Know Your Allies

[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Well, good morning, would you help me welcome all of our campuses or worship me with us this morning? [APPLAUSE] So good to be with all of you. Thank you so much for participating in our 21 days of prayer. Today is day 21 of our 21 days of prayer. And if you've been following along, you've been praying for the exact same person for 21 days. It's been pretty special to go through that. We've been hearing stories of people who have gotten saved as a result of people praying and sharing the gospel. And I can tell you this, we've had hundreds of men in our prisons that have been saved during this 21 days of prayer and guaranteed that. [APPLAUSE]

As we continue to talk about campuses, you need to know this is a prayer request. The wardens here in our state, the deputy director for the board of prisons, they've all come and talked to us and said, you're doing such a great job. We want to see this nationally. And so now they're talking to us about North Dakota and Texas and Illinois and being a lead for churches to get in and do this, showing our messages from brave to prisoners all over the country. So be praying that the Lord will continue to open up doors as we do that. So today, I want to give you an update. I think the last update we had for our taking ground capital campaign was in April. But to give you an update, please welcome up Kelly Hacker, our elder chair from our stewarding elders. Friend of mine, great brother. Share with us a little of what's going on. OK, thank you, Pastor Jeff. Good morning, brave church. While like you, I am anxious to return across the street to our newly renovated Inkelwood building. But how blessed have we been to have this as our backup plan for the last several weeks with comfortable seats? So what a blessing. So as Patrick Jeff mentioned, my name is Kelly Hacker, and I'm one of the stewarding elders here at Brave Church. And as always, I just want to start with thanking you for your incredible faithfulness

and your incredible generosity to the Lord through Brave Church. As a stewarding elder, I have the privilege of witnessing your generosity each and every week, and it is absolutely humbling. So on behalf of Pastor Jeff, all the elders, the entire staff, thank you. So as many of you know, last fall, we launched our taking ground capital campaign. At that time, we committed to keeping you updated on the progress of the campaign. Since our last update in April, we've accomplished an awful lot, although you can't tangibly see much of it just yet, but you will very soon. As Jeff mentioned, a couple of weeks we'll be back across the street at the Inkelwood building, and I think you're just absolutely going to love it. So to help facilitate the update today, I'd like to draw your attention to a couple slides that we're going to show on the screen. So today, total commitments have remained fairly steady at about $17.3 million. So for those of you that are new to Brave Church, and I know I see a lot of new faces week in and week out, or perhaps those of you who haven't had an opportunity to participate yet and join in the campaign, I would just ask that you would prayerfully consider a pledge that we'd be meaningful to you and your family. It's never too late to join in this campaign, and it will never be too late to join in this campaign,

and we just loved you to be a part of what the Lord is doing here through Brave Church. I'm pleased to report that we have already received almost $7 million of those pledges. Yeah, it's amazing. And we've begun to put a significant amount of those funds to work through the end of July. We've invested roughly $5.4 million on a few of the initiatives that we identified and communicated to you last fall when we launched the campaign. Notably, we have now completed the classroom update and expansion over at Brave Academy. So now we can accommodate a significantly larger enrollment. I would highly encourage you to visit Brave Academy and prayerfully consider enrolling your kids in the Academy. at Brave Academy, and I know you wanna be a part of it. School starts tomorrow, but it's never too late to enroll your children, and it's never a bad time to enroll your children in a school like Brave Academy, so we're super excited to continue and invest behind Brave Academy. As mentioned, we're executing some fairly comprehensive renovations at our building in Englewood. One of the more significant things that we've already done is we've invested in a significant upgrade to our LED wall, and we've completely reconfigured the stage area, and that'll be very obvious to you when you return to the building in a couple of weeks. We've done that for two reasons. Number one, for those of you who are familiar

with the North building at Englewood, this will significantly enhance the viewing experience at Brave, regardless of where you're sitting in the sanctuary, and then secondly, and this is really important. This will also enable us to broadcast Jeff back much more effectively when he preaches from Westminster and from our other campus locations from time to time. So again, I think you're gonna really notice a pretty significant difference. We've already completed the installation of our upgraded LED wall in Westminster, and so our brothers and sisters in Westminster are already enjoying the benefits of that investment. And of course, as we communicated when we launched the campaign, we're gonna continue to pay down our debt and support behind our expansion of our prison campuses. And as Jeff mentioned here on a routine basis, we're really excited about how that's going, and I would say thus far, we've progressed that much further than we thought we would at this point. So during the remainder of 2026, we will remain focused on several key kingdom building initiatives that we highlighted last year. Again, the big one here, at least in the short term, is the renovations at Englewood. I already mentioned to you the upgraded LED wall, the reconfigured stage area. We're really touching most of the building there

in some way, most of it cosmetic, but it's significant cosmetics. Repainting everywhere, recarpening in most every location. You're gonna see in those of you who spend any time in the kids area with the classrooms, significant improvements, and of course, yes, the replacement of all the seats. (audience applauds) Nothing's more likely to get a plaza line than talking about replacing the seats over at Englewood. So we're also in the process of some modest upgrades within the building at Westminster, but more importantly, our significant investments up in Westminster are focused on the parking lot. So in a couple of weeks, we'll start on a project to resurface and re-stripe the existing parking lot, and those spend any time at Westminster, of course, our folks at Worship at Westminster every week. No, that's been badly needed for a long time. We're gonna get that started right away and get that finished this fall. It's also an important project that we expand the parking capacity at Westminster. We'd hope to get that started this fall, but we've had some delays in our permitting, surprise, surprise, but we'll get that ironed out soon. We'll probably shift that work to the first part of next year once we get through the winter. But it's really important that we expand

