Series: Sermon on the Mount
July 11, 2021 - Jeff Gokee
Hey, hey! Morning! Today is the day the that Lord has made, let’s rejoice and be glad in it! Are you with me?
I was reminded in the first service, and even right now as I was listening to worship, how special it is that we’re together. You know, it wasn’t so long ago that we weren’t together and we felt the desire to be together and worship together. Now we’re here and so here’s what I want to say: let us not ever forget there was a time that we couldn’t gather. So when we gather, it’s just really exciting.
For those of you who are watching online, if you’re in proximity, come on! Now, I know there’s some health stuff. I get it. But if you’re in proximity to this church, this body, come. Be a part of the local church. It’s special. And I don’t ever want to forget how good it is to be together. Are you with me? Good.
My name is Jeff. I’m the Executive Director of Phoenix One. At Phoenix One our job is really just to care for the local church both internally and externally. We just want to serve the local body. We believe in not just this church — and this happens to be my church, my family’s church — but we believe in the Church as a whole, that when we come together as one that people are going to come together and see Jesus through the way we love one another.
Isn’t that a beautiful vision that Jesus gave to us, that we would be one so people will see Jesus— so people will see Jesus through the way we love and care for one another. So I love to do that. But today I love that I’m here. I love that I’m at my church and I get to teach here and I’m so excited to walk through what we’re going to go through.
So if you have your bibles, we’re going to be in Matthew 6 today.
I got married when I was 21 years old, my junior year in college, which I suggest for everyone because it was so easy. I got married at 21, my second semester of my junior year. In the brochure they said that there was something called the honeymoon period and I bought into it hook, line and sinker. I was like, “Oh, man, give me the honeymoon period. Give me all the ‘I love yous’ and all the stuff that comes on the brochure.” I’m sure you know what all that stuff is on the brochure.
So I was like fully into whatever that was. So I was like, “I love you,” all over the place. “I love you, I love you, I love you.” And my wife would always say, “Okay.” Or, “Thank you.” And I’m like, ‘Wait a second. That’s not what the brochure says. You’re supposed to reciprocate that.” Right?
So every time I talked to her on the phone, “I love you,” and she’d say, “Thank you. See you later tonight.” And I’m like, “Man, what is going on?”
Like most men, I came up with a strategy. I decided one night I’m going to just dial it in really good. I’m going do a really good I love you, because we’re in our honeymoon period. It’s in the brochure. So we’re ready to go to sleep and I go, “Hey, listen, you’re the moon to my ocean.” No, I never said that. But I was like, “I love you so much and I’m so glad that God gave you to me. He saw you and he saw me and he put us together. It’s so beautiful. I’m so grateful for you and I love you so much.”
And she said, “Thank you. Good night.” And I was like, “What’s your deal? Honestly! What’s your deal? Why won’t you reciprocate this? What is going on? Am I doing something wrong? I’m putting a lot of stuff out there. I’m putting a lot of ‘I love you’ out there and not getting a lot back.”
She said, “Yeah. That’s the problem. Because your ‘I love you’ is not for me. It’s for you. Your ‘I love you’ is for you because you’re insecure because your mom left when you were twelve years old and you’re worried that I’m going to do the same thing. So you’re going to try to manipulate the system to manufacture some form of love to try to tamper down some deep level of insecurity in your life. And I won’t have it.”
She was pointing me to Jesus. She was saying, “I can’t be Jesus in your life and you want me to be Jesus in your life. You want me to fill up all that love bucket and I won’t do it and I can’t do it.”
That’s why I said it’s good to not be alone. Man, thank goodness that God created a wife and that wife convicted my heart and showed me there’s something deeper going on inside of me. I wonder for you, I wonder if there’s something deeper going on inside of you. David’s been taking us through the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus is exposing these things in us. We all tend to deal with the Christian life on the outside and Jesus is trying to get deep on the inside. What is really going on inside of us?
