Unshakable Faith - Saddleback Weekend Service

Hey, everybody, welcome to church. So great to see you in the room. We've come for one reason and that's to lift high the name of Jesus. The only name worthy of praise. Come on, everybody. Let's worship him together. That can empty out a grave, I know a name. It's the only name that saves and it's worthy of all praise. I call you Jesus. I call you, I call you healer, risen and reigning in power. Something comes out of the grave. Every time I call you, Jesus, I call you, I call you. Savior, worthy of glory forever. Something comes out of the grave. Every time I call your name, come on, let's sing. And I have a king with dominion over death and he holds the keys. Yes, he does. In his holy nail scarred hands. And he is the healer that has crushed the serpent's head. I resurrected, great I am. And I call you Jesus. I call you, I call you healer, risen and reigning in power. Something comes out of the grave. And every time I call you, Jesus, I call you, I call you. Savior, worthy of glory forever. Something comes out of the grave. Every time I call your name, come on, chains break, dry bones wake. Every time I call your name, the gates of hell shake. Every time I call your name, come on, chains break, dry bones wake. Every time I call your name, the gates of hell shake.

Every time I call your name. The Bible says, oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sin? And thanks be unto God who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ. Come on, let's sing this out together. Where, oh, death, is now your sting? And where, oh, grave, your victory? You say, where, oh, death, is now your sting? And where, oh, grave, your victory? Dead things come alive, dead things come alive. Dead things come alive in the name of Jesus. Dead things come alive, dead things come alive. Dead things come alive in the name of Jesus. Dead things come alive, dead things come alive. Dead things come alive in the name of Jesus. Dead things come alive, dead things come alive. Dead things come alive, dead things come alive. In the name of, I call you Jesus, I call you, I call you healer. Risen and reigning in power, something comes out of the grave. Every time I call you Jesus, I call you, I call you savior. Worthy of glory forever, something comes out of the grave. And every time I call your name. ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ Oh, well, hey, everybody, welcome to church. You picked a great weekend to be here because it is baptism weekend. So in a couple of minutes here, we're gonna get to celebrate with a couple of our friends who are taking their next step in baptism. And I love that we just sang this song

that dead things come alive because that's what baptism is. It's our old life being buried with Christ and coming out in new life with Jesus. And so in a few minutes, we're gonna get to watch people take their next step. And I wanna remind you that all of these people, they have already made a decision to say yes and following Jesus. And today what they're saying is, we just wanna go public with our faith. Baptism is really just an outward expression of a decision that we've already made. Baptism is saying, I want all of my friends and family to know that I am a follower of Jesus. And so this water out here, it's just good old California water district water, ain't nothing special about it. Because how many of you know, only the blood of Jesus saves us, but baptism is a way for us to go public with our faith. And so in a minute, I'm gonna ask you to multitask, okay? We're gonna continue to worship and then we're gonna watch baptisms up there on the screen. And listen, every time someone gets baptized, they're gonna go under the water and come up. And I want us to celebrate and scream and shout and cheer them on.

So can we practice that for a second? When they go under the water and they come up, we're gonna, woo! All right, so you're gonna watch a couple of people get baptized, but the first one, I gotta tell you this story I just heard. Her name is Sydney. She came on Easter for the first time and saw all of those people taking their step, getting baptized, and God began to plant a seed in her. And today she decided that she's going public with their faith and then she's gonna get baptized and she has a friend with her who's gonna get baptized as well. So come on, let's continue to worship and celebrate baptisms tonight. ♪ Shaking off the heaviness ♪ ♪ I'm dancing off of my regrets ♪ ♪ Throwing caution to the wind ♪ ♪ No, I am not ashamed to praise like this ♪ ♪ Some would say it's foolishness ♪ Put our hands together. ♪ I say it's worth the risk ♪ ♪ I'll let what Jesus did ♪ ♪ No, I am not ashamed to praise like this ♪ ♪ Where are those chains that once held me? ♪ ♪ I'm free, I'm free, I'm free, I'm free ♪ ♪ My sin is gone, how can it be? ♪ ♪ I'm free, I'm free, I'm free, I'm free ♪ ♪ And look at what the Lord has done ♪

♪ I'm never going back to the way I was ♪ ♪ I'll sing, I'll dance, cause I'm free ♪ ♪ I'm free, I'm free, thank God I'm free, yes ♪ ♪ We thank you for freedom, come on, sing it out ♪ ♪ My sin is gone, how can it be? ♪ ♪ I'm free, I'm free, I'm free, I'm free, I'm free ♪ ♪ And look at what the Lord has done ♪ ♪ I'm never going back to the way I was ♪ ♪ I'll sing, I'll dance, cause I'm free ♪ ♪ I'm free, I'm free, thank God I'm free, yes ♪ ♪ You took the cross and you broke your body ♪ ♪ Sing it out, my debt is paid and my record is clean ♪ ♪ I couldn't do it so you did it for me, sing it out ♪ ♪ You took the cross and you broke your body ♪ ♪ You shed your blood and now the sinner can't see ♪ ♪ My debt is paid and my record is clean ♪ ♪ I couldn't do it so you took the cross ♪ ♪ You took the cross and you broke your body ♪ ♪ You shed your blood and now the sinner can't see ♪ ♪ And my debt is paid and my record is clean ♪ ♪ I couldn't do it so you did it for me, sing it out ♪ ♪ Anyway, I'm sure You did it for me ♪ Let's sing it, Freedom Church. ♪ There are those chains that once held me ♪ ♪ I'm free, I'm free, I'm free, I'm free ♪ ♪ My sin is gone, how can it be ♪ ♪ I'm free, I'm free, I'm free, I'm free ♪ ♪ And looking what the Lord has done ♪ ♪ I'm never going back to the way I was ♪ ♪ I'll sing, I'll dance, cause I'm free, I'm free, I'm free ♪

