Become Like Jesus.

If you have your Bibles with you today, we are going to be continuing our series called Create the Culture of Christ, where as we get ready to celebrate eight years of being a church community, we are taking time to dive deeper into what does it mean to create the culture of Christ and how do we do that? Through being with Jesus, becoming like Jesus, so that we can naturally just flow and do the things that Jesus did, because that's what we want to see in our daily lives and in this city. And so today we're talking about what does it look like to become like Jesus? And to do that, we're going to turn to the Gospels again. And we're going to start in Luke chapter 12.

So in verse one, it says this. I'm looking at the wrong thing, you guys. Hang on. I looked. I was like, this is not what I'm about to.

Okay. Luke 11. That's later. I just spoiled the whole message. Don't go there.

Luke 11, starting in verse 37. It says this.

When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. But the Pharisee was surprised when he noticed that Jesus did not first wash before the meal. Then the Lord said to him, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you. “Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone. “Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in the marketplaces. “Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which people walk over without knowing it.” One of the experts in the law answered him, “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also.” Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.

Luke 11:37-46 (NIV)

I just have to pause sometimes in like the sass of Jesus when they're like, what do you tell you? He's like, woe to you. And he says to them these things. He says:

“Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your ancestors who killed them. So you testify that you approve of what your ancestors did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs. Because of this, God in his wisdom said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute.’ Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all. “Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.”

Luke 11:47-52 (NIV)

Says in verse 53, when Jesus left there, the Pharisees and the teachers of law, Does not say they went, they listened to him. They applied what he said. Instead, it says they began to oppose him fiercely with questions waiting to catch him in something he might say. That was the response to Jesus.

So before we dive in today and respond to Jesus's word, let's take a moment to pray again together. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your word today that is alive and active. We thank you for your son, Jesus, that through his death and resurrection and leaving with us his Holy Spirit, that we get to hear your voice today through the scripture. We thank you for your presence that we already feel and know is in this room.

And we just continue to say, Holy Spirit, would you come? And I just want to invite all of you in your own ways right now, would you just invite God to speak to you? If you want to hear from God, if you want to see his word transform you, if you want to leave this place more living into the love of Jesus and who he created you to be, would you just say, come Holy Spirit, come Holy Spirit. We trust you, God.

So we ask all of this in your name. Amen. A couple of weeks ago, I was with a friend of mine and she was giving me this situation and it was kind of wild, all these details. And she's like, okay, so I have two options of how I want to respond to this right now.

And she lays out the one and it was a little unhinged. And then she lays out the other and it felt very wise and mature. But she's like, yeah, but I don't do that kind of stuff. And it reminded me of how I often process things.

If you've heard me share, like some people think you got an angel and a demon. I have 17-year-old Abbie and Pastor Abbie that live on different sides of my body here, and they're constantly talking on how to respond to certain things. And those of you that you've been around for eight years, you watched 23-year-old Abbie pastor this church, and I'd like to think we're a little more leaning into the mature version of that and not 17-year-old anymore the longer we live. But that's the reality for a lot of us is we always have different options of how to live, of how to respond to things.

And I paused as she was telling me these things and I said, which option best represents who you want to become? Now, I had a lot of thoughts and opinions about what she was asking me for advice for. And there were some like really pointed things that I could have said that would have been some wise advice. But I paused and I asked that question.

I said, which one represents who you want to become? Not your default response of who you are, not who you have always been, not how you've seen your parents or your family or your community respond to these things, but which option is going to represent who you want to become? And as followers of Jesus, this is a question I think we all need to ask ourselves. But through the lens of saying, which option is going to help me become more like Jesus?

Because I was created as someone in the image of God to bear his image and to become more like Jesus and share his light every single day. And that should lead us to places of reflection in our everyday life to saying that following Jesus invites us into something different. Jesus invites us into becoming someone new. So many prophets like Ezekiel prophesied about this in Ezekiel 36, where he says:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

Ezekiel 36:26 (NIV)

Paul, he reminds us of this in 2 Corinthians, where he says:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)

When we say yes to following Jesus, when we receive the gift of salvation, we are entering into this process of continuing to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus. But sometimes I think the thing that we're missing is we get stuck with the being and the doing becoming this competitive thing rather than seeing them as something that is complementing one another and necessary for us to become like Jesus. That Jesus heals us, he restores us, and then we get to now practice living in that new identity, which requires us often to slow down in moments and say, how is the life I'm living helping me become more like Jesus?

It's not simply always saying what would I normally do, or even sometimes what would the people around me do, but the classic WWJD. What would Jesus do in this moment if he were me and that acronym would be way too long for a bracelet which is why it's simplified. But here's the thing that I want to talk about today is we often ask these questions of who am I becoming?