That’s why I think one of the great passages in Scripture is Proverbs 4:23. It’s an umbrella passage over all of our lives. Solomon’s writing Proverbs and there’s so much wisdom. It’s the book of wisdom. There’s so much wisdom in there and yet he says this:
Above all else…
Which means this. I’m about to tell you a bunch of really good, wise, wisdom things that you can go live your life for the Lord. But above all else…
guard your heart,
for everything you do flows from it.
There is something inside of us, deep inside of us, that is impacting the way we relate with the Lord and relate with the world that’s around us. And Jesus is coming after our hearts because he loves you. He loves me. He wants to go, “No, can we just be honest? Can we just be real?”
So this is my encouragement this morning. Can we just be honest? Can we just be real? Can we deal with the conviction that the Spirit of God is going to bring to the teaching of Jesus? He’s going to do a much better job of teaching than I am. The Spirit of God is the Helper, so he’s going to open your hearts to what Jesus is about to take us through.
It’s really important, I would say this morning, it’s really important to feel the feels. Allow yourself to deal with the weight of what’s going on. Because what you do in secret will impact who you are in public. And what you do in public will impact how you connect with God in the secret. This is what this passage is coming after. This is what Jesus has been doing all throughout the Sermon on the Mount. This is a vision of the righteousness of God to the people that are supposed to be righteously following after him.
What Pastor David’s been taking us through the last few months is the vision of the righteousness of God. He’s challenging us to shift the way we think. The upside down reality of the way that the God of the Universe, Emmanuel With Us, is living and acting. To the point like as radical — as David brought to us last week — love your enemies. Love your enemies. I know the world says to hate them. But love them. That’s radical. And what he’s going to invite us into in this next section is no less radical.
He’s starting to get into the disciplines that maybe you and I as Christians have followed. And he’s going to come after those because there’s something deeper that’s going on inside of you and me.
Matthew 6:1-18 is where we’re going to go.
Before I move on, I want to say this. Today we’re going to talk a little bit about what the problem is. Why is it that we struggle to connect with God through these things that he’s talking to us about? Next week the worship team is putting on a time of prayer and worship. It’s just going to be prayer and worship. You’re going to love it. It’s going to convict you. It’s going to bless you. It’s going to be a beautiful time next week.
Then on the 25th I’m going to come back and teach on the Lord’s Prayer. I’m going to teach the Lord’s Prayer, which is essentially what we do. But today is going to be what the problem is, what the struggle is. I want to help you understand that. Then, as we go through this passage, I want you to start looking for the common themes that you see all throughout this passage.
Matthew 6:1 says this:
“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven…”
If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. If you practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. I want you to feel the weight of that as we go into this. I want you to feel the weight of that. And now he goes on…
“…So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray…
Listen to the personal pronouns.
“…go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
So the question is, what do we need? Well, Jesus is like, “Let me tell you what you need. You need to learn how to pray. And this is how you pray.”
“This, then, is how you should pray:
‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.’For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
This is the word of the Lord. And everybody said – Amen!
When I was a kid, I grew up in the church my whole life. In the tradition that I grew up in, they would bring the children up front and they would pray over them and then kind of dismiss them to Sunday school. Anybody grow up in a tradition like that or experience anything like that? Okay. That’s how I grew up. And every once in a while, the pastor would invite one of the kids up to like pray.
And I was the kid that was like, “Put me in, Coach. I am ready. I am a warrior. I’m ready to pray this house down.” I was always waiting for my opportunity to pray, because I was going to crush, okay? So one day I was sitting there and Pastor Roger Curson (sp), he was my pastor, I grew up in the same church my whole life. He said, “Jeff Gokee is going to come up and pray for us.” And I was like, “Whew! Now it’s time! Let’s go! I’ve been waiting for this. I’ve been preparing for this. I’m ready to go.”
I don’t know what happened, but my seven-year-old self turned into a sixteen hundreds English preacher. I started talking about eschatology, ecclesiology, soteriology, right? I’m talking about the propitiation of Jesus’ death and resurrection in the name of the Father, the Son and Spirit, amen. And I sat down next to my mom and I looked at her and I said, “That was a good prayer.”