our parking capacity in Westminster. Our seating capacity far exceeds the ability of our parking lot to support it. And so that's something we need to get done. I know those of you in Inglewood are familiar with that, but it's a particularly acute problem at Westminster, so we're committed to solving that, and we will do that probably sometime before the first half of next year is over. And then, as we mentioned in the campaign, you're gonna be committed to pay down the debt that we have. It's very manageable level of debt, always good to pay down debt. But importantly, what that does is that will strengthen our balance sheet, and that will give us the additional capacity and capability to expand campuses further as opportunities arise. I wanna be very clear on this point. I think Jeff's been pretty clear in the past, but I wanna be very clear. We remain committed to expanding our campus presence and also expanding our brave church campuses throughout the greater Denver area. In particular, our priority is launching a campus in South Denver. So continue to pray that the Lord would open doors for us, that we could find a spot in the South Denver where we could launch that site, and we're gonna remain opportunistic

and be able to do that whenever we possibly can. Finally, while it's a relatively modest investment, I wanted to just mention the podcast studio build out over here in Englewood, really for this reason. The elders, Pastor Jeff, we've been praying for a long time as to how we can more effectively and efficiently reach people around the world with the truth of the gospel. But I'm gonna ask Pastor Jeff to come over and talk for a minute about how we're making a little bit of a strategic shift and how we're going about achieving that. - Thanks, Kelly. So we've been talking for a couple of years. As you know, we do radio here in Denver that's gonna continue, that's been a huge deal for us for people to hear messages before they come. Several of you are here because you heard us on the radio before you ever even came and attended Brave and that's been great. But what we've noticed is as we expanded our radio presence across the country, the people that were talking to us and helping us show us in every market we're in pretty much, there's been significant growth and leadership on the time that we're there. The challenge has been for us, it's very difficult to find out who's listening, how often they're listening, how we connect with our listeners, how we can actually make disciples.

And so that coupled with the fact that most people consume content on their phone or on their computers, not based upon the time that they can listen to a radio program. And so for us nationally, we're dialing that back in and instead of spending the resources going out, we're gonna use them to do more digital platforms. So we're on pray.com and some other digital platforms and what we're finding with that is, not only are we getting thousands of email addresses, we're able to communicate with those people, help build them up, help them find local churches and do all of that. So that's a pretty significant shift that we've done. Secondly, I would tell you this, what happened was, I've been in the process of writing a book, it's actually called Brave, you'll like it. (audience laughs) And it's subtitled, "Wake Up, Be Courageous, Fight to the Finish." So a lot of our DNA and what that's all about. But in writing that book, one thing that was super clear to me and we began talking about is that, I love the local church, I'm for the local church. We've always had kind of a side ministry for radio that evolved into Pastor Jeff Ministries. But even when I got done, I'm like, I don't wanna do things outside the church, I wanna use it to build the church. Just like the school's building the next generation of the church, we wanna build the men,

the mission and the message of the church. So what we're doing with Pastor Jeff Ministries is we're bringing everything under the local church. So we'll have the title of Brave Media, but Brave Media will be an extension of Brave Church. So that's kind of all the new stuff that we have there and we're super excited. We believe we're gonna be able to reach more people, disciple more people and stay connected with more people that way. - Yeah. - Great. - Thanks, Pastor Jeff. Yeah, can we just give it up for Pastor Jeff for a second? (audience applauds) Thank you. So as you can see, the investments that we've made so far in the campaign have been largely focused in on enhancing the worship experience in God's house, both in Inglewood and in Westminster. And those are things that really need to be done. So we're really happy to get those behind us. Now as we look forward, our emphasis will be on campus expansion and on Brave Media, ways that we can reach, again, our primary goal. Our real heart is reaching more people with the truth of the gospel around the world. That's what campus expansion's about. That's what our expansion through Brave Media is about. So I hope you'll join us in this effort. I'll be out in the lobby after service

and of course, feel free to reach out to our staff, our elders, of course myself at any time if you have any questions. And of course, we have a website takingground.net if you'd just like to get more information that way. So thanks again for your time and attention today and I'll turn it back to Jeff. - Could you give Kelly some appreciation? Thank you, Bill. (audience applauds) - Kelly and I have known each other for years. We've been in cod race together with his family and you're in really good hands with all of our stewarding elders. Just wanna let you know all of our elders in general. What I wasn't clear from the beginning is, just so you know, if you're here in Inglewood next week, by God's grace is our last week in this building before we move back. So we're planning on moving back September 13th with that. I mean, I always challenge the men to be the leaders in our church because that's what we're called to be spiritually. So we have a warrior call. You're familiar with the warrior summit. We do it every February, this year's February 28th, 2027, but I'm calling all the men in our church. The day before we launch 9 to 11 in the morning, I'd love you to come gather at our north building here in Inglewood to pray over the building,

to seek God's face, to ask him to use that, to expand the propagation of the gospel. So every guy, if you're in high school, your middle school, you wanna come pray with us, please do. Bring your sons, bring your uncles, bring all the men, let's gather, let's worship the Lord and let's be ready for this launch. Amen? With that, who's ready to hear the word preached? All right. Would you pray with me? Father in heaven, we do give you praise, glory and honor for who you are, Lord, and in the time that we have today, we just wanna celebrate you. Lord, thank you for this 21 days of prayer. Thank you for a church that seeks your face. Thank you for all of the scores of people who have come to know Christ as a result of people praying and sharing the gospel. Lord, you love them, and Lord, even the people that we're praying for who are having not yet repented and trusted in you by faith, we pray you continue to go after them, we'll continue to pray for them, believing great things in the future. Lord, thanks for bringing us in your house today. Thanks for letting us celebrate your great name of what you're building in and through this church. May you be highly and exalted in our midst.

