Essential Elements of a Life Well Lived - Ben Stuart

The cast of young guns was reunited after 38 years. Many of you didn't see that movie 38 years ago, combining Hollywood heart-throat such as Emilio Esteban, Charlie Sheen, Lou Diamond Phillips. The guns aren't so young anymore, but good for them for getting out there. But if you miss the movie, young guns was the story, a story, about Billy the Kid and his grand band of buddies that were avenging the loss of their mentor. And as they go out there to exact justice, suddenly they find themselves hunted by bounty hunters, by the sheriff, by the military, and it gets increasingly more dangerous. And they survive the first movie and made enough money to make young guns, too. And yet in that, the circle begins to close around Billy the Kid, and as he's getting hunted by Pat Garrett and by all different people, at one point he just starts to visit all his old friends who were still alive. The movie is almost like a march to the grave. And at one point as he's visiting his friends, one of them asks him, "Why are you still doing this? Why not flee?" And he tells them a story. He says, "There were three men playing cards, and someone burst in and said, 'The end of the world is at hand.'" And he said, "The first man said, 'Well, I'll go hide and pray.'" He said, "The second said, 'I'm going to go to the bar and spend my last moments in hedonistic pleasure.'" And then the third man said, "I will finish the game." And then Emilio looked at his buddies and said, "I will finish the game." Now, when I know the end is coming, I want to live a life that has meaning, and I want to run in the path laid out for me. Why mention that? because that's where we are right now in the book of Acts. We've been studying the birth of the Christian church, and the book of Acts pivots to focus on the apostle Paul, the man who was the persecutor of Christians, suddenly in Acts season one became a proclaimer of Christianity, that God converted him.

He became a Christian. And at Paul's conversion in Acts chapter 9, the Lord said, "He is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel, and I will show him how much he must suffer for my name's sake." That was way back in season one. As Paul was converted, God said, "He will testify before kings, and I'll show him how much he must suffer." So we know where he's going. We just don't know how he's going to get there. Aristotle said about every great story that its endings should be inevitable, yet unexpected. We know where it's coming, but we don't know how it's going to happen. And so we saw in Acts season two that this great apostle Paul went out, and he who once persecuted the church now proclaimed Jesus Christ. And we saw the gospel spread throughout Asia and Greece and Macedonia, churches popping up and being planted all across the Roman Empire. And then after the emperor died, suddenly it opened a door for Paul to go to Rome to testify before kings. But before that, Paul has to go back to Jerusalem to send money to the hurting church, to testify to the original group about what God had been doing. And so you see that Paul has to return to the city where he once led a mob to kill Stephen. Now he must return to face a mob that wants to kill him. And we watch him do what Thomas Campbell called in a hero of a thousand faces of crossing the returned threshold, that the hero must return with freedom from the fear of death, which gives him freedom to truly live. And what we're looking at today, Paul's, these are not Paul's final words, Paul's final words that we have are in Second Timothy that he wrote later, and he tells Timothy at the end of his life, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished my race, I did it, I played the game." What we get to see here is how it's done, that as he sees his fate before him, we watch him take the hero's journey.

He will not shrink back from his calling, but he will move towards Jerusalem knowing suffering and meaning are waiting for me there. And I just want to watch how he did it. I think most everybody here wants to live a life that means something. You don't move to DC or stay in DC for no purpose, it's too expensive. You're here because you want your life to matter. And whether you're a Christian or not, it's undeniable that the Apostle Paul's life and writings changed planet Earth like rarely any other human being. So it benefits us to look at how we did it. But I want to look at four essential elements of a life well lived as we watch Paul approach his end game. Season three, in these last moments we'll watch Paul get arrested, he will never be free again. These are his last free moments that he marches towards his destiny as a man with meaning. And we'll just pop in at different places on this boat ride to Jerusalem. Acts chapter 20, which we had read before, it says in verse 1, "After the uproar ceased he said farewell and departed for Macedonia. When he had gone through those regions, he had given them much encouragement, he came to Greece. What's the first element of a life well lived? It's courage. Courage. C.S. Lewis said courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at its testing point, which means at the point of highest reality, a chastity or honesty or a mercy, which yields to danger, will be chased or honest or merciful only upon conditions. Pilate was merciful 'til it became risky. What C.S. Lewis is saying about courage is courage is the virtue that makes all other virtues possible. You won't speak the truth without courage.