♪ Thank God, You took the cross and You broke it by me ♪ ♪ You shed Your blood and now the sinner can't see me ♪ ♪ My debt is paid and my record is clean ♪ ♪ Once and for all, I couldn't do it so You did it for me ♪ ♪ Oh, You took the cross and You broke it by me ♪ ♪ You shed Your blood and now the sinner can't see me ♪ ♪ My debt is paid and my record is clean ♪ ♪ Once and for all, I couldn't do it so You did it for me ♪ ♪ I couldn't do it so You did it for me, I couldn't do it for me ♪ ♪ Only God can do it, only God can do it ♪ ♪ Look at what the Lord has done, I'm never going back to the way I was ♪ ♪ Look at what the Lord has done, I'm never going back to the way I was ♪ ♪ Look at what the Lord has done, oh His amazing grace ♪ ♪ Look at what the Lord has done, I'm never going back to the way I was ♪ And all because of His sacrifice, all because of His body broken for us. When I think about the cross, when I think about His bloodshed, my natural response is worship, my natural response is to lift my hands and say, Hallelujah. Can you say Hallelujah in the room? So let's sing this together. Hallelujah, praise the one who set me free Hallelujah, death has lost its grip on me You have broken every chain There's salvation in Your name Jesus Christ, my living hope Let's sing. How great the chasm that lay between us How high the mountain I could not climb In desperation I turned to heaven And spoke Your name into the night Then through the darkness Your loving kindness

Tore through the shadows of my soul The work is finished, the end is written Jesus Christ, my living hope Come on, let's sing. Who could imagine so great a mercy What heart could fathom such boundless grace The God of ages stepped down from glory To wear my sin and bear my shame Come on. The cross has spoken, I am forgiven The King of kings calls me His own Beautiful Savior, I'm Yours forever Jesus Christ, my living hope Come on, here we go. Hallelujah, praise the one who set me free Hallelujah, death has lost its grip on me You have broken every chain There's salvation in Your name Jesus Christ, my living hope Hallelujah, praise the one who set me free Hallelujah, death has lost its grip on me You have broken every chain There's salvation in Your name Jesus Christ, my living hope Then came the Lord that sealed the promise Your buried body began to breathe Out of the silent, the roaring lion Declared the grave has no claim on me Then came the Lord that sealed the promise Your buried body began to breathe

Out of the silent, the roaring lion Declared the grave has no claim on me Jesus, Yours is the victory Hallelujah, praise the one who set me free Hallelujah, death has lost its grip on me You have broken every chain There's salvation in Your name Jesus Christ, my living hope Hallelujah, praise the one who set me free Hallelujah, death has lost its grip on me You have broken every chain There's salvation in Your name Jesus Christ, my living hope And Jesus Christ, my living hope God, You are my living hope Christ is our living hope And today when we gather together in worship We get to declare that There is hope because of Christ's death And His resurrection from the grave We can have assurance That there is forgiveness from sins That what things that felt lost or dead in our life Can come back to life again That there can be restoration in relationships That we can be restored in our relationship with the Father And today we get to celebrate that And declare that Christ is our living hope Well, we are so glad that you're joining us for worship today Welcome to Saddleback

We want to invite you right now If you're watching on YouTube You can go to the link in the description And click on that to access our digital program Or even better yet, we have a Saddleback app That you can download to help you stay connected To the things that are going on in the life of our church And also respond to the message As we get to hear from Pastor Aaron today And so set your campus as online community When you open the app And we'd love for you to engage that way And if it is your first time joining us online for Saddleback We want to say welcome We hope that you feel loved And we would also love to personally connect with you And help you get plugged in And it starts with you letting us know it's your first time So you can do that by filling out a Next Steps New Here form Through the digital program that way And we would love to reach out to you And help you get plugged in And one of the best first steps that you can take If you're new to our church Or you haven't taken a step to get connected yet Is joining us for Activate Activate is a one-hour experience Where we will share more about the life of our church And also what it looks like to be a part of Saddleback Especially as the online community

Because we believe church is more than just a place just watching online, but it is doing life together It's a place where you can connect with people And it's a place where you can be a part of a community and growing in our faith. And it's a place where you can be a part of a community And there are ways to do that as an online community member. And it's a place where you can be a part of a community So we wanna invite you to join us. You can register for our August 2nd Activate through the Saddleback app, and we would love to meet you on that call. Well, this week we are in week two of our series Off the Shelf, where we have some incredible best-selling authors joining us and speaking and sharing from their books. And this week we have Pastor Aaron Graham joining us. We are so excited to have him here. But throughout this series, we wanna give you the opportunity to dive deeper into these books. And so throughout the series, every week, we are giving away five of the author's books from that week. And we wanna let you know how you can get a chance to possibly get one of those. You can fill out a Next Steps form through the Saddleback app or by clicking that link in the description. Just simply fill out a Next Steps form while you're watching the service today,

and we'll let you know if you have the chance to win. So we are so grateful that you're with us today. We're gonna join the rest of our church family to hear what happened this past week through the life of our church. Hey, Saddleback family. My name is Charlotte, and I am here in the midst of Summer Blast. Summer Blast is our day camp for kids, and we welcomed all of our campuses here at our Lake Forest campus this year. We have nearly 1,200 kids here who are worshiping Jesus, learning about God's love for them, being cared for by our amazing Dream Team Kids leaders, and, of course, having fun. But I don't want you to just take my word for it. I want you to hear from some of our kids and leaders right now. Let's go find some. All right, what is your favorite part of Summer Blast? My favorite part of Summer Blast is doing the craft. Friday! What is something that you've learned about Jesus? That he is a shepherd. Did you learn anything new about Jesus? I learned about that he went on the cross. I love how it gets to explain your feelings about how you love Jesus. I have been a leader for over 25 years, and what I love about Summer Blast is it never gets old.

