Keys to a Loving Community | Love Without Limits | Twin Rivers Church

I want to just dive right in and kind of fit right into our series on Love Without Limits. If you weren't here last week, Pastor Joe shared with us how do we get better at loving and specifically how do we receive the love of God in the middle of our regret. If you weren't here last week, go back and listen to that, an amazing message to kick off the series. And so today I want to talk about loving community. Now here's the big idea. The big idea is that we were not created to love God in isolation. We weren't created to love God in a vacuum. We were created to receive the love of God. But then once we receive the love of God, we are to live together in a community of believers that love God together. So by its very nature, love demands an object. In other words, you don't just love, you have to love something or you have to love someone. And the early church was built around this idea that God loved them deeply, that the love of God was what defined them. The love of God is what marked them. The love of God is what compelled them. And if we're going to walk in the purpose and the calling of God that he has for us, then that love has to mark us. Let's read a couple of scriptures together. In Acts chapter two, the Bible speaks about this early church. Here's our word. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the breaking of bread and fellowship and all the things in that early church. There were all kinds of signs and wonders done by the apostles. And the Bible says, and all the believers, they were together and they had all things in common. They weren't just living out their faith on their own. No, they were devoted to one another. They were committed to one another. They were walking together in community. Here's the way Hebrews chapter 10 says it. Let us consider ways that we can spur one another on. We can urge one another. We can encourage one another on to good works. That if we're going to walk out our connection in community, then we have to walk that out in a way where we can encourage one another and we meet together and we love each other. Listen to John chapter 17. Jesus is praying and here's what he prays. He says, my prayer is not just for these disciples, but my prayer is for the disciples that will believe because of them. That's us. My prayer is for everyone that will believe in their message, all of them, that they would be one. Father, as you and I are one, then the world will know that you sent me. In other words, when the church walks together in unity, people see the church and they say, Oh, this Jesus thing must be real. It's no wonder the enemy fights unity, right? It's no wonder that the enemy wants us divided. It's no wonder the enemy wants us to speak against one another. And Jesus says, here's

my prayer. Listen, you and I have the opportunity to answer the prayer of God, the prayer of Jesus. He says, God, my prayer is that they would be one because when they're one, when they're loving each other at that level, then people are going to peer into their community and they're going to say things like, I've never seen people forgive like this. I've never seen people love like this. I've never seen people who can get offended, but then they walk through that offense because the love of God, it's so broad in their heart. I've never seen people come together and unify around Christ like this. So here's what I want to do today. I want to take a look at the early church because the early church wasn't casual in their relationship with God. They weren't passive. They were passionate about their relationship. And so when you read the people of the early church, you see people who are passionate about their walk. And so today I want to take a look at two people, a married couple, Priscilla and Aquila. They are mentioned six times in the New Testament. Every time they're mentioned together, they're never mentioned separately. Every time they are ministering, every time they are serving and every time they are promoting unity. Let's look at Romans chapter 16. This is Paul. Let's read it together. Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my coworkers in Jesus. They risked their lives for me. Not only I, but the churches of the Gentiles are grateful for them. Greet also the church that meets in their house. All right. If you're taking notes, grab a piece of paper, write this down. Five points today. And we're going to look at their lives and draw some conclusions about what we're supposed to look like by looking at their lives. Here's the first point. Write it down. Healthy relationships. Healthy relationships begin with knowing who we are in Christ. Healthy relationships begin with knowing who we are in Christ. where he, Priscilla and Aquila, my coworkers, in Christ Jesus, that they weren't known by their theology, they weren't known by their gifting, they weren't known by their charisma, they were known by the fact that they were believers and that they were in Christ. Healthy relationships. If you want healthy relationships in your life, healthy relationships flow out of knowing

