Latest / Wesley at FSU & TSC / "How To Be A Person :: You Are Not The Whole Body" | Sunday Service | October 11th, 2026

Transcript

"How To Be A Person :: You Are Not The Whole Body" | Sunday Service | October 11th, 2026 · Wesley at FSU & TSC

0:58
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: Amen and amen and amen.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: We're going to turn our attention to the sermon series we started last week, which was How to Be a Person.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: And I'm subtitling this week's You Are Not the Whole Body.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: Look at somebody next to you telling them you are not the whole body.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Sufficiently awkward, amen.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: We're going to be reading Romans 12 every week.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: Now I encouraged you last week to read Romans 12 throughout the week.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: You could read it every day, it would be very helpful.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: It's only 21 verses.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: It's not that hard for you to read.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: A lot of you probably thought about it.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: And I appreciate you thinking about it.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: This week we're going to put it into practice, amen.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: A lot of you grab Bibles too.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: So I'll reiterate that thing.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: If you don't own a physical Bible, I do not want you to leave this room this morning without having one in your hand.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: So even if you own one back home, but you don't have one here, I get it.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: I get it.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: Come get one.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: I will give it to you.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: It is my joy and privilege.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: I buy them very cheap and I have alums give them.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: But we're going to read Romans 12 every week, and we're going to read a little bit more every week as we begin to go through this very important chapter.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: If you remember what I said about Romans last week, Romans 1 through 11 is some of the deepest, richest theology that exists in all the scriptures.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: It's because Paul is telling us who God is and what God has done for us, and he's doing it in an assortment of different ways.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: It's incredible.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: If you really want to get in the heart of it, you should start in Romans 8 and 9.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: Blow your mind.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: But the after we get through chapter 11, Paul goes kind of into this worship moment.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: He just gets into this like real excitement moment where he's just kind of lost all words about how good God is, and he just starts giving praise to God.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a beautiful thing.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: And then when he gets to chapter 12, he decides to show us how to be a person, how to be a follower of Jesus, how to be a person that God wants us to be.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: And so we're going to read a portion of this every week as we go through it.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: We're going to start in verse one.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: This is Romans 12.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: Hear now the reading of God's word.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: So, brothers and sisters, because of God's mercies, I encourage you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: This is your appropriate priestly service.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: Don't be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you can figure out what God's will is, what is good and pleasing and mature.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: And we move on this week, verse three.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: Because of the grace that God gave me, I can say to each one of you, don't think of yourself more highly than you ought to think.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: Instead, be reasonable, since God has measured out a portion of faith to each one of you.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: We have many parts in one body, but the parts don't all have the same function.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: In the same way, though there are many of us, we are one body in Christ, and individually we belong to each other.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: We have different gifts that are consistent with God's grace that has been given to us.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: If your gift is prophecy, you should prophesy in proportion to your faith.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: If your gift is service, devote yourself to serving.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: If your gift is teaching, devote yourself to teaching.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: If your gift is encouragement, devote yourself to encouraging.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: The one giving should do it with no strings attached.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: The leader should lead with passion.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: The one showing mercy should be cheerful.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: The word of God for the people of God, thanks be to God.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: Let's bow our heads and pray over the preaching of God's word.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, your word is a lamp into our feet and it's a light into our path.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: We ask here this morning that it would speak to us and speak through us for the establishment of your kingdom on this earth.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, as I prepare, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight and in your sight alone.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, you are our rock and you are our redeemer, and we love you because you first loved us.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: And we pray this in your holy name.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: When I started writing this this week, I wanted to start by saying one of the things I see college students do all the time is compare themselves against each other.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: When you go to the gym, there will be somebody at the gym.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: Not that I've ever done that, but there will be somebody at the gym who is stronger than you, better looking than you, working harder than you.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: When you go into the classroom, there will be somebody who is smarter than you, talks more than you.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: When you get assigned a group project, isn't there that initial meeting with that group, whether it be the six minutes that you get in class, or maybe that first time at the library where half of you forgot to show up?
