exact reason why I'm starting this Bible study on Wednesday. Now, hang with me here for a second. This might feel like a plug. But let me just tell you, I believe that God is going to raise up the next generation of men in our church to be about missions bigger than themselves. Do you believe that too?

Do you believe that? I believe it. And I want to be a part of it. I want to do my best to run towards Jesus and help bring others with me. So we're going to start a Bible study on Wednesday mornings. And young men, here's what I want you to hear. I want you to hear that no matter how hard it will be to get up at 7 a.m. on Wednesday morning, it'll be worth it because you'll be in a room full of other young dudes who want to run towards Jesus and bring other people with them. Run towards Jesus and bring other people with you. Now, we're going to host this Bible study in this room, in this room, which if you look around, this room is really big. There's 800 seats in this room. Now will 800 young guys show up to this Wednesday's Bible study? Someone just said no. Are you kidding me? You have no faith. Are you kidding me? No, 800 will not show up. 800 will not show up. Maybe eight show up. But the reason that we are going to host it in this room with 800 seats is because I believe, and I know I'm not alone in this, I believe God's going to raise up at least 800 young men that want to be on mission for Jesus in this generation. And until all 800 seats are filled, we've got some work to do. We've got some seats to fill. We've got some other people to bring with us. So young guys, 7 a.m. this Wednesday, I want you there. And older guys, I was counseled to call you older men, not old men, even though in a room like this, if you're over 30, everyone here thinks you're an old man.

Old men, older men. I would love you to be a part of it too. Because I believe that this generation of young guys need the older generation of men to come behind them and pour into them, to invest in them, to show them the ways that you've been running towards Jesus and to bring them along. So 645 a.m. this Wednesday, I need some help opening some doors. Maybe brewing some coffee, welcoming the 8,000 young guys that show up to this Bible study. But also, I want you to be a part of it, sit in on it. I just wonder what God could do. I wonder what He could do if we were about a mission bigger than ourselves, a mission that could change the world. What could He do in 800 young men and 8 young men in our church? I think deep, world-changing friendships could come if we got on board with a mission like that. So my question for you, at the end of this thing, very simple, what's your mission? What is it? It's not even hypothetical. Think about it. If you have to, close your eyes. Go ahead. I'm not going to judge you. No one else will. Close your eyes. If you need some help thinking about it, maybe just think about your calendar. What's your calendar full of? Maybe you got to back-engineer your way into your mission and you go like, "Well, maybe I should evaluate some friendships that I have right now. What are we all about? What unites us? What's your mission?" I think if you and me can step into a mission that's bigger than ourselves and start asking that question, "What is my life about?" Instead of asking, "Where's my people? Who's my community?" I think if we ask the question of what's my life about what mission am I on, we're going to experience some really, really deep relationships, relationships that last. So before we go, I'm going to go a teeny bit off script, but I was approached earlier before service started by a friend of mine, actually two friends of mine who asked if I would be willing to pray for them with our church, which is like not in the plans. I did not have it in the books, but they asked because they're going through some stuff in their life right now and they wanted some prayer. And I thought at first, "I don't know how that would work." But then the more I thought of it, the more I thought, "How cool would it be if we together as a church were on mission in prayer and prayed for a friend of ours who's in some need?" So I'm just curious, would you be willing to pray with me for this person? Yes or no? Shake your heads if you're willing. Okay. Let me just tell you a quick story of this person. And then we're going to be good friends

to this person and be on mission and pray together for them. My friend Reed is a part of our church and Reed, when he was 17 years old, was in a car accident and he was driving and he was impaired when he was driving and his best friend was in the car with him and his best friend passed away in his car accident. It's been over two years since this accident has happened and Reed has been going through the legal process of this incident in his life. Reed has given his life fully to Jesus, has believed and received that Jesus' gift of salvation is also for him. He stepped out of his own life and said, "Jesus, give me yours. Forgive me. Give me new life." And in two weeks, Reed has a court date that will determine if Reed will spend time for a long amount of time of his life in prison. Or what we're going to pray for is that the judge would have mercy and give him probation. And we're going to be a good friend and be on mission together and pray for this. And then we're going to dismiss. Sound good? Okay, if you want to, I'm not going to tell you where he is. Just put a hand in the air and I just believe God will know you're praying towards Reed and for Reed. All right, Jesus, we, we want to embody what you were about. We want to be like you as best as we can, running towards you and bring out other people with us. So Jesus, as we run towards you this morning, we just want to run in prayer and pray for our friend Reed. Lord, would you show up at his court date in a week and a half? And would you move the heart of all involved, move the heart of the judge to mercy and to compassion, to grant Reed probation that he doesn't have to spend any time in prison, Lord. And God, above all things, what I pray for is that this story, this story, we're just going to pin it to to your character and to your word. You say that you for good. We pray that this story would be turned for good, that people would know you because of it, that they would be brought into the same forgiveness that Reed has received himself, Lord, and as best as we can, help us be on mission, Lord. Run towards you and bring others with us. Pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Amen, well thanks for being here.

Guys, we'll see you at 7 a.m. at this Bible study Wednesday and Kirsten, get up here, dismiss us out.