that you are deeply, deeply, deeply loved by Jesus. You're not performing for his love, you're not trying to get his love. His love comes to you before you ever do a thing and so many people are somehow trying to get God to love them. You're trying to get God to do something that he's already done. You're trying to get God to say, look at me, have I earned your love? Have I performed enough for your love? Do you love me, God, because I'm doing this? Listen, before you ever did a thing, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And that's our identity. That's who we are and if we don't get that right, every other relationship struggles to find foundation. My wife and I, we've been married like 30, if you're watching today online, I know exactly how long it is, I promise. 30 some years, like 33 or 34 or 32 or somewhere around there. I need a word from God today, come on, Lord. Listen. Long ago, we determined that we don't complete each other. Like we are complete in Jesus. And two beautifully complete people in Jesus can come together and love each other. Healthy relationships flow out of knowing that we are deeply loved by God.

If you wanna get your relationships right, you gotta begin by getting your identity right. You gotta start by knowing that you're loved by God. I love when Jesus is baptized, he's about to begin his ministry and it's about to start and the first thing that happens is he's baptized by John and John comes and he baptizes him. It's this promotion day and he goes to the wilderness, he's tempted, but he comes out, he starts all these amazing miracles. But the thing that happens in that moment, the heavens open up, dove descends and God's the Father speaks and here's what he says. This is my beloved son, I'm pleased with him. Listen to me. He has not done a thing. He hasn't healed anybody. He hasn't raised anyone from the dead. He hasn't preached in the synagogues. Before he ever does a thing, the Father says, it's my son, I'm pleased with him. I love him. Listen to me, maybe you walked in here today and you feel like God, God, do you even hear me? God, do you know where I'm at? God, do you love me? God, what can I do to get your attention? Listen to me, his eyes on you. But before you ever do a thing, he loves you. He's pleased with you.

He has a plan for you, he has a purpose for you. Here's the challenge. When we don't know who we are in Christ, we ask other relationships to tell us. And so when I don't understand my identity in Christ, what I do is I begin to lean into other relationships to tell me what my identity is and it's a big word right now, it's identity, identity, identity. Listen to me, we are supposed to find our identity in Jesus Christ. And when relationships become the source of your identity, here's what happens. They struggle under the pressure of trying to manage that. In other words, we're asking people to carry something for us that God said, wait a second, I've already carried. Let me say it this way. People make great spouses and great friends and great employees and great bosses, but they make terrible gods. And so oftentimes, we're looking to someone else to say, okay, fill this gap in my life, fill this void in my life. And God is saying, no, no, no, no. I'm the one that's supposed to fill that. They can't tell you who you are in me. You've gotta know that you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, right? And when you get that right,

then you begin to get the other relationships right. I've never done this here. I've never showed you a picture of my family. Let me show you my family here. This is, my son just got married to Ashlyn there in the middle. That's my youngest daughter on the left. My oldest daughter has adopted two. That's her. There's a fine looking man right behind her. He's looking good. Come on, somebody. Can I get an amen in the house? Lie to a brother. Come on, let's go. My wife, listen, I have no idea either. I'm with you on that. I have no clue how that happened, but it did. Thank you, Lord. My son there that got married, that's my second daughter. Her son is hiding, I suppose. They live in New Orleans. My wife's there now and right in the middle of Mardi Gras. God help them. And then my son-in-law at the end there, my other granddaughter. My son in the middle that got married. Great high school football player, played all the stuff, you know, all state, all everything, all region, like Chattanooga, all that stuff.

And had a lot of different offers. And throughout that whole journey, I kept telling him, son, your identity's not in your ability to play football, your identity's in Christ. He went to Georgia Southern, four years, great opportunity, four-year scholarship, all the good stuff that comes with that. And the whole time, I kept telling him, son, your identity's not that you're a football player. But because everybody says to him, what are you gonna be? What do you wanna be? You gotta do this, you gotta do this. And I told him this, I told him constantly, I said, there's coming a day where you'll never play another snap of football, but you're gonna be a father, and you're gonna be a dad, and you're gonna own a business, and you're gonna be a great friend, and you're gonna be a part of the kingdom of God, and you're gonna serve in the church. And if your identity is in what you do for someone else, you're gonna be so skewed on foundational principles about what it means to have a great relationship. Your identity is in Jesus, and now that season's over, but he's married, he's a man of God. Here's what I'm telling you, mom and dad, don't teach your children that their identity is in the sport they play, or the instrument they play, or the amount of friends they have, or the car they drive. Make sure your children know that their identity