The connections the kids make with each other and with God, and I love the messages every year and the stories. It's brilliant. If you haven't done it, you need to join us. God is doing incredible things in the lives of our kids, and this week, over 70 kids made a decision to follow Jesus, and I wanna tell you the story about one of them. Her name is Addie. Now, a few years ago, Addie invited a family to come to Saddleback. They had just moved to Orange County. They were looking for a church home, and they loved Saddleback and quickly got connected, and that mom in that family, she is now a leader at Summer Blast this year, and it just so happens that Addie is in her group. Now, as they were talking, they realized that Addie had never really made a decision to follow Jesus, and so the mom got to lead Addie in that. She got to pray the prayer with her and lead her into saying yes to Jesus for the first time. Only God can do that. Only God can write that story and have that little girl bring a family to church, and that family be the ones that lead her to Jesus, and all of this happens because of your generosity. You are investing in the lives of our kids. You're investing in the lives of the next generation, and God is moving because you are making space

for him to move in the next generation. So, if you want to give your tithes and offerings today, you can do that through the Saddleback app, and if you are wondering what 1,200 kids sound like worshiping Jesus, I want to give you a little idea of what that sounds like. ♪ I'll raise you again ♪ ♪ I'm stronger than I've been in the moment ♪ Isn't that amazing? Well, you picked a great weekend to be at church. We are continuing our summer series, which is the off-the-shelf series. So, let's listen now to today's message. Incredible. You know, I heard actually after the video was recorded, there were another 32 kids that made first-time decisions to follow Jesus. So, we can celebrate that together, church family. God is on the move, he's changing lives, and he's using you to make it happen. And so, I do, from the bottom of my heart, want to say to all of our volunteers, all of our leaders, thank you for investing your life in the next generation. We are a grateful church for all that you do. So, can we, as a whole church family together, just say thank you to our dream team that served this week, investing in the lives of our kids. Well, it is a great weekend to be together. I do want to welcome all of our campuses and those of you who are joining us online.

We are in the second week of a message series called Off the Shelf, and the way this series works is we bring in, over the course of a month, we bring in pastors, authors, leaders that have written books that we want the message of that book to impact our church. And so, today, you're gonna hear an incredible. from a very good friend of mine, Pastor Aaron Graham. Now, I'll tell you a little bit about him. Aaron pastors a church in downtown Washington, D.C. He's been there for 15 years. He and his wife, Amy, started the church together. Aaron and I actually have known each other the whole journey. So he started, and I was also in the Bay Area at the time with my wife, Stacy, and we had planted a church. So we got to know each other, but we were doing that a part of an organization called the Strategic Launch Network. Now, you may have heard of this because Saddleback is now investing in churches that are being started all over North America in some of the hardest to reach places. And now there are close to 100 churches that have been started through this network, many of them reaching thousands of people in the hardest to reach areas. And Aaron's church is one of those churches. And so I love our journey that we get to talk together, share stories.

But one of the things that you're gonna hear in him is a heart to live with the truth of God, but also to live with the grace of God and to help us as followers of Jesus or anybody who's listening to this message to understand how God's truth helps us live with freedom in a culture of lies. So this book, Unshakable Faith, is going to rock your world if you read it. And Aaron is gonna be a blessing to our whole church family. So I wanna ask you, will you please put your hands together, give a warm Saddleback welcome to my good friend, Aaron Graham. Thank you. It's so great to be with you all. Welcome to all of the Saddleback campuses across the US and the world. I'm glad to have the opportunity to share God's word with you today. And I love this man, Pastor Andy Wood. He is a dear brother. Leadership can be lonely, pastoring can be lonely, but when you have somebody that's in the trenches with you, we get to see each other two to three times a year. This guy's the real deal. He's the same person on stage as he is off stage, the way he loves his wife, his kids, and the way he loves and prays for you guys. So can we celebrate Pastor Andy and Stacy Wood?