And Lord, we thank you for the proclamation of your word because we as a people believe that every time your word is faithfully and accurately proclaimed that it is you who are speaking. So our prayer this morning is speak Lord for we are ready to hear. And so now for everyone here who desires to hear the Lord Jesus Christ speak directly to you who will believe what He tells you and who will by faith put into practice what He shows you, will you agree with me very loudly this morning by saying the word amen. Amen. You cannot live the Christian life on your own. I'll say it again so you hear it from the beginning and you'll hear it all the way through. You cannot live the Christian life on your own. When God saved you, He saved you and He placed you into the body of Christ. You're part of the body of Christ. You can't be isolated and be the fullness of everything God's called you to be. You cannot live the Christian life on your own. And yet for so many of us, especially in this series where we talk about no mercy and being merciless with our sin and where we get the power and how we get the escape route through temptation and how we find the ability to forgive others and all the things we've been talking about,

we have a tendency to think I need to work on this. I need to do this. If it's gonna be, it's up to me. But God puts us in a body so that we can do it together. And it's important that you understand that because in our culture and from the time that you're young, you're trained that independence is the most important thing. You watch any infomercial and they'll tell you if you can get to a place where you don't need anybody else financially and you don't need anybody else with your health and you don't need anybody else for any reason, you've really arrived. Actually you've just exposed yourself. That's all that you've done. The reality is you need other people in your life and even the way that the Bible reads, if you read it as it's stated, it's not just a book written to you, it's written to the body, especially in the New Testament. I mean Ephesians 2.89 says, "For it is by grace, you've been saved through faith, it's not your own doing, it's a gift of God, so no one should boast." But the next verse says what? For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared for us in advance that we may walk in them. Yes, it's true that as a believer,

you're part of God's masterpiece, but it's we collectively that are the masterpiece. It's us together that does this. And so in a series like this, when you hear about here's the sin of my life and I don't want that sin anymore and I wanna walk it outright and here's the power that I need and all these different things, we've talked about how you need to know about all those. Today I wanna talk to you about know your allies, know your allies, who are the people in your life that you have, that you can walk the Christian life with. If you don't have that, you cannot be the fullness of what God wants you to be and here's the truth. God's placed you in His body, the body of Christ. God's put you into a local church so that you can find genuine relationships where you can grow and fulfill everything that God has for your life. And I'll tell you this one more time and I'll tell you throughout the message, you cannot live the Christian life on your own. It's not simply enough for you to take notes and go work on you. You need other people in your life to process with, to grow with, to develop with in order for you to become what God wants you to be. So today I'm gonna talk to you about how it is you can know your allies

'cause here's the truth, if you're a born again believer, God wants you to be in genuine relationships with other people. I mean, the Bible makes clear. We're talking about two main relationships. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and what? Love your neighbor as yourself. So one vertical relationship, a plurality of horizontal relationships, that's what we're called to do. And it's important that we understand that. So today I wanna give you five truths from God's word that will help you know who your allies are and what you can do to have those in your life. And to do that today, we're gonna be in Exodus 17, Exodus chapter 17, starting in verse eight. And I'm gonna tell you a familiar story from the Bible and we'll use that to hear from the Lord as to what he would like us to do so that we can live with the people that he wants us to live with to accomplish what he wants us to do. So here's the word of the Lord this morning. In Exodus chapter 17, verses eight, nine, and 10 as it starts, it says, "Then a mallec came and fought against Israel at Refidim." So Moses said to Joshua, "Choose men for us and go out and fight against a mallec. Tomorrow I will station myself on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand." Joshua did as Moses told him and fought against a mallec

and Moses, Aaron, and her went up to the top of the hill. So this is after the Red Seas parted, this is after Egypt has been destroyed, this is on their way to Mount Sinai. And here's what goes on, the mallecites come The Amalekites come and they're waging war against them. And so here's what happens. Moses tells Joshua, "You choose men and you guys go fight. We're going to go up on the hill. I'm going to raise my staff in my hand." And you remember the staff is not just a piece of wood. It's a reminder of how God has empowered all of Moses because you remember by the burning bush he set it down and then he picked it back up. And when he did, after it became a snake, he picked it back up and had power. And he used that for all of the different plagues that he brought to Egypt. He held it out to part the Red Sea. Now he says, "You guys go fight. I'm going to go up on the mountain. I will hold my staff above my hands and I'll bring Aaron and her with me." Aaron was Moses' brother. Her we don't know exactly who he was. Some scholars say he may have been married to Moses' sister Miriam. We don't know exactly. But he was certainly a close confidant friend of Moses here. So that's what he's doing. He's delegating what's going on. Some are going to go fight. Some are going to go pray. Everybody knows their role and here's what they're going to do. Here's what I want you to see.

When it comes to knowing your allies, you need to assemble with your allies. You need to assemble with your allies. We assemble with God's people here every weekend in the church, but that's not enough. There needs to be time where you have some people in your life who genuinely know you and who you genuinely know. Because here's the reality. For many of us in church, we think, "I'm fine. I don't really need that. It's kind of scary. I don't know that I want to meet too many people at church. You know what church people are like. They tend to be judgy. They tend to put you down. So I really don't know that I need that. Here's a challenge to that. How many of you in the last year would say, like raise your hand if in the last year nothing's gone wrong in your life? It's been just as you planned, and there's never been any stress. Just keep your hands up so we can all see you because we'd like to meet you." The reality is how many would say there's been at least one thing in the last year that's been somewhat stressful to me that's been concerning. If you're not raising your hand, you're just not being truthful. The reality is all of us have those things. The best planning and the best efforts. Here's what happens. If you're in a church over 50 people, it's impossible for the pastor to know and care for you. If you're in a church of more than 12 people, it's impossible for the pastor to truly know you and care for you. So when you're in a larger church, the way things get set up is so you can be in community.

Some churches call them small groups. We call them cadres here, but the purpose of that is that we can truly get to know each other where you know other people and other people truly know you so that you have people that you can share real life stuff with who are there for you because inevitably here's what happens. I don't need that. I don't need that. Oh my goodness. We're pregnant. I didn't realize that was going to happen or hey, I'm getting married. I wish somebody could speak into my life about that or hey, I just lost my job and I'm going through a financial crisis or I didn't realize I was going to have this health problem. I didn't know my spouse was going to die. I wasn't prepared for all this. What we find is that people that are in community, in cadres that have people that love them and know them are able to endure a lot more than people who don't because what tends to happen is we invite you, hey, come to Pathways. We love to show you how you can get in community. We love to show you how you can get in a cadre or lead one, however God leads you so that you can have this. Some people are like, I don't need that, I don't need that, but then when it hits the fan or life happens, they tend to call the church and with our limited staff expect our church to be able to drop everything without knowing who they are and tend to every single knee that they have, which is absolutely impossible. So what we've seen in our cadres many times is people that are in a cadre, somebody that gets sick and goes to the hospital before one of our pastors even arrives. There's a whole group of people around them praying for them, setting up meal trains, doing all this stuff. Why? Because they had built relationships long before those things happened.