How did I get here?

And I think it's important for us to also start and look back at how did I get here? How did I get here? There's many different people that have talked about this and there's four kind of adapted versions that I want to talk about today of what it looks like and how the most common ways that we are formed. One of the first ways that we often see that we are formed and we're going to go more in depth as we go through the scripture today is we're formed by what we hear. We're formed by what we hear.

Stories that we are told. Sometimes stories we tell ourselves, sometimes good ones, sometimes lies, disbeliefs. We are formed by the stories and the things that we hear that are told to us. We're formed by how we live. We're formed by the practices, the habits that we repeat over time.

Those things form us. We're formed by who's around us, relationships, community, our family of origin, which essentially is what was the story in the family that you were born into, whether it was growing up with biological parents or one parent or whatever family community you grew up in. We were all born into a story and a family of origin, and that forms us whether we know it or not. It forms us. So what we hear, how we live, who's around us, and then what happens to us, pain, suffering, our experiences of pain and suffering, how we receive those things, it all forms us.

We're formed by stories that we believe, and that shapes often what we believe about God, the habits that we repeat, relationships, pain and suffering. What the gospel of Luke here, what we're reading is Jesus is addressing that the Pharisees were doing all of these practices, yet in that they had missed Jesus forming and transforming their hearts to becoming people of love. He's not necessarily saying every single thing that you practice is wrong or bad. In the same way, a couple of weeks ago, when we talked about Mary and Martha, he's not saying like serving and doing is necessarily bad, but he's continuing to point to, is your heart centered around Jesus? Are you becoming more of a person of love and compassion and forgiveness and kindness?

Because doing these religious things is not the point. The point is that they are forming us into the likeness of Jesus. And so when that stops happening, we have to stop too and look and say, who are we becoming? How did we get here? And are the decisions that I'm making today leading me to who I was created to become?

So in Luke 11, we read this, that a Pharisee invites Jesus to come and eat. Again, one of the reasons we love food around this church, Jesus loved food. He ate with people all the time. This is one of those moments he's going into their homes. So great reminder, we should all be inviting each other into our homes.

But the Pharisee is super surprised because Jesus, he didn't do something. He didn't wash before the meal. So they're all looking at him and they're like, who is this guy? And who does he think that he is? That he is not washing before the meal.

And we don't want to get into the fine details because like we have hand sanitizer out for a reason. We should wash our hands. So Jesus is not anti hand washing or anything like that. It was not just about hygiene in this moment. It was about these religious purification practices that existed.

So the Pharisees, they were Jewish at the time and they were deeply concerned with honoring the law and honoring and living in this holy way. So they had all of these practices that they did. And if you go back into the Old Testament and you read some of those, it's like they kept adding to the laws and adding to the laws and adding to the laws over and over and over again. So there were laws about just about everything that you could possibly think of. And so then he goes on and he confronts the gap between their external appearance and their internal living.

That is what Jesus is doing here in this moment. As he's looking at saying, this is how you're acting on the outside, but I see on the inside. And these are the moments where he uses something so simple that we can all picture in our heads today. He uses a cup. And he talks about how on the outside, you can look at a cup and it can look clean.

And we've all probably done it. When you take something out of the dishwasher and you take that clean cup and you look on the inside and you're like, oh, that one's going through again. Not yet. Because sometimes the outside looks clean. And for me, it's my coffee.

You look at it and I was like, and why does it still look like I just drank my coffee? And you got to clean it again. He's confronting that the external and the internal are not lining up. He's encouraging them and reminding them like, I care more about the inside. I care more about your heart.

Not because the outside and what we do does not matter. But he's talking about the becoming and the default practices here. Because what happens if we're only concerned about the outside and we're never looking at the heart, then we could become really religious people where we're doing all these quote unquote good things and following the rules. And we've all probably experienced it. You can still do that and be really angry and bitter and unforgiving and have all these things built up.

I grew up in a church setting where it was always talked about. It was like, we want excellence and excellence and that's all great. But there were so many moments where we would be having these like big events and doing these big things. And meanwhile, like people would just be like snapping at people in the process and like yelling at people in the process. And you're like, but we're kind of being mean to each other.

You know, we're trying to do these good things, but we're just being mean. And you think about it too. One of the best ways to say like, am I becoming a person of love is who are the people closest to you that see you all the time and how do you act around them? What does that look like? Jesus is saying like that external's fine, but, if we start first with the internal and we become people of love where we allow him to transform us, then the default will be to do all of these really good, holy, righteous works.

