REALIGNMENT BEFORE REVIVAL

Well, good morning. Would you help me welcome all of our campuses that are worshiping with us today? So good to have all of you. For those of you that don't know, next Sunday is a very special Sunday for us. Next Sunday is our 15-year anniversary since we started our church, amen? So it'll be a special day for us. And so excited just to talk about God's faithfulness and all that he's been doing over the years. Also, you may have been watching the news. You may be aware of what's going on in our country with the government shutdown. We've been helping out at the prisons, taking food to some of those government employees, making sure things are taken care of that way. But with some of the benefits that potentially are going away right now, we want to be the church. So I'm just encouraging you, let's help. Here at Brave, we just follow God's word. In Matthew 25, 35, it says, when I was hungry, you gave me something to eat. And there's a number of people, a number of children in our country, right here in our state, right here in our city, that may not be able to eat coming up. So I'm asking for your help, if you'd like to participate, to bring in non-perishable goods, cans,

all those kind of things, so that we can distribute those to different food banks throughout the month of November. It's something you can do here on Sunday through Thursday, just drop things off. Or, if you're so inclined, I would encourage you, do it through your cadre. It's a great thing to do as a cadre. You collect those, you take them to whatever food bank you want. But let's help do our part. But let's help do our part. For those of you that would say, hey, I can't shop, I can't do, but I'd love to participate, there's a benevolence dropdown in our menu on our website, if you'd like to just give to that. Just asking you for the month of November, let's just be as generous as we can as a congregation, to the extent that the Lord would lead you to do that. And let's trust that we as a church can play our part in taking care of some of the needs that people are gonna have for hunger in our culture, okay? So that's an opportunity that we have. And with that, let's continue our worship today, as we go before the Lord and get ready to hear His living and active word among us. Will you pray with me? Our Father in heaven, we give you all the glory, honor, and praise.

And Lord, we love you and we thank you for who you are. Lord, we do pray for our nation. We do pray for those who are hungry, Lord, that they would be able to eat. Lord, your word says that you will provide according to your glorious riches in Christ Jesus. Lord, as we've been prompted, Lord, help us to do our part in what we can do. And Lord, we just trust you to take care of those needs. And Lord, I just tell you in advance, as we finish this service today, that we've completed 15 years as a church. It's an amazing, amazing testimony to your faithfulness, that you're gonna build your church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And Lord, a big reason for that has been your word. Lord, we as a people believe that every time your word is faithfully and accurately proclaimed, that you are speaking. And so our prayer this morning is speak, Lord, for we are ready to hear. And so now for all those who have gathered, I desire 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. How many of you know when God answers your prayers,

it doesn't remove problems, it oftentimes creates new ones? Right? I mean, for some of you that are single, you're praying for your spouse, which is a great thing to pray for, because he who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord. But when you go from single to marriage, there's a whole new set of challenges that you're gonna face. And then some of you, when you get married and you're praying to have a child and God blesses you with a child and you're so excited that that child comes and God's answered that prayer, all of a sudden now there's even new challenges that you didn't expect. And when you have that first child, you feel overwhelmed. You're like, I don't even know how we're gonna get through this. And then you have a few more and you realize it was so easy back then. I mean, isn't it interesting, no matter where we are, no matter what we're talking about in life, that when we ask God to answer our prayers and sometimes he chooses to answer them the way we've been praying, that it doesn't remove the problems. It just creates new ones.

I mean, for some of you, you remember what you made in your very first job and you were thankful for it, but you were praying, Lord, if I could just make a little more than that someday. And now you make a little more than that, but when you made a little more than that, you realize there's other responsibilities that I have and there's other places this money goes and it doesn't just sit around and bank for me. There's other new challenges. There's always new challenges when God answers prayer. And those aren't bad things. They're just things that we need to focus on for what God wants to do. And this is true in the church. We pray a lot that God would do according to his will, that people would hear his word proclaimed, that people would get saved, that people would continue to grow in Christ. And we do that because the great commission in our Bibles tell us to go into all the world and make disciples. And so if I was asking, like I've asked before, who wants to see more disciples? Who wants to see revival in our city? All of us would say, I'm in. But even an answer to that prayer creates all sorts of new challenges because now there's more people to take care of

and there's more things to deal with and there's more challenges that arrive. And so it's not that we don't want God to answer our prayers. Oftentimes when we do, it creates new challenges. And this is what's happening in the book of Acts in this section that we're in today in chapter six, verses one through seven. Because what's been happening is the church was launched through a prayer meeting and then Peter proclaimed the word. And on the day of Pentecost, 3,000 people got saved. And then the next time we read about what they're doing, I mean, they're trying to arrest the apostles and do all sorts of things and they won't keep quiet. Now there's 5,000 men alone that know Christ. And then it says, it stops keeping numbers, it says, and it continued to multiply greatly. Now it's multiplying, now it's 15, 20, 25,000. But guess what? Just because God was answering their prayers didn't mean that the early church didn't face problems. And when we face problems in the church, when you face challenges in your family or when you face challenges in the workplace and you're doing what God wants you to do and you're seeking the Lord and God's moving in that way, but now there's new challenges, what do we do? How do we answer that challenge? What does God want us to focus on?