And so you have to assemble the allies that you need before the problem comes up. If the Amalekites would have come and fought and Joshua and Moses and Aaron and her were not friends, didn't know each other, didn't know what each other's roles were, then the Amalekites would have come in and destroyed them. But when that came and the enemy came and the battle was there, we know how to handle this, you guys do this, we'll do this, here's what we'll handle, God is with us and we'll be fine. And so it's important for us and if you think about your life, think about the crises you've been through, the ones that you've been able to endure the best, you've had other people around you who have helped you and you need that. I mean Ecclesiastes tells us that I have this engraved in my wedding ring that two are better than one. You know, if one falls down, the other can help them up, a quarter of three strands is not easily broken, right? You need other people and you need the Lord in those relationships to be able to do what God wants you to do. And here's the reality, Proverbs 18 1 says, "He who separates himself seeks his own desires Isolation is not a gift. Isolation is exposure. And you need to be aware of that. Even as we talk, and a lot of times we'll use this verse in men's conferences, Proverbs 27, 17, is iron sharpens iron. So one man sharpens another. Have you ever seen an iron sharpens iron? It's not, ah, isn't that fun? I mean, there's a cutting to it. There's difficulty to it. And one of the reasons that people don't like to be in a cadre or a small group is because there's conflict that comes.

Can I just tell you something? Every great relationship endures conflict. If you don't have conflict in a relationship, you don't have a good relationship. If every time conflict comes, you press it down, like we're not gonna deal with this. I'm just gonna keep everything happy. That's not a healthy relationship. That's one that has a time bomb ticking that's gonna explode at some point. Healthy marriages have conflict, and then you learn how to get through the conflict. Healthy parent-child relationships have conflict. You learn to get through the conflict. Healthy churches with cadres have conflict. So when you get in there, like, I don't know if these people agree with me. They don't. On purpose, God doesn't want them to. So that iron can sharpen iron. And it's not that your way has to be right or their way has to be right, but sometimes it's massaged and you become sharper in what you do. But you've gotta have people in your life because when things strike, it's too late. When the battle shows itself, it's too late. I mean, think about this. Even an experienced pilot, I think about a pilot, one of the best pilots in the world, he doesn't fly the plane alone.

He doesn't tell his co-pilot, "I don't need you." He doesn't tell the crew, "Get out of here." He doesn't tell the control tower, "Shut up, I got this. I'm a good pilot." A good pilot relies on all the other positions because even though he's flying the plane or she's flying the plane, they know that I need my co-pilot in case something happens. I need somebody else to see navigational. We gotta talk to the tower who's telling us things that we can't see before we take off our land 'cause I need those other people in my life for me to be strong in doing what I'm doing. Or even if you see a veteran surgeon that's operating on someone, they usually have an entire medical team around them before they do the operation. Somebody's doing the anesthesia. Somebody's making sure all the bandages are there. Somebody's making sure they have the right instrument. Somebody's doing, there's a whole team that comes together. And that's what the body of Christ looks like. So here's my question to you, personally to you. Just think about these rhetorically. Who knows what you're fighting right now? Who in your life knows what your battles are? I mean, really knows you. Here's another question. Who has permission to ask you difficult questions or make difficult statements to you?

Who in your life can come up and tell you? Like, hey, I see how you are as a father, but you're neglecting this child here and they need more of your attention and you seem blind to that like you're too concerned with these things over here. Who can say that to you? Who would you listen to if they did? Who can say to you, hey, I look at your marriage and your wife's normally happy, but I know she's not happy right now and I wanna tell you why she's not happy right now. You don't preference her enough. I can tell when we're out with you. Who can speak into your life like that? I have people that can speak into my life like that. I don't like those people all the time. (audience laughing) Just so you know. But I know that I need those people in my life. Nobody wants that, nobody wants correction, nobody wants accountability, but deep down we do. And do you have people in your life who will do that to you? Do you have people in your life that knows where your most vulnerable to temptation? Do you have people in your life that can see that you're gonna fall before you get there that you'll listen to, right? Who would recognize that things aren't going well before you fall, right?

That's what God wants. And you can't fight beside people who don't even know what your batter really is. So part of being part of a cadre is not just so that you know other people, it's so other people can truly know you. And to be truly known by a few people, that can be really scary. It can be scary in a marriage with just one person, it can be scary within a family, it can be certainly scary outside of that. I get that, but God designed you for relationships. And God wants you to have other people in your life that stand with you. And God wants you to be a person that's gonna stand with other people when they're going through it because we might think, well, that's gonna be really hard 'cause I'm like responsible for them. But you have to realize when you're building someone else up and you're doing something for somebody else, guess whose faith grows? Yours does. And God wants us to be in seasons where sometimes we're the ones needing help and sometimes we're the ones that are helping others. So here's why I encourage you, assemble with your allies. If you don't know who they are, let us help you find some. Let us help you find them.

And by the way, can I just say this? Joining a cadre is not a, it's not marriage. (audience laughing) You can change. (audience laughing) You can say, you know what? This one wasn't as good for me. I'd like to be in this one, these people I tend. Okay, cool, that's fine. I get all that, but find somebody that you know and somebody that really knows you. Second, and these second and third ones pair together and I would say this, this is hard for everybody, but these two are especially hard for men. Here's the first one, accept that you need help. Accept the fact that you need help. That's very difficult to say in our culture. Notice this, in verse 11 in the first part of 12. So it came about when Moses held his hand up that Israel prevailed and when he let his hand down, a mallet prevailed. So here's how it's working. God told him what to do, they're gonna go up to the mountain. As long as Moses holds the staff up, I mean that's his only responsibility. Joshua's gotta go battle with all of his friends. All he's gotta do is hold it up. As long as he holds it up, Israel's dominating. When his hand comes down, a mallet starts winning.