Love you guys. So grateful for you. And I'm grateful to be here with you guys. I'm actually here with my wife, Amy, and our two kids, Elijah and Natalie. We've been around the OC and also down in LA doing a little touring. So it's been great to be here. I bring you greetings from the District Church in DC. We are two miles directly north of the White House, over 80 nationalities represented in the church. And we were just entrusted with a huge cathedral on the most spiritually significant street in DC, 16th Street, and we're about to break ground on that to restore it. And I look forward to you guys coming and worshiping with us next time you're in DC. Now, today I wanna talk to you about how to have an unshakable faith in a culture of lies. Somebody say unshakable. Unshakable. You know, I used to think that spiritual drift was just something that happened in large secular cities like DC or San Francisco, but the data tells a different story. Research shows that now more people have left the church in the last 25 years, then came to faith, that came to Christian faith in the First Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening,

and the Billy Graham Crusades combined. Now for the first time in US history, there's more people that don't go to church than do go to church. And so Gen Z is either in revival, because research shows they're actually attending church more often than any other generation. They're either in revival or they're in retreat. There's nobody, there's no room to sit on the fence anymore. There's no room for cultural Christianity, you're either for them or you're against them. But this is also happening, not just in Gen Z, it's happening across all different demographics. And there is a spiritual war that I wanna talk to you about today that is going on for the hearts and the minds of this generation. And the war is around who is going to have ultimate authority in your life. We're gonna unpack that. And the two questions I want you to be thinking about and wrestling with as I open God's word and as we go through this message is the first question is, am I drifting? Is there any way that I'm spiritually drifting from God's truth and God's church? And the second question is, do I know anybody who's drifting? A loved one, a family member, a friend, a roommate, a colleague at work.

And we're gonna have an opportunity to pray into that today. But I wanna start first with our scripture from today, which comes from 2 Timothy 4, starting in verse one. And if you're able. Across all the campuses, would you stand now to reverence the reading of God's word? This is the Apostle Paul writing to his spiritual son in the faith, Timothy. These are some of the last words that the Apostle Paul gives. He's on the eve of his death just outside of Rome where he's gonna be martyred, killed for his faith. He's been laboring intensely in the gospel for 30 years and he charges Timothy, this is what matters the most. He says this, in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge, preach the word. Somebody say, preach the word. He says, be prepared in season and out of season. He says, and he gives them these charges and he's giving these charges to Timothy, not just because he wants them to be a better preacher, but because he understands the tendency for some Christians to drift from Christ. And so he says, he says, correct, rebuke, encourage with great patience and careful instruction, for the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine, that's sound theology, sound beliefs, instead will suit their own desires. They'll gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. I'm glad there's no itching ear Christians at Saddleback, amen? They'll turn their ears away from the truth and turn them aside to myths. But you, somebody say, but you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry, amen? You may be seated. You know, over the years of pastoring, I've seen this story on repeat over and over.

Somebody comes to faith in Christ at a young age, commit their life to Christ, and all they can imagine doing is serving God the rest of their life. And as a result of your newfound faith, you begin to work hard. You begin to apply yourself in the classroom, apply yourself at work, because you're learning the Christian virtues. And as a result of that, you begin to succeed academically or professionally. You land a scholarship. You go to that great school. You build a whole new community, and you continue to excel in school. You land that great job in a new city. You meet that spouse. You begin to have kids. But one of the patterns that I've seen over and over is that as so many of us progress professionally, we regress spiritually. And it's not that like anybody wanted that to happen. It's not you set out, you're like, hey, I just want to like make money and do really well, but like, you know, just follow Jesus in my spare time. No, it's like that's not where we start off, but this pattern can often happen in our culture. The great evangelist John Wesley, who ministered coming out of the first great awakening to tens of thousands of people, struggled with this same dynamic of spiritual drift. He would preach the gospel and thousands would come to faith in Christ. He would put them in small groups, what he called bands or classes. And there was intense accountability in these groups. And so people would learn to get sober. People would learn to like show up at work on time and start saving more than they're spending. People, drunk dudes started loving their wives and getting clean and then raising their kids to know the Lord. And as life progressed, they began to prosper. But Wesley was frustrated because the fruit of discipleship was like then leading people

to then later regress spiritually. Listen to what he says. He says this in 1786. He says, for wherever true Christianity spreads, it must cause diligence and frugality, meaning hard work and saving money. And these in the natural course of things must beget riches, right? Because if you save more than you spend over time, you'll have money. And riches naturally beget pride, love of the world, and every temper that is destructive to Christianity. Now let me be clear. John Wesley was not against making money or being wealthy. In fact, he's famous for saying gain all you can, save all you can, and give all you can. Wesley was not lamenting that the revival was creating prosperity, but that the prosperity that was being created was undermining the revival that then led to this prosperity. Being upwardly mobile economically was leading to people being downwardly mobile spiritually. And as I witnessed this same pattern, ministering in the richest city in the richest country in human history, and in the most educated city in our country, I began to say, what's this pattern? This pattern of predictable lies of how the enemy gets Christians to believe lies that will cause us to water down our faith. And there's seven specific lies that I go through in the book. But the key point is that they're subtle, they're predictable, they're gradual, they don't happen overnight. C.S. Lewis's book, Screwtape Letters,

was a big inspiration for me in this book. And Screwtape is the devil writing to his junior devil, Wormwood, and giving the playbook of how to get Christians to spiritually drift in their faith. It was written 80 years ago to an increasingly secular European culture, but it's very relevant to us today. Listen to what Screwtape says. He says, indeed, the safest road to hell is the gradual one, the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. Church, this is weighty stuff that we're talking about today. We're talking about life or death. We're talking about, when we're talking about the gospel and drifting from the truth of God, we're talking about sin. We're talking about the consequences of sin. We're talking about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We're talking about the grace of God that is available to anyone who repents and places their faith in Jesus. And there's an urgency that I have to this message, because Jesus is returning soon, and we must be ready, we must be alert, we must be unshakable. In fact, the author of Hebrews says it this way,

since we are receiving a kingdom that is unshakable, somebody say unshakable. Unshakable. Let us be thankful and please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe. That's what we're doing today. We're worshiping him with holy fear and awe. Now, my confession is that whenever I used to observe spiritual drift in others, I would back up, because I am a recovering people pleaser. I don't like conflict. I want everybody to get along. And so when a friend starts telling me these questions and things they're wrestling with, I minimize the parts of the gospel that might seem controversial and try to highlight where there's common ground. But what I've realized over the years, and this book is my confession, is that where I stepped back, the culture stepped in. And the culture didn't step in with a godly worldview that was based on the lordship of Christ and the authority of scripture. The culture stepped in and caused us to try to turn in on ourselves and remove God from the equation. And so what Paul is telling Timothy here, Paul's telling Timothy, don't back up. You gotta lean in. You gotta contend for the gospel in your generation.

