It's Complicated | Tough to Love | Jeremy DeWeerdt

My favorite color is blue, Jen's favorite color is pink. My favorite color is orange, and Jer's favorite color is blue. My favorite food is, oh really, Scandinavian swimmer's candy. Jer's favorite food is steak. My favorite food is steak, and Jen's favorite food is soup. My love language is acts of service, gift giving, physical touch. And Jen's is words of affirmation, words of affirmation, words of affirmation. My love language is words of affirmation. Jer's love language is acts of service. My favorite movie is Top Gun, and Jer's favorite movie is Nacho Libre. My favorite movie is Nacho Libre. Jen's is hands down Top Gun. My favorite hobby is hunting. Jen's is shopping. My favorite hobby is housework, and Jer's favorite hobby, he has so many, I'm going to go with hunting. My favorite drink is the soda water with wine, and Jer's is a Coke. My favorite drink is Coca-Cola. Her favorite drink is anything that's sparkling water. Now, wait a minute, did she say that her favorite hobby was housework? And not shopping? You know, today, we're going to talk about denial. And... All right, that was fun. Jen beat me. She was like, I beat you, I beat you. I'm like, you cheat to win. Scandinavian swimmers candy, come on, right? All right, well, no, we're having fun. And we're having fun in this relationship series. And we're talking about all different types of relationships.

And it's called It's Complicated, because how many of you know that relationships can be complicated? Yesterday, I was on a flight home. And I had gotten done speaking down at our Cape Coral location at a business leaders event that we host down there every year. And honestly, on the flight home, it was probably one of the craziest flights I've been on. I fly a lot. One of the craziest flights I've been on in a very long time. We were all, like it is now, airline travel. We were all packed like sardines in a little metal container flying through the air. And I'm sitting in the middle seat, which is always kind of weird, because you don't know, like, who owns the armrest. But the real problem was this, is that there were literally 1,000 babies on the flight. And they were all just losing their minds. No joke. And they were like a symphony, right? And the minute it would get quiet, one would start crying, and then they'd all start crying. There are babies seated all around me. And then right behind me, there are these two toddlers that I promised had five Mountain Dews each before they got onto the plane. And they are just, like, hyper and going crazy. And normally, I have, like, these, like, noise-canceling earbuds that I put in. And I wanted to go put those in. And for some reason, they were not working. And so babies are crying. Toddlers are screaming. Parents are ordering extra drinks. And I'm trying to, like, prep today's message. No joke. I sat there for almost three hours staring at the screen of my laptop. And it was so crazy loud, I couldn't get thoughts out onto the page. And I knew the topic that I wanted to talk about today, but I literally could not. I couldn't think straight. It was so loud.

And I was feeling a pressure as we're, you know, flying to Illinois. I mean, we're getting closer. And I'm going, I need to, like, have a sermon. I mean, this is like tomorrow is, like, when I have to preach. And it had been a crazy week. And I had already prepped some sermons earlier this week. And I thought, OK, I'll, like, prep on the flight home. But I didn't realize that I was going to be in a tube of terror. I mean, I didn't realize that. And so I didn't want to come up here and look at you guys and be like, hey, thanks for coming to State First. I got nothing. All right? Let's just go home. I didn't know what to do. So I'm feeling, like, pressure. And I'm feeling anxiety about this. I got to get this message done. And I'm starting to get frustrated. And so I decided I was going to do something. I literally got up and I went back into the back of the plane. And I went and I locked myself in a lavatory for a moment to try to get some peace and quiet. You know you're desperate when you go to, like, a plane bathroom. You know what I mean? And I'm, like, standing in there. And I'm just trying to get my head, like, to, like, think straight. And it was the craziest thing. And I'm not lying on this, this is the craziest thing. I felt like the Lord spoke to me in that lavatory. And I'm sitting there staring into the mirror, and I'm thinking, what am I going to talk about?