You won't show love without courage. Courage undergirds and empowers all virtue. So if you want to live a good life, a meaningful life, it will require courage. And here Paul realizes it's time for me to go to Jerusalem. And yet he's planted these churches all throughout these regions. And he says, you know what, I need to go visit those places. Those places where I preached the gospel that got me a beating, got me hurt, got me hit, an uproar. There was a riot in Ephesus. And yet Paul, because of his courage that he faced opposition, he also left behind him awake of blessing. A church in Ephesus, a church in Philippi, a church in Corinth. And so he goes back and says, I'm leaving, you won't see me. And did you notice twice in the text it says? So he encouraged them. I courageously brought the gospel to you. You courageously hold it, defend it. In Ephesus, the gospel lands in that culture, but challenges that culture. A culture that was obsessed with money and power. And Paul says, you hold the line, don't let go of the truth and a culture that will want to pressure you to come apart. He went to Philippi where they had suffered. And he told them, hey, you hold the line, you be strong. Plant your feet and stand strong. Christ gave his life for you. You give your life to proclaim him, right? That word encouragement is the word para calleo.

Calleo is to call and para is alongside. It's like a dad running along the sidelines with his kid in the game. Paul says, I ran my game. Now it's your turn, let's go. I want you to step into the destiny God has for you. And we watch Paul encourage them. Now we don't have time to read it all, but I'll show you on a map what Paul's gonna do. I don't know if he's gonna show up there. Yes, the riot was when Paul preached the gospel here in Ephesus, the capital of Asia. He'd already done this part. And he realizes, I gotta go. And so he goes and he ministers all through this area up into Philippi. We know the letter to the Philippians to them. The Thessalonians are here, Berea. He makes his way down to Corinth. Now Paul's plan was to take a boat ride straight to Jerusalem from there. That's the fastest way. But when he gets to Corinth, he realizes there's some people that want to kill him. So scratch that. And he's gotta kind of loop back this way and come back through some cities up here. Troas, and he's gonna go down here to Miletus as he makes his way ultimately to Jerusalem. Makes sense?

That's clear, right? The point there is Paul is courageous, but he's not brash. It's not bravado. When he sees they're trying to kill him in Corinth, he pivots, right? So courage is not foolishness, but he moves. Now we'll move off point one, but before I say it, do that, some of you go, well Ben, I want to be courageous. I'm not. How do I become a courageous person? Well Ambrose Redmond said this, courage is not the absence of fear. It's the judgment that there's something else more important than the fear. So don't just try to make yourself courageous. How do I get courageous? How do I get courageous? You don't do that. You find something you love that's worth giving your life for and you will find that you're courageous. The movie Hail Mary just did this. I won't give away the whole movie, but the protagonist is a coward. And he realizes he's a coward because he doesn't truly love. And it's only when he truly loves someone that he suddenly finds within himself

the willing to sacrifice for another. He discovers courage, not by seeking courage, but by seeking something higher. And courage is what stirs up when you care about something. You'll see that in dating, I promise you. Man, if you get off social media, put down the video games, you live a pure, holy life. Don't get caught up in distractions. You will suddenly discover as you stop numbing those desires that you have a desire for intimacy. And then you'll see a cute girl and they'll be feared to talk to her. And yet as you desire intimacy, longing and connection, suddenly you'll go, you know what? I don't care what happens, I'm going. And you'll initiate a conversation with her and I hope it goes well, son, I really do. But it's when you have something worth being courageous for, you'll find courage within yourself. Paul had something to live for. And yet you won't make a difference without courage. But notice courage does not mean he's harsh. It's courage with compassion. That's your second point. If you want to live a well life, Step out there, put yourself out there. But that doesn't mean you become a harsh person. He has courage and he has compassion. You see that as he continues his journey,