6:39
SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I mean?
6:40
SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe those moments when you're starting to rank like people who are going to contribute to this project, right?
6:47
SPEAKER_00: And you start to create an order.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: I know, and let me be honest, so honest with all of us, and can we be honest together?
6:53
SPEAKER_00: You are always at the top of that, right?
6:55
SPEAKER_00: Like nobody goes into that, like you're either not at that meeting or you're thinking I'm gonna have to do all of it, right?
7:00
SPEAKER_00: There's like those are the two, those, those are the two places you put yourself.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: I was a music major in undergrad, and you better bet that in the arts, this is so real.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: You show up to that first voice studio meeting, whatever, and you're like, oh, oh, oh, they're better than I am at that.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: Or, well, I can blow them out of the water.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying this is good, I'm saying it's real.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: And it's so true in a lot of different things, it's true in sports, it's true in music, it's true in academics, it's true in all these things.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: And so, what I wanted to say at the beginning is I see college students compare and rank themselves against each other all the time.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: And what I realized about Thursday morning is that I do that too.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: It ain't just college students, it's all of us.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: Whenever we're in a situation, we start to rank ourselves against each other, don't we?
7:54
SPEAKER_00: What's really funny about this is that it starts to affect the way we think about ourselves for the good and for the bad.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: And it kind of depends on where you are and your confidence and where you are and your self-worth and all of these things, but they all kind of play into this moment where you start to place a ranking of yourself where you sit in the order of things.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: And you sometimes it affects everything.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: I would often say it affects the way that you think about yourself.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the problem in Romans 12, he starts by saying this he says, Because of the grace, or sorry, so brothers and sisters, because of God's mercies, I encourage you to present yourselves as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: This is your appropriate service.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: Don't be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed, say transformed by the renewing of your mind, say renewing of your minds.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: Yes, so that you can figure out what God's will is.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: His goal for us here is to transform the way we think.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: And yet the world has taught us to think in terms of rank.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: The world has taught us to think in terms of comparison.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you, for instance, you go to class, say yes.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: You do your work, say yes.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: Yes, you you get your exams done, say yes.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: You okay, less energy on that one.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: You do well and your exams say yes.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: See, confidence is so much of it.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the class, you get a okay.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's good.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: I was expecting the word grade, but I'm with that.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: At the end of the class, you get an Yeah, okay, okay.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of that class, and then at the end of all the rest of the classes, you get a grade, and that grade gets put into a GPA.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: And then that GPA gets calculated toward the next semester and the next semester and the next semester.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to create anxiety in your life.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm just talking real.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: And when you get to the end of it, the top person in the class gets called the valedictorian.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the second person gets called the salutatorian.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: Don't raise your hand if you were the valedictorian in high school.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: Nobody will like you here.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: Everybody gets placed in a rank.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: That's the way the world is.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: When you go to apply for a job, you are very much up against other people.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean to call out anybody specifically right now.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna call this out as a unit, but Wesley has staff.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: And one of my least favorite things about the way that Wesley's student staff behaves is that in August, that would be the beginning of the school year.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: In August, that staff starts to talk publicly about who they think would be on the staff the next year.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: Homie, we hadn't even started yet.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: You don't even know what midterms is gonna do to your work ethic.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
10:41
SPEAKER_00: But like there is this moment where like, okay, I'm gonna start putting together and I see it all the time.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: You think I don't hear about it?
10:46
SPEAKER_00: Come on, bro.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: The thought walls are thin.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: I hear about it all the time.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: It starts to affect the way you think about yourself.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: But Paul said what?
10:57
SPEAKER_00: Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: Did he not?