She smacked me. Whack! She said, “Don’t you ever talk about prayer that way. You are praying to God Almighty. He gets all the glory. Not you.”
And I thought, “Wow!”
But isn’t that true? No different than what Patty was trying to teach me. I take a long time to learn lessons. You with me? It took a long time to understand there’s a deep rooted thing inside of us, a deep rooted insecurity. We just want to be known. We just want to be known for the wrong things. We don’t want to be known by the King of kings and the Lord of lords who knit us together in our mother’s womb. We want to be known by the masses. We want to be affirmed by them to make sure that we feel okay.
What I find really interesting is that Jesus is talking about three really good things here. These aren’t bad things. These are good things. Right? These were the pillars of what it meant to be a good Jew in that time. He talks about alms giving. A lot of times when we think about alms giving, we think about doling out cash to really poor people. That’s what we think. But actually, in the Greek, the way it’s translated is mercy mindedness. It’s this right here: In the secret place I know how merciful God has been to me and I find this deep level of gratitude in my soul so that when I awaken and open my eyes and go out in the public place I can’t help but be giving mercy wherever I go. Which means, sometimes there’s people who have financial needs. I can’t wait to meet that need because I just sense the mercy of God in my own life and it has changed my perspective on the world. The mercy mindedness is what alms giving really meant.
Praying. The Jews were prayers. In fact to be Jewish was to be a prayer. They prayed a pray called the Shema that roots all the way back to Moses. The Shema. They prayed it every day. They also had a section of eighteen prayers that they would pray every single day. The Jewish culture was a praying culture. So they were known for their prayers. They were known to be a praying people. To connect with the God of the Universe, to connect with Yahweh they would pray.
And they would also fast. Fasting was interesting because these people were used to going to the temple and making a sacrifice. Fasting was very much a very personal sacrifice. It was sacrificing some aspect of their life to focus in on God. So it became a personal sacrifice. It was a good thing. It was what they were known for.
What Jesus is saying is these are good things that you’ve turned bad, that are now, instead of allowing you to connect with the God of the Universe, it’s creating a disonnance between you and him because it’s no longer about God. It’s about everybody else.
It’s interesting. Sometimes good things can be really bad. Did you know this? Did you know that drinking too much water can kill you? That’s why I drink coffee, okay? I’m going to avoid that altogether and go straight to coffee. No, but water, if you drink too much water, it can kill you. Now, we all know that if you don’t drink water it will kill you. But did you know that drinking too much water can kill you?
If your intentions around alms giving, around prayer and fasting is wrong, it can kill you, spiritually speaking. And it can kill others. This is what Jesus is trying to get at. He’s trying to get to the heart of things and going, “The things I’ve given you to connect with me are there to bring you life and life to the full. To allow you to be a light unto the nations for the world” to see, who? Me? No! To see God. To bring glory to him! We’ve come up against those good things and we’ve made them me things. When it’s all about him. This is where the problem starts.
Psalm 51 has been a really important Psalm to me. Verses 16 and 17. I want you to hear this. It’s so important.
You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.
See we’re all in the marketplace going, “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!” And he’s going, “I don’t need you to do that. I just want you to be broken. I want a broken and contrite heart that goes, ‘I just want you. I just want to bring you bring you glory. I just want to know you intimately in the innermost being of my life.’”
Jesus, knowing this, is saying, “We have a problem and we need to talk about it.”
The thing we need to talk about is this thing he repeats over and over and over, which is this, “Do not be like the hypocrites. Do not be like the hypocrites.” And what are the hypocrites? Well, in the Greek, the word literally means actors. The actors.
You know, I’ve grown up in the church my whole life. I went to church. I went to Christian school. I went to Bible college. In high school, I won the Best Christian in the school. That’s a real thing. I have a plaque. I have two of them. I have two plaques that said… do you know what that does for a teenager’s heart? Right? It’s no different than pouring fuel on the fire of that seven-year-old that got in front of that church and said, “I’m a somebody!” So I know the game. I played the game.