You know, what we're dealing with today is nothing new. Yes, it's been accelerated in the Western world for the last 300 years with enlightenment. It's being promoted online very quickly across places. So now it's no longer confined to secular cities like DC or San Francisco, but it's coming to a neighborhood near you. Tell your neighbor it's coming, right? It's coming, right? And so we have to be aware. We have to be alert. And one of the things we have to be clear about, and I'm saying this as somebody who once again is a recovering people pleaser, is that we have to be clear around biblical truth. Clarity is kindness. And I believe that we can hold together both conviction about God's truth and compassion and love for people from all different backgrounds. Jesus came full of grace and full of truth. And so we have to realize these lies have been around from the very beginning. You know, in the garden where God tempts Adam and Eve to twist the truth. Did God really say that you must not eat from this tree? That's how the enemy always works. He disguises himself as an angel of light and he takes a bit of truth, but then he twists it and mixes it with lies

so that it will be more attractive and more digestible to us. Now, the early church had to confront these lies as well. It's why so many of the epistles were written. They were written to address false teaching that came from within the church. Not out there in culture, but actually came from within the church. Jesus, the epistles call him false prophet. or false teachers, Jesus calls them false prophets. And Jesus says, watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they're ferocious wolves. By their fruit, you will recognize them. So they talk like church people, they dress like church people, but you have to be discerning. They'll slip into your feeds online and they'll sound very persuasive. They may even have a book deal or be on some big podcasts, but you have to be discerning. You can't let your guard down. And Paul tells Timothy here, you've gotta be alert. You gotta be ready. You've gotta be ready in season and out of season, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, because a time will come, he says, when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but in order to suit their own desires, they'll gather around them, listen to this,

a great number of teachers, false teachers, right? A whole army of them, not like one person, but like a whole army of people that will be saying the same thing so that the lie will feel even more justified. And they'll say what people's itching ears wanna hear. What Paul is saying here is not a new problem for us today, but we have to ask ourselves, how do these cultural lies manifest in 2026? In the cultural moment that we're living in, how do we be faithful in this moment? Because Jesus promised that he will build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail. So you can stand firm, you will stand firm, but we've gotta be discerning. And so the question is, how does spiritual drift happen in our cultural context today? Well, I don't have time to go into all the seven lies, but what underlies all seven of these lies is a shift in authority. It's a shift in authority. And today, authority increasingly lies within your own experience and interpretation of the truth rather than in God's authority. So it's a shift. Instead of God being in authority, now I'm in authority. The fancy sociological term for this is expressive individualism. This is where you do you, you live your truth, you follow your heart.

And there's part of that that's true, right? Because God has fearfully and wonderfully made you. You have a unique calling, you have a unique gifting that you must steward. And so there's a part of you that you have to discover. But you have to discover God, your truth of how he made you within God's greater truth. And so this shift in authority is saying, now you get to decide for yourself what is true. That ultimate truth rests in your own feelings. It rests within how you, your own desires. That the chief end of man is not to glorify God but to pursue your own happiness. And so you understand how this can cause us to stray from biblical truth. And what this shift in authority is leading to is it's leading to what I call progressive theology. And this is simply this, it's reinterpreting scripture and the historic teachings of the church to make it more acceptable to our current modern culture or more comfortable for ourself. Now this happens around all the hot button issues, right? It happens around sexuality, it happens around gender, around family. It happens also around care for the poor and how we care for widows and orphans and others. Now, let me be clear. There's certain things that we need to progress on in life. That you should always be learning and growing. But there's some things

that we don't need to progress beyond. There's a firm foundation that has already been laid for us in Christ Jesus. And we have to understand that when we submit to his ways, when we submit to his divine design, it leads not only to our own flourishing, but it leads to the flourishing of others. Now, in my experience in DC, if you just do nothing, you will drift. If you just do nothing, you will drift. A boat out on the water with no anchor on a clear day, perfect weather will drift. A boat, let me say that again. A boat out on the water with no anchor, perfect day, no breeze will drift. It's just the reality. We have to be very intentional about cultivating and growing our faith. And what I've seen, because I've had a front row to progressive Christianity on the East Coast. What I've seen for many, not all. is that progressive Christianity becomes a layover on the way to post-Christianity. And the reason is because it has no ethical stance against the world. It calls for nothing other than a secular definition of love and tolerance. Now this drift can happen in either direction. It can happen to the right or to the left,

but the common denominator is there's a shift from the authority of God to the authority of self. From the authority of scripture to the authority of me, where my own personal freedom, my own autonomy, that I get to decide what is best. But here's the reality. When autonomy becomes your highest value, following Jesus becomes impossible, right? Because it was Jesus who said in Matthew 16, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. When you make yourself the center, when you orient everything around your own desires, it not only hurts you, but it hurts the next generation. Right, a faith that's all about you will not reproduce to the next generation. Because the kids are like, what are you calling me to anything other than the world? I can just go live in the world. You're not calling me to be countercultural or different in any other way. And when we believe that, over time, church becomes a social club that has no power or potency to call the next generation to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow Jesus. The question is, how do we discern this spiritual drift in us or in others before it's too late? Well, the book of Jude, which is another short epistle,