So Moses' responsibility says, that's it. I just gotta hold the staff up above my head. But notice the first part of verse 12. But Moses' hands were heavy. It doesn't say Moses admitted that his hands were heavy. It doesn't say he said I need help, it's obvious that it was difficult for him. How many, if you brought a Bible today, if you're able just to hold it above your head, could you just do that for me real quick? Okay. And could you just hold it like that for the rest of the service? (congregation laughing) Right. Read verse 12, they did it 'til sunset. That's 733 here in Denver. So if you're gonna do it, come up here 'til 730. (congregation laughing) But the point is, I mean, we can do it, but at the end of the day, we realize the longer we do it, the harder that it is. If you follow God's will for your life, the longer that you do it, the harder it is. And you may be able to accomplish a lot in life, but you cannot accomplish what God wants in your life to do in and through you, without other people to do it with. Amen? And so Moses' arms are tired. So he's gotta accept the faith place that he needs help.

And the Bible tells us that we're gonna get tired. I mean, Isaiah 40, verses 30 and 31, says though youths grow weary and tired and vigorous young men stumble badly, yet those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles that will run and not get tired. They will walk and not become weary, right? The Bible tells us in Galatians 6'9. Do not lose heart when doing good. Why would it say that if we're not gonna lose heart? Why would it say that if we're not gonna get weary? Even the night that Jesus was betrayed when he was with his apostles in the Garden of Gethsemane who was asking him to stay awake while he prayed and they couldn't do it. They kept falling asleep. And here's what he said. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. When we're talking about sin in your life, most of us leave the church that are born again. Like, I don't wanna sin anymore, man. I wanna do it this week. I'm gonna get there. I'm gonna live it out. Spirits willing, flesh is weak. You can't do it. And so we've talked about the power you need and the Holy Spirit. We've talked about ways to avoid temptation.

We talked about how to forgive others and all those different things. But here's what I'm telling you. You also need other people to do it with, people that will build you and encourage you and walk with you and understand you and care about you and want to see the good in your life realized. And the fact is every single one of us wears a sign that says, "Please encourage me." We don't wear it outwardly, but it's right there on all of us. And there's nobody in here today that would say, "You know what? I've had enough encouragement." (congregation laughing) Please give that to somebody else. Everybody just has been so great all the time. Everything I do, people tell me is awesome. There's not one of us. Every single one of us needs to be encouraged and built up. So accept the fact that you need help. I mean, you think about it. Even elite marathon runners hit a wall that they have to push through. There's no way on your own you have enough strength to accomplish all that God wants you to do. So assemble your allies, accept that you need help. And then third, do this. Once you can accept that you need help, this is really hard for some people to do,

but allow your allies to support you. Allow your allies to support you. Allow people to actually help you. 'Cause there's some of us like, I know I'm struggling with this, but I got it. Stay away, I can fix it. Who are you to tell me what? No, if you need help, then let people help you. Like there's certain ones sometimes they need meals brought. No, I don't need any meals, we'll figure it out. Let's pride. If you can't allow other people to serve you, you're a prideful person. And if you're not willing to serve someone else, you're a prideful person, right? I mean, even the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. So allow your allies to support you. put it under him and he sat on it. And Aaron and her supported his hands one on one side and one on the other. Moses never asked for their help. Moses didn't say, "I'm getting weary. Can you guys do something here?" No, they were noticing. He was holding it up. He's probably switching hands. He's probably doing this. He's getting tired. They see all this. And we've got to help him. So they just go get a stone and say, "Hey, Moses, sit on this. That will relax it. And by the way, I'll take this arm and her will take this arm. We'll hold it up for you." Because the key is that you're doing the work, but we're going to make sure that you're doing the work that God wants you to do. And our job is to help you accomplish it. Amen? So Moses doesn't say, "Get away. I'm Moses. I'm God's anointed. Who are you?" Jokers. He doesn't do that. Because what's Moses' goal? He wants to see God do what he's going to do through the battle that's taking place and he knows he needs help to get it done. There is nobody in the body of Christ that can accomplish what God

wants you to accomplish without other people helping you and without you helping other people. It will not work. You need people in your life and they need you in their life. So allow your allies to support you. I mean, think of all the one in others in the Bible. I mean, there's over 50 of them. We're stronger together when we do the one in others. I mean, think about some of them. I'll just list a few. How about pray for one another? Are we stronger when people are praying for us? Are we stronger when we're praying and interceding for other people? I can tell you that we are. One of the most special things I ever hear from people is, "Pastor Jeff, me and my family pray for you and your family regularly." And I'll say this to you, if you ever said to me, "That's the greatest gift you could give my family." Thank you very much. We pray for one another. How about when we love one another? Love's not a feeling like I feel like loving you. Love is, I'm choosing to preference you. There's power when you do that for another and there's power when another does that for you. Or how about comfort one another? When you're going through a hard time, when life gave you something that is wounding and it's a sting and somebody comes alongside and they bring comfort, or you're able to do that for somebody else when you see it in their life? Or how about encourage one another? We've already talked about what you haven't had too much encouragement today. Encourage one another. When somebody encourages you or you look to encourage others, it builds you up. Or how about this one? Bear one another's burdens. Bear one another's burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ. What does that mean? It means when somebody is going through it, I want to see you get there. So I'm willing to walk with you until we see that realized so long as you're willing to walk with God. We'll do this thing together. You don't have to walk alone. You don't need to be embarrassed. You don't need to realize I'm just here for you. I'm going to encourage you. I'm going to build you up. I'm going to carry your burden with you. And then last week we talked about this one, forgive one another. Forgive one another. Let it go. Sometimes you need other people in your life to say it's okay. You need to forgive them. Jesus wants you to forgive them. And by letting it go, you're not saying it was okay. But I'll be here for you because I know you don't feel like it. But let's just trust God to do that. Amen? I mean, we need people in our life that can do that for us. And we need to be able to do that for other people while we're doing it. Think about this. If you're a weight lifter, you know, like