In fact, let me just tell you this — maybe you don’t know this about people who come up here and teach. It’s hard because I’m doing everything I can not to get your affirmation, that you would think of me as a good teacher. Now, I’m going to serve the Lord to the best of my ability, that he gets all the glory. But it’s painful for me. I have to pray and ask for God to sanctify my heart as I come up here and bring his word. Because I feel unworthy. That I might receive something from you that he wants to give me. It’s hard and it’s heavy.
Because, what I find so often in the local churches is that I’ve got to come into these spaces and places where it feels at times like we’re just acting. Like we’re playing the part that you play in the church. Do you know the local church is the easiest place to fake it. You say the right words and do the right things and everyone assumes that you are just a solid believer in Jesus Christ. It’s easy to fake it here.
Jesus knows it. He’s exposing that in you and me. He’s like, “Stop acting. Stop pretending to be something. Come before me. Repent before me but don’t act.”
I’ve realized in my own life, would I give? Would I be generous if I didn’t get a writeoff from the government? We get rewarded from our government for giving money away. Would I do it if I did not get that reward? Man!
I think one of the prayers that I feel are some of the most sacrilegious prayers are mealtime prayers. Because we’re not thinking about God. We’re thinking about, “How do I get into this burrito as fast I can? I’ve got to get through this Christian pageantry so I can get to the good stuff.” He’s the good stuff! He’s provided this. He’s given us the provision. And all we can think about is, “Let’s get through the routine so I can get to my burrito.” When in reality, we should be like, “Oh my gosh! I have a burrito. Oh my gosh! You love me and you care for me and you see me. And there’s people all around the world that don’t have — and I do.” But we’re trying to rush through that because it’s a part of the pageantry that we’ve become accustomed to.
We have Christian idioms like, “I’ll pray for you.” Think of how often we say that to people or that’s being said to us. Are we really praying for people? Do we not wear the weight of what those words mean? Are we just acting and pretending here and playing a game? Like in a Christian drama? Like it’s like church as a theater, Christianity as a theater. And Jesus is like, “Don’t do it. It’s killing you. Not only that, but it’s killing your witness in this world.”
Here’s the scary thing. Here’s the real scary thing. The consequences, we receive the fullness of that reward in other people’s view of us, not Jesus, which means we don’t get Jesus. We don’t sense his pleasure. We don’t sense his peace. We don’t sense his joy. No, because we’re doling out all of this stuff and hoping to get something in return that only he can give us, and it’s killing us. That should feel weighty. Like Romans 1 says, He releases us, listen to this. It’s so heavy. He releases us to the desires of our hearts.
If the desire of your heart is to be known by the masses, he will release you to that desire and you miss out on the presence of God that is nearer to you than your own heartbeat. And he desperately wants to connect with you in that way.
So often what we’re trying to look for is an ROI on our righteousness. ROI on our righteous deeds, right? “Oh, God, I’m going to pray to you, but you’d better answer that prayer.”
“Oh, God, I’m going to give, but you’d better hook a brother up if I give. Right? I want an ROI on that righteousness.”
“I’ll fast. I’ll lay something down. But you’d better honor me and reward me for that.”
And it’s killing us. Do you know this generation is the most depressed, medicated generation of all time? Suicide is at an all-time high. Why? Because we’re trying to get filled up in all the wrong places. We’re trying and begging and hoping that something else will feed us up.
I find this so interesting. You see this right here? (Indicates taking a selfie.) You ever see this? Maybe you’re one of these people. I’m sorry, but I’m going to go after it a little bit. Just hang with me, all right? You’re one of these people, and God’s like this, “Stop it!” You’re trying to put something out there that’s not real in hopes that you get a Like or a Comment back that will affirm you, when he’s like, “I want to do that for you. I want to fill that desire in you. I want you to sense my presence. I want you to feel my love, but you’re so busy getting it from others.” You get your reward there and it’s crushing you.