he makes his way to Troas as he's going back through. And we see in verse nine, it says, "A young man named Uticus was sitting at the window. "He sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer." Paul was in the middle of a sermon and it went long, okay? It happens sometimes. (congregation laughing) And being overcome by sleep, Uticus fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. Don't fall asleep during sermons. It is the point there. Write that down. But look at what Paul does in verse 10, "But Paul went down and bent over him "and taking him up in his arms said, "'Do not be alarmed for his life is in him.'" And when Paul had gone up and had broken bread and eaten, he conversed with them a long while until they break and so departed and they took the youth away alive and were not a little comforted. Paul sees this kid fall out of the third story window, hit the ground dead and Paul brings him back to life 'cause he's cool like that, right? (congregation laughing) And that's part of the point, right? Is that God doesn't judge this kid for his weakness. God is gracious with this kid. And you see great comfort come from Paul.

He's preaching to them earnestly, a message they need to be willing to die for. But it's not something that lacks compassion. When he sees a kid hurt, he runs. And there's comfort within the community there, right? Interesting, we gotta move off this. But often in the Bible, the names they say of someone are really their nicknames. You see in the Old Testament with some ancient kings, what the Bible will call them is kind of a pejorative name if they were bad guys that other people would call them. You see in Luke, there's Prisca, that Luke calls Priscilla. That's the diminutive form of her name, little Prisca, right? 'Cause he was his friend. Uticus here, that might have been what his mom called him, but the name means fortunate. And so some scholars think that because he fell to the ground dead and Paul revived him, they just took up calling him lucky, which probably true. But you see, Paul leaves them and he goes back and sees the elders in Ephesus. He doesn't have time to go back into the city. He calls them out and they have their first leadership retreat. We covered it last week. But I missed the last verse of that sermon he gave them. He's telling these leaders, preach the gospel and beware of the wolves. They're gonna be people that wanna tear your church apart and hurt and exploit the people under your care. You have to be strong for the sake of the sheep.

So he's telling them to be courageous. And yet in Acts chapter 20 verse 35, he ends his sermon this way. And all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way, we must help the weak. And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said it is more blessed to give than to receive. Courageously preach the truth and compassionately care for even the weak. Christianity doesn't step on weak people to gain power and influence. It steps down to care for the unicuses that have fallen, right? There's a reputation DC has when I first moved here that people will ask their first question, what do you do? And that will determine whether or not they ask the second question, what is your name? Because that first question will determine, are you someone who can help advance me in my quest for power? Or are you an obstacle to step on? Get out of my way, right? Christians don't do that. We are not survival of the fittest. We are to care for the weak and care to the poor. Paul or Jesus said it is more blessed to give and receive. You want a blessed life, you want a good life? Care about someone other than you? A selfish life shrinks. A loving life will lead you to a courageous

and a meaningful existence. It's interesting, there's a book called Gates of Fire. I'm not necessarily recommending it. It's got some pretty harsh scenes, but it's about the Spartans at Thermopylae. Interestingly, it skips a lot of the unsavory things about the actual Spartans, imports a lot of Christian principles into a people that didn't necessarily have them. Anyway, there's an ongoing debate in this historical fiction about what made the Spartans so brave in battle? How could they face insurmountable odds? How could the 300 stand up against the onslaught of the Persians? How could they do it? And the Spartans are debating among themselves, what makes us so courageous? Is it fear of shame and battle? No, that's just replacing one fear with the other. What truly makes us courageous and the mentor of these young warriors finally tells them on the eve of their final battle. Do you know what the secret is? Love, love. You won't fight courageously if you don't care. It's you gotta love something more than your own life. You gotta combine courage and compassion if you want a life well lived. And Paul has that. He was willing to lay his life down