is in Jesus Christ and in him alone, right? And we so create this challenge with our children trying to get them to be something that God says, be who I called you to be. People don't just wanna love, they want assurance. They wanna know, am I loved? Do I belong? Do I have purpose? And if those things aren't settled in God, what happens is we begin to try to settle those things in other relationships. And listen to me, listen to me, that's a dangerous place to be. When our daughters or our sons begin to look for answers to those questions in other relationships rather than in God, they become very, very vulnerable. It's the reason 1 John 4 addresses this when John writes that God showed his love to us by sending his own son into the world that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love, not that we loved him, but that he loved us. Listen to what he says, no one has ever seen God, but if we love each other, God lives in us and his love is brought to full expression. In other words, when we love each other, listen to me, look at me, we don't have to agree on everything to love each other. We don't have to have all the same answers to the questions to love each other.

If we can find unity around the cross and an empty tomb and an upper room, if we can find unity and we are one in Christ, then Jesus says, I'm pleased with that. And then John writes that the expression of God's love is brought to fullness when the body of Christ loves like that. God's love is not some cosmic divine reaction to our devotion. God's love is the cause of our devotion. In other words, let me say it this way, he pursued us before we ever pursued him. Christianity doesn't begin when I say yes to Jesus. Christianity begins when he says yes to us. And he says, I'm going to chase after you and I'm going to pursue you. So if you want your relationships to be healthy, make sure that your identity is in Jesus. Here's the second thing that Priscilla and Aquila would teach us, that our greatest commitments grow out of our most meaningful relationships. Our greatest commitments grow out of our most meaningful relationships. That somebody goes on and says, give my greetings to Priscilla and Aquila, my coworkers in the ministry of Christ. In fact, listen to what he says, they once risked their lives for me. I'm thankful for them and so are the Gentile churches. Give my greetings to Priscilla and Aquila,

they once risked their lives for me. You know what that says? That says to me that their relationship with the Apostle Paul was meaningful. It wasn't casual, it was meaningful. Like there was something to it. He wasn't thankful for their gifting, he wasn't thankful for how they serve. He wasn't saying I'm thankful that they've got great charisma I'm not thankful just that they open up their house. He's saying the thing I'm most thankful for is their relational loyalty. What would happen, what would happen if we become that committed to one another? What would happen if we became that committed to the body of Christ? That they risked their lives for me. I had a moment that I thought about this recently, about three weeks ago when it was very cold in the South, got down to about nine degrees where we live. And so we are at a lunch with our team one day and April's gonna run home for a few moments before she goes to church. I'm gonna go back to a store and grab some things. And so I get to the store, in the parking lot and my wife calls me and she said, hey, I just walked into the kitchen, I think we have a leak, a water leak. And I said, well, punch a hole in the sheet rock and just let the water drain and I'll come there

in a few moments, I'm gonna run to the store. She calls me back and she says, hey, I think you need to come on home because it looks like it's pretty bad. So I get in the car and I start running home and I get about halfway, I'm only seven minutes from the house, I get about halfway home and when I get halfway home, she calls me again and she says, hey, I think this is really bad, you need to rush home. And I'm like, I'm rushing now, so I speed home. The house we live in, there's five huge steps that lead up to the porch before you go in and so I jump out of the car, I'm in a hurry and I go running up the steps and as I run up the steps on the last step, my big toe on my right foot catches that last step and I fall. I mean, I'm trying to save it, but I'm falling the entire time. I run into the house, I jump out. Now, here's what happens, guys. If you ever fall, guys will know what I'm talking about. Like, I'm down, I hit the ground, I'm down and for every guy in the house, you know what I'm talking about, if that ever happens, you just pop up and you're like, yo, what's up? You know, it's like, you don't even, like, it's like, you can be dying and you're like, and if somebody asks you for help, you're like, no, bro, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good.