a real weight lifter, not like me anymore, but like a real weight lifter, and you're going to pump iron, you're going to bench press, and you're going to max out on your bench press, usually what you'll do is you'll find somebody else in the gym or your partner that's with you and say, "Hey, will you spot me?" And what you're saying is there's a possibility here that when I'm pushing to be my best, I may not make it. I'm going to try to make it. But if I don't make it, I could really use you to be here to make sure this weight doesn't crush me. And nobody looks at that and says, "What a wuss." You know, everybody looks and says, "That's what you do. How come we can't do that in the Christian life? This is what God's calling me to. This is what I'm going for, but I kind of need you in my life to be a spotter because I may not be able to do what He's calling me to do. And if I can't, could you be there to help support some of the weight?" That's what a cadre is, amen? And that's what we need in each other's lives. And you might say, "Well, how do I find one of those?" Well, go to pathways. We'll help you find some. We know people in the church. We can help associate you. Or if you say, "I just want to lead one." Some of you that have been in one have been a Christian long enough that you know enough, you can actually lead one. And it's okay. But I wouldn't know how to do it. That's because you don't have to do it alone. You can do it with other people. And on the first cadre meeting, you can say, "This is the first time I've ever done it, so I'm going to need y'all's help." People will appreciate that, right? And so at the end of the day, you need to know that you need to have other people around you that can I was playing football, and things didn't work out the way I thought, but I had already been part of a small group, I had already been part of a cadre, one of my professors at the University of Illinois mentioned that he was a Christian, which I'd never heard anybody say publicly, and then went on to talk about in our speech communication department how we didn't need to worry about engineers and accountants, and he told us how much money he made a day to consult, which was more money than some people made in an entire year, and I remember thinking, "I can live off that. I got to meet this guy." So the first thing I said was, "How do I get to where you are? How can I make that kind of money?"

Oh, by the way, it was nice that you mentioned you were a Christian, and he said, "Well, are you a Christian?" And I began to talk, and I just kept talking, and I began to share how I was trying to walk it out, but I didn't know how to walk it out, and if you ever shared too much in a conversation, that was that day, and I knew I'd shared too much because I finally shut myself up. Like, "Why did you do this?" I realized he had two master's degrees in counseling and a doctorate, and so I was just pouring out my guts to this guy, and I knew because I've been in church long enough in my life, I'm about ready to get judged. Like now he's going to be like, "How can you call yourself a Christian and live like that?" And that's what I was expecting, and I remember he leaned back in his chair and kind of looked at me and was like, "Well, you know, Jeff, I guess if you don't enjoy sinning, you just haven't found the right sins to sin yet." And I was like, "What?" because I knew he wasn't affirming my sin, but I had never experienced that measure of grace that it's like, "I see you're struggling, and I'm okay with it, and I can help you." And I remember saying, "Hey, how do I get that?" And how can he's like, "Would you ever be interested in being in the Bible?" And I said, "Yeah, would." He goes, "Do you have any other friends that are kind of like you?" I'm like, "Tons of them." And so he started facilitating the Bible study. It went on for 12 years. I was part of it the first three years. The third year, I lived 90 miles away because I had moved off campus and moved back home, and I would drive 90 miles each way every Monday night just to be part of that two-hour group. I never missed because I had that.

And when things went south for me, playing football, which wasn't the biggest deal, but it wasn't my life because God was showing me my identity was placed in the wrong place, and I was weeping. Two weeks in a row, I went to that group, and for the hour and a half, two hours that we had in that study, all they did was listen to me cry and moan and wail and do all this stuff. And after two weeks of doing that, it kind of cathartic, it felt better, moved on. So what changed was I trusted these guys at a level I'd never trusted anybody else, and we were forged because they were doing something for me that I was willing to do for them when it was happening for them. That's what we miss. That's what we need. That's what you're yearning for. So when you leave church and you're making all your commitment plans, and here's what I'm going to do, and I'm going to make sure I get all this stuff done, who are you doing it with? Who are you building this with? And here's why you need other people in your life for more than encouragement. Here's why you need it. You need their eyes in your life because sin blinds you. Sin blinds you. Sin blinds me. I mean, I think, like you think, that the way that I see the world is perfectly clear. If only everybody could see it the way I see it. Right? But when you get around other people, maybe some of the things that you see clear aren't as clear because there's things in your life that you need to see. You need their words because sin lies to you. And even when you read God's Word, God's Word is the word we need to be in the most. You need Him, but with somebody that understands God's Word and can speak God's Word into

your life, there's power in them. You need their prayers because if you're doing what God's wanting in your life, the battle will exhaust you. There'll be times you don't want to continue on. And you need their hands because eventually whatever the Lord's calling you to, the Lord's going to be too heavy for you to do it alone. If God said, "Go do this," and you can go do it all by yourself and you don't need anybody else to get it done, it's not the call of God on your life. God always calls you to something where you need other people. And I have this in my life. And I wouldn't do what I'm doing if I didn't have this in my life. If I didn't have people that I could call on the phone and say, "Hey, this is kind of a pit in my stomach. I need you to get this out. I need to talk to somebody. I need to share this." Would you listen to me and just speak into my life? If I didn't have people like that, I wouldn't do what I'm doing here because I'd be a fake in a charlatan. I got to have other people in my life that know me that I know and I know I could speak the same way into their life. And you need it too. Amen? So allow other people to support you. I would just finally close this point by saying other people can't help carrying what your pride and sits upon hiding. Let me give you one more verse about James 5, 16, "Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you might be healed." And those who it doesn't say, it doesn't say talk about your weaknesses. Those who it doesn't say, talk about how you're going to change those weaknesses.