for the people he loved. And that's your third point. You want a life well lived? You need a community, community. You gotta live for more than just you. Heroes don't journey alone. When he finishes this conversation with the Ephesians, notice in verse 36, it says, when he said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. You didn't always kneel or even often kneel when you prayed. That was a sign of deep solemnity that they all knelt together and they prayed. In verse 37, there was much weeping on the part of all. They embraced Paul and kissed him. Being sorrowful, most of all, because of the words he had spoken that they would not see his face again and they accompanied him to the ship. All through this journey as Paul's making his way to Jerusalem, you'll see these people crying with him on the beach, that Paul had a wake of real relationship behind him. He wasn't just drifting through cities, getting what he needed for his career. He was leaving a wake of blessing behind him. It's fascinating, as Paul was making this journey around a Jerusalem, he talks about it a lot in the letters he wrote, like to the Corinthians, Philippians and others, that what he was doing was collecting money to send down to the church in Jerusalem.

And as he did that, representatives from all these different churches say, "We want to go too." And in Acts 19, the chapter right before this, it starts naming the people with him. There was Silpater, the Berean, son of Pyres, accompanied him. Of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Sagundus. Gaius of Derby, Timothy, of the Asians, Ticchicus and Trophimus. They went on ahead and were waiting for us to Troas. But we sailed on from Philippi, that we is Luke. Luke joined the mix. After the day of unleavened bread. And in five days, we came at Troas and we stayed there seven days. He says, "We got Asians with us, in Greeks with us, Macedonians with us. We just started picking up all these people from Derby and Lestra and Thessalonica and Philippi. All this wake of a multi-ethnic community moving along with Paul as he makes his inevitable journey to pain in Jerusalem. That Paul has a literal physical wake of blessing behind him. He's like Aragorn, showing up not alone in Gondor, but with a dwarf and an elf and a wizard and some hobbits and people are like, "What are you doing?" Because it's bigger than just the realm of men. It's the Black Panther. And yes, the first movie was phenomenal, but the second movie when Wakanda's under attack, what happens?

You've got Captain America there from America. You've got the Scarlet Witch from Europe. You've got Thor from Asgard. You've got a space raccoon. Suddenly they realize it's bigger than one tribe. That God knits people together for his purpose. And there's power in that unity of diversity. And you see in Paul's life, as he makes his march towards Jerusalem, he's got a wake of people behind him that he blessed. And you see in chapter 21 verse one, it says, "When they had parted ways, that parted is literally the word tearing away. We set sail. We came to coast and roads. We don't have time to go on to this." He lands entire. And there it says, through the spirit, there were believers telling him, "Don't go to Jerusalem." And yet, he says farewell to them. It says in the passage that they knelt down on the breach and prayed. And they said farewell to one another. And he departed. He moves further towards Jerusalem. And as he gets close, all these cameos start popping up from season one. Philip the evangelist is there. But now, Philip's got four daughters who are prophetesses. And he meets up with them.

Agabus is there. The prophet from season one shows up. And when Agabus shows up, it says in verse 10, "While we were staying for many days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. And coming to us, he took Paul's belt, pulled Paul's belt off, and bound his own feet and hands with it, and said, "That says the Holy Spirit. This is how the Jews at Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles." And Luke writes, "When we heard this, we, the people that urged him not to go to Jerusalem." This is fascinating passage word. Paul passes through these last couple of towns, and they know Paul Payne's waiting for you. The spiritual people are sensing what the spirit has been telling Paul, Payne is coming, and so they deduce, therefore, don't go. Don't do this. You don't have to do this. It's interesting. There's a theological debate on that. Did Paul disobey the spirit then? And the clear answer is no. And you don't say that 'cause I want that to be true. You just read the book of Acts. You gotta read verses in context. Acts chapter 19, a few verses before. Paul resolved in the spirit to pass through Macedonia