Remember the story in the scriptures of the Pharisee and the tax collector? The Pharisee stands in the temple like so many of us do. “Thank you that I’m not like them. Thank you I’m not a sinner like them. I give my money. I pray. I’m faithful. I stick by all 613 laws and follow the sacrificial system to the 9’s. God you’re so blessed to have me in your kingdom.” And he points to the tax collector and says, “Thank you I’m not like him.”
Then all of a sudden it transitions to the tax collector and he says, “Have mercy on me, oh God. I’m a sinner.” That’s soul talk. That’s heart talk. That’s conviction talk. This is what Jesus is trying to get after with you and me. But we’ve got to listen to the word of God, to the teaching of Jesus that he has given to don’t be like the hypocrites. Don’t get your reward from the world, from the kingdom of the world, get it from the kingdom of God. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you. All these things will be added to you.
Ten years ago I started Phoenix One. The reason why we started it is because the largest generation of our time, the Millennials, all the research was coming out and they were called Nones. It means they grew up around the church and they got tired of the drama. They got tired of the acting. Because moms and dads would come to church and raise their hands and pray and then come home and fake it. And the kids of that generation said, “I’m out. I’m done.”
So we were doing everything we could to reconnect them back to the local church, reconnect them back to Jesus. What I want to say is this has to stop. We are at a crossroads in Church history, where we need to stop faking it. What we do in here matters. But what you do out there, it matters. We have got to stop faking it. We have got to stop being a part of this drama and allow the Lord to meet us and convict us and to use us once again. He will if we allow ourselves to slow down to meet him in the secret place. That’s the solution. It runs contrary to the way we process through things. He wants to meet you in that secret place.
This quote has been so helpful for me. It says this:
I must turn my attention away from a group-consciousness as a ruling norm of my actions and fasten my glance on the source, rather than the impact, of my actions, and this in the sight of God, who is in heaven.” –Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis
It’s going like this, “It’s all about Jesus.” Let him do the ministry. He will. And he will use you as a result of you coming to rest in the secret place with him. All throughout this place. It’s in the secret in your heart. Why? Because it runs your whole life. That’s why you need to guard your heart. It affects everything you do. It directs your life and he wants to meet you there and minister to you there. Why? So you can go out and be a ministry to other people.
This is what he’s inviting us into. He wants you to come in the secret place. He wants you to be silent. He wants you to be ministered to by him because he loves you. That’s why he sent the Helper. That’s why his death and resurrection made possible the release of the Spirit of God. You are the temple of God. And the Spirit of God — if you’ve made a commitment to follow after Jesus is in you. He’s nearer to you than your own heartbeat. But do you know him? Where is God? God is in the secret and he’s meeting you there, maybe right now he is meeting you there. And the weight of conviction you’re feeling, I hope you are. I am. I am.
He loves you and he sees you and he wants you to know him intimately the way he knows you. I’ll tell you where he’s not. God is not on the street corners blowing trumpets and trying to get all the attention. He’s not in the contorted face in fasting. He’s not in hypocrisy. He’s not in self-promotion. He’s not in religious devotion who steals for himself or herself the glory of God. He’s not in glory thieving. That’s what a lot of us are. We’re glory thieves.
He’s in the place that he see you. In the secret place. In the place where you first met him and you felt the conviction that allowed you to make your life right before the God of the Universe as a result of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
I was trying to think, “How do we move forward from here?” The best passage I can give you is John 12:25:
Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
That is a paradox. The paradox is a part of what it means to follow after Jesus. A paradox is like two illogical turns that come together and we’re like, “That doesn’t make sense.” Welcome to the Christian life. If you lost your life, if you lay it down, if you lay down all this public affirmation, all this stuff that we’re putting out there, if you lay that down you get Jesus. You sense his presence. You move forward in holiness and righteousness. You receive peace and joy. Not in the things of this world but in him. This is what Jesus is getting after.
