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Transcript

[WW] Know Your Shepard · The Wesley Word

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Wesley Word.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'll start off by reading a couple of scriptures.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Look at uh 1 Corinthians 13, 11.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm gonna read it up there because I'm I'm lost here.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: When I was a child, I spoke like a child.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, and when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then hear this also from Paul and uh his letter to the Ephesians, third chapters, verses 16 through 19.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: We got that ready to roll?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: I pray that according to the riches of his glory, that he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner spirit, being with power through his spirit.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that Christ may dwell in your all your hearts through faith, as you were being rooted and grounded in love.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I pray that you may have the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I like how the NIV says it, that you will be able to grasp how wide and how long and high and deep is the love of Christ.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then in verse 19, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be fulfilled with all the fullness of God.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Let us pray.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Holy and gracious God, again we give you thanks for this time of worship.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: I pray, O God, that you would either speak through me or despite me, but in some way may you have a word for us this evening.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Speak, O Lord.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: In your name we pray.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: So if you look at Scripture, it is full of questions.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus Himself asks over, I think it's like 307 questions.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Go home and count tonight, see if I'm right.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm pretty sure it's 307 questions that he asks.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus is asked about 186 questions, give or take a few, right?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you missed some of the crowds.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: And very rarely did Jesus come back with a direct answer when he was asked a question.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oftentimes you would ask Jesus something important, right?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: The Good Samaritan.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: How do I hear the kingdom of God?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus is like, well, let me tell you a story, right?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: He's like the old grandpa that keeps on telling stories, right?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Love you, Jesus, you're not old grandpa.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: But you know what I mean, right?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: He tells these stories.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: But questions are part of the gospel, they're part of the ancient Jewish tradition.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you look throughout the Hebrew scriptures in the Old Testament, you see questions.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: You see in the Psalms that questions are allowed.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: How long, O Lord?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you allowing this, O God?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Questions are always brought up in Scripture.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus himself teaches that.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: What I want us to remember tonight, as we think about where we're going, is that questions are okay.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Questions are good.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: We learn from questions.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: We often, in school, right, as you sit in your classes, and maybe you don't want to be the person that asks a question, but oftentimes you don't know something, you ask a question to find out or to explore more and to go a little bit deeper.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus oftentimes teaches through questions, he teaches through parables, wanting people to dig deep.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: And each time we get a different thought as we go through.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: We've seen the Old Testament is Jacob who wrestled with God.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: This idea of wrestling, questioning, struggling in the faith is something that we see in the Bible over and over and over again.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it's important that we question, that we wrestle, that we struggle if we want to indeed grow in our faith, right?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um we'll never have all the answers.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: I've got two questions for you tonight.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna get to uh I got two questions I want you to think about.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: But we'll never have all the answers.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um we will always be sort of changing as our faith.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, scripture itself is is God, God breathed and God inspired, um, but it's constantly God is revealing God's self in this scripture.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: We think about the book of Acts, how you know it's a whole text about the disciples trying to figure it out, right?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: They got questions.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: What does this life look like as a Christian here and now?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I often also have to remind myself as I go on my faith journey that we serve a living God.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: And as we serve a living God, it means that we also have to have a living faith.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: It means you can't one day say, got it all figured out, because tomorrow something's gonna happen.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: A new question's gonna pop up, a new situation is gonna arise, you're gonna read scripture in a new way, and you can't have a stagnant, constant faith.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: To serve a living God means you have to have a living faith, a faith that is constantly questioning, constantly diving down, constantly looking at the world around you and trying to make sense of what it is that's gonna happen, right?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, for example, like when um I know y'all stick on tonight, so I'm gonna tell a little kid story, okay?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: But you weren't alive, well, you're kind of alive, right?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's all good.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Coleman was like a pee inside Julie's um, you know, belly.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: I remember I signed up at the time, they had this thing called babysitter.com, and I signed up for like daily updates because I wanted to know what my living child was doing and growing, right?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so one day it really was just like, oh yeah, they're the size of like, you know, a little, you know, little speck of nothing.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: And like, oh, that's cool, and it could do this and this.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: And each day, like, right now we're a pea, uh, all the way up to like an orange or a plum and a grapefruit until one day we're like, whoa, whoa, it's a baby, right?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but each day you learn about something new that's happening.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: In many ways, our faith is like that, right?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: We get we're new to the faith, we we wonder what's gonna happen, and as we grow in our stages, we grow and we develop, and there's new things, new opportunities, new answers that come and about.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh James Fowler, uh no longer with us, but he was a great theologian and a professor at Emory Canada School of Theology, where I went to school.