If you ever wanted to know the answer to that, I believe God has a word for you today. So I invite you to open up your Bible to Acts chapter six. Acts chapter six, we're gonna be in verses one through seven. So I'll read those to you. And you'll realize this comes right off the part where Gamaliel, the leader of the Sanhedrin said, hey, pay close attention. You know, I'd be careful to stop these guys because if it's not of the Lord, it's gonna die. But if it's of the Lord, you might realize that you're fighting against God. So they warned the apostles, they flogged the apostles, and the apostles rejoiced that they were worthy of getting beat for the name of the Lord. And they kept right on preaching and teaching the name of Jesus. Everything's going great, but there's some challenges. Notice what it says. It says, now at this time, while the apostles were increasing in number, a complaint arose on the part of the Hellenistic Jews against the native Hebrews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily serving of food. So the 12 summoned the congregation of the disciples and said, it is not desirable for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables. Therefore, brethren, select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the spirit and of wisdom whom we may put in charge of this task.

But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. That statement found approval with the whole congregation. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmaus, and Nicholas, a proselyte from Antioch. And these they brought before the apostles. And after praying, they laid hands on them. The word of God kept on spreading and the number of disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem. And a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith. And here in that section, what we see is the first challenge in the early church. God is answering their prayers. Revival's breaking out all over the place. People are getting saved in mass numbers. There's so many people that they can't take care of all the challenges that are gonna come upon them. And so I'm gonna give you four truths from the word of God this morning that when you face a challenge in your life, whether it's in your family, whether it's in your community, whether it's in your job, whether it's in the church, when you're following the Lord and God is moving mightily, but it creates new challenges, what are you called to do? And the first truth I'm gonna give you this morning is this, recognize the distraction.

Recognize the distraction. Notice what it says. It says, now at this time, while the disciples were increasing in number, let me just stop right there. They were increasing in number. Now, while they're increasing in number means this, while God's doing everything God said he was going to do, while revival is still breaking out, while everything is still going well, that's when the challenge is created. Sometimes we have this false idea in our head that there's this plateau that we can get to in life where all the problems go away, or a lot of them will go away. If I could just get here, then I'll be fine. There is no place like that anywhere on this side of heaven. That place takes place when Jesus Christ returns to the earth for those of us who are believers and earnestly awaiting him, then all your problems go away. He'll wipe every tear from your eye. Joy will be yours forever. You won't know how to sin anymore. Every Christian will get along. It's gonna be glorious. Until that time, that's not happening. And so it's while they were doing what they were supposed to do, right? And we get thrown by this sometimes. Singles, you're dating that person,

you've been praying to the Lord, I wanna marry a Christian spouse, and all of a sudden God brings them in, and they're a Christian, and you're a Christian, you love the Lord, you go to church together, you got it, and then you get married, and guess what? There's all these challenges you didn't even know that you had. Now what do you do? Or you're getting along just well, and you have that child, and now I got these challenges, and what's up with this? Or now we got some money issues that we didn't have before. Now what are we gonna do about this? Oh, now we got some extended family issues, mother-in-laws, father-in-law, we didn't even know about that before. Now we gotta deal with this. Oh, we got some health issues. I mean, do you understand how life works? Right at the time you think, we're through it, you're not. I remember when we started this church and people would ask me, how's it going? And I would tell some story about the challenge we were facing at that time. And I always ended by saying this, as soon as we get through this, man, it is gonna be smooth sailing. And I said that over and over for about three years

and finally caught myself one day and like, no, it's not gonna be smooth sailing. There'll be something else because there's always something else because that something else is a prompting from God to seek his face even more. Did you know that? It's him getting your attention. So you have to recognize the distraction. Everything's going well. The disciples were increasing in number, but guess what happened? A complaint arose on the part of the Hellenistic Jews against the native Hebrews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily serving of food. So here's what you have. You have widows who are being served food. You had Hebraic Jews, the Jewish Jews that were there, their women were being served, but the Gentile or Greek widows were not getting the same kind of treatment. And so there's a problem. And the problem is a food distribution problem in the church. The problem is a care problem in the church. Not everybody that's a part of the church is getting cared for in the same way. And it's not fair that the Hellenistic Jews aren't being taken care of.

And it's just the Hebraic Jews that are. I mean, this is a problem, right? And what's really easy to do when a problem arises is to go one of two extremes. One is neglect, like it's a food problem. Like figure it out. Like, hey, if your family, if your grandma's a widow, like feed her, like take care of her. Why are you stopping us from the most important work we can be doing? Just deal with it. And we abdicate responsibility. Or we can go to the other side and we can go full on structure business model of we're gonna do this, this, this, this, this, this, while we neglect the very thing that we're supposed to be focusing on. Just because problems arise doesn't mean you drop everything you're doing and only focus on the problem. It means if you're married, you're still focused on your marriage. It means if you have kids, you're still focused on your kids and your family. It means if you have a job, you're still focused on your job. So how do you keep the main thing, the main thing while dealing with the other things? And that's what we're gonna see here. And really, it's gonna be an invitation.

You're gonna see it further in the text. I'll bring it right out of the text that when you recognize the distraction, what's the distraction from? The distraction is always from keeping you focused on Jesus and what he wants done in the moment, always. Whether it's a good distraction or a bad distraction, whatever kind of thing you wanna call it. If it's to take away from your relationship with Jesus, the distraction is a way for you to recognize that. You need to recognize that's a distraction because your time needs to be about him. Now, listen to me, no matter who you are, no matter why you're here, no matter what challenge you're facing in your life, can I tell you it's an invitation to seek the Lord in prayer? It's an invitation to get to know him better. Why? Because it's interesting to me that in the early church, it wasn't the persecution that stopped them, that actually helped them grow. It was the distraction. And what you see is growth creates gaps. When you grow, when you develop, it creates gaps. There's neglect, the widows aren't being looked for. And so what began as a spiritual movement is now in the process of becoming this logistical nightmare for the apostles. Like, how are we gonna deal with all this?

