Latest / Wesley at FSU & TSC / "Built Together" | Sunday Service | January 12, 2025

Transcript

"Built Together" | Sunday Service | January 12, 2025 · Wesley at FSU & TSC

• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to look this morning at the second chapter of Acts, and I'm going to preach a sermon called I clue-I cued her wrong.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Built together, built together, and we're going to look at the second chapter of Acts.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: The reason is because the second chapter of Acts is one of the most important chapters of all scripture.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: You've heard me say that about several different chapters, but that's really true about this too.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because it is the beginning of the church.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Pop quiz.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone know what happens right at the beginning of the second chapter of Acts?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Pentecost.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Someone say it, Eli.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Pentecost.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay, good.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: He's tired of playing too much guitar playing.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Pentecost.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Pentecost is the incoming of the Holy Spirit, in which the Holy Spirit comes in upon those who are gathered there and infuses the Holy Spirit into their lives, thereby birthing the church.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's what happens in the second chapter of Acts right at Pentecost.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then this is the very end of that chapter.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Here now the reading of God's Word.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: The believers devoted themselves to the Apostles' teaching, to the community, to their shared meals, and to their prayers.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: A sense of awe came over everyone.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: God performed many wonders and signs through the apostles.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Every day they met together in the temple and ate in their homes.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: They shared food with gladness and simplicity.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: They praised God and demonstrated God's goodness to everyone.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the Lord added daily to the community those who were being saved.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's this interview that sticks in my head because I have a weird obsession with the technology world, and particularly with a certain company that made most of the phones that are in your pockets right now.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: And their founder, particularly, who is now has now passed away, Kindle, he's been dead 14 years, crazy, named Steve Jobs.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the last things he did publicly before he died was give an interview.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And in this interview, he talks about what happened when he came back to Apple.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you don't know anything about the history of Apple, he started Apple.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: They had this relatively successful company, but he was a really young guy, had dropped out of college and stuff.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so he eventually was voted out by his own board as CEO.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So he was CEO and then got voted out, which would have been a real bummer of an opportunity.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I'm saying?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you got voted out of your own company, like what did you do wrong, right?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and eventually, though, they they did not go well.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Things did not go well for Apple.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: And he ended up coming back.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: And he talks about what happened when he came back in this very short clip.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Apple was about 90 days away from going bankrupt back then in the early days.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And um it was much worse than I thought when I went back initially.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: But there were people there who I expected all the good people would have left.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I found these miraculous people, these great people, and I said, I I tried to ask this as tactily as I could, why are you still here?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, a lot of them had this little phrase.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: They said because I believe it's six colors.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Which was the old six color of the logo.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And um, that was code for because I love what this place stands for, or at least stood for.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that just made all of us want to work that much harder to have it survive and have those values survive and bring it back.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I would say that he was relatively successful in that endeavor.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, he talked about going back and seeing the people and asking them very tactfully, because a lot of them he had known before, and he asked them, like, why are you here?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there's lots of other companies you could have worked for.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you still here?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Everything, they're 90 days away from bankruptcy.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: That means they have zero dollars and they're not selling anything, which is pretty bad for a company, right?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, I bleed in six colors.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not familiar, this is the early Apple logo.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually not the very first one, but the early Apple logo because it's six different colors on there.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, it didn't count.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Is that six, one, two, three, four?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: I believe him.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so he they said they bled in six colors, which means that they lived for the things and the values of that place.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now I want to tell you a real quick story.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: In 2020, I got a phone call.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was living in Lakeland at the time, and they said, Hey, uh, you're gonna go to FSU Wesley to serve as the pastor.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I had known about this place.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: If you if this is your first time in this room, I'm gonna give you kind of a real quick primer about uh the history of this place.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: But this place has been all around almost a hundred years we've been across the street from Florida State University.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's crazy.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Say, wow.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, a hundred years.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: A hundred years we've been across this uh street from Florida State University.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm only the fifth pastor to have served it, which means that most pastors have been here a very long time.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, the first one was supposed to be here for three months, and he stayed for 34 years, uh, which is crazy.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it was the only church on Jefferson Street.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was like standing room only every Sunday morning.