So I run into the house, didn't get hurt, I was fine, run downstairs and when I am running down the stairs, my wife yells from the kitchen, the whole ceiling just fell in the kitchen floor. I'm like, turn the water off, come upstairs and when I tell you, it is like the entire ceiling, sheetrock, it's just, it is a disaster area and I'm sitting there and in those moments, you don't know what to do and I'm overwhelmed. I'm like, what do we do? Water's off, what do we do? And so I'm trying to think and I look at April and I'm like, babe, I mean, I start rehearsing the last seven minutes of my life and I'm like, babe, I rushed home, I got here as quick as I could, I ran up the steps, I fell, my big toe caught the last step and I fell and I said to her, I said, babe, I risked my life for you and the family and the kids and God, I did all of this and then I'm like, we're just overwhelmed and my wife looks at me and she doesn't say, man, you're a hero. She doesn't say, you're the guy. She doesn't say, oh, I'm so glad I married you. She, you know, she looks at me and says, dude, I gotta check out the ring video and see if we got that on video. Listen, our ceiling is in our floor and she is thinking about going viral on TikTok. Like, you gotta be kidding me.

Priscilla and Aquila literally, genuinely risked their lives for Paul. That kind of courage and loyalty, it's not born out of contract. That's what we live. We live contractually. Marriage is not a contract. Raising your children's not a contract. I don't even believe the body of Christ should be a contract, not scripturally because contracts say, I'm gonna guard what's best for me. Covenant says, I'm gonna guard what's best for you. And so when I enter into a covenant with you, I'm saying, listen, I'm not just thinking about what's best for me. I'm not guarding my interest, I'm guarding your interest. You know what, we're one. We're brothers, we're sisters. We love each other deeply. It's a kind of courage that's born not out of contract but out of connection. In a marriage, in a friendship, in a church, it's not commitment out of duty, it's commitment out of devotion. And so they risked their lives. When a relationship is deep, commitment becomes resilient. Love makes sacrifice reasonable, not irrational but reasonable. And belonging makes endurance possible. When you know you're loved, when you know you're loved,

you don't use relationships for validation. In other words, listen, I'm an affirmation guy. If you want, my love language is affirmation. My wife, she's fluent. She speaks all five of them. Come on, somebody, anybody married. But I mean, give me words of affirmation. That's my love language. But when I'm looking for relationships to give me something that only Jesus can give me, then I am in a very vulnerable place relationally. They risked their lives for me and the gospel. It also tells me this, that Priscilla and Aquila, they weren't casual Christians. Like, they were committed. There are a lot of Christians in the world today that they're not rejecting God. They're just not pursuing Him. I love this idea of a year focusing on devoted because you know what that says to me? Here's what it says. We're not gonna do it. and be casual in our Christianity. We're not just going to go through the motions, we're gonna be intentional. Devoted means, listen, here's what it means, it means I'm all in. Like I'm committed. They have devoted themselves. There's one scripture that says that,

and I forget the exact, I think the firstborns of Achaia, I think of Achaia, it says they have devoted themselves to the ministry. One translation says they have addicted themselves to the ministry. Can't get enough of it. Gotta have more of it. Do anything to get it. That's what devotion is, I am all in. But casual Christianity, it's everywhere in the church. It's everywhere we look. And so many Christians, it's like I'm gonna add a little bit of Jesus to my life. I don't want him at the center of my life, I want him somewhere over here, but I've got a lot of other things going on, and I'm just gonna be casual in my relationship. Listen to me, you'll find that nowhere in the New Testament. Like nowhere in the New Testament will you find this idea of consumer or casual Christianity. Here's what you will find. You will find a Savior who says, if you're gonna follow me, you're gonna have to deny yourself and take up your cross, and you're gonna have to follow me, you're gonna have to give me everything. Give me everything. And listen, gang, if you have been walking with Christ for five years, two years, two months, and you don't look differently than you did five years ago, then you need to take a step back and ask yourself,