And what's it look like? Now, keep in mind, all of this is happening because they're doing exactly what God wants them to do. They're ministering the word of God, they're praying, they're seeking his face, they're seeing God do all this. Now there's a distraction, but this distraction is not a bad thing because these widows need to be taken care of by the church and they need to come up with a solution to do that, but they can't stop taking care of what's most important. And what's most important is time with Jesus. Now, what you're gonna see in this solution is nothing new to the New Testament. If you have your Bibles with you, I encourage you to flip back to Exodus chapter 18. You'll remember when Moses delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt and got to Sinai, Moses' father-in-law Jethro comes to him and Moses' father-in-law notices what Moses is doing all day. All day long from morning to night, he's representing the people before God. He's teaching them all the law. He's doing all these different things and he's gonna get worn out. And so when Jethro sees him and sees what he's doing and sees that Moses is doing all the work, in Exodus chapter 18 verses 17, Moses' father-in-law said to him, the thing that you are doing is not good.

You will surely wear out both yourself and these people who are with you for the task is too heavy for you. You cannot do it alone. And so he's gonna give him some instructions. Now, what was Moses' call? God spoke directly to Moses, told him what to do. God told him where to go. God directed all the plagues through him. God parted the Red Sea. God provided water through Moses. God provided quail in the wilderness, and manna, and all that stuff. So Moses has been God's representative on the earth to do what God wants to do. And Moses' father-in-law is like, you're doing too much, man. You're gonna burn out. This is not good for you or for the people of Israel. So he tells them three things he can do. Verse 19, he says this. Now listen to me, I will give you counsel and God be with you. You be the people's representative before God, and you bring the disputes to God. What does being the representative of the people before God mean? It means you talk to God on behalf of the people. It means this, you pray for them. That's your job.

Your job is to pray for the people. So do that, represent them before God. Then he tells them to do a second thing in the next verse, verse 19, or verse 20. Then teach them the statutes and the laws and make known to them the way in which they are to walk and the work they are to do. So instead of you being the only one to do it, you teach everybody what God wants them to do so that everybody who is in the nation of Israel will know what God says, right? So you pray for the people, then you teach the people so that they're well-equipped to do all of that. And then he asked for a third thing in verse 21. He says, furthermore, you shall select out of the people able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain, and you shall place these leaders over thousands, over hundreds of fifties and of tens. So what's he saying? You pray for the people, you teach all the people God's word, and then select solid spiritual men to deal with groups of people, with thousands of them, hundreds of them, fifties. Put them into groups so that everybody gets taken care of because you yourself can't do everything. And it's a hard lesson for a leader to hear because when you start something from the beginning, it's hard to let go of it.

When we started the church, it was me and my wife. That's all we had. We grew it to 12. Then I was one of 12, right? Then we grew it to a couple hundred. But do you know when we had a couple hundred people, we used to have these things we would pass out to you every morning when you came into church, they were called bulletins. It was pre-COVID, you used to get a bulletin. And when you got a bulletin, guess who designed the bulletin? Guess who chose the font size of the bulletin and the colors of the fonts and the pictures that we were gonna have there and whether it was good? Guess who spent their Friday morning looking at that, which was an absolute waste of his time? It was me. Because if I didn't do it, it wasn't gonna get done, right? And there are all sorts of things that I never wanted to do, but you kind of have to do. And then as you get people around you that are better at it than you, which doesn't take long, you have to start delegating those things out to people. But here's what you need to realize. You need to recognize the distractions in your life, right? You need to recognize what's trying to pull you away from what God's called you to do and what God's called you to be. You need to recognize it for what it is.

And this is the biggest application I can think of. You know, when it comes to Brave Church, our biggest threat is not the government, it's not our culture, it's not critics. It's really distraction from doing what God's called us to do as a church. It's the internal things that we need to stay focused on so that we can do the things God wants us to do. Now think about this. In Jesus Christ's ministry, it says in Mark 135, very early in the morning while it was still dark, Jesus got up and went to solitary places where there he prayed. His whole life was centered on prayer. He woke up in the morning looking for prayer. After he fed the 5,000, he went up on a mountainside to pray all night. Before he selected his apostles, he prayed all night. He was always in constant prayer with his Father. Even the night he was betrayed, he was three hours in the Garden of Gethsemane praying to his Father. Even on the cross, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they do. He was always talking to his Father, so much so that the one thing the disciples wanted to be taught is, Lord, teach us to pray. Can I tell you this? I think the hardest spiritual discipline there is in the world is prayer. There's none harder.

I mean, I've known the Lord for almost 35 years. It's still difficult to pray. It's not like you have a really good Saturday night prayer time, and then you get rollover minutes on Sunday where you just pick up where you left off, and it was just awesome. I mean, every time that you decide to go before the Lord, it's like starting fresh, and you start to pray, and your phone's right next to you, it starts beeping, or you start thinking about all the things you gotta do that day, or you start thinking about the responsibilities, or it's just that God feels distant, so you don't know if you're really praying right, or then you start reading the Word, and you're just distracted all over the place. Why? Because the enemy hates you spending time with God. He absolutely hates it. I used to wonder when I was a new believer why it is I could read any sports magazine, any newspaper, any book, any anything, and be great, but the second I opened up my Bible and started reading that, I'd get real tired, because the enemy hates it. It's a discipline to seek the face of the Lord, and I wish I could tell you it gets so much easier. I wish I could tell you now after 35 years, I wake up in the morning, and I can almost hear angels singing as I roll out of bed,