and to go to Jerusalem. Acts chapter 20. He says, "I am going to Jerusalem constrained by the Holy Spirit." It's the very spirit of God leading me there. And then after he gets to Jerusalem and all heck breaks loose, he's in prison. And in Acts 23, it says, "The Lord stood by him and said, take courage. As you have testified to me in Jerusalem, you will testify to me in Rome." So if you read in Acts in all of context, the Lord is leading Paul towards suffering. And yet it's interesting. He's in this community that has a spiritual sensitivity that knows pain is coming. So they interpret it as, therefore, don't go. And what I love about this is they get to have this dialogue together. They're struggling with each other. Sometimes discerning God's will when it's not clearly in a verse, "Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am not only ready to be imprisoned but even to die for the name of the Lord Jesus and since he would not be persuaded we ceased and said, let the will of the Lord be done. And after these days we got ready and went to Jerusalem." Paul's not a desporado writing alone. He had joined a community that traveled with him in hard days that ministered alongside him, that wrestled with him about big decisions, that knelt and prayed with him on the beach, that as Paul is marching towards his faith, do you notice he's never alone, the communities around him? And look, a lot of you moved here with nothing but your clothes and your dreams and your little four-door sedan,

but you're not going to make it very far alone. We're meant to journey together. We are better together. And the great Apostle Paul comes rocking in with a community that is honest with him and encourages him. And then even when they aren't sure what God's doing, they say, "We're going to trust God together. Your will be done." They pray like Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane as Jesus saw pain coming in Jerusalem. He said, "I would rather not drink this cup, but your will not mine." And here this community surrenders to the will of God together, and Luke says, "And we got ready, and we went to Jerusalem." How could they do that? How could Paul march into what he knew was suffering? Well, this is your fourth element of a life well lived because he had a cause. He had a cause worth dying for. Compassion, courage, a community with a cause. Why are you breaking my heart? I am ready, not only to be imprisoned, but to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. Fellowship don't form around nothing. Unity doesn't happen around nothing. We unify around something. That's how humans work. Causes build communities, and you can build a community around a bad cause, or you can build a community around a good cause. It's interesting. I get the opportunity to speak with a lot of athletes that are retired, and they miss the locker room. They miss that strong bond of community that comes with having a cause. Not just that I got buddies. It wasn't just buddies. We were in the locker room prepping for a combined effort towards something that was worthy of our sacrifice. It's why soldiers miss war. Not that they like killing or like death. They don't abhor it. And yet that sense of, I've got a community that's been forged for a purpose that's worth more than my life. People miss it intensely when it's gone. And here Paul has the best of all communities because he has the best of all causes. The Son of God gave his life to forgive even me. Paul was a killer of Christians. And Paul says he was gracious with me. He gave his life for me. Then I give my life to him. I give it right back. That's the most logical conclusion. I'm going with him. That's my king. If he took a hit for me, then I take a hit for me. If he died to procure me, I died to proclaim him. I'm going to Jerusalem. I don't care what happens anymore. And when you've got that kind of clarity of purpose that you're not afraid to die, then you can truly live. You've got to know what you're willing to die for if you'll know what you'll truly live for. And Paul says I've got a cause that's worthy of my life. And friend, it's worthy of yours and mine too. We need this. I read an article years ago about video games that people didn't like being stuck in a linear story. And so they said, you know what? We just need to create an open world, a game where people

can walk around and do anything and interact with anyone and just have conversations. And those did not sell because they realized, hey, people don't want to feel constrained, but they want to know that we're going someplace. So you need a story. So now a lot of video games have side quests, but a main storyline. My son and I are playing Zelda right now. Okay. People have feelings about this. We're sharing a character. It's very fun. And we found the side quests are fun. Let's help you find your true love. Let's gather some fruit. But all the while, you look up and see the dark clouds forming because you know evil is hurting people. And so you know the whole time there is a cause. And at some point, I got to stop piddling around in side quests and get about the main purpose for why I'm here. And let me encourage you. It's good to enjoy your life and have fun. God is not against that, but I just don't want you to play your whole game in side quests. There is a main cause and I want you to join the cause because that's where meaning is found, that's where life is found, that's where Paul had the greatest of all causes, and it gave him a beautiful community that he loved with a deep compassion. Co-passion, they were willing to suffer with him, and they courageously met the meaning God had gave them together, and friend, I want that for you. Now, in our last moments together, normally this is where I end that I pray about your individual life and what God's gonna do with you, and we should do that and we'll do that and always do that, but I wanna talk for a minute about us collectively as a church, 'cause I don't just wanna apply this hypothetically, propositionally, one day with you and your buddies, God's called us here. This community journeyed together towards Jerusalem, they're all gone, but we're here, it's our turn. To us with failing hands, they threw the torch, be it ours to hold it high, it's our turn.