is my discipleship process everything that it ought to be, right? We excuse ourself because, well, that's just the way I'm wired. I know it's the way I'm wired, but that's why God wants to rewire me, right? The reason that we've gotta be born again is because we were born wrong the first time. In sin, brokenness, rejection, fear, anger, lust. And God says, listen, I'll rewire all that, but you gotta walk, you gotta walk close enough to your rabbi that you're covered in his dust and that you know his teachings. Let me hurry on. Here's the next point. Priscilla and Aquila would teach us that healthy community happens around intentional commitment. Intentional commitment. Again, Romans 16, Paul's writing. He said, also, give my greetings to the church that meets in their home. You know what Priscilla and Aquila were? They were life group leaders. The church that meets in their home, greet them. A person without community, like genuine community, is a vulnerable person. But a person with community has people that will stand with them and strengthen them and help them. For some of you in this room, the reason your journey with God has been such a struggle

is because you've never connected yourself closely to a group of people that can walk with you, because it's very possible to walk in here every Sunday, walk out every Sunday, but until you get to the point where you get close enough to someone to be able to look them in the eye and say, hey man, I'm really struggling in this area of my life. Real life change happens in that kind of community, because when we come to Jesus, we come to Jesus with issues. Like every single one of us have issues in our life. Listen to me, if you don't believe you have issues, come on somebody, that's your issue, right? All God's people got issues. Can I get a big amen in the house? Like we all got issues. And so how do we change? We join together in a redemptive community and we say, listen, I need change in my life. We need community. Here's why, because we just don't know. Like wives, when your husband says to you, I don't know, like they're not kidding. My wife, we had a kid, my wife was like, do you not know how to change a diaper? I'm like, no. Like we don't know how to handle our finances and so we need help. Like when we got married, like I didn't know how to be a good husband. I didn't know.

So you know what I did? I found people that I thought were great husbands and I said, teach me how to be a good husband. Like when we had children, like we had the one and you saw the picture of them, we thought we were so good at this children thing. We had three more and we wanted to bless the world with more lesser children and like every single one of them, it's like, I don't know. You get a brand new DVD player and you get an 800 page manual. You have a kid and you're like, here, congratulations. I'm like, wait a second. No, just hand me that because I don't know. I don't know. Like for instance, we didn't even, when we got pregnant the first time, like we didn't go to any classes. They were like, we need to go to Lamaze class. I'm like, what's Lamaze class? She said, you learn how to breathe. I'm like, you're breathing great. I don't understand. It's like, I mean, breathe in, breathe out. Like we're great at this breathing thing. We've been doing it a long. time. It's like, and so, you know what we did? Honest truth. We went to Blockbuster back when there was a Blockbuster and we rented a video on childbirth. One of the top five mistakes of my life was reading that video. No doubt. Yeah, I'm watching this video and I had two questions the entire time. I'm like, who does this? Who gets in front of the camera and does this on camera?