and I just have my spiritual life flowing, and I can't wait to just talk to the Lord. And we sit down and I hear him so clearly and he tells me every step I need to take. It doesn't work that way. It takes me time to engage my mind and my thoughts on the things of the Lord. And I have to cut out distractions in my life before I can even focus on him. Sometimes it takes minutes, sometimes it takes longer than minutes just to get the distractions out so I can clearly hear what the Lord wants me to hear. But all throughout the Bible, that's what we see. I mean, in Revelation 2, 4, Jesus talks about that church. You have lost and left your first love. What's our priority in the church? It's Jesus. It's Jesus, right? Taking care of the widows who are hungry, that's the ministry that should come from the overflow of spending time with Jesus. And here's the reality. If we don't spend time in devotion with Jesus, everything we're called to do will feel like a duty. Meaning what God wants is your devotion. If you're devoted to him, the Bible says streams of living water will flow from you. If you're not devoted to him,

if you're not spending time with him, everything you do for him will feel like, well, I'm just doing it for Jesus. I have to, I have to. It's not gonna be a delight. It will be a duty. But I want you to see this. When things got difficult, the apostles didn't panic. They prayed. They prayed. Don't panic when things are out of control. Don't panic when you see distractions. Pray. Hey, Lord, this is a new season. What should I do? Never been here before. I don't understand. And yes, it is okay to seek counsel from those wiser who have lived longer than you. It's great. But there's no substitute for seeking the face of Jesus. And can I just challenge you this way? And you'll hear me challenge you a couple times today. I'll challenge you. If you don't believe me, set a time tomorrow that you're gonna pray to the Lord. Just put that on your calendar. Whatever time you put, whether you're gonna do it for five minutes or whatever, I promise you at that time,

you will have more distraction in your life than you have any other time during the day. And I don't care whether you put five in the morning, nine in the morning, noon, three in the afternoon, you pick the time, and I promise you at that time, there will be so many distractions in your life, you won't even be able to count them. Okay? Why? Because the devil doesn't want you to spend any time with Jesus. Amen? So you have to recognize the distraction so that you can stay focused. And number two is this, you gotta refocus the priorities. You gotta refocus the priorities. So what do they do? So the 12 summoned the congregation of the disciples and said, it is not desirable for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables. Okay? Here's what they're not saying. They're not saying serving food to widows is beneath us. And we don't really desire that. That doesn't sound fun. And so we don't wanna do that. That's not what they're saying. They're saying it's not the priority as to why God gifted us or put us in this church to do.

And so it wouldn't be right for us to rob somebody else who has the gifting to do it and do it ourselves when we neglect the very thing God's called us to do. It wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be desirable. We've been called to something else. And what they've been called to, if you look at verse four, but we will devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. What was the apostles number one job? To continue to pray on behalf of the people and to do what? To teach them the word of God. It's exactly what Jethro was telling Moses in Exodus 18. You represent the people before God. You pray for them and you teach them the word. They're saying the same thing here. Can I tell you what's the number one job as a pastor? It's to pray for his congregation. It's to be a man of prayer. Go somewhere where you know that the senior pastor spends time alone with God. And number two is this, to preach the word, to present the word of God so that the congregation can clearly hear a word from the Lord. So that when people are hearing the word taught, they hear God speaking to them. That's where you wanna go and that's where you wanna be. So this is what we have to do. They have to refocus the priorities.

They weren't saying we're too important to serve. They were saying we cannot neglect our calling. And here's what I would say. In a church, I would say, if you think about church like a car, prayer would be the engine and the word of God would be the steering wheel. And if you don't have prayer and you don't have the word, you have a vehicle that has no engine and no steering wheel. So it doesn't matter what the rest of the car looks like, you're going nowhere. The two most important ministries in any church, anywhere is prayer and the ministry of the word. And I can tell you this from being a senior pastor, the place I get distracted the most is to take me offline from doing those two things. Hey, you need to get involved in that leadership decision. Hey, you need to do this. Hey, you can go do this. Hey, you can go do this. You don't need to read the word today. You don't need to. Prayer and the ministry of the word are the most important thing that a pastor can do for his people, if he loves God and if he loves his people. And if you're in a place where prayer is central and the word of God is being taught and you've experienced that, you'll never be able to settle for something less than that. Because everywhere else you go,

it'll feel like a TED talk and a show. And you'll be like, I don't need that. I need Jesus. I need to hear him. I need God speaking directly to me. And so what they were doing is they were guarding the fire. I mean, you see all this played out. Remember Jesus, I mean, Lazarus' sisters, Mary and Martha. I mean, there's stories about them. And it seemed like every time Jesus got together, Martha was serving. She's running around serving, serving, serving, serving, serving, serving, or complaining that her sister Mary is not serving because Mary was just like parked at the feet of Jesus. And what would Jesus say? Mary's chose the more noble thing. What was he saying? She wants to be with me. She wants me. She's not here trying to serve me. She's not trying to get points. She wants to be with me. And that's even more important. What does God want from your life? He doesn't need you to run out and serve for him. He wants you. He wants to be with you. He wants your dedication to him. The greatest ministry you can have

is your personal devotion to Christ through your prayers, through the reading of the word. And the reality is this. If you spend time with Jesus alone in prayer, and if you spend time with Jesus in the word, you can't help but wanna serve. The word of God will grip you in such a way that you have to use your gift. The word of God will grip you in such a way like how could I not serve? But if you don't have devotion with Jesus, you're not in prayer with him, and you're not spending time in his word, then when you get invited to serve, it's gonna feel like a have to. It's gonna feel like I'm too busy for that, or that's really hard, or I don't want to. But when Jesus is filling you and controlling your life and moving you around, you can't help but do that. What's he looking for you to do this week? Spend time with him. Again, I'm challenging you. Set a timer. I'm just telling you. Just trust me. Just so you can see how much the enemy doesn't want you to spend time with God. You'll have stories you can tell all sorts of people. I did it for three in the afternoon. That was the one time I knew my kids