It says, "Confess your sins." Like, "This is the sin. This is what I did wrong." I'm telling another brother or sister in Christ, "That's a sin in my life and I hate it." But you need to know, I just want to say it out loud that that's a sin in my life. You have people in your life you can do that with because it's important that you do. And not people are going to judge you like, "Are you kidding me?" the fact that you're admitting that, God can heal that. Amen? Do you have people in your life that are willing to do that? 'Cause you need it, and so do I. And then once you have that, then you can do this final point. You can advance through the battle. You can advance through the battle. Notice what happens. As they did all this, thus his hands were steady until the sun set. So how long did they do this with him? All day long, until the battle was through, until the battle was over, they continued to do this. And then it says, so Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and the people by the edge of his sword. So listen, who won the battle? Israel, who is the one leading it? Joshua, but who was the one giving him the victory? God, and why? Because they did what God wanted to do, and they were all supporting one another,

and soldiers on the field were supporting one another, and Aaron and her were supporting Moses, and everybody was doing what everybody was supposed to do. What does that mean? It means when you come to Christ, the Holy Spirit and dwells your life, and you've all been given a gift, and God wants you to deploy that gift for his glory. And when you deploy that gift for his glory, and you begin to take a step forward, life's hard to begin with, just so you know. So if you're not a Christian and you try to work, works hard. If you try to get married as an on Christian, it's hard. When you're doing things God's way, they're opposed. You say, I want to be moral as a single, like God wants me to be, you'll be opposed. I want to be a married person that does it God's way as a husband. I want to be a spiritual leader. My wife wants to submit to me. I want to do God. It'll be opposed. Churches are opposed that preach the word. Pastors that preach the word are opposed. Their families are opposed. So there's opposition. So when you step forward, it's not just, yeah, I'm doing it for the Lord. You'll find out very quickly,

there's opposition that comes your way. And you need to stay in the battle with those people until the battle's complete, until the battle's over. And that's what you see here. And so what you see here is the fact that together, you can walk it out. Philippians 1.27 says, stand firm in one spirit, striving together for the faith of the gospel. I mean, think about it like this. If you work for a suicide line, there would never be a time that you would take a call and say, wait a second, didn't you call yesterday? I don't have time for this. We already discussed it. If you did, they would replace you. Why? Because you're always on call for help with someone that needs help. One of the reasons that I find people don't get in cadres is it's a commitment to be there for other people when it's hard enough to take care of yourself. But here's the reality. When you begin pouring into other people, that's how you grow spiritually. That's how you become a disciple. Every time Kim and I have done premarital counseling, marital counseling, any of that stuff, it's always strengthened us. And here's why. Because when I'm opening the Bible and I'm opening up to Genesis two,

where I'm opening up to Ephesians five, and I'm like, here's what a good husband does, and here's what you need to do. As those words from the Lord are coming out of my mouth to that guy, I'm thinking, I can do way better than what I'm doing with that. And every time my wife opens up the word and she's sharing, this is what a submissive wife looks like, and this is how you can do it. She's feeling the same sense of conviction. So usually on the car ride home or after they leave our house, we're looking at each other and I'm saying, I'm sorry. I know I said that, you could have elbowed me. Thanks for not elbowing me. I can do a better job at that, right? It happens every time. And so as you're teaching people about the gospel, here's how you share the gospel with people. You're gonna get better at sharing the gospel when you teach people how to share the gospel. Here's how you have a healthy marriage. You're gonna get a better marriage the more you teach people. And here's the truth. If you wait until you've mastered every Christian concept, you'll never be ready to lead anybody. Because here's the reality. When you come to Christ, Jesus cares about every area of your life. He cares about your morality, your sexuality.

He cares about whether you're greedy or not. He cares about how you handle your finances. He cares about how you treat other people at work. He cares about who you are as an employer or an employee. He cares about how you dress, how you look, how you carry things, where you live, what you do, who you associate with, where you take your vacation. There's not an area of your life that Jesus would say, oh, you go ahead and do that, I don't care. And so how do you grow in the fullness of all these things? It's arrogant to think, well, I got this. What's humble is to say, I'm gonna need some help. And you're gonna find there's certain things that you're really strong at in the Christian faith and there's certain things that you're pretty weak at. And what do you need? I need the body of Christ. 'Cause collectively with Christ at the center, then we can be strong, amen? So we advance together through the battle. And then finally is this, when it's all said and done, acknowledge the Lord as your banner. Acknowledge the Lord as your banner. Joshua fought hard, Moses did what he was told, Aaron and her held up his arms. God's the one that gave him the victory. Notice this, then the Lord said to Moses, write this in a book as a memorial and recite it to Joshua that I will utterly blot out the memory of a mallet from under heaven, which God did.

of English, Jehovah, Nisi, the Lord is my banner. And he said, "The Lord has sworn the Lord will have war against Amalek from generation to generation." We think about the Lord is my banner. It means he's the one that I look at. He's the one that's overall. He's the one that's protecting. He's the one that's guarding. He's the one that's doing this. And so what we're doing is we're not seeing Joshua get all the kudos. We're not seeing Moses get all the kudos. We're not seeing the helpers get all the kudos. We're seeing God get all the kudos. So here's what you do. When there's been other people who have helped you in your life, thank God that he brought those people in your life to help you. You know, honor the people in your life who have been there to work and fight beside you. You know, and then rehearse God's faithfulness to the next generation and give the Lord credit for every good thing that's ever happened in your life. I mean, the Lord is our banner. If you've ever been in the military, you're familiar with a guide on flag. A guide on flag is a certain kind of flag that's got like a little tail cut into it. Brave, we use that as our logo to talk about who we are with five red stripes for being bold, resolute, authentic, virtuous, engaged. But what's a guide on flag? A guide on flag is really saying the Lord is our banner. It tells us who's we are. When you're here at Brave and you're part of Brave, Jesus Christ is who you are. This is His church. You're part of His body, right? We rally under Him. A guide on flag shows a rallying point. It's carried into battle. It shows this is where we assembled. This is where we come together. All that marks is this is where we gather. These are the people that we gather with, the people of Brave. It marks where the commander stands. That's what a guide on flag does. So the guide on flag here at Brave, it marks where the commander stands in. Who's the commander of the Lord's army here at Brave? It's the Lord. Are we putting the logo up so people can see it? It's behind me. I can't see behind me. My mom always said she had eyes in the back of her head. I didn't get that. Thanks. And then the guide on flag, it's got to stay up. When the flag's flying, it shows that we're still in the battle. So when you see the guide on flag, that's what it means. It just means brave, bold, resolute, authentic, virtuous, engaged, and we're gathering under the umbrella of Christ to give Him all the glory. That's all that means. Because here we've seen victories. Here we've seen marriages healed. Here we've seen God save people. Here we've seen God grow people. And who's getting all the credit? The Lord Jesus Christ, because He's the one that's done it all. But how's He chosen to do it? He's chosen to do it through you. And He wants you to be involved. So He wants you to be in a cadre. He wants you to invest in other people. And He