11:01
SPEAKER_00: Here's one thing I want to say to you.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I think Paul's saying.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: It's something that's pushing against the patterns of the world.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: Your performance and your worth are not the same thing.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: If you're writing something down, that would be something I would write down.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: Your performance and your worth are not the same thing.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: A few years ago, I was listening to one of my favorite podcasters, Mr.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: Dave Ramsey.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: And I actually really like Dave Ramsey in a lot of ways.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: I think his principles are good.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I think he goes off on a little few more rants than he should, but I think his financial principles are good.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: But he decided to go off on one of these rants, like he does one day, and he's just riffing, you know, with a million people listening.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: And he starts talking about how your worth is what's decided by the market.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: That's what he said.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: Your worth is decided by the market.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: Now, what he meant was financial worth.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: What he meant is like if there's a market for your job, then it your the that amount will be decided by the market.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: And I hear him.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: That's not what he said though.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: He said, Your worth is decided by the market.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: And so I, as I tend to do, go and get on my Twitter machine, and I say, something tells me a Christian like Dave Ramsey should not say what he said yesterday.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: And it was as I got into the shower in the morning, I get up and shower pretty early, way earlier than you do.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: I just know it to be the case.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: And by the time I got out, I realized he had responded.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: And he and I had this little Twitter war.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: I still call it Twitter, by the way.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: We're not going to the X thing.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: Twitter thing back and forth.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: Until I replied one more time and I got a error notification saying that he had blocked me.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: Still to this day, the Dave Ramsey Cott has blocked me.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: What I was trying to say is that your performance as a human being, as a person within the marketplace, as a person within the world, is not the same as your worth.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I mean.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: When we get into this ranking motion, when we start to compare ourselves against each other, it starts to weave its way into the way we understand ourselves, the way in which we think about ourselves, both high and low.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: If we see somebody who's not as good as or we're not as good as them, all of a sudden we're the worst person to ever do it.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: But is that ever the case?
13:42
SPEAKER_00: No, oftentimes you're just maybe there's a growth area for you, but we don't think about it like that.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: We start to get down on ourselves.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: We start to think poorly about ourselves.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: The same is true on the opposite side.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: If we think, if we see somebody, we're like, we're better than them, we did that better, we the amazing like all of a sudden it starts to define our identity.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden we take our worth from our identity, but our identity is not in our performance, it is in Christ Jesus.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: And so it is not about what we've done, but it's about what God is doing through us.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: Do you hear that?
14:17
SPEAKER_00: That's super, super important because it is so easy for us to be like, ah, I can do it.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm the best there is.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: You start comparing yourself against other people, or on the opposite side, being like, I'm not as good a guitar player as them.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: Or I can't do it, or I'm not worthy of that.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, you start thinking that about yourself.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: It starts to infect your mind.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: But Paul wants us to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna show us what to do here in a second.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: That's the whole body thing.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about that in a moment, but I couldn't go past without talking about this.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna show us what to do.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: I wanna I want to add maybe another another way to say what I said before.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: It'll be on the screen.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: You can be gifted without being superior, and struggle without being inferior.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of us need to hear that on both sides.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: You can be gifted without being superior, and you can also struggle without being inferior.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: When your performance has control over your view of your worth, all of a sudden it becomes the redefining piece of you.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: I see it all the time in the church.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you an example.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: I was a worship leader growing up and uh had a pretty healthy ego.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: As worship leaders tend to do.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: Why?
16:04
SPEAKER_00: Because they have a microphone and everybody's raising their hands and they're like, this is golden, you know.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: I get it.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: I've been there.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of service, you'd come down, and you know, there's all these people like, hey, great job, great job, great job.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: You know who's really bad at this?
16:18
SPEAKER_00: Pastors.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: Here's why.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: Because pastors in a typical church, they go to the back of the sanctuary at the end and they shake the hands of everybody who walks out.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: And so little old Margaret with her walker, you know, she's walking through and she goes, Great sermon, pastor, great sermon.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: The next person goes, Great sermon, pastor, great sermon.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: It might have been the worst sermon that pastor's ever written, but because they hear great sermon, great sermon, great sermon, just as a transition to like, like, can you get me back to my car?