were gonna be out of the house, and the one time I knew my husband wasn't home, and I could totally devote myself. You watch. You watch what happens. It's not by accident. I've done this for years, and I see it all the time. It still works the exact same way. Why? Because here's what God wants from you. He wants your heart. He wants your full dedication and devotion. He wants you to pursue him, amen? And so that's what the disciples are doing. They're renewing their resolve. They say it's not desirable for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables. The word of God is primary, and God's put us here to teach the word. So we've gotta do that, but we've also gotta do this other. Therefore, brethren, select from among you, verse three, seven men of good reputation, full of the spirit and of wisdom, whom we may put in charge of this task. Same thing you saw Jethro say to Moses. You represent the people before God, you teach in the word, and choose qualified men. We'll come back to that. But notice verse four. But we will devote ourselves to prayer

and to the ministry of the word. If you look at certain churches that are not doing very well, or you're looking at whole denominations that are closing down, this is what left. Prayer and the ministry of the word. Because when prayer and the ministry of the word is central, Jesus Christ is being exalted. And wherever Jesus Christ is being exalted, great things happen all the time. But it's not just like, well, I already read the Bible. I've heard people say this. I don't go to church. I already read through the Bible once. I already know it. Come on. The word of God is living and active. I don't know how many times I've read through the Bible. I don't know. I don't really read it through like that. I have a few times, but I don't know how many times I've read. But every time I read it, it's living and active. I'm not reading it to remember. It's like food. I've been eating for almost 55 years now. But I don't remember every meal that I've had. But I can tell you, it's been pretty regular that I've eaten over those 55 years. I don't remember every single thing that the Lord's shared with me through his word.

So it's not like, I gotta remember it. I gotta remember it. I got, oh, I read this today and I forgot. It doesn't matter. You're fueling yourself spiritually. And it's interesting that if you do that, even the thing that you quote forgot that day, you'll be in a conversation six months from now and all of a sudden that'll come out of your mouth because it's in you, right? And so at the end of the day, that's what we're talking about. It's like, how do you refocus your priorities to stay focused on the word? 2 Timothy 4.2, my favorite New Testament verse, my call verse, preach the word. What are pastors supposed to do? Preach the word. Tell people what God says. Don't hold back, right? I mean, from Genesis through Revelation, anything is free to preach from and teach from. You don't need to come up with all these new ideas and cool theories that everybody's gonna be like, oh man, that's so cool. I mean, it's just all right here. If every Christian knew this book backwards and forwards, I can't even imagine where we'd be as a culture, right? Teach the word, preach the word. Colossians 4.2, devote yourselves to prayer.

Devote yourself. Make prayer a primary ministry in your own life. Friends, I know this with my whole heart. I know it with my whole heart. If you know how to say, seek the face of the Lord and you can hear him through his word, it's gonna solve a lot of challenges that you face going forward forever and ever, just will. But if you don't know how to seek the face of the Lord and you don't know how to hear God through his word, there's not a lot people can help you with. And the challenge in the church is too often we wanna go to people rather than go to God first. And there's nothing wrong with going to other people who are godly. My wife and I have been blessed by people that are more seasoned in the faith than us, that have poured into our, that's great, I love that. We wanna be that to other people too, right? But first and foremost, seek Jesus. When distractions come, I've told you this many times, God's not doing it to you, he's doing it for you. He's putting you in a season you thought you knew, you don't know. And it's cool that you don't know because it shows humility to posture yourself before God and say, I didn't know it was gonna go like this. I didn't think it was gonna be like this. I really don't know exactly what to do. And so that's what we do.

So they're gonna devote themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. Friends, no matter where you go, if you don't end up living in Denver for the rest of your life or Brave Church isn't your place, always pick a church where prayer and the ministry of the word are central to wherever you go. If you do that, you will grow in your appetite for the word. Listen, I've had people say, is it wrong for me to wanna be fed? No, you have to eat. If you go somewhere where you're not being fed, you're spiritually malnourished, you're starving, you're dying and you don't even know it, right? Go somewhere where the word of God is taught, go somewhere where the word of God is prayed over, go somewhere where people are praying for and with you. And if you'll do that, when distractions come and you recognize the distraction and you refocus your priority, then he tells us what we've been talking about. Then release the faithful, release the faithful. Have other people who can help you with that problem. Now go back to verse three. Notice who we wanna release. He says, therefore brethren, select from among you seven men of good reputation, filled with the spirit and of wisdom whom we may put in charge of this task. So there's at least seven things in that,

or five things rather, in that short verse that he's telling them they must do. This is who you're looking for in the church. Notice what he says first. Select where? From among you, that's number one. It's assumed, and maybe this shouldn't be assumed, but it's assumed the people that are gonna help out in the church are actually born again. You actually know Christ. It's hard to serve the Lord when you don't know who the Lord is. So the baseline is they have to know the Lord. Number two, what does he say? Therefore, select from among you seven what? What does your text say? Says men. Why? Because men have been delegated spiritual authority in the church. That's why. It's interesting. This is a widow food distribution problem. This would be really easy to say, who's the women's director? Fix it. Throw some money at it. And that's not what they're doing because every problem in the church is a spiritual problem, so it should be led by a man