wants you to be known so that other people can invest in you too. I'll start like I finished, or I finished like I started. It's impossible to live the Christian life on your own. You need other believers in Christ to do so. Amen? That's what He wants you to know. Would you pray with me today? And as I pray, I'm just going to invite our teachers and administrators up from Brave Academy. Father in Heaven, would you just glorify yourself? Would you do a work that can only be attributed to you? Lord, would you show us our need for other people? And Lord, would you help us take the right steps so that we could find that? And Lord, would you help us invest in others as they invest in us? And Lord, we give you all the praise. Lord, you died for our sins and rose from the dead and placed us into a body so that we could serve you by serving one another. We love you and we bless you and praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Hey, today's a special day because tomorrow marks the start of our fourth year of Brave Academy. Could you welcome some of our administrators and staff there, come on up. So when we started the church, I knew very little about how to start a church. People asked me from the beginning, "When are you going to start a school?" And my answer was never. And then 2020 happened and the Lord put on my heart, we got to we got to have some place that we can grow Christian kids as an option, not the only option. Home school is a great option. There's other great options out there as parents. But we won't have a place where it could be an extension of what we do on Sundays. We started Brave Academy. We've had our hiccups, we've had our challenges and all that stuff for along the way. I can tell you this because these guys were all at our staff retreat last week. You have a phenomenal staff of teachers and administrators. I mean, they're just incredible. And so with everybody that's coming into the school, parents, families, I wanted my pastor, Pastor Kyle and Kent Shaw, another of our supervising elders, just to pray over these people. So if you wouldn't mind, and we're doing this on both campuses, would you stand please and feel free to extend a hand and I'll start with Kent. If you pray for us and then hand the mic to Cal, and can we just pray that God would bless this year, not only this year, but every one of these kids would come and be a warrior for Jesus. people have bold and confident access to you. And Lord, though your throne is great and mighty, it's a throne of grace. It's a throne of mercy. Lord, today we come on behalf of Brave Academy and we acknowledge, Lord, that your word is true that unless you build the house, Lord, we labor in vain. So we're asking you, Holy Spirit, to come and to build Brave Academy is only you can do. We ask, Lord, that you would fill each one of these great

teachers in front of us with the fullness and the power of your Holy Spirit. But we ask that you would fill this building, these classrooms, Lord, with the glorious presence of the spirit that you be moving and touching. And Holy Spirit, please fill this place, not only with your presence, but with joy and peace and laughter and learning and transformation. And Lord, we thank you that you're a God that takes our ordinary and does extraordinary out of it. So Lord, take our five loaves and two fish today and multiply it around the world. Take Lord, our five loaves and two fish and raise up a generation of young men and women that will transform the world for the sake of Jesus. Lord, we know, Lord, that you are more than able and willing to do that. We ask for your heads of protection around each pupil, each student. Lord, there are Jeff mentioned earlier that whenever we stand for you and for righteousness, you are opposed. So we're praying right now, Lord, that our enemies against you would stumble and fall as they approached this school. And Lord, we just thank you for the privilege of doing this. We thank you that children are a gift from you. We entrust them back to you, Lord, ask that you would work through each person here. And Lord, would you cause this year for these students that duty would be delight? That they would find great delight in you and great delight in this calling and great realization that you're using them in ways they can see and in many ways they can never see. So Lord, we entrust them not to you with a grateful heart and with great expectation that this is going to be a great year at Brave Academy because of you, Jesus, because you're raised from the dead and you rule. Thank you, Lord, Jesus. Amen. Yeah, and as I was praying this morning, I felt the Lord say, just remind these educators that they have a superpower. Yes, they're educators, but they are activators. And so Lord, I pray for each one that's involved in Brave Academy, each teacher that they would remember every day when they get up and they get ready to head to school that they're not just coming to teach reading, writing, arithmetic. They're here to activate the call of God, the anointed God, the gifts of God in the hearts and lives of these students by calling out what they see. And I'm praying that there'll be young people coming through these classes whose lives are changed. Yes, they learned what they needed to learn, but it was a teacher who saw something in them that they didn't know what that they had. And that teacher called it out and years from now, they'll go, wow, I remember it was second grade that this teacher looked at me and said, you know what? God's put a special gift in your life. And they called it out. I remember the day that

youth pastor looked at me and said, Cal, you need to pray about becoming a pastor. I remember preaching this five minute message in a guy coming up and saying, Cal, you remind me of a young Billy Graham. That wasn't stuff that went into my head that just filled my heart. And I said, Lord, really? Could I be something for you? And so I'm praying, Father, that far beyond just the education will be the activation. As I said, if your call of your giftings that young people will hear from God because they've been with these teachers. And so I pray, Father, just a special anointing on them. I pray for ears to hear and eyes to see and voices to call out in confidence what you have shown them. So these classrooms truly become places that go beyond education, but become activation for the kingdom. And we give you thanks and praise for that in Jesus' name. Amen. - Bye. [MUSIC PLAYING] Thanks, brother. Thank you, guys. (dramatic music) Would you say, "Sandy," we're gonna reprise our last song. I know it went a little long today, but can we give these teachers and administrators one more round of applause? Thanks, guys. Love you. (applause) Let's just sing this refrain to the Lord. (dramatic music) (gentle music)