16:41
SPEAKER_00: kind of thing, right?
16:42
SPEAKER_00: Like that moment, it starts to infect the way we think about ourselves.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: Paul wants us to renew our mind for it to be transformed.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: Worship leaders are the same way.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: Hey, did great job worship.
16:56
SPEAKER_00: And then we're always like, No, no, no, it was all God, it wasn't me.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: Let me say this about this because this is sometimes hard.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: It's really it'd be it'd be simple for us to be like, just be humble.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work like that.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: The truth is, like, yes, you do put in pieces, like, yes, you you sang on key.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: That's something you worked at, you know.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: You played the right notes, that's something you worked at, and so it's not it's not a problem to say, like, hey, you're gifted in that, it's just that it does not make you superior.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: Do you hear me?
17:25
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's an important distinction for us.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: The same is true with the pastor.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: We have all seen sermons where like the pastor has put in the effort, and the ones where they haven't.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: It's clear.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: Don't tell me which ones are mine.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: But we've all seen those moments, and it's okay for the pastor to be like, man, I really feel like this really hit this, this, this spoke to this congregation at this moment, but I also want to keep a healthy way to know that there's a place in a space for that work, and it's not that it's making me superior.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: Do you see how on the other side it can be that way?
17:57
SPEAKER_00: And the same thing is true on the other side.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: You can struggle with your gifts, and it doesn't make you inferior, it just gives you a space to grow.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's something for us to hear.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to talk about what he uh moves through because what Paul does the very next verse, I think is interesting.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: When he talks about thinking, the transforming of the minds, blah, blah, blah.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: The very next verse, verse three, because of the grace that God's giving you, I could say to each one of you, don't think of yourself more highly than you ought to think.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: That's what we've been talking about.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: Instead, be reasonable since God has measured out a portion of faith to you.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: We have many parts and one body, but the parts don't all have the same function.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: In the same way, though there are many of us, we are one body in Christ.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: And individually we belong to each other.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: We have different gifts that are consistent with God's grace that has been given to us.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: This is a Greek piece I really want you to hear, and I know that we can nerd out of Greek stuff every once in a while.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: This the word he uses here to discuss gifts is charismata.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: Say charismata.
19:05
unknown: Charismata.
19:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you gotta say it like you care though.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: Charismata.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: Charismata.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: Yes, charismata.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: And the word that he uses for grace is karis.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: Do you yeah, you can say that, yeah.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: Charis.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: Do you see the relation of the words?
19:19
SPEAKER_00: Charismata and charis.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: C-H A R I S in the English.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: C-H A R I S.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: Karismata, Karis.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever heard somebody say, hey, they're gifts and their graces?
19:38
SPEAKER_00: That's where it comes from.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: He's using the same word, gifts and graces here to talk about the things that we've been given.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: Now, does it transform your mind to hear about the gifts that you've been given?
19:50
SPEAKER_00: The things that you worked at, the things that God did.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: Hey, this person is really good at this thing.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: Does it change your mind, transform your mind to know that that is not just a gift that you might use for your own benefit, but it is the grace of God working in your life?
20:05
SPEAKER_00: Oh.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: And he uses, he has a lot of wordplay here because he says, We have different gifts that are consistent with God's grace that has been given to us.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: If your gift is prophecy, you should prophesy.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: If your gift is service, you should devote yourself to serving.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: If it's teaching, do teaching.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: If it's encouragement, encourage.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: The one doing it should do it with no strings attached.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: The leader should lead with passion, and the one showing mercy should be cheerful.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: There are four different places in Paul's letters where he talks about the gifts.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: And you've probably been in some sort of church gathering that has made you take a spiritual gifts inventory or talked about it, and those are very helpful.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: One of them is here, the other one is 1 Corinthians, and then we have another one in Ephesians.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember what chapter?