because spiritual authority is given to a man just like it is in the church and in the home, which means this, men, it's okay for you to notice challenges and distractions in the church, but you can't complain about them. You're called to fix them. Amen? You don't need to be quiet. I'm talking to you. I'm just telling you, that's the challenge in the church. Sometimes we think it's the woman's problem. That's what our first father, Adam, said. It's why for those of us even in our home, we know our responsibility to provide and protect, but we don't like that responsibility. What do we want? We want our wives to support us and we want our wives to take care of the kids and we just wanna come home and sit on the couch and scroll through social media and all those different things. And I wish I could tell you my flesh is not a fellow struggler. It is. Because I know the good I'm supposed to do and sometimes I don't do it. It's hard to do what the Lord wants you to do as a man because it goes against the grain of your flesh. But in the church, it doesn't mean women

can't play a significant role in the church and lead in a lot of areas, but spiritual authority in the church is given to men. And where God is really at work is where you see godly men that want to elevate and bless women and children. Not be an authority figure. That's stupid. I'm talking about men that wanna elevate others. That's a godly man. Because that's exactly what Jesus did. That's exactly what the Apostle Paul did. That's why they had all sorts of women serving in their ministry in a generation where women didn't serve in ministry and they were elevating them all because they were being godly men, right? Men, it's your job to serve. Whose job is it for children's ministry? Men. What about youth? Men, right? What about the challenges you see around? Men. What about the food distribution problem in our country? Men. Where are the men? Like where you have godly men that are stepping forward, all women flourish everywhere. We'll help with that.

We'll do that. We'll do that. We'll help, right? Where are the men? So they're gonna get seven men from among you. And what do these men have to have? They have to have a good reputation. It's number three. Trusted character, trusted character. Character is only seen over time. You can't meet someone and say, oh, they got great character. You don't know that. You may have been told that, but you'll see it over time. You spend time with a person, then you can see, oh, yeah, they have character. They're always gonna choose integrity. They're gonna choose the right thing. When they don't choose the right thing, they're gonna be the first to apologize for it. They're gonna say, I was wrong, you were right. I mean, that's trusted character. So that's the kind of man you wanna look for. You don't wanna find a man that's a good business guy. You don't wanna find a man that dresses well. You don't wanna find a man that's all about himself and can give you his resume. No, no, no. You wanna find a man that has trusted character and has a good reputation.

It means you see this kind of man, you're like, that's a godly man. That man loves his wife. That man loves his kids. That man will submit to Jesus. That man's humble. That man will build others up. That man wants others to succeed. That man's not about himself. That's what you wanna see. And then what else do you wanna see? You wanna see that he's full of the Spirit. What does that mean? It doesn't mean that he's charismatic. It doesn't mean he's swinging from the chandeliers. It doesn't mean he's speaking in tongues. It means he's yielded to the Holy Spirit's work in his life. It means that when he's reading the Word and spending time with Jesus, and Jesus says, I want you to do this and I want you to stop doing that, he does this and he stops doing that. And he's got a track record over time of continually staying yielded to the Lord. He's not about himself, he's about Jesus. You'll see it in him. And so he's filled with the Spirit. He's empowered by the Spirit. He's controlled by the Spirit. And then finally, what's the final one?

End of wisdom. Wisdom is a track record of choosing God's best. Wisdom is the ability to know what to do in certain life circumstances. And the only way you know how to do what to do in life circumstances is to be someone who's been humbled, someone who's been taught, someone who's been wrong and changed their way. I mean, that's the only way you can know what to do. When you see somebody who's wise, they didn't come out of the womb that way. When you see somebody that's wise, it's been a training ground for a long period of time. So it's not just, oh, we gotta have men. That's not what the text is saying. And by the way, where do you find men like that? They align with 1 Timothy 3, which is the qualifications for an elder, and Titus 1, which is the qualifications for an elder. Now men, listen up to me, because this is painful. Most of you think, well, I'm never gonna be an elder, so that's not for me. No, the whole Word of God is for you. It means whether you ever serve in the role of an elder, this is what you should be as a man. So that if someone ever came to you and said, would you serve as an elder, you would meet all the qualifications for it, right? So read 1 Timothy 3, read Titus 1,

see the qualifications for an elder, that you're hospitable, that you're not given too much drink, that you're a man above reproach, that you're all those things, that you're a husband of one wife, all the things. Say, that's what I'm called to be. And then go be that and grow in that and ask God to develop that in you. And the reality is, when women are part of a church with godly men like that, they love it because they flourish, because those men are trying to bless women and children and use their gifting to the glory of the Lord, amen? And that's what we have to do here. So notice what it says. This statement found approval with the whole congregation. So as they're looking around, I mean, the people in the church are like, we know where some of these men are. We've seen guys like this. It's not like they just appointed these guys and like, who's Stephen? Never heard of him before. They're looking around. They're like, this feels good to us because we've been in church and we know these men. And so they chose seven. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit.

Now, the next 60 plus verses are gonna be about Stephen, just so you know. So Stephen is serving, helping widows, but guess what? What's his job? To honor the Lord Jesus Christ and to serve him only. And he's gonna have the opportunity of preaching once and lose his very life for it. So it's not just like, oh, he's a servant in the church. Yeah, he is a servant in the church and yes, he is bold in his faith about Jesus. So you have Stephen. Then you have Philip, who's an evangelist, who we're gonna read about as we go through. Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas and Nicholas, who's a proselyte from Antioch, which means they're not all Jewish guys. We have Greek guys there too, taking care of the Greek widows, right? So you have this combination of people and they're all working together. And what you have in the church when teams are built correctly, you have people from all different walks of life that would never get together for any other reason than for what they're doing here, right? That's what Christianity looks like, right? The world forms cliques. The world forms cliques when you're young. It forms cliques in school,

like these are the athletes and these are the band people and these people are in drama and these people do this and these people are the brainiacs and these kids are the nerds. And we start forming groups like that. And then it doesn't stop. It continues on for your whole life until you're saved. And then you see people as saved or unsaved. And if they're saved, even if they're totally different than you, they're brothers and sisters in Christ. start doing stuff together, and we start serving together, and we start blessing each other together, and we start rejoicing together, and we pray together, and we seek God together, and then people look at us and be like, how could the two of you actually get, well, because we have Christ, because they're family, and that's who we are, and that's what you see in this text, and what you see in this text is they're releasing these faithful people, and here's how they did it, and they brought before, and these they brought before the apostles, and after praying, they laid their hands on them, so two things they did, one is they laid their hands on them to give them spiritual authority, but before they did that, what did they do? They prayed again, they prayed. Where are you gonna find leaders? You pray for them. Where are we gonna get the leaders we need?