And God's called us to this city, we're here. I don't know how long you're gonna be here, but we're here, and for many of us, man, we know the people around us, so when God calls us to love, it's not just propositionally, hypothetically, someone will someday meet. It's that guy, it's those girls, it's this community. God has forged us and given us a moment together, so above and beyond is what we call this season, we're just for a couple of weeks, and this is the end of it, we focus on our church particularly and say, man, where has God been calling us? What has God called us to do? And it is a giving campaign, in some sense, it is, but it's more than that. It's asking everyone to take their next step of obedience, whatever it may be. On the giving side, two weeks ago, we talked about what we did last year, that you guys all gave and above and beyond Sunday, and it allowed us to create space for kids that now at 1201, all three floors are filled with children. As we made space, an old tiki bar became a ministry because of your generosity, right? (audience applauding) Yeah, it's good news, yeah. Way better things happening over there, as far as I know, I don't. Although someone did tell me they love that tiki bar.

I'm sorry, man, but it's for the kids. (audience laughing) You also helped stand up the church that we are now fully independent. We heard stories up here about how Passion City Atlanta launched us. We could not have existed without the generosity of brothers and sisters in Atlanta, but there came a time like every human being, you got to stand on your own two feet and pay your own bills, and so we looked last year and said, hey, there are some things we've been leaning back on them for, accounting, HR, finance stuff that's not real exciting, but really critical, and we need you to give so we can stand up some critical infrastructure of our church, and you did, and we were able to do that, right? And we served our community, helping kids get the structure they need to flourish, through unique learning center and through cornerstone schools, right? So as we look at this year, I want to give you a couple things that I've been praying about, we have as a team, as we look at above and beyond now. Number one, we talked last week about people, that we're growing as a church. God by His grace is letting us minister to more people. There's more of you showing up on Sundays,

which is exciting. We're growing here in this space. There's more people coming in neighborhood nights, and I hope you all do, to take that courageous step to meet some of the community that God's put in your neighborhood. And we've seen our family groups grow. That's that smaller group of three to four people that we hope you'll meet here and on neighborhood nights, that you can say these are the people that we really are brothers and arms, locking arms, praying for each other, walking with them when I was showing up at the hospital, that kind of stuff. We've seen that number grow considerably, and we've seen the number of people serving as do elders grow. It's amazing. So we've getting to minister to more and more people. And because of that, we've seen the number of people who give grow, we've seen our giving grow, but we mentioned this two weeks ago, I won't belabor it now, our attendance is going faster than our giving. Awesome both are giving. We just need one to move a little faster, because part of where we're at is, we still have a budget where we're able to pay our bills, we're not in jeopardy in any way, but we are limited in what else we can do. And I'll be honest with you,

in terms of what all we want to provide for people in the city, the resources we want to provide, the programs and events we want to provide, we're limited at this point in a lot of what we can do. There's some critical hires we need to make. We're limited really only by money at this point, right? And so we want to minister to more people, and that's why, part of why, we want people to give to above and beyond this year, so we can minister to the people God sent us. Another thing is place, and we talked about that, God called us to this city, and I want to say, I feel so grateful we're here in the Lincoln theater. This is such a gift. Most theaters in the city are union, right? And what that means is the costs are really high, and it's really cost prohibitive to meet weekly in a union venue. It's just too expensive to have a weekly gathering in a theater, and so we can't do it. This is one of the few that's not union. So we're so grateful to be here, and the staff's awesome to work with, they've been generous to us, gracious to us. Huge act of trust to let us put a tub of water on their stage. (audience applauds) This is a miracle, right? When we first came, can we baptize on your stage