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Pastor Tommy went there.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Great, great um thing.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: If you think about seminary, check it out.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: And in it, he talked about, and I'm not gonna get too academic here, but he talked about like the six stages of faith that people go through, right?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: And he talked about how stage one, and you may kind of think through this, right?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Stage one is this like very beginning like faith, like age three through seven, right?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's that that very much like mystical, you know, God's up there with all the different stuff, right?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like God hangs out with the tooth fairy and Santa and all that kind of stuff, and you're just like, it is what it is, right?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then you get into step two, where like a lot of school age get to, and it's passed down from parents where it's a very literal faith, right?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Everything we take, we take very literal because our parents said so, and we believe it.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very simplistic thing.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if I'm good, God will bless me.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm bad, God's gonna get onto me, right?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Not necessarily the case, but that's that's where we're at in step two, right?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Then you graduate to step three.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: He would say it's a synthetic conventional faith.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: We'll just call it step three for tonight, right?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and in step three, this happens like a lot of times in teen years, and he says the next step in your faith is this conformity with expectations or beliefs.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like you sort of take on the beliefs of your social group, right?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's your parents, maybe it's your youth group, maybe it's people at school, and you just believe that because that's what everybody else believes.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Some believe it too, right?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: And if you believe something different, they can be like, that's the weirdo that thinks differently, right?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so a lot of us get stuck in group three.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: And for many people, many, many people, they never leave that third level of faith.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: They just stay there, and that's because, well, I've just always believed this, and that's just what other people believe.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm not gonna ask any questions.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Life is good.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm good, God's good, everything, like hallelujah, let's have some fried chicken and move on, right?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: And people stay there in stage three.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: But the goal, he says, the goal is to move through that, right?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're willing to ask some questions and to begin to reflect and to examine on your faith, you start to move into this next stage, stage four, um, individuative reflective faith.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And in it, you move forward, and what he says here, this is sort of your crisis, your struggle, where you start to question, say, Well, I know my mom and dad always said this about those people, but I'm starting to experience them in a different way, and maybe God loves them too.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I I don't know, something's a little different here.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And you begin to wrestle, you begin to struggle, you begin to think that maybe everything in life and everything in faith is not black and white, and there's some growth that can happen there.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, once you begin to struggle, he calls that the dark night of the soul, um, stage four.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: You begin to struggle and wrestle, then you get into this next stage where you pass through stage four and you begin to be get to a point where you can accept paradox.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: You can be able to accept things in in your faith life that and hold things in tension.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to have all the answers.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay, maybe this thing can be true and this thing can be true, and I can't reconcile everything, but it's gonna be okay.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's okay if I don't have all the answers.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe there's more questions and answers, and that's okay.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I began to see things less in black and white, and I begin to live into the gray and live into that more fully and see the beauty that is there.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then if you're really awesome, he says you get into step six, um, where you get in this like selfless, unconditional love type thing.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: He says that's kind of saved for like your mother Teresa's, your Mother King Juniors, the folks that are really out there and are willing to suffer on behalf of others in this unconditional love.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now you can still have unconditional love at every step, right?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but he says it's very hard, very difficult to go from stage three.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm believing what everyone else believed, and I'm good with that, to a point where you've wrestled, you've struggled, you put the time and you put the work in to sort of make your faith your own and realize that it's a living, breathing faith that's gonna continue and go, right?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so my question, I've got two questions for you tonight.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, very simple.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I only had one question, and then I realized, nope, gotta have the first question.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Paul writes in uh Ephesians, as we mentioned, I'm gonna read the NIV version.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Again, he says, I pray for you that you may have the power together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Paul tells his people, I want you to grasp how wide and how long and how deep and how high the love of Christ is.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: He's saying, I want you to experience the fullness of God.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: I want you to know the deepness of Christ, and I want you to be able to strengthen and struggle and wrestle.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so my question for you tonight as we start this new semester is do you want that?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to grow?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to go from stage three to stage five?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to get to a place where you're experiencing, able to see the fullness of God and how deep and how wide and how long and how high?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: Are you good where you're at?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's okay to be where you're at, but do you want to experience that?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to grow deeper?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to see a more full faith?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to be get into the stress all the struggle and the wrestle?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: New word coined a stressful, right?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Are you wanting to be there?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's the first step.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to be there?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to experience those things that Paul has given you and have this more complete faith?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Again, one's not better than the other, but the question is, do you want that?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Do we want it?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: I was reading uh a long time ago a book called Almost Christian, and it sort of talks about the faith of young adults and teens, all that kind of stuff.