We pray for them. God, here's what we need. God, can you raise up people? Now, here's what I know about the church. Here's what I know about the church. Every single born-again believer is gifted by the Spirit. First Corinthians 12, Romans 12 teaches me that. If you're born again, you have the Spirit of God inside of you, you have some gift, and you are given a gift to serve the body of Christ, which is the church, and by doing that, we'll help advance the kingdom of God. So who's called to serve? Who's called to ministry, which is another word for service? All of us who are born again are, all of us, right? So every single person has been called by God to serve in the church, and a good church is an Ephesians 4 church, which equips the saints for the work of ministry, so what's a good church do? A good church says, everybody here is called to serve, not just some of you, all of you, so what we're gonna do as a church is release as many of you as are qualified to go serve the Lord, and what would happen if everybody who's born again that was qualified to serve actually served in their area of giftedness? There would be new challenges and new problems because there'd be massive growth, right? What tends to happen in a church, and this is not the church you wanna be a part of,

what tends to happen in a church is you pick the church based upon whether you like the worship music or the preaching, and then you sit. You do not wanna meet Jesus saying, well, I sat at Brave for 30 years. I did nothing, but I really liked the preaching. You don't wanna do that, right? You wanna hear the word and be in a place where you can be stimulated to go use your gift and serve, because what does God want? He wants everybody serving, and here's the reality, just so you know, everybody can serve somewhere, and all of you have been given different gifts, different measures of grace with that gifts, but you're gifted just the way God wanted you to be gifted so that you can serve him, and if you dedicate your time with him, he'll reveal what that is, and as you start serving, you'll learn very quickly, it ain't that. It's not this. This one doesn't feel good. Man, this one kinda feels, I kinda like this, and you learn, so if you start to serve through our core here at Brave, and you recognize this isn't my long-term, lasting place, you're not getting married to it. You can find a different place to serve. Do you understand that? But we want you to serve not because we need you or we have a shortage.

We want you to serve because I know that if you serve, your relationship with Christ will grow exponentially. If you're using what God has put in you, you will grow exponentially, amen, and we want you to serve, and so that's the kind of church that we wanna be, and I can tell you this because I was here at the beginning, and I've been at every different stage, and so I've been at church when it was a handful of people, when we were 200 or less. I've been when we were about 500. I've been when we've been about 1,000. I've been with a couple thousand now that we're massively bigger and on different campuses, and I can tell you from having different pastors that have served with us, different ones of us are gifted for different types of service. Like, we're in a season now as a church. Like, I'll just give you an example. When we started our church and we were a couple hundred people and we had about 35 kids, we hired somebody who loved kids. Like, you wanna be our children's director? Oh, yes, I love kids. I just wanna be with kids all the time. I wanna write curriculum for kids. I just wanna do kids, kids, kids, kids, kids. That person, when we got to about 800, was not very helpful to us anymore because we had a lot of adults bringing their kids and we needed some administration that came along with that

and we needed to help get people, and we needed that person to multiply themselves because we needed about another 10 of them, but we needed somebody overseeing all that. We're in a season now as a very large church where the pastors that we're trying to hire are not guys that are wanting to preach and teach all the time. We want guys that are saying, I'm called the pastor. I wanna get everybody plugged into Cadres. I wanna get everybody plugged into the core. I want everybody here to flourish in their gifts. I wanna turn everybody loose. There's some people in our church that wanna do it outside the walls, some inside the walls. We wanna help them do all that. That's a better season for where we're in now, and as a pastor, I've talked to several of our pastors who have been on our staff and several that wanna be pastors, and I can tell by talking to someone what you wanna do. I've told several of our pastors, you wanna be in a smaller church. Why? Because you wanna do this, this, this, this, and this, and if you do all those things and you don't let other people do all those things, you won't be able to grow it. This may come as a shock to some of you. Those of you that are in business, it won't.

I used to make every single decision in our church. Nothing happened without my knowing. Can I tell you something? I don't really know half the stuff that goes on here. I don't make all the decisions. I've empowered other people to make those decisions. If you come to me and say, hey, we should start this ministry, I'm gonna redirect you to about three people. They do that, I'm not doing that. I'm here to devote myself to prayer and the ministry of the word, that's my job. Because if I get here on a Sunday and I stand here and be like, I was kind of busy this week, I don't have anything to say. We're just gonna sing for a little while longer. I don't think I'm doing myself a service, right? So my job is to pray for you. So when I get wind that one of you's sick or I get wind that, hey, this is a job to do, I wanna pray for you. And I wanna pray and ask the Lord to do what he wants to do. And I wanna seek his face and I wanna study the text and I wanna do all those things. Because we wanna be an empowering church. If you're here and you say, there's no place for me to serve, I can put you in touch with people.