21:01
SPEAKER_00: Four.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: Yes, so good.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: Great.
21:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh Ephesians 4.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: We've been doing Ephesians on Wednesday nights.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 4.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: And then in Colossians, he mentions as well.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: And in each place, he places an importance on the gifts that you've been given.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to ask you to do something uncomfortable right now.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to ask you to do something uncomfortable right now.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: I want you to tell yourself, not to the other people, it's not a bragging opportunity.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: I want you to tell yourself right now something genuinely that you feel like you are good at.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to give you 10 seconds.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: Something you are genuinely good at.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: Blast off.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: Those things that you're good at.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: You should tell yourself that every day.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: Why?
21:53
SPEAKER_00: Because they're gifts.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: The point, though, is that you know where to use these gifts.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Can I tell you this funny story?
22:01
SPEAKER_00: We started talking about this.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: We have a group that meets on Tuesdays of students that are feeling called into ministry, and we kind of talk about the text and we talk about these other things.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: And what we started doing is we started talking about the body parts.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, we started talking about the right hand and the left hand and the right arm and the left arm and the right foot, the left turn around.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: We started talking.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: And what was really funny is we started to get into this place where we're like, well, hey, there's there's always a stronger arm than there is the other arm.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm right-handed, but some of you are left-handed.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: Uh, some of you, very few of you statistically, but uh, some of you are left-handed.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: So like you feel that as a strong, your left hand is stronger than your right.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: Same with your foot.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: We also started getting into the place where we're like, well, the brain is definitely the most important one, right?
22:43
SPEAKER_00: Like, is it really fair to talk about the different?
22:45
SPEAKER_00: Do you see what we're doing there?
22:46
SPEAKER_00: We're ranking.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: I know scientifically that that makes sense because you're like, well, the neurons like the brain is important.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: But do you see how we're ranking there?
22:59
SPEAKER_00: We were getting into the same habit of the patterns of the world as before.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: And really, what Paul's trying to say, even though every metaphor is not perfect, what he's trying to say is that everything has a purpose and a reason.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: Everything has something that it's good at.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: The brain is really smart, but it's really bad at picking things up.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: Like last time I tried, you know.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: It's really bad at kicking a soccer ball.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: So there are purposes to the things that we have.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: And there are purposes to your gifts.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: The thing that you said to yourself, I'm really good at that.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: There's purposes for that in the life of the church.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: There's something you're really good at right now.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: And I would venture to say there's something really good that you're that you're really good at right now that you're not using for the life of the church.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: Maybe because you haven't been creative and think about where you're gonna do that.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: But you're just not using it.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: We started talking about in like because we tried to rephrase it and we're like, well, what does this mean to us?
24:00
SPEAKER_00: Does this mean like does this mean okay?
24:02
SPEAKER_00: Well, that just means like if you're doing this, you should do this, and you're doing this, you should do this.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: We started reading other translations and other paraphrases and trying to get a feeling around the commentaries and that sort of thing.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: And um, one of us said that, well, I think it just means stay in your lane, you know, like do the thing that you're good at.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: And and I think that's partially true.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: We should probably stay in our lane with the things that we're good at, not overstep into other places, but also I think it probably just means that we need to stay in our lane, but maybe not try to take over the whole road.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it true that so many people try to take over their old road?
24:41
SPEAKER_00: The old thing in the in the church is that hey, 80% of the people do 100%, or sorry, oh my gosh, that was so bad.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: 20% of the people do 80% of the work.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: 20% of the people do 80% of the work.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: I look at our ministry and I think that's probably true as well.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: I look at most ministries, I think that's probably true as well.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: What if we had a better path for you to utilize your gifts and your skills, the thing that you are good at, the things that is a grace of God in your life to do something for the work of the church?
25:12
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't that change everything?