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: This is back in the 50s and 60s, uh, and it was a crazy successful ministry, for lack of a better term.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh a new pastor eventually came in, and uh the the ministry held on okay for a while, and then it kind of took a dip.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: They did some frankly crazy things.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: You'd be if I told you the stories now, you'd be like, what?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and everybody else there was like, what?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so slowly uh the the kind of ministry took a big dip, and then uh a new pastor came in in the early 2000s, and and then it blew up again.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: You should see some of the photos there are.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, just absolutely huge.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: The it'll put the to shame the people going on a retreat this this year in terms of numbers of just crazy amount of people that were involved in this place.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was a different building at the time, but a different place, and and and so everything was going great, and then that pastor felt called to go back to the local church, and so then a new pastor came in and and things were okay.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: They ended up building the building, and then it kind of took a big deep nosedive.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I found out that I was coming here, I I didn't really realize the current situation at the time.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I was excited to be part of a big ministry, but then I got here and there were like 18 people, and everybody was like, wow, look how many people are here.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, ooh.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody told me this before I moved my family to Tallahassee.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then slowly I started to get uh some pressure from people who are my bosses to say, hey, you've got to grow this ministry, we built this big building, you've got to bring people in the door, you gotta do these things, and I started feeling all of the pressure.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is a common problem in the church.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Every single pastor, whether they tell you or not, compares who came to their service to the next guy on the live stream one scroll over.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, every single pastor does that, every single church does that, particularly as the church has started to die.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: And when I got here, I got all that pressure, and I felt the weight of it.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was also COVID, like, not a great time to help start a new ministry, you know, like nobody was showing up anywhere.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so it was just really bad.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things I got to do though is I got to sit with those 18 or so people.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: There were 12-ish, 12, I think it were 12, 12 on staff that year, and um maybe six of them should have been, you know.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I got to sit down with each of them one-on-one, and I asked the exact same question of all of them each time.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Why are you here?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: I tried to ask it as tactily as possible.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: A little Steve Jobs moment, you know, but like, why are you here?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, you won't believe it, I believe in six colors.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm just kidding.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: They said, they said, I'm here because of the community.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, cool.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: What I found out later is what they meant was that I was here, I'm here because my friends are here.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Those are two different statements.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm here because of the community, versus I'm here because my friends are here.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I started thinking about this.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: If we're gonna grow as a ministry, there are lots of ways that we could attract people.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, literally, just get a fog machine, a little hazer bend, you know, and put it up there, people walk in the door.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm just kidding.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's a joke.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of ways to attract people to a ministry.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I think there's really, when it comes to the church, only one way to build a community.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Do you see the difference?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Attract people to a ministry, build a community.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Two different things.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: So here's what I want to do.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: I want to take this pattern from Acts 2.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to look at it, these four pillars.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: And before we go off of this, I want to show you these.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the first one is teaching, the second is fellowship, the third is breaking bread, and the fourth is prayer.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: They are right there in Acts 2 at the beginning of the church.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Those four things that make up, they build the structure, get the pillar thing, okay.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Four pieces of the church that make up what it means to be built together as a community.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go through them.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: The very first one teaching.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things I really wanted when I first came here was for people to be hungry to learn about the scriptures, to be hungry to learn about what God was doing in their lives, versus just being there because their friends are there.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: There are a whole bunch of ministries across the street.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, sorry, well, there are ministries across the street too, but a whole bunch of groups across the street, like organizations.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: You probably belong to a handful of them.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, organizations across the street that are there because their friends are there.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're there because they provide you a place to be with your friends.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I wanted to be something different.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things I realized very quickly when I got here is that there wasn't a lot of biblical knowledge.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: There wasn't a lot of people who were just really on fire for learning about the scriptures.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: They were just there because their friends were there.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: I want to show you this.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this is uh verse 42.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: The believers devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the community, to shared meals, and their prayers.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Look at this first part.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: The believers devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know who an apostle is?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: The apostles are the apostles are the disciples at this point.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Later on, uh Paul would call himself an apostle, but he does not exist in the story up in this point.