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And in it he talks about, and we mentioned this on Wednesday, if you were there last Wednesday, said that that who we are as Christians is about love, right?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not about love, it's a hard thing to call yourself a Christian, right?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's our number one thing.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Love is about action, love is our purpose, love is our meaning.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: But uh the author, Douglas John Hall, says that faith, right?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Faith is a dialogue that we have.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Faith is a dialogue that we have constantly with our doubts.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's a personal reckoning that we have with God's involvement in the world and God's investment in our lives and how we shape out how that all looks and how that works.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: The question I want to have for you tonight is do you want it?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to grow deeper?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to move to that faith where you can begin to look at paradoxes and tension?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to have a faith where you begin to experience the depth and the width and the heights of God's love and God's fullness?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: And if the answer is no, that's cool.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: You can take a nap for a second.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: If your answer is yes, then ask this question.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: This was a question I thought I just had for tonight, but I was like, no, I actually gotta see if you want to go there first.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: But if the answer is yes, then a very simple question for you.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: What's your plan?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: What's your plan?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: What's your plan to grow deeper?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: What's your plan to experience the depths and the width and the height and the love of God's fullness and all that God has to offer?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: What is your plan?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I know some of you are big-time planners, right?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Some of you are freaking out, like, don't talk about plans.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Some of you I know have like the next five to ten years planned out, right?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know what you're doing, you know what grad school you're doing, you know what kind of internships, what kind of job, right?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're dating somebody, you're like, I'm not doing anything until this, this, this all works out.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I know y'all, y'all are a bunch of planners in here, right?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: I know, you tell me, I know, you probably got color-coded schedules and everything.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm out and a bunch of people, all right.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: But when's the last time you planned your faith life?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: You sat down and said, What is my plan for growing my faith?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because you don't just stumble into discipleship.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: I've said this often, right?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Discipleship doesn't happen by accident.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have a plan, right?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: When you go into that.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: And you've got to want to do it, right?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Talking about that want to, uh, do you want it, right?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm I'm playing basketball right now.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: This is not a basketball player, right?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like talked into it.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: I was talking to them playing church basketball at the men's league, and like, there's some grown men in this league.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like a little boy there, right?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: And today I'm sitting there and um like I was at the table, like bodies are hitting the floor, like people getting fouled and going down.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And coach is like, Steve, you want to go in?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, no, right?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: I want no part of that, right?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: I want no part of that.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: I played two minutes, it was awesome, and I looked lost.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I didn't want that, right?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: If I was gonna go play with them now and like actually compete, I know that I would need to make a plan.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: One, like start moving so I'm like dying when I'm running, right?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Put the skills in, learn how to play.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: I need to have a plan to be able to get out there and play.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Discipleship is no different.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: If we want to grow in our faith, if you want to experience, and God's gonna, you know, Paul was walking down the road and like God's like boom, boom, you know, eyes, scaly eyes, all this kind of stuff.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: We have these major conversion experiences.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: God can work how God's gonna work.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: But more often than not, and I talk to students all the time, they're like, I feel kind of stagnant, like, I want to grow in my faith.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't feel like I'm getting anything.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times in your faith life, you get in, you get out, just like anything in life, what it is that you're putting in.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so, what's your plan?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not putting a um, I'm not saying come to everything Wesley.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I think that's very unhealthy in life.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: If all you have is Wesley, we need to talk, you need some other friends, right?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: You have a full, full life here, right?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: But do you have a plan to make sure that worship is an active part of your faith life?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Where you're hearing the word proclaimed, where you're singing with other Christians, where you're allowing people to sing with you and for you.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we do small groups at the beginning, and you don't have to be in a Wesley small group, but I hope that you're in a small group somewhere.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have a plan to take your discipleship serious?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Where you're gonna meet with other people and to talk about faith, to wrestle with these questions.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have a plan to talk with someone?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe maybe you're not in the small groups, maybe you need to reach out and find somebody to be an accountability partner.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the most incredible times of growth that I've had as a person of faith have been in small groups or like one-on-one discipleship type stuff.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: I had a small group, my the best time ever that I think I grew leaps and bounds.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we got our name, we're called the GMB.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and can't tell you what that stands for, secret code.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: But we met at the basement of the Wesley building, right?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: And there were five of us.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: We were a legit small group.