And I knew that I was going to talk on this subject, but I couldn't get it out. And I felt like the Lord said to me, hey, Jeremy, what are you speaking on tomorrow? And I answered, loving your neighbor. And I felt like he went, oh, really? And I started thinking about it, I'm like, I'm not loving any of my neighbors right now on this plane. And here I am, going to put together this message about loving your neighbor. And at that moment, I literally did this. If you could have seen me in that lavatory, I'm literally, I smiled back to God. And I was like, touche, touche. And so I went back out there into the crazy, and I began to type as much as I could. And I finished it when I got home last night. And so really, what I want to talk about today is I want to talk about how it's hard to love people who bother you. And that's really what the whole love your neighbor, love thy neighbor, depending on what version of the Bible you're reading, that's what it's kind of all about. I mean, really, sometimes it's hard to love people that are a little unlovely. In fact, today, I entitled the message, Tough to Love, because there are people in our world that are tough to love. And in Matthew chapter 22, there's a story about Jesus. And let me give you a little background on it.

He is in one of the most combative, tension-filled times of his ministry. There is all kinds of momentum building around him. People are following him. The religious leaders of the day, they're called Pharisees. They were not happy about this. In fact, they hated Jesus. And so they are turning up the heat, trying to figure out a way to trap him, to get a soundbite out of him, so that they could literally kill him. That's what they were trying to figure out. And so they're coming to Jesus, asking him all kinds of questions that are really like traps, and the pressure is mounting. And so in Matthew chapter 22, a religious lawyer, this is a special type of Pharisee. This is an individual who specialized in the law of the Torah. In other words, the first five books of what we now call the Old Testament. His job was to study every law that God had given, Moses, and the Levites, and things like that. And basically, there were a lot of them, and he was a specialist in this area. He came up to Jesus, and he asked a loaded question. This is what he said in Matthew chapter 22. The story goes, one of them, an expert in the religious law, tried to trap him, meaning Jesus, with this question.

Which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses? Which is the most important commandment? Jesus replied, you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. We would all assume that to be true, right? Especially since Jesus said it. And then Jesus goes on to say, a second is equally. Everybody say the word equally. Equally important. Love your neighbor as yourself. Wow, I mean, that's crazy. So Jesus is going, the most important one is you love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind. And by the way, there is an equal commandment, and that is you love your neighbor as yourself. Now on the surface, the lawyer's question may seem a little bit innocent and sincere, but actually it was very, very loaded. Here's the background. The Jews of that day taught that there were 613 laws in the Old Testament that they had to obey equally. 613 laws. I want you to try to imagine living back in that day, and these Pharisees were telling the people, you need to memorize and know all 613 laws. You need to obey them all, otherwise God is gonna be not so happy with you.

So this lawyer comes along and asks the question to Jesus, what is the commandment that matters most to God? Out of all 613. See, this was a trap. What he's trying to do is he's trying to get Jesus to say something so that they could claim that he was a blasphemer. In other words, a person that in a sense said something against the Almighty God, and that would give them the latitude to go ahead and arrest Jesus and such. And so what does Jesus say? I'm gonna put it in modern day lingo. Basically, Jesus answers, love God, love people. I don't know if you ever heard of this before, love God, love people, and then we added on you'll love life when you do that, right? In fact, it's over the entrances to our locations and things like that. Love God, love people, love life. This is where this comes from. Every commandment is important, but Jesus is saying these two matter most. Jesus is basically saying, while all God's commandments are significant, these two commandments, loving God, loving people, that's the foundation of all the other commandments, all the 611 other commandments, basically, is what he's saying. And in the book of Luke,

it tells the same story as Matthew chapter 22, and it gives a little bit more color. The lawyer then comes back after Jesus answers that, and he asks a follow-up question. He goes, okay, we're supposed to love our neighbor as ourself, who is our neighbor? Who's my neighbor? And see, the lawyer, again, is asking something that's very complicated, because if you were to go back in the Old Testament, again, in the first five books of the Bible, there was a guy by the name of Moses. Most of us have heard of him before, and God gave Moses these commandments, and basically the idea of loving your neighbor according to the Mosaic law, again, the Moses law. The Mosaic law infers this, that your neighbor is your personal friend. So the Jews believed to love your neighbor means that you love your personal friend, meaning that you could still hate your enemies, and you dislike anybody who's not your personal friend. Then the Pharisees came along hundreds of years later, and they kind of narrowed the definition of what a neighbor was from the Mosaic law. They came along and basically said this, a neighbor is someone who shares your beliefs. So in other words, you can hate anyone you disagree with. That is why the internet is full of Pharisees. Actually, the people don't realize it,