or do what, Charles? No, absolutely not. And now they let us do it. So it's pretty awesome. So we're very grateful to be here. God has grown us here as a church. We can't add a third gathering and I don't know if you can tell we're starting to fill up here. We can't get earlier and it's a functioning venue that shows almost every Sunday night so we can't add a third one here. So what has been a gift to us will become a limitation as renters. And when we do neighborhood nights and other things we rent all these venues. We spend a lot of time, energy and money, renting a lot of venues to help you forge community to help us grow as a community. We don't regret that. It's good. We feel like, hey, ultimately our most stable place to grow as a church will be to be owners of our own space. We want that. I mentioned two weeks ago, I was just sent 40 different buildings by a realtor. And my estimation and the team helping me, I don't know that any of them are going to work. But there's a lot of buildings coming up for sale in DC and being sent to our doorstep and what we've discovered is, you kind of got to have an athletic posture to be ready to pay an architect and people to just see like, can you put a sanctuary in there? Can we host kids in the same building where we worship? Can we do all that? So we're realizing you've got to kind of have some starter money to evaluate some of these spaces. And so I would love to stand up here now and go, and here it is and show you the building.

I think honestly, and I had someone encourage me with this the other day, like, hey Ben, I don't think it's going to work that way. He said, I think the church needs to pray. And so then when we watched God provide a building, we know God did it, not a savvy group of realtors. And so I felt challenged by that and I think He's right. So I'm like, yeah, let's do that. So part of Above and Beyond, and you'll see it in your envelope and you pull it up in a minute, is to not just give financially, though I encourage you to, it's to pray. Pray for us, pray for this place, that God will give us a place to minister to people. And we also would hope on that card, you'll write per request of yours so that we can pray for you. Paul said that to the churches he started, far be it from me, to fail to pray for you. So we want to pray together. And we want to support partners. And we mentioned this last week, so I won't go into all detail of them, but whenever we raise money here, we like to give money away too. I think that's a healthy thing for our hearts. I think it's a healthy thing for a church. And so we have two local partners and two global ones that we want to give to. Local partners are DC 127 that helps families impacted by the foster care system. In DC, primarily where their needs are, is to help families that are maybe at risk of a kid being removed. There's church communities and ministries at 127 that will come around a family to kind of help them with resources to stabilize so the kid can stay with biological parents and have the structure they need to grow. And then there also are some resources through church partners where they help kids that are in the foster care system find some stability here in the midst of the city. So we want to give the DC 127. We also want to give to Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center.

They help people in crisis pregnancy. They need a door. Their door's busted. And that lets in, what is the word they used? Not varmints. That's the word I use. Pests. That's adorable. I just saw a pest out there and he's probably five pounds. So, there's a rat, not a human. Come on. But anyway, we want to help them too. We want to see kids flourish. Some of you know that one of the greatest challenges in our city is kids lacking the structures they need to thrive and reach their potential. And so as a church, whenever we say, "Hey, we need to give to provide what's happening here." We want the children of this city to see the people of Jesus leaning towards them. So that's why we pick those two partners. Globally, we want to look beyond us. And the same way we don't have time to go into this, Paul told the Corinthians, "Hey, the Philippians are broke." It's great. You can read it and go. He's like, "Philippians are broke." But when they saw that we were given to Jerusalem, they found a way to get, they just wanted to be in on that. And so he told the Corinthians that to motivate them. And so I love for us, I'm like, "Okay, we're probably not going to move the needle on massive global causes here today, but we want to be in on what God's doing."

And illuminations is something that many of you are familiar with. If you, you know, we have the Museum of the Bible in our city, you can go there. You can walk into a room that has Bibles from every language on planet earth that's, it's been translated. And it covers about two-thirds of the room, Bibles in all these languages from around the world. And then that last third of the room, it's empty binders. And those are all the languages that don't have a copy of the Word of God in their language. And it's meant to motivate you. We can change that. And illuminations has helped supply funding for translators. I remember I used to do fundraisers for something. You have these guys translating the Bible into other languages that would have to take time off to go raise money for themselves. And some businessmen came and said, "You know what, we'll raise the money. You just keep translating the Bible." And so illuminations has partnered with 10 different Bible translation organizations to get this job done. And it will happen in our lifetime, like 2033. It's amazing. [Applause] I thought, hey, we should get in on that. And so we called them, their friends, and said, man, what do you got? And they told us about the Gabbari people in Nigeria that the translation is actively going on right now. But the project will need 1.2 million to finish. And we're like, all right, we may not have 1.2 million to give you. But how much for the book of Acts?