And then the second question was just as great as the first one. It's like, who rents this stuff? And I'm like, this guy right here. You know why? We don't know. Like, we just don't know. And so, we need community. Why? Because they can help us know. And so, you join together in meaningful community. One of the most important things that you will do is join together in community. And one of the most powerful things you'll do is join together and fight the devil together in community. Like, we're going to do something significant together. Every great thing that happens in the scripture, there are great men and there are great women, but it always somehow comes down to community. And the same is true in real life. Like, the most compelling stories are community stories. In February of every year, I begin to dig for stories just to get inspiration, specifically about our African American community. And I'm just digging. And I like to find stories that I've never read before. And I read a lot of different ones. And I found one this year about the Gee's Bend community in rural Alabama, a group of ladies in this impoverished community at that time, very isolated by segregation. And just began to read about this community and they needed, they needed, they couldn't stay warm at night. They didn't have the resources to stay warm. They didn't have some of the resources for heat in their homes. And so these ladies in this community out of a common mission and need said, you know, we'll start quilting together. And so they took old scraps of sack cloths and old work clothes and different scraps of fabric. And they sewed them together and they began to make these quilts, not so they could make art or something beautiful. That wasn't the purpose. It was actually to survive and stay warm at night. But something amazing happened when they came together in community with aunts and with grandmas and moms and daughters and friends. And these ladies came together. They began to make these quilts and these quilts become very popular. It became artwork. And now they're in museums all around the world. And they have been some of the most beautiful things. And high prices are demanded for them, 35, $45,000 because a group of people came around a community. Here's a picture of the ladies of Gee's Bend. And they come together. Listen, when you come together, you can always do more than you could ever do separately. And part of being a part of a life group, and for some of you, this is your time. It's not too late to dive into a life group. For some of you, it's time to have some conversations with your life group pastor and say, hey, I'd like to lead a life group in my home next semester. I'm telling you, it will make all the difference in the world. April and I started one in our home for young

adults about two years ago. We started with three people. We had dinner. Here's what I found out about young adults. If you feed them, they will come. Come on, somebody. We had a great meal. April cooked, and back when we had a kitchen, and April cooked a great meal. And then all three of them said, hey, let's come back next week. And they left. And April's like, do you believe that, man? They love community. I'm like, they don't love community. They love that lasagna you just cooked. They care less about community. Came back the next week, and April said to me, she said, if we're coming, we're going to study. So we started studying the Bible. This past Tuesday, we had 31 kids in our house. I mean, they're eating us out of house and home. I'm telling you. But here's the deal. You've got to get involved. You got to make a commitment. I'm going to get involved in community. Let me give you two more points very quickly today. Here's the next one. Priscilla and Aquila teach us that church exists to unite people around a shared mission. Like being a part of church is not just finding a place to worship. It is finding a community on mission. I love this church. I watch you often. I celebrate you from a distance. I'm so excited about our new campus. I mean, I don't feel like I'm a guest. I feel like I'm part of the family. Pastor Joe and Kayla are dear, dear friends of mine, but you are so precious. I want to commend you on your heart to do something significant in our community, if not now, when, if not us, who. Listen, this matters that we make a difference in the lives of people. Common mission. Here's another place in Acts chapter 18 that they're mentioned. Paul leaves Athens and went to Corinth. There, he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus who had recently come from Italy with his wife, Claudius. that ordered the Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them and because he was a tent maker, they were there together and they stayed and they worked together with him. They had common interest. What I have found about the mission of God is that when we serve God, that oftentimes proximity is more important than programming like just being around people. That's where your ministry is.

Like the people that you see, the people that you engage with, being led of the Holy Spirit. About a couple years ago, it's late, it's about eight o'clock we're gonna get something to eat at a bread company, a little sandwich place and we're gonna go home and eat and we drive up and there's a young lady but she appeared to be homeless but she wasn't very old. She looked like she was 30 years old and she's sitting there and I walk up and when I get out of the car, my wife looks at me because my wife's voice and the voice of God sound eerily similar and my wife looks at me and says to me, give her some money and I'm like, yes, yes, yes Lord, I hear you. And so I reach in my pocket, I have a $5 bill and so I'm gonna hand her $5 and when I got close to the lady, I felt the Holy Spirit say, just go in, bring her in and buy her something to eat. And so I said, hey, would you like to come in, let me get you something to eat and she said, are you serious? She was real excited and I said, sure, come on, I'll get something for me and my wife, come on in. So she comes in, I got mine, I said, all right, get what you want. She said, anything I want? I said, yeah, get anything you want, just get anything you want, get as much as you want.