but they have a Pharisee spirit online. They hate anyone they disagree with. As my friend Peter Haas says, they need a Pharasectomy. They need to get the Pharisee out of them. Well, Jesus comes along and he says this, he defines what it means to love your neighbor. He says, you have heard the laws that says love your neighbor and hate your enemy. So in other words, he's acknowledging the Old Testament law. You can love the one who is a personal friend, or then the Pharisee says, love the one that has the same belief systems you do, but you could hate your enemy. So it was kind of like, okay, to hate your enemy. Jesus then comes along and he raises the bar. He goes, but I say, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. If you only love those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. Now, let me pause there a minute. Back in Jesus's day, the most hated people on the face of the earth were tax collectors. And here's the reason why. They were Jewish individuals that went over to the dark side of the Roman emperor and the Roman empire and basically collected taxes from their fellow Jews for Rome. And they would always skim off the top. They would charge too much.

They would fleece people. They had plenty of money and they were basically getting that money off of the backs of their fellow Jewish brothers and sisters. And so the Jewish people hated tax collectors. Call them any name, but if you call them a tax collector, that was like the worst, all right? So Jesus is going, hey, listen, even tax collectors can love those that love them. There's no big deal when it comes to obeying that commandment. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that, Jesus said. Ouch, ouch, right? I mean, basically anyone can love God and their friends and anyone can love God and those that agree with them. But how about if you love God and also those that you disagree with? Can you love God and love those that voted differently than you? Can you love God and love those that have different bumper stickers on their cars than you do? Can you love God and even love those that hate God? of God and love those that live in a way that you disagree with, and they're even belligerent about it. See, that's what Jesus is saying. Jesus is going, you love only those

that you agree with on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok? Big deal. He's saying, if you really want to be godly, why don't you love those that oppose you, those that are enemies to your thoughts, your belief systems, enemies to even your faith? You see, the real question that I think the lawyer is asking here is he's saying, do I really have to love people I don't like? Do I really, Jesus, have to love people I don't know? Do I really have to love people I don't disagree with or that I disagree with? Do I really have to love people that do 40 miles an hour in a 55? Do I really have to? And that really echoes a question from thousands of years before at the very beginning when Adam and Eve had two sons and one son killed the other and Cain was the one that was the murderer. And he said, am I really my brother's keeper? See, this is really something that has been in the DNA, the spiritual DNA, you could say, of humans since the very beginning. We want to love those that love us. But do we really want to love those that we don't like? It's hard to love those that aren't lovely. And it's hard to love those that have unlovely actions and personalities and beliefs. Yet seven times in the Bible, seven times in the Bible, it is mentioned, love your neighbor, seven times.

The perfect number of God, by the way, seven. And so maybe God is trying to really communicate and drive something home to his followers. And that is, you know what? You've got to love people that even sometimes rub you the wrong way. When you walked into our physical buildings, if you came to a physical building today, if you're watching online, obviously you didn't. But if you come into a physical building, you'll see various signage on the wall. And if you didn't notice it, notice it on the way out. But you know, it says, welcome home and you belong here. And there's all kinds of little things like that. And we do that on purpose. We don't do that because we just are randomly picking decor. It is a messaging that reflects a culture of City First. And that is, we want this to be a welcoming place. And when you walk in the door, we hope that you feel welcomed and that we hope that you feel loved. Now, the only way that you're not welcome at City First is if you're dangerous or if you have an ungodly agenda. At that point, we're going to be like, hey, listen, I'm sorry this is not your place. Because this is a place also where we want people to be safe and such like that. But it's important to understand this, that we are welcoming people into the church that may not even agree with everything that we believe. And Jesus instructs us that we are to love our neighbor.