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: We weren't like 20, there were five of us.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: There were two leaders and three guys, there were five of us all together, and we never missed because our plan was to grow together.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: And we were there every single week, and we talked about everything about faith, everything in our life, we held each other accountable, and we grew, and like out of that, that sounds bad.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's like two pastors and a Wesley board chair, like we and we're still friends to this day, right?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: But we had a plan to be there together and to grow.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: There's another year, we didn't, I didn't delete a small group, but a guy came up to me and he was like, hey, let's just meet and talk and let's just like disciple each other.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: And we went through the book of Revelations and we had this cool plan.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: We met at every we tried a new barbecue restaurant in the area every week for a whole semester.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we went to Liberty, all these different barbecue places, and we also studied the book of Revelation.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so we ate barbecue, we had some revelation, we prayed for each other, we held each other accountable, but we had a plan to meet, and we didn't miss.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: We had a plan, we met, we grew, we made it happen, right?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Anything that you do, you don't stumble into discipleship.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: It has to be intentional.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, what is your plan?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'll end with this story.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: I love this.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Barbara Brown Taylor is, she was like my original Theologian crush.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Brene Brown's like sneaking up there, but but Barbara Brown Taylor, she's my original, right?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Theologian crush, Julie's my one and only on that, right?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: I got you, babe.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um but she writes and she is uh one of her books.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: In one of her sermons, she talks about um where Jesus is talking in John 10 10.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Let's put this on the screen.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: John 10, or not 10, 10, 25, yep.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: He says, and Jesus answered, I have told you, you do not believe the works that I do in my father's name to testify to me, but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: And here's the cool thing she talks about in this sermon about shepherds.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know about you, I'm probably like I'm not a shepherd, right?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm barely a dog person, right?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: I can't a dog person.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm not gonna lie to you, right?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the thing about shepherds and and sheep, right?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: She she did some research and she's talking about some friends, and she went to um over to Israel and and different things, and she said that shepherds have told her that the sheep recognize their voice.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that if there's uh a herd of sheep, a bunch of sheep, all right, sleeping at night, that if their shepherd walks amongst their flock, right, that the sheep just they're chill, they're cool, they'll sleep through that because they know their person.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: But if a stranger tries to walk through that same sleeping flock, they'll start waking up, they'll start making noises, they'll start alerting one another.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: They know the voice of their shepherd.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you go into um some of the areas over there when they'll have multiple flocks of sheep that will all go to the same watering hole, and she says, It's amazing the shepherds have told her that they don't get lost because they know the voice.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so when their shepherd, like, you know, clicks their tongue, look, they know like my sheep, like, oh, that's my sound, that's my person, and they go away.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: They know the voice of their shepherd, they know who they belong to.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: You think about do you want to grow?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Are you making a plan?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know the voice of your shepherd?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: When you're sitting there around the watering hole and you've got all kinds of different voices around you and surrounding you, can you pick out the voice of the good shepherd?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it's okay if you don't, because like any good Christian, sometimes we are awesome at it and we fall in line and we know what's happening, and other times we're just eh at it.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: But as you think about, do you want to grow?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to experience the width and the depth and the heights of the love of Christ that is available to each and every one of us without cost?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because you want to experience that.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: The easiest way to do that is to make a plan, to go deeper and to live into this discipleship.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to know the voice of the shepherd?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Are you willing to put into work to spend the time one-on-one in your quiet time, to do some work in small group and to worship, and to there's all kinds of podcasts, books, ways that you can get out there to learn and to grow in your faith.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you find yourself in the mix of the mumble jumble and all these different sheep, you can point out the one who is truly calling you to go in the past that God is leading you to.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: So simple questions tonight.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want it?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to grow?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: What's your plan?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: And are you willing to be attuned to the good shepherd?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Let us pray.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Holy and gracious God, again, we give you thanks for this night.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: That we give you thanks that you don't give up on us.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: That even when our belief is more unbelief than belief, you still maintain that you are a God and you are a good shepherd.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: God, we pray that you would give us eyes to see, ears to hear the ways you are calling us.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: We pray that you will pour upon each of us a spirit of humility, that we are reminded that we don't have all the answers, we probably never will.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: But you invite us into the struggle.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: You invite us into an ever-living faith, an ever-living story with you.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: And for that, we give you thanks, oh God.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Give us the courage to say yes, give us the endurance to press on.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: And in the midst of that journey, in the midst of that answering yes, may we be reminded that you're with us every step of the way.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: We love you.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Praise you.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: We ask us in Christ's name.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: The Wesley Word is a production of the Clemson Wesley Foundation.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: For more information about Clemson Wesley, check out our website or follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, get out there and love your neighbor.