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: He says the believers devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, meaning the disciples' teaching.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Teaching's a really interesting word, isn't it?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because you came here to go to school.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: And across the street or at CSE, whichever one you go to, um you go and you sit underneath professors who teach you something, hopefully.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: They will lecture, hopefully, right?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you will learn, hopefully, right?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that the idea that you would get you would you would kind of gain knowledge?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the thing about teaching within this space is that the apostles' teaching were not teaching differential calculus, right?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: They were not teaching music theory, right?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: They were not teaching visual art.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: What they were teaching is how to follow Jesus.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they were teaching.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so what it says, that they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't like the next big brain thing that I could learn so I could steady my next or take my next step into the next thing that I'm gonna do for my career that's gonna get me this amount of money.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't any of that.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: They were learning from the people who learned from Jesus himself.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: They were learning.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: They were learning not just things about the scriptures.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, the New Testament didn't exist at this moment.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: What they learned was who Jesus was, what he cared about, how they could find grace and mercy and love in their lives.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they learned.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: They learned about how to be a better disciple, how to follow in the same path that the apostles had followed in.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's the teaching.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: My hope and prayer for this ministry is that we would do as much of that as possible.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh a few years ago, I started a Bible study on Thursday afternoons, and nobody came to it.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then I was like, Well, nobody wants to go to Bible study because why?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: We're a bunch of friends, not a Christian community.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh this year we decided to put it on Wednesday nights right after dinner.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not aware, we do Wednesday night dinners here.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's free your first time, come.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Six o'clock, we're gonna have it this week.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's pasta, right?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't forget that wrong.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's pasta, it's delicious.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Come, it's free your first time, it's like five dollars after that, it's cheap.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh cheaper in Chipotle, okay?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then come eat here.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: And afterwards, we do a Bible study.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I started the Bible study in addition to our community groups.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, we used to do some kind of fellowship groups, and and uh so I just was like, well, I'll do a Bible study, and maybe five or six people came.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the first week, I think there were seven or eight, and the next week there were 17, and then next week we couldn't fit in the library, so we had to go out to the office.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: That was fine, anybody who was there.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was a mess.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we did we hit it there until we hit like 25 or so and we couldn't really fit there anymore, and then we moved to the coffee shop, and we now can't really fit there.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I started to realize as there was some growth, um, wow, a lot of people who are here aren't just here for their friends.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I hope you have friends here, hear me wrong.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: But they're not just here for their friends, they're here to learn about the work that God's doing in their lives and how they can see that through the scriptures.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, bro, that's what we call answered prayer.
• 15:42
  unknown: What?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so that's teaching.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: I want to go to fellowship next.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: This this next part, uh, this is verse 42, but uh well, we'll go on to 44.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Go on to 44 here, Hannah.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: All the believers were united, it's coming, I promise, and shared everything.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, no, no, no, go back.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: All the believers were united and shared everything.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, now go on.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: I just wanted to hit, you know.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: They would sell pieces of property and possessions and distribute the proceeds to everyone who needed them.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot about this term fellowship, because there is an element to being a part of a ministry, a part of a church where you do have your friends and that sort of thing.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if we look at it as that, fellowship as just that, we've missed a whole depth to what fellowship can be.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because fellowship is not only showing up to the party or the dance or the dinner or the retreat or whatever.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Fellowship, I've heard I've heard this said to me before, and I absolutely love it.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Fellowship is not just showing up to the dance.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Fellowship is when you show up to the dance or you're invited to the dance, someone asks you to dance.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's like this immediate inclusion that brings you in and the fellowship.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because at that point, you've seen a need in somebody, and you've provided something to them.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: The apostles were learning what it means to live in community right there, and so they were they were trying to develop the early church.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've ever tried to start an organization, but it didn't go well for the first few years, you know?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you're trying to figure things out.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: People have a lot of opinions, people have a lot of feelings about things.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so what they did is they they started to develop that, and what the scriptures tell us is that in Acts 2, they all gathered around and they started to hear each other's needs, and they started to provide for those needs.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: They started to see a need and give of themselves for it.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's fellowship.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Just more about making more than making friends, it's about finding and caring for other people.