That does not mean that you have to support your neighbor's actions or agree with their choices that they are making. Do you hear that? You can love someone, but not affirm what they believe or their actions. Love, unlike what culture has defined love, culture has defined love, that if you really love me, then you just approve of everything I do. That's not what Jesus modeled, by the way, even though many people are trying to say that Jesus just loved people, and so because love just lets people do what they want. That's not true. Jesus actually modeled the love, but he didn't approve of what everybody did. In fact, he even called out people sometimes and said, hey, you shouldn't be doing that. And so he's not asking us, when we love people, that that means that we approve of everything they do, or we approve of what they say, or we approve of their belief systems. That's not the point. What Jesus did model is he said this, love through actions and deeds. How many of you have heard that actions speak louder than words, right? So Jesus modeled it. He modeled through actions and deeds, because love is more than words. Love is action.

In fact, also, love is hard work. In fact, here's some verses that show it. In 1 John, it says, my children, our love should not be just words and talk. It must be true love. So defining what true love is, which shows itself in action. True love is backed up by actions. It's not just lip service, all right? Matthew chapter 5, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. In other words, see your good works. Love is work. First Peter 3, it says, if any of them do not believe God's word, your conduct will win them over to believe. Isn't that amazing? In other words, what the Apostle Paul said, So Peter's saying there is he's like, what the Apostle Paul said, what the Apostle Paul said, even when you encounter people is that if any of them do not believe God's word, that don't believe what you believe, your conduct will win them over to believe. they're gonna see your life and that is gonna make them go, hmm, that's legit, that's legit. Isn't that amazing? You know, love requires action. And I love what C.S. Lewis,

a theologian from the 20th century and an author, he wrote this in a book called Mere Christianity. If any of you kind of like a little bit more heady, a deeper thought, Mere Christianity is an excellent book to read. It really is amazing. He said this, he said, do not waste your time bothering whether you love your neighbor. Act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we will find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you love someone, you will presently come to love him. That's a great quote. In other words, do I love my neighbor? Just act like you love your neighbor and guess what, you're gonna start loving your neighbor is what he's saying there. So how do we love our neighbor? Because I can get up here and I can be like, love your neighbor, and you're like, okay. How do I do that in a tangible way? Well, the best way that I think that we can figure that question out is to look at the one who did it perfectly and his name was Jesus. And so let's look at his lifestyle for the remainder of the time that we have together. And this is not an exhaustive list

or an all encompassing list. I just cherry pick some ideas of what he did and how he showed love, you could say to others or his neighbor. First thing he does this is Jesus walked his talk. Jesus walked his talk. In other words, you know what? He didn't just talk, he walked it out. His lifestyle proved his doctrine. Does that make sense? He didn't live one way over here and then he lived another way over here. No, no, no, no, no, there was not that. One of the greatest ways, and you go, is this how you really love your neighbor? Yes, one of the greatest ways that you can love somebody or to love your neighbor is not being duplicitous. In other words, that's a big fancy word for you live one way over here and another way over there. You aren't consistent. You cannot have a Sunday self and then a rest of the week self. Y'all with me on this? In other words, Christianity isn't a Sunday outfit. You wear it all week and your walk should match your worship. Your walk should match your worship. So a question on that for all of us and you're gonna see on all these points, I'm gonna have us ask a personal question.

Am I a person who shows God's love with everyday actions? Well, all of us could be better at that, but I mean, we really need to think about that. Monday to Saturday, Monday to Saturday, how are my actions lining up with my worship? Am I living in a way that glorifies God? Second thing that Jesus did is Jesus brought healing everywhere he went. He brought healing everywhere he went. Now I know some of you are like going, yes, he healed the sick and the lame and the blind. He raised people from the, yes, yes. I'm not just talking physical healing. Everywhere he went, he brought emotional healing. He brought spiritual healing. He healed relationships. Everywhere Jesus went, people felt taken care of. You know, one time I heard it said that every church has two types of people. There are policemen and there are paramedics. Policemen make sure that everybody is spiritually doing it right, that all the laws are being upheld and everything is great, and paramedics are putting people together. I'm in no way insinuating that we should not have convictions, morals, standards, or even have difficult conversations. No, actually, that is love to do that. So I'm not trying to say that we just are just like, whatever, you know, or whatever.