gives us a framework. It's the second to last book in the Bible before Revelation. And Jude is writing to address false teaching. And he says this, be merciful to those who doubt, save others by snatching them from the fire, to others show mercy mixed with fear, hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh. Now, here's the pattern of what I've seen when spiritual drift goes unchecked. Doubt turns to deconstruction, which over time turns to denial. Let's walk through those briefly. So doubt, having doubt is a normal part of a human experience. To doubt is to be unsure of something. It's to come to church with questions. It's to say, I don't feel like God is with me in this situation because I'm going through a really difficult time. We want church to be a place where people can be honest about their questions and their doubts. Jesus welcomed people who had doubts. When it was John the Baptist, when it was Thomas, when it was Peter, and Jude says here, be merciful to those who doubt, because you might not have the same doubts, but you could at one day. So be merciful. Jesus meets us in our doubts,

but he's never met a doubt he liked, because Jesus ultimately calls us to walk by faith, not by doubt, amen? When doubt goes unchecked, it turns into deconstruction. Deconstruction is the process of dismantling one's accepted beliefs. Deconstruction is usually a very unhealthy process, but I must issue a disclaimer because some of you may have grown up in a church with really bad theology that was super legalistic, or maybe somebody encountered abuse in the church. And so what you have to do is you have to get around godly community that believes in the word of God, somebody say godly community, that can help you. This is like where you need, like you go to a doctor that has training. You don't just go to like anybody when you're sick, you go to a doctor. You need to go to people with training that help you deconstruct the stuff that's wrong that people taught you was from the Bible so that you can rediscover Jesus and a true faith, right? So sometimes that's necessary. But what I find most of the time is that deconstruction becomes an excuse for most people to sin. So you say, okay, chap GPT, give me a biblical reason that I can justify sleeping with my girlfriend or dating somebody who's not a believer. We have to be careful with deconstruction. That's like a yellow card, yellow flag,

it's World Cup weekend, right? Yellow card, right? And Jude says to those in the deconstruction camp, show mercy mixed with fear. Mercy, because you could have gone through some really bad theology, but mixed with fear because going unchecked, this was going in the wrong direction. The last stage is denial. To deny something means to declare something as untrue. And so for them, Jude says, snatch them from the fire. This is beyond like an indirect personal warning. This is like call a time of prayer and fasting and hold an intervention meeting where you speak the truth in love. Now I've seen this pattern happen over and over. I remember a young guy in our church who was leading, he was leading a life group. And over time he stepped back from leadership and then he stepped back from community and then he stepped back from an active prayer life, he stepped back from the church. And over time, Jesus became nothing more than a great moral teacher who inspired him to live a better, more loving and inclusive life. We have to be careful, denial is red card. And the enemy is on a mission. We have to be discerning because the enemy is on a mission to spiritually isolate you. The enemy wants to take you out of church.

The enemy wants to take you out of community because he knows that if he can isolate you, then he can better cause you to believe many of the lies that will cause you to stop believing core Christian doctrine, like foundational Christian doctrine, right? It usually, at least in my context, it usually starts, these conversations usually start around a hot topic like gender or sexuality, that the church needs to be more loving and more inclusive. And absolutely, we need to be loving to people from all different walks of life. But what happens is that people attach a secular definition to love and inclusion. It's not a biblical definition. The Bible, the gospel is the most inclusive message of all time, that Jesus died for the whole world, for whoever repents and believes. But it's a secular definition of you do you, you follow your own adventure. And it has no power because love in the Bible is that Jesus sent his one and only son to die for us. That's love. That's how the Bible defines love. And so what I've realized is, because I've been engaged in all these conversations around sexuality and gender for all these years, what I've realized is it's not actually about that at the end of the day. It's about something further upstream.

And what I found is progressive theology over time leads people to deny that Christ is the only way to salvation. So Jesus becomes a way rather than the way. The other thing is it causes people to deny that the Holy Spirit provides supernatural gifts, to deny that the Bible is the authoritative written word of God, to deny that heaven and hell are real places, to deny that we are sinful and in need of God, and to deny Christ death and bodily resurrection. Church, the stakes are high. And people want to try to cause you to reduce Jesus to just another prophet or just a great moral example. But how many of you know that Jesus is more than a good moral example? He is the Son of God. He is the Son of God who alone has the power to forgive our sins and reconcile us to a holy God. One of the lies that I talk about in the book is that everything is rational. It's lie number six. And I want to share with you today about it because it's the one that I'm most tempted to believe. And this lie goes, everything is rational, that I have to fully understand something in order for it to be true. Think about how arrogant that is. But it's really about me. I have to figure it out intellectually