And the Christian life is a paradox. I want you to listen to this:
As Christians we see unseen things. We conquer by yielding. We find rest under a yoke. We reign by serving. We are made great by becoming small. We are exalted when we are humble. We become wise by being fools for Christ’s sake. We are made free by becoming bond servants. We gain strength when we are weak. We triumph through defeat. We find victory by glorifying God in our infirmities. We live by dying.
This is what it means to be a Christian. This is what it means to follow after Jesus. We live in these paradoxical, upside down, kingdom-come-will-be-done realities here on earth. The problem for so many of us is we’re resisting that. We’ve created a counter strategy that’s not only killing us but it’s killing the gospel message that we’re called to give in his world.
Jesus is like, “Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop faking. Stop acting. Stop it. Repent. Return to the Lord.”
Hosea 6:1 says this:
Come, let us return to the Lord.
He has torn us to pieces
but he will heal us;
he has injured us
but he will bind up our wounds.
Right now some of us need some wounded-ness so that we can be healed by the Spirit of God and remind us who we are in him so we can go out in this world and be the presentation that only he can give. We’re just clay. He’s the one who molds us and puts us together.
I’ve spent a good portion of my life in India. I love India. India is kind of like my home away from home. I love it there. Twelve years ago I got to lead a pastors conference for seven hundred Indian pastors. I thought I was just going to go there and bless their socks off. They rocked me. You know why? Because those paradoxical statements I just read you, they live those out. That’s who they are. That’s what they were doing. It was costly for them to follow after Jesus.
Here I was, this American pastor, and it really hasn’t cost me much to follow Jesus. And they taught me and I was humbled. And I was convicted. And I repented because I was like, “Oh my gosh. I’ve just gone astray.”
There’s a picture that’s going to come up. This is Pastor Abraham. I was in his village a couple of years ago, in a village outside of Padafrom (sp), which is in Southern India. It’s the second largest red light district in the country. I was meeting with him and I asked him some simple questions. “Why? Why did you choose to be a pastor?” Because if you choose to be a pastor in India, you’re choosing to be abused. You’re choosing abject poverty. You’re choosing to be mocked. You’re choosing to be flogged. Not only you, but your wife and your children. You’re choosing to have your house be burnt to the ground. You’re choosing that. And I said, “Why? Why would you do that? Why would you pick that?”
And he says, “Because Jesus loves me. Because Jesus loves me.”
And I wanted to argue with him. “No, no. It’s far more complex than that. There’s way more to it than that.”
And he was like, “I love Jesus. I want other people to see Jesus.”
We need to learn to love Jesus. We need to learn to live for Jesus. This is what it means to be a body of Christ, coming together as one. We’ve got to stop faking it and start sacrificing in order that others may see this gospel, this good news that Jesus loves them and died for them and cares for them. But we’re glory thieves. We’re trying to rob that to fill our own insecurities. We need to stop.
I’m telling you, I stand before you the chief of all sinners. I feel so unworthy to preach this. I’m so unworthy, as I’ve gone through this week, I’m going to tell you, it’s been heavy. I’ve been excited to bring God’s word. I’ve been really excited to bring this word from Jesus. But I feel so unworthy. I feel so challenged by this passage, so convicted by it because what I realize is this. The statement that I made:
What you do in secret will impact who you are in public, and what you do in public will impact how you connect with God in secret.
I want us to wear that. I want us to feel that. I want us to be convicted by Jesus’ word, the best teacher of all time. He says this in 6:1:
“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven…
That’s weighty. I feel convicted by that. I don’t know about you. But I hope this morning you’re convicted by the word of God; but I hope that conviction doesn’t leave you in despair, but pushes you toward the hope that we find in the resurrected Jesus. He didn’t leave us in hopelessness. He became that hope for us, so that we can bring hope into the spaces and places that he’s called us to. This is what it means to be the Church. This is what Jesus was trying to help people understand what it meant to be a part of the kingdom.
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