No, no, no. But what I am saying is this, is we need to remember what the Bible says in Romans, and that is that God's kindness is what leads us to repentance. God's condemnation didn't bring you to salvation. God's kindness drew you to salvation. And in the same way, we need to be people wherever we go, that where we're at work, whether we're on the job site, whether we're in our neighborhood, whether we're at the gym, whether we go to the coffee shop, wherever we go, we walk with a spirit of healing in that place. We bring healing. We bring lift. We bring hope. We don't come with a spirit. of haughtiness or religiosity. Some Christians I meet, they have this like, I'm looking down on you tone. You ever met anybody like that before? And that's not what Jesus did. He never was like, I'm looking down on you. I'm God. I'm perfect. You suck. That's not the tone that he had.

Instead, there was a kindness that sometimes was very convicting and sometimes was very forthright, but there was a kindness that led to repentance. Why were so many thousands of people following him everywhere he went? So we had to ask ourselves the question, am I a person that brings healing to the people around me? Am I a person that brings healing? Do people look forward to seeing me, or do they run the other way? Number three, Jesus pursued connection, not just conversation. This is another way you could love your neighbor. There's a story one time I heard of an elderly man whose wife had recently passed away, and he used to sit on the front porch of his house, just kind of grieving. And there was a little boy that was next door, and he would go out and play, and sometimes he would wander into the old man's yard. And the young boy's mom kept on saying, don't go in his yard, and he's going through a really rough time right now, and don't bother him. One day she was doing dishes and looking out the window, and she saw the little boy run into his yard, up his porch, and go and start talking to the man, and then sat on his lap. And literally, the mom is dying a thousand deaths, going, oh, this is not good.

And so the boy finally came home, and she scolded him and said, hey, I told you, leave him alone. He's really kind of going through it right now. And the boy said, I wasn't doing anything. I was just helping him cry. And you know what, I thought, and I heard that story, I thought, that's kind of, in many ways, what we are supposed to be, that communication doesn't begin with words, it begins with connection. How are we connecting with people? Jesus didn't just go up and preach in a synagogue. In fact, if you look at all the teachings, the number of times he is preaching in a synagogue versus he's talking to people in the streets, it's a very small percentage of time he's actually in the synagogue. So he's not just up preaching to people. Instead, he's with them, he's connected to them. He is connecting with them in the midst of their everyday life, the highs and the lows. Jesus always conveyed his message, this is so important, his message in their language on their turf. And that right there is a guideline for every Christ follower. We need to communicate Jesus's message in their language on their turf. Get rid of the Christianese, all right? Don't be walking out, you can do it inside a church if you want to, but hallelujah, glory to God,

all these kind of things. People don't know what in the world you're talking about. It's like you are literally talking a foreign language. Instead, talk to them in a way that they talk and share his message in their language and on their turf, which means, guess what, you gotta get into their world. You can give that a huge round of applause. I know some of you wanna applaud that. In every interaction, seek connection. So the question is, am I a person who seeks authentic connection with others outside of my comfort zone? Because you know what's real comfortable to do is just hang around the seven going to heaven. What's real comfortable to do is just stay in our Christian ghetto. It's real comfortable to just almost kind of have like some sort of a gated Christian community. And we just kind of all talk about Jesus and we wanna go deeper and all these kinds. What does that mean? What does it mean to go deeper? I always love that when people say that. I'm like, well, what does it mean to go deeper, really? Because define that. I mean, we love to do that kind of stuff. And at the whole time outside of the four walls of the places we gather in, there are people that are desperately wanting hope. They desperately need to know Jesus.