How much for Acts? Like, we're studying Acts, how much for Acts? And they said, Acts is $35,000. And we're like, all right, that's cool. Let's take a run at it. But we just want to be a part of getting the word of God to the Gabbari people in Nigeria. And we want to give to Passion Conference. You heard the story earlier. And it's my story, too, that Passion Conference was a catalytic moment for me in my faith journey. And as part of the Passion family, we help host Passion Conference. This year, we'll host 100,000 university-age students, Lord willing, in two different venues in December and in February. We will invite these college students to come. They will pay very little. They'll pay less than it costs to put on a conference to inspire them. But there's not a city I can go to, where I don't run into somebody that said, I was inspired to go into ministry at Passion. And so we just want to be a part of being that catalytic moment. We want to give back to the movement that birthed us. Not because we're being told to, or have to, because we want to. We want to be like Paul showing up in Jerusalem saying, hey, we actually, we want

to give to what God's doing through you, not just through us. So that's our stuff. So as we talk about above and beyond this year, we want to reach the people God's entrusted us to reach. DC, less than a third of people are in church on any kind of regular basis. Every Bible-preaching church could grow by orders of magnitude. We are not in competition with our brothers and sister churches. We need to reach the city. There's a lot of people here. So we want to reach people. We want to trust God with the place. We want to serve our partners. And so that's going to require provision. So here's how we did it with this year's above and beyond. You're going to see a QR code come up on the screen if you want to give. Let me say, if you're a guest here-- I know some of you brought a guest here like the wrong Sunday, darn it. Hey, man, if you're a guest, feel no pressure to give. You can if you want to. We're not prohibiting it, but the pressure's off, bro. But on that card, put a prayer request that we can't pray for you, whether you do it with your name on it or anonymously you do whatever you want. But we would just love to pray for you. But for those of you who have been coming here,

this is your church home, there's kind of two action steps that I'd like you to pick one. One, and above and beyond seasons past, people have just given one-time gifts, and that helps us a lot. We mentioned that that we kind of need our reserve to grow. So we can kind of have a good, responsible reserve, so that would help us if you decided to give one time. There's also in there a place, though, and this is new for us above and beyond, where you can say, hey, Ben, I'm going to cross the line and become a regular giver. That sort of helps us budget better. When we know people are giving regularly, we sort of know what's coming in, so we can budget how to plan events in the future. So I just want to encourage you, some of you go like, I don't know if I want to give to you every week or every month, but I want to give now to be a part of what you just mentioned. Do that. Some of you may go, you know what, I'm a part of this church. I'm not going to give them this massive one-time gift from all my wealth, though you could, say, no, but I'm going to sign up and just make giving a part of my regular spiritual journey. I'd encourage you to do that. So we'll give you a minute to fill out that card and then second and do that. But I did want to, I almost forgot this, but I wanted to mention this too,

because I thought this was interesting. As the team was looking at our church and praying for our church, we looked at our online numbers. Like, I don't know if you know this, we do a video on demand where people can join us digitally on a Sunday, and there are orders of magnitude more people with us online than are with us in the room. Did you know that? (audience applauding) I didn't know that. It's really kind of wild. And so we provide that service to them. There's a whole separate sound team just below us, reaching them. So I just want to talk for a second, for those of us who are watching online, we make this free because we want it to be, we want the gospel to go out as far as it can go. So we want it to be free, but it's not free. So if you're watching online and would like to help pay for you watching online, we would love it. Because it costs about five figures a year for us to pull that off. We think it's a service and a ministry because we watch it go, we get messages from people who are deployed all over the world. In the military and our government, so many of you that you get sent out that say, but I still get to be tethered to my church in DC.

So we want to provide that and we'll continue to, Lord willing, but if you want to lean in and make that possible for us online, jump in. Join us. You [BLANK_AUDIO]