25:15
SPEAKER_00: I can tell you what, I'm really bad at it.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: When I first got here in 2020, there weren't a whole lot of students, and so I had to start learning how to do things myself.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: And I decided that I was gonna learn how to do everything on our campus.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: So there were nights at midnight, I was here 30-something years old, pushing the floor cleaner because the floors needed to be cleaned before the next day.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: There were two years in which I went into the kitchen on Wednesday nights.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: And if you know me, you know that's scary.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: But I needed for there to be some sort of leadership and direction on Wednesday nights in the kitchen, and so I was in there from the hours of two to five o'clock, and I was sweaty and gross and discussing when we went out to dinner, just like the kitchen crew typically are.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: It's hot in there.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: It's fine, it's fine to know that.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: I started like when I first got here, there were like no musicians.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: In fact, one of the most fun phone calls I ever had with was the two people who had done music before I got here, and I got on this Zoom call with them at 10 o'clock at night, and it was great.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: We had this great conversation, two hours.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: And uh at the end of it, they told me that they weren't coming to Wesley anymore.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I was like, that's pretty exciting.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: And so I came in and I was like, well, I can play the guitar and I can play the piano and I can sing.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: So we just started doing that, and I started recruiting musicians.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: And I I was we were COVID, so we were filming everything, and the band was like less good than now, right?
26:39
SPEAKER_00: And so uh we were I was like filming and editing and playing and singing and other people, and I started to figure out how to do every single piece of what would eventually become uh the work that we do in our ministry.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: And that helps.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: It's not bad, it's not bad to utilize your gifts, it's not bad to be well-rounded.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you about something that happened last week, though.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: We have a live stream that uh we uh can we say thank you to the people in the tech crew right now?
27:14
SPEAKER_00: Um do a lot of people watch our live stream?
27:17
SPEAKER_00: No, but do we work really hard to make it as good as possible?
27:20
SPEAKER_00: Yes, and um and so the this morning, for instance, um Sydney's up on the front of the house.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: That's she's hearing the she's doing the audio, yeah, yeah.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: Tyler, Tyler's doing the broadcast audio, and um and and oh my gosh.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: Oh, Thomas.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: Thomas is doing the slide or the video, and Hannah is doing the slides that you're seeing.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: So Thomas and Tyler are doing stuff that you'll never see unless you go to YouTube later.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: And I know the view count, you're probably not, you know.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: But they're doing stuff for folk at home or whoever's gone to be able to see, and I'm grateful for their work.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we run all the sound from the band through a secondary mixer uh that's via software that Tyler's doing.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: And last week my friend Will was doing, and Will comes up to me at the beginning of the thing and he goes, Hey, it's making really weird noises.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember this, Will?
28:09
SPEAKER_00: Will Shortle, King of the World, and uh it's making this like noise, which is probably not what you want on the live stream audio, right?
28:16
SPEAKER_00: And so I could have and should have said, Will, hey, can you just uh turn off the Wi-Fi, make sure that the Dante's going over?
28:26
SPEAKER_00: Let's check the routing, let's check the whatever.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I did instead.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: This is my public apology to Will.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: I did not tell him I was doing this, by the way.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: I said, Will, get out of my way.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: I've been thinking about that interaction ever since.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: Because isn't it true that sometimes we get out of our lane?
28:53
SPEAKER_00: And so I realized that you can have these gifts, you can have this knowledge, you can have this wide range of whatever, you can be as good as you can.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes there comes a point, and there are people in this room that probably need to hear this, and I'm probably chief among them.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: The best thing sometimes that you can do with your gifts is to make room for somebody else to use theirs.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: You are not the whole body, and the church is better served by folk with a transformed mind, renewed in the spirit, looking at the gifts, being honest with themselves about the gifts they've been given.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: The reason I know this is because there's a piece of self sacrifice to this, isn't there?
29:51
SPEAKER_00: When you're humble, there's a piece of self sacrifice to it.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: There is no mistake that Paul calls it a living sacrifice.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: He does that because of the one who gave himself for us as a sacrifice.