They need to go to heaven. They are out there going to help us, but we're in here going, no, we're gonna just talk our language and do our own thing. No, no, no, no, that wasn't Jesus. What did Jesus do? He got out of the synagogue, and he walked the streets, and he talked to people at wells. He talked to people next to bodies of water. He talked to people at a fountain. He talked to people along the way, at gates of cities. He talked in the common, everyday marketplace. Number four, Jesus loved everyone, and no likes were required. And what do I mean by that? Is that on social media, we love likes, right? Somebody likes what we say, likes what we say. And Jesus loved people, regardless of whether they liked what he said. And I've discovered that it's easy to love people who love me back. I'm an expert at loving people who love me. And so are you, if I could be honest. All of us are. We love to be loved, and we love those that love us. We love those that kind of like say, man, you are the best thing since microwave popcorn, or whatever, you know? And we're like, yeah, thank you, I love you, right? But how about those that don't?

I struggle with this, you do too. And Jesus is making a point to this lawyer in this story in Matthew 22. He's basically saying, hey, yeah, yeah, yeah. Love your neighbor. In other words, love your personal friend. Yeah, yeah, yeah, love your neighbor. Yeah, love those that agree with you, and share the same belief system. But also, love your enemy. Wow. I mean, we say that a lot. Love your enemy. It's almost a little bit of a cliche, because we hear that Jesus said it, and we say, but man, when it's all said and done, more is said many times than done. It's so hard to love those that don't love you back, right? In fact, in 1 Peter chapter two, I love what the apostle Peter says here. He goes, be careful. Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Now, a little context here. This is probably around, I don't know, decades after Jesus has ascended to heaven, that Peter is writing this. And by this point, most likely Nero was the emperor of Rome, and Nero hated Christians. In fact, he persecuted them.

He killed them by the hundreds. I mean, it was a big thing. And what would happen is that if a neighbor found out that you were a Christian, they would narc on you to the Roman government, and then the Roman government would come and arrest you, or would isolate you, or maybe even imprison you, and maybe even kill you. So your neighbors were narcs, all right? And what is Peter saying here? He's saying, even unbelieving neighbors, if they accuse you of doing wrong, even if your neighbor is narcing you out, even if they accuse you of doing wrong, live properly among them, because this is what's gonna happen. They will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world. In other words, they're gonna look at your lifestyle, and they're gonna see something is different, even as they are attacking you. I mean, this is a level of Christ-following that is hard for me and you. It really is, because what happens if somebody comes at you? What if a coworker who doesn't like the fact that you're a Christian starts saying things about you? How about if that person posts stuff online about you? How about if they make fun of you at school, students? I mean, what is your first reaction?

Your first reaction is, I'm gonna bow up, and man, I'm gonna go back at them. And Jesus is like, no, don't do it. Let them see your Christ-like actions, and at some point, they're gonna go, wow, that faith is real. So the question is, am I a person who loves those who are difficult to love? Oof, right? I don't know, that's hard. I don't want them to work on until I go to heaven, and probably you will too, but we gotta try. The last one, real quickly, is this. Jesus was fully present. How did he love people? He was fully present. Sometimes I think we can love our neighbor, not just our physical neighbor, our coworker, our fellow student, the person at the gym, whoever. We can love them by just being all the way there, because in our culture, nobody is here anymore. They're here, but they're not here, you know what I mean? We're a distracted culture. Pew Research said this. They found out that 51% of partnered adults in the US feel their partner is often or sometimes distracted by their cell phone during conversations. Goes on to say, and 40% are bothered by the amount of time their partner spends on their mobile device.

And that's just in a marriage. That's not even a neighbor. We're distracted. And Jesus never, ever, at least we see and we don't believe, because again, he's God, but he was never distracted when he was with somebody. One of his most remarkable characteristics was empathy. Empathy means to feel with. Sympathy means I feel bad for you. Empathy says I feel with you. It's attentiveness of the heart. Jesus had compassion. In fact, it says in Luke chapter 19, but as Jesus came closer to Jerusalem, he saw the city ahead and he began to weep. Goes on to say in Matthew 9, he saw the crowds and had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. I have a question. Is that how we see the world around us? Do we look at our neighborhood? Do we look at our city? Do we even look at our nation? And do we, maybe we don't physically cry, but is there a grieving? Is there a sorrow that they're so disconnected from God? And do you look at your coworkers and your fellow students and your neighbors and the people at Target and all the different places you go?