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh, Lord, we should hear that in this nation today.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: I need to hear that myself.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Verse 46.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Every day they met together in the temple and they ate in their homes.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: They shared, whoa, it's okay.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's just the Bible.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: They shared food with gladness and simplicity.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, as you can tell by looking at me, food's the most important thing we do here.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you more than that, too.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: We do it on Wednesday nights and we do it on Sundays.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, if you want to go afterwards, we're going to Keynes and Kaba afterwards.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: We'd love for you to come.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's yeah, there we go.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: Canes and Kava, okay.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we would love for you to come break bread with us after this.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're also going to do it at the table here.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: But one of the things I started to invest in, both personally and Wesley started investing over the course of the last several years, is that I wanted to break bread with each of you.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Not just as a total community, but I wanted to do it one-on-one with you.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: And several of you have taken major advantage of that opportunity.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Phil's up there going like, yeah, every time I see it on the counter, I'm like, ah, he wants to go to Whataburger.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: My cholesterol, man.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: But one of the things I wanted to do is I wanted to invest in that time of building community among us by breaking a bread.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because something special, something spiritual happens when you gather around a table.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: I have noticed this many times.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: I've sat in my office or the library or walked campus with some of you, and there's just these walls in between.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like asking some questions to try to get to the next thing, and you're a little scared to actually put any more information there, but something happens around food.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: It just kind of takes the pressure off.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Something special happens around the breaking of bread.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Every day they met in the temple and they ate in their homes, and they shared food with gladness and simplicity.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: I might encourage you to do this as well with each other.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Over the course of my uh now 11 years in campus ministry, I have run into a few conflicts here and there.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: College students, you got conflicts.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I get to hear about these things from third-party sources, it's really fun.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: I get to hear about it from this person, then I get to hear about it from this person, then I get to hear about it from the best friend who just wants them to stop bickering, you know.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like, uh, will you please fix that situation so that we can be friends again?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, like I hear about that all the time.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things I've always told people is you have to sit down with each other.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: For God's sakes, and I don't care where this applies, stop going over your conflicts on the phone.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Stop texting each other.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Stop.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's so stupid.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot read each other's faces, you can't read each other's sarcasm, their apologies don't seem real.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: May I suggest instead of doing it over the phone, do it over chicken fingers at Cane's.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: Do it over coffee at Lucky Goat.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Snowflake Crunch is still available until the end of January.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because when conflicts occur, the best way, and I'm not sure I can put words to why, but the best way that they can be dealt with is by the sharing of food.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Break bread with one another.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: I want to go into prayer.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna read uh verse 42 so you can get a picture of where we were, and then 47.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: The believers devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the community, to their shared meals, and to their prayers.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: They praised God and they demonstrated God's goodness to everyone.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: This is verse 47.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: They praised God and demonstrated God's goodness to everyone.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: The Lord added daily to the community those who were being saved.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: One of the very first things that the people of God at the beginning of the church did is pray together.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: And if I can be real honest, I think we we're doing okay at the food thing.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think we're growing in the fellowship thing, and we've really grown in the teaching piece.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: But the prayer part, I feel like we're still lacking a little bit.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure why.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: God'll tell me one day, but I can tell you.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: I feel convicted by it in my own life, and I bet you feel convicted by it too.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you a couple of things about prayer.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to pray in community, it starts in the individual.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to have a strong community prayer life, you gotta have it in the individual.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not talking about having the courage to pray in front of people that I don't care how spiritual are, sometimes that's just nerve-wracking.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like that, that's not that.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying, like, if you want to build a group of people who say, hey, I'm praying for you, and they actually mean it, that has to start in the individual.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: It has to start in the heart.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: And let me let me invite you to do something, particularly because conflicts arise a lot.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: In those events where you have a conflict with a friend or a coworker or somebody you just don't like in the world, uh, you want to take them to Keynes.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: We already went over that.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: They have gluten-free, so everybody is welcome.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then, secondarily, I love Keynes, and secondarily, I want to invite you to pray for them.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't mean those playground petty prayers.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: You hear that?