in order for it to be true. But how many of you have a story, a testimony in your life of God doing something miraculous that does not have a rational explanation, but you know is undeniably true? When I was 10 years old, my family moved to this tiny little country called Kuwait to be missionaries. We were the first Baptist missionaries in Kuwait. And three months after we arrived, Saddam Hussein and Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait and our whole family was held hostage during the Persian Gulf War. There's a picture of us right here when I was 10 years old. That's me on the left. And it was a brutal experience. Iraq had the fourth largest army in the world at the time. The US and many other countries responded and then half a million troops built up in Saudi Arabia to keep Iraq from coming into Saudi Arabia to hopefully push them back into Iraq. But Saddam Hussein took us as hostages, as human shields to prevent the war from going on. It was a very strategic move for Saddam Hussein. Well, thankfully my mother, my brother and I were all released six weeks into the conflict. So we went home, but my dad had to stay. And it was four months into the whole ordeal. It was the first week of December of 1990 and millions of Christians were praying for Maurice Graham

to be released, to be miraculously released from being a hostage. In fact, Saddleback Church prayed for my father in 1990. In fact, when I first met Pastor Rick, he told me. We prayed for your dad. I talked to people after the last service that talked about, we were here in 1990, we remember praying for your dad. And you don't want to hear the story, that same week, during that week of prayer, when people were specifically praying for this missionary Maurice Graham, God began to trouble the heart of Saddam Hussein. He began to have these disturbing dreams, and it got so bad that he wasn't able to sleep for multiple nights. He called his whole cabinet together, and he demanded them that day to release all of the hostages, 200 hostages across Kuwait and Iraq, and my dad came back the next day. Here's a picture of us. That's me on the left being reunited with him when he landed in Nashville. Former Secretary of State James Baker said there was no political reason for Saddam Hussein to do this. When my dad went back to Kuwait and reopened the embassy, he met with former President H.W. Bush, and he — and Bush said there's no human explanation for why Saddam released the hostages. He said, I just know it made my job a lot easier. Well, President Bush may not have known why Saddam Hussein released the hostages, but I know. Because God moved on the heart of one of the most wicked leaders in the world in response to the prayers of his people. Church, there's, there's some things that are super natural. They're super — they're beyond our own explanation. That's why they're miraculous. You have a testimony of God bringing healing to you or to a loved one.

You have a testimony of a financial breakthrough, of getting a job or getting housing or some story. My Aunt Kathy — or my Aunt Barb is here today who's a twin sister to Aunt Kathy, and when I was in college, she got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and I prayed and I fasted for the first time in my life and got our college ministry to pray for her, and she's still alive 23 years later after doctors said she only had six months to live. And her twin sister is a part of Saddleback right here. I love what God is doing. This is so important, it's so important for us to lean in to the supernatural, to not just think that we get to decide for ourself what is best, that we get to define truth. Church, we have to be bold and stand firm in the gospel, because where we step back, the culture steps in. Here's the reality, if we don't disciple our people, the world gladly will. If you don't disciple your kids, the world gladly will. And what's happening in our post-Christian culture that we live in today is that the post-Christian culture is more aggressive about evangelism and getting people de-churched than we are about evangelism. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to have the students in our church have to be more bold in the classroom than their pastor is in the pulpit. We have to be clear. Clarity is kindness. We can hold together both conviction and compassion. Now the point of all this is not to live in the cultural analysis of everything that's going up here. I'm a sociologist by background, so I love all the stats and everything. The reality is we have to address these lies and talk about them, because they're undermining our ability to live out the core things that we're called to do all the time as the church. The things that we just do day in and day out. And so I talk about seven historic practices in the church. The first one is true worship.

This is calling people to faith in Jesus, and it's resisting the lie that it's all about me. The second is deep community. This is calling people to join the local church, and it's resisting the lie that church is optional, that I can just shop for a church until I find the perfect one. The third one is bold storytelling. This is sharing your faith. This is evangelism, and it resists the lie that faith is private, that I just hold my faith to myself. The fourth is Bible engagement. This is really about encountering the whole Word of God. It's resisting the lie that the Bible is outdated, the chronological snobbery argument. The fifth one is biblical justice. This is about caring for the poor, and it resists the lie that we can change the world with our spare change and our spare time. The sixth is inviting us to a Spirit-filled life, to experience all of the gifts of the Spirit, and to resist the lie that everything is rational. And finally, the invitation to radical forgiveness, to love people that are difficult to love in a divided world, to resist the lie that enemies must be canceled, and to live out the truth that Jesus taught us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Church, the enemy is on a mission to cause you to drift in your faith, but the good news of the Gospel, and Jesus prayed this in John 17, that you can be in the world, but not of the world. You don't have to drift. Amen? I want to close by sharing a story. from the Atacama Desert in Chile, which we can put a picture of it here. It's the driest place. It's literally the driest place on earth.

You think Southern California or wherever you're listening from is dry, this is drier. It's the kind of place that you wonder how anything lives because very few things do. The Atacama Desert gets less than half an inch of rain per year, less than half an inch of rain per year. A few years ago, something miraculous happened. There was a downpour and they got seven years worth of rain in 12 hours. And so the thousands and thousands of seeds were below the surface that nobody could see that were waiting for this moment. If we can show the picture, it's what's called a super bloom. This is in the middle of the desert, the driest place on earth. 200 unique species of flowers bloom simultaneously, creating a flood of color as far as the eye could see. Saddleback, this is a picture of revival. This is a picture of revival. If you can show the next picture of kids playing in the field. And I believe that revival is beneath the surface of our culture right now. The ground of the culture may feel hard and dry, but there is a potential for something miraculous waiting beneath the hard exterior. The seeds are ready. The hearts of this next generation are ready. And we just need God to send the rain.