And do you see them as lost and confused? And your heart breaks over that because they are like sheep without a shepherd. I'll confess to you, even as your pastor, many times I don't see the world that way. I see what's going on in my world and in the world and I get frustrated and I get annoyed and I gotta remind myself, no, no, no. I need to see what Jesus sees. I need to see sheep that are lost without a shepherd, confused, disjointed, striving for happiness and fulfillment, not finding it. I need to look over my neighborhood, my community, and I need to have a heart that weeps and breaks over the lostness of people. Oh Jesus, heal our hearts. Because we get annoyed. We watch stuff online or we binge on the news or we get on the Facebook with the rest of our neighbors and the HOA and got that one guy, right? Who's always like complaining about everything. You're getting mad. You're mad at the person you're working with because they drive you crazy. And here's the thing, the one person or the one thing, excuse me, the every person, every person, no matter who they are, they wanna know one thing. Does someone care about me? And attentiveness more often than not is most needed when it is least convenient.

So am I a person? Am I attentive? Am I dialed in when I'm with others? Am I really seeing what Jesus is seeing? Or am I seeing through the eyes of Jeremy DeWert and getting frustrated at the crying babies and the toddler who's kicking my seat? Maybe this morning is your walk to the lavatory where you need to look in the mirror and hear Jesus say, love your neighbor, love your neighbor. And you come out of that lavatory and you go back into your tube of terror and you see it differently. That's how God checked me yesterday. Your pastor less than 24 hours ago when I'm flying 35,000 feet at 600 miles an hour somewhere over Kentucky. That's when God spoke to me. How's he speaking to you? Love your neighbor. Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you that you showed us love even though we didn't deserve it. In fact, I would even say this, that the more we experience your unconditional love, the more that we realize we're the ones that are tough to love. And yet Jesus, you did it anyway. God, help us to see what you see. We go to work tomorrow.

We go to school. Even for some of us, when we go back to our family, help us to see what you see and help us to love the way that you love. In Jesus' name. Everybody said, amen. Amen. Come on, let's give God a huge round of applause. A message from Pastor Jeremy. And hey, we don't want to let a week go by where we don't invite you into the opportunity to pray and make Jesus the leader and forgiver of your life. So if there was something that he said during his message that really struck you and is driving you in that direction, I want to invite you to pray with me right now. Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I made mistakes and I need your forgiveness. I believe that you died for my sins and I now invite you to be the leader and forgiver of my life. In Jesus' name. Amen. And hey, if you prayed that prayer, we celebrate with you. And a couple of things we want to encourage you to do. Number one is tell somebody about it. Let somebody know. We're not meant to do life alone.

So let somebody know either around you, let us know in the chat, send us an email, somehow, let us know. Also, there's a QR code on the screen that you can scan to get our new beginnings resource. It helps kind of walk you through and answer some questions about what are the next steps in my walk with Christ. That's right. Another great next step for you is growth track, all right? And growth track is designed for you to discover your God-given gifts and talents, really how to grow in those and how to use them to not only build you as a person, but also to build the kingdom of heaven. That's what we're here to do, right? Bring more people on this journey of faith with us. And so if you want to be a part of growth track online, you can do it at your own pace, all right? Sign up on the app or even at cityfirst.church forward slash growth track. That's right. Also, if you need prayer for anything or are wondering about any of the resources that we have here at City First, download the app. If you haven't done yet, check it out. Yes, that's right. All right, and the best thing that you can do is to keep coming back to church, okay? So hopefully we'll see you next week.

Hopefully we'll see you at First Wednesday, all right? Don't forget, mark your calendars. There's so many things happening and so we really hope to see you back here next week. Have a good one.