They'd love to meet you at meet and greet today to say, no, we got a place for you. We got a place for you. And we wanna release more and more faithful people. Cause it's like this, no matter what your system is, and we gotta have some systems because that just helps us grow things. But at the end of the day, you don't build a system and keep it the same. Our systems are changing all the time, right? Now, some of you might say, well, I don't wanna be a part of a church that's changing that much. Yeah, you actually do. Cause if you're in a church that's static and we don't change anything, it's like one of those churches that I've been to where you go into the church and God bless the woman that's 85 years old on the piano that's been playing since she was 32. And it's the same woman there. And it's the same, you know, 25 to 30 people in the congregation cause the other 90 have died off and nobody's there and they're not doing anything. I mean, that's a reality in a lot of places. And what happened? They let go of prayer in the ministry of the word and they stopped empowering God's people. But if there's prayer in the ministry of the word

and God's people are getting empowered, there's no stop to what he's gonna do, except for we're gonna see more distractions. Like if we double in size, or we triple in size or quadruple in size, or there were 72,000 people that call Brave Church their home, we would have so many more problems than we have right now. You couldn't even count them. But that doesn't mean we don't wanna do what Jesus wants us to do cause he's the one that brings the growth, amen? So this is what we wanna do. We wanna release the faithful. And then notice this, the final one. Then you can do number seven. You can reap the increase. Notice verse seven. After they prayed for those and laid hands on them and gave them authority, here's what it says. The word of God kept on spreading and the number of disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem. That means multiplication. And a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith. So what did they do? They didn't grow anything. They didn't come up with an evangelistic strategy coming out of the food distribution meeting.

Here's what they did. Hey, we know our role. We're called by Jesus to pray and minister the word. You're called by Jesus to solve this problem. We're gonna empower you. We're gonna let you go do this. You release this. And it's like this. I mean, if you have a cup and you fill it up with liquid, depending upon the size of the cup, it can only handle so much. And then you're gonna need another vessel to be able to hold what gets poured into it. That's why systems are always growing and changing and dynamic. But until the system changes, it looks like it's overflowing. We got problems. Well, then you gotta help change the system. But what's the system? You have to pray and seek the Lord and ask him what he wants to do. You have to read his word and see where he's going after. That's why I tell you all the time, I love that vision, but I hold it all with an open hand because God can redirect anytime he wants because it's God's church, amen. It's what he wants to do. And I can tell you this, that's why prayer is so central to everything we do.

That's why on the first Tuesday of every month, we gather for prayer. That's why we've done it for years and years and years. And I would just encourage you, this is challenge number two. First challenge was to put a time on your calendar this week that you're gonna pray every day. Second challenge is this, come to first Tuesday. Come to first Tuesday. Now, some of you have already been distracted, even while I'm saying that, and you're not coming to first Tuesday. I'm telling you, I lead first Tuesday, and there's never a first Tuesday that I wake up that I wanna go. I mean, I have distractions in my life. There's so many first Tuesdays where people are like, are you fired up for tonight? I'm like, no, I don't even wanna go. But if I push through my feelings and I go, there hasn't been one time where I've changed my attitude and gone to a first Tuesday where I haven't walked out of this building or the Westminster building where I haven't said, I think that was the best prayer meeting I've ever been a part of in my life. That was awesome. If you haven't been to first Tuesday, you do not understand the foundation of Brave Church. And I would challenge you, seven o'clock on Tuesday night,

it's the most important thing you can do all month, right? And if you do choose to go, because some of you are taking me up on the challenge right now, I promise you, your Tuesday is gonna be miserable. I don't mean miserable like bad. I mean, like, there's gonna be something where you're like, I just can't go. I didn't know we were gonna have that test tomorrow. I can't go. My boss gave me this extra work. I can't go. My kids actually did this. Mom went to the hospital. And listen, there's no guilt. Don't, don't, I don't believe in guilting you. I don't believe in shame. I don't. And if you don't go, we love you. He just loves you too. I'm just saying, I'm just trying to teach you how difficult it is to pray individually and pray corporately, but if it becomes a focus of your life, you will change a lot, right? And that's what we see. We see releasing the faithful leads to being able to reap the increased in the harvest. Our job as a church is just aligning with God. His job is to do the advancement. We don't have a strategy to grow and reach.

I can't save one person. You can't save one person. We can't make a disciple. God has to do all that work. Our job is aligning with Him. God's job is advancement. We're called to be faithful, and faithfulness always precedes fruitfulness. If we'll do the little things, God will do what He wants to do. And church, I'm just telling you, I wanna be part of that. I wanna be part of that. I'll end with a story. You'll remember when Jesus was talking to Peter after a night where they couldn't catch any fish, which seemingly was about every night from what you read in the New Testament. But Jesus comes to Peter, and He tells them to go back out and put their nets down on the opposite side. And Peter begins to tell the Lord, you don't know what you're talking about. We've been fishing all night. Like, we're tired, we're exhausted. But he goes back out, puts the net down on the other side, and there's such a catch of fish that their boats begin to sink, and they gotta call all the other boats.

And when Peter comes back, he says, go away from me, Lord, I'm a sinful man. What was Jesus trying to teach him? Not just that he didn't know how to fish, but you don't know how to do anything that I'm asking you to do. All I'm asking you to do is be obedient. If you'll be obedient, you'll seek my face, and you'll be obedient, my word tells you, I'll do all the things that I promise you that I'll do. And that's the call to you, too. God wants you. He wants your devotion. He loves you so much. He came to this world, fulfilled the law, died on the cross for all your sins, was buried, rose from the dead, offered life to anybody who would repent and believe in Him. He loves you. He wants your devotion. And if you're devoted to Him, it will translate into the service that we're talking about today, amen? Would you stand with me? Our Father in heaven, we give you all the praise, glory, and honor. Lord, you're the Lord who leads us and guides us. Lord, you're the one that unfolds our path and our plan.