Sister loaded up, I mean, I mean, loaded up. And I sensed the Holy Spirit say to me, tell her, get what you want for tomorrow. She doubled up, I mean, and so now I'm thinking, man, I wish I would've just listened to my wife and so it's like, I'm like, have you ever served God but didn't have a great attitude about it? Have you ever done that? It's like, ugh. And I sensed, I felt the Holy Spirit say, go get her a drink. I'm like, all right, got my cup, went and got her a drink and she came over and just, man, she walked over and I felt the Holy Spirit say, just give her a little hug. And so I looked at her and I said, ma'am, can I give you just a proper hug? And when I said that, she teared up and she said, sure. And I'm telling you, when I reached out my arm and I put my arm around from the side to give her a hug, man, I felt the Holy Spirit so real. And then I said, can I pray with you? When I was driving away that night, the Holy Spirit reminded me, he said, this is the most spiritual, godly, righteous thing you will do all week. And sometimes we think our big moments are ministry. It was a Saturday night. I was going to sit in my chair to prepare for three services, my big moment. And God reminded me that night

that sometimes your big moments are just in the moment where you are. Not always those things that everybody knows. Here's my question, what are you doing to leverage your life for something bigger than you that will outlive you? In the late 1800s, early 1900s, Kitty and Milton were newlyweds. They wanted to have a baby but they couldn't and they tried for a while to have a baby and couldn't have one. So they decided that they were gonna start a school for orphaned young boys. They begin that school and they started with 10 boys. They poured everything into them. Kitty, the wife, lived basically there and poured into these boys. Loved them like they were her own. After a moment, just a little bit of time, I think it was about five years, Kitty passed away and Milton was left to determine what he was gonna do with the school and he made a decision that he was gonna leverage everything that he had, time, talent, treasure to keep that school going. 100 years later, the Milton Hershey School exists for people who come and they learn and they grow, it's for children that are underprivileged, orphaned, don't have a lot. They find dignity, security, validity. All because Milton Hershey determined to leverage

his entire Hershey chocolate empire to create a trust to build something that would outlive him. Here's my question, what are you doing to make a difference on mission? Something that will outlive you. The fact that you are building a campus across town is saying, God, we wanna leverage everything we are because we have one shot at this of making a difference and reaching people for the kingdom and I wanna applaud you because God is, listen to me, I'm telling you, I speak. prophetically today, God is going to do more than you ever dreamed or imagined because of your commitment to love him, to serve, and to give. And some of you right now, you're struggling because God has told you to do a certain thing, to give a certain amount financially, to give a certain amount in your resources of your time and your talent, and you're wondering, God, do I do it? I'm telling you, this is word, yes, because what you're doing matters. Let me give you the last point, and I'm done. In Acts chapter 18, verses 25 and 26, they speak of Aquila and Priscilla, and they teach us that meaningful communities focus on things that matter, like things that really matter. It's in what it says, he, Apollos,

who's kind of, I guess, a young preacher, begins to speak boldly in the synagogue, and when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the ways of God more adequately. In other words, he was talented, he was gifted, but he was just fresh, new, a little raw, and they said, hey, come to our home, and let's learn, and let's grow. They invited, it was this constant theme with them in the home, pouring in. If you want to make a difference, unify around a meaningful mission. For my wife and I, the greatest moments that we've ever had in terms of covenant and together have always been when we fight together. Listen, I'm speaking, she's fighting with us right now. She's praying. She called me right before I left this morning. She said, I'm praying for you. I'm not praying for, praying for the good people of Twin Rivers. Why? Because we don't do this separately. We do this together. There are two big forces that we usually unite people. An enemy we're fighting, and a mission we're fighting for. And for us, in the kingdom of God, those are the same thing.

There's an enemy that has a strategy to divide and to steal, kill, and destroy, and there's a mission to push hell back and to see God do amazing things in our area, in our families, in our schools, in our homes, in our businesses. And so today, let's not be casual in our Christianity. Let's be passionate, mission-driven, God-loving, risk-taking people.