Somebody say, send the rain. We need God say, send the rain. Church, revival is when dead things come back to life. It's when we awaken from our slumber to live with urgency and fire. Revival always happens in history when the church returns, there's the word, returns to what is true and gains clarity about the cultural moment it's in. When we have the revelation that only unshakable things remain. Now, across all of our campuses, I wanna invite you to take out your next step card. And I wanna just lead us into a time of prayer. And I want you to be thinking about and ask the Holy Spirit to bring to your mind the name of a loved one, a friend, a classmate, a colleague at work who has drifted or seems to be at risk of drifting from God's word and God's truth and from the church. Some of you have already been thinking about that name as I've been sharing today, but I wanna invite you on the back of the card where it says, how can we pray for you to write down the name of anybody or names of anybody that God is bringing to your heart? Because we're actually gonna pray over these names this week and believe God to do a miracle. And so the buckets are gonna come around in a little bit and you can put those names in there.

The second group that I wanna pray for is those of you who are here today, listening today. And you say, you know what, pastor, if I'm honest with myself, I feel like I'm drifting. I feel like I'm being tempted to believe so many of these lies that truth rests in myself rather than in God's word. And if that's you today, I just want you to know that there's no shame in that. There's no shame in being tempted to drift. Jesus was tempted to drift by the devil in the wilderness. The good news of the gospel is that you can stand firm. Greater is he who is in you than he that is in the world. And so just if we could bow our heads right now, just every eye closed. And if you're here today and you say, you know what, pastor, I'm in a season where I don't feel like I have an anchor and I feel like I'm spiritually drifting, but I wanna have a strong, robust faith. Would you just raise your hand where you are? I just wanna pray over you. I see hands going up all over the place. Raise them high. God, thank you that you love us. Thank you that you're a good father, that you see us. Thank you, Jesus. God, thank you that no weapon formed against my brothers or sisters will prosper. Thank you that they are more than conquerors in Christ Jesus.

God, as the church right now, we pray that they would put on the full armor of God so that they would stand firm against all the schemes of the devil, that they would put on the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit to be able to stand firm. We thank you, Jesus, that you desire us to flourish. God, we wanna pray for all these names that we've written down on these cards. God, we pray for a super bloom in Orange County. God, we pray for a super bloom in LA. We pray for a super bloom. in San Diego, in Hong Kong, in Germany, in the Philippines, God. We pray for a super bloom in Buenos Aires, God. We thank you that you desire revival. God, help us to hunger for it. Help us to get on our knees and pray, God, that you would send the rain. Help us to not be discouraged when we see the hardness in our own hearts or in our family, when the surface is hard. Help us to believe by faith and see the seeds that have been planted underneath so that when the rain comes, God, there would be an awakening. God, we thank you. We thank you for your love for us. We thank you for giving us an unshakable faith

that can stand firm in a culture of lies. We love you. We pray it in Jesus' name. And everybody together said, amen and amen and amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. I wanna invite you guys to stand if you're able. And as we worship to this song, there's some of you, the buckets are gonna come around. You can put them in there, but there's something about moving around with our bodies that just helps confirm a word that God has put in our heart. So if you put some of those names down and you wanna come put them at the altar here, so just as a symbol of faith that these prayers are gonna be prayed over, you're gonna pray over them. Please bring these forward. If we could have the prayer team come out as well on the sides. If you're here today and you say, you know what? I'm just in a season where I'm being tempted to drift, the prayer team would love to pray with you. So as we sing this song, let's respond as the Spirit leads.

♪ Christ the Lord, cornerstone ♪ ♪ Weak made strong in the Savior's love ♪ ♪ Through the storm, He is Lord, Lord of all ♪ Come on, let's sing Christ the Lord. ♪ Christ the Lord, cornerstone ♪ ♪ Weak made strong in the Savior's love ♪ ♪ Through the storm, He is Lord, Lord of all ♪ Come on, Christ alone. ♪ Christ the Lord, cornerstone ♪ ♪ Weak made strong in the Savior's love ♪ ♪ Through the storm, He is Lord, Lord of all ♪ ♪ Said He is Lord, Lord of all ♪ ♪ He is Lord, Lord of all ♪ ♪ Christ alone, cornerstone ♪ ♪ Weak made strong in the Savior's love ♪ ♪ Through the storm, He is Lord, Lord of all ♪ ♪ Lord of all ♪ What an incredible message from Pastor Aaron today. And it's such an honor to have him with us, to be encouraged in our faith and to be reminded to stand firm and to step up for such a time as this. And we wanna invite you, if you didn't get the chance to fill out a Next Steps card yet, or maybe even write down the name of somebody in your life that you want us to be praying for, we wanna invite you to do that right now. You can click the link in the description. If you're watching on YouTube,

you can scan the QR code that you see on the screen, or you can even open our Saddleback app and fill out a form that way. But we would love to be praying for you and also coming alongside you as a church to be walking with you and to help encourage you in your faith. And if you wanna hear more about Unshakable Faith from Pastor Aaron and his book, you can purchase it by scanning the QR code that you see on the screen. It will send you to a link that you can purchase it to read more of Unshakable Faith. And we also wanna remind you that each week, we are giving away five copies of the author's book. And so you can be entered for a chance to win one of those books by filling out a Next Steps card as well. Well, we're so grateful that you're with us this week. Next weekend, we're continuing our off-the-shelf series with Pastor David Nasser. He's coming to share from his book that he wrote. And so we want to encourage you to maybe even invite a friend to join you as we continue this off-the-shelf series. We are so grateful that you are with us this week, and we'll see you again next week.