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: I made that up on the spot now.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't mean those playground petty prayers of like, I just hope, I just hope that she learns how wrong she is, right?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want that.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: What I want is actual prayer.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, man, I'm going through it with Eli right now.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: That kid is getting under my skin.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: He would not give me the fist bump.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna pray.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Pray for him.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I found about things that happen within the community where conflicts arise?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: I found that there's generally some underlying thing we just haven't named.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think God can reveal that to us if we would just pray some more.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna do this year a couple of um, what we used to call late-night worships.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna do them on Wednesday nights, and some of them will be in place of Bible study and some of the other things.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I think this is a real opportunity for us to enter into and develop a prayer life as a community.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's a lot of different ways we can facilitate that and we will.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so I encourage you to keep your eyes and ears open and come.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: But if you are struggling in your own personal prayer life, let me invite you to do one thing that I found super helpful for me in my own struggle to prayer life.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because when it comes to praying, I I'm not the get down on the knees on the side of the bed right before bedtime prayer thing.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: That like happened in the 1950s, I guess.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, or maybe it just happened on TV.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: But uh here's what I think is helping in prayer is to go for a walk, or for me, a drive.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because on a drive, I can't have my phone.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: I can't have my phone.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes I listen to stuff and sometimes I don't.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: But what I do is I just kind of talk out loud.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure the the people next to me in the car think I'm crazy, but like I just talk out loud to God.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: I say some things that are on my heart.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: I sometimes say words I shouldn't.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: I say things I shouldn't.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm just trying to bear my soul to the Creator.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'd encourage you, if that's something that would help you, just go on a walk or a drive or something like that.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: And don't try to start it as like, dear God.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Just start bearing your heart.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: In the same way you would your best friend when you have some tea to spill.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the next step.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Before we finish here this morning, I want to show you the very last verse.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: This is verse 47 again.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: They praise God and demonstrated God's goodness to everyone.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: This is the important part.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: The Lord added daily to the community those who were being saved.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of talk in the world about why young people don't go to church.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: I have this theory, it's more of a theological understanding, I think, that if we were to build a community on those four pillars, teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, prayer, the Lord will add daily to the community those who are being saved.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because your generation needs Christ just as much as the Roman nation back then.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: Your generation needs a spiritual walk with their creator, the one who created and loved them and gives them grace upon grace upon grace upon undeserved grace every day.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Your generation needs that just as much as every generation in the past.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: And my friends, it's available.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: If only we would build a community that could do it.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: To be based just as that early church was teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, prayer.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Which one do you feel called to?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: Before we have communion, I want to have one little more announcement.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I broke this thing a couple weeks ago, so I'm just like Amazon special.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: I want you to pursue it for a second.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: We have a group of people who live in that apartment and then in a townhome down the road called Residential Staff.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: They help run this ministry.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: I say to them and to many, this is the core of this ministry.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: They live here for a very reduced rent and they work, most of them, and uh they do things like clean the building and set up and they work really hard.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so grateful for them.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you have an ability to build that community as well.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: All you have to do is apply.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um so we have an application that's online right now.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: You can just go to fsuwesley.com.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's right at the top of the page, and you can apply for that.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, for those of you who are actually serious about doing this, like, yes, I'm gonna do this.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it is due the at 11.59 next Sunday night, so you have a week to do it.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, do not wait till 1157.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason for it is, is because there's a section on there for you to talk about the things that you would like to see in Wesley.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: The things that you think Wesley should do, the things that you feel, the holes that you feel like you could fill.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're having a hard time thinking of those, maybe I would encourage you to point to those four pillars teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, prayer.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: Where's a place you can fit in in the spiritual walk of this community?