So he's not saying the works are bad, right? He goes on to talk about we need to feed the poor, we need to pray for healing for the sick and all of those things. So he wants us to do that. But it starts with the inside so that can flow from within. God is someone that from Old Testament to New, we see that he cares about the vulnerable, the poor, the oppressed.

And so in verse 42, he gets really, really specific about how their hearts are not aligning with his heart. He says, woe to you, Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue, and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone. So he's saying, you should have just practiced justice and being a person of love rather than just the tithe and all those things. God's heart is for justice.

He sent Jesus to set captives free, to set us free from our sin that bound us. He wants people to experience the fullness of his gospel. And we see this, that he has set things up all throughout the Old Testament to do this. So he's looking at their practices and he's reminding them. He's like, do you not remember why we started this whole thing to begin with?

So he's referencing that they're tithing. They're giving that 10%, which this is something that we talk about as a church. We still practice today. And when we talk about it, we say like, our goal is not that everybody gives 10% of their income to the church and that's it. Our goal is that giving 10% is a practice that forms us into generous people that learn to see everything that we have as gods.

And where we're constantly saying, Lord, what do you want me to keep? Rather than what do you want me to give? Because we recognize everything is his. So the 10th and the tithe, like that's a practice we do, but that's not the point. We don't mark this like big successful thing now when it's like, great, I tithe 10%, I made it.

No, that's something that forms us into becoming more generous people like God. But here he's reminding them, like, let's go back to where this started. And Deuteronomy 14 is one of the times that we see the tithe talked about. And at that time, the tithe was set aside essentially so that they could have, the leaders then could have a percentage to give to the poor, the vulnerable, the oppressed, so that people could come and be fed. And so he's reminding them, like, you're giving these things, but then you're neglecting the poor.

When the reason that you were supposed to set aside this was so that you could take care of the poor and they could eat and they could be nourished and sustained. So when he's confronting the Pharisees, he's confronting that they're neglecting the love of God, that they're neglecting justice. He's not telling them to stop practicing their faith. He's not saying like, stop tithing, that's bad. Don't give, don't do those things.

But what he's getting to is that God doesn't just want us to practice the habits of worship. He wants those habits to form us into people who love what he loves and who naturally just do what he did, that's what he's confronting here because the pharisees for years it's like they had kept up with all these practices but they totally lost the purpose. And so before we go on, we can easily criticize the Pharisees and kind of make them the villains of the story, but I think it's important for us to recognize how quickly we can do the same thing, how quickly we can get caught up in these religious practices and lose the purpose and how they're forming us and who they're forming us to become.

Formed by the stories and beliefs we hold

So let's get back to the ways that we're being formed. Formed by the stories and beliefs we hold. This is one of the most common ways that we are formed. all of us, we have these internal narratives.

We have these things that are going on in our head, beliefs about who we are, sometimes beliefs about what we deserve, whether we feel safe, whether we feel loved. And some of those are grounded in truth and others, they're formed through different painful experiences. And so none of these are really like singular, but they all kind of go together. An example of this is like two people, you can receive the same criticism or even feedback.

We won't even say criticism, like feedback. And they're gonna have two different responses based on the story in your head and how you interpret those interactions. Our thoughts and our feelings, they're real experiences, but they're not always completely accurate. And it's important for us to pay attention to our thoughts and how we're interpreting them.

And are we continuing to tell ourselves stories that lead us to becoming more like Jesus or not? And this is why it's so important, like in Romans chapter 12 too, where it says that we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. This is where the practice of being in scripture like every single day, whether it's listening to the Bible app, opening up your Bible, reading a verse on your phone, whatever it looks like, but to get the word of God and his story in your head so that it can continue to shape your story and it can continue to correct and realign the parts of your story that you're telling yourself that are not shaping you to becoming who God created you to be. Following Jesus means that we are allowing him to challenge the stories that have been shaping us.

As I continue to read into Luke chapter 12, the parable of the rich fool comes up. And in Luke chapter 12, then Jesus goes on and he is telling people not to worry in all these things. And I wanna encourage you guys, we had a reading plan through Luke and I wanna encourage you to keep reading through Luke throughout this series because there's so much here. And one of the things that I noticed about here is a common thing that we all have a story about is provision and is money.

And Jesus, he goes on to meet this man here that he's calling a rich fool at some point. And it says in verse 13:

Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”

Luke 12:13-15 (NIV)

And then it continues to go on. And Jesus is like, given the classic, like, don't worry about tomorrow. You got enough. There's abundance. And it brings up in this man, he had a story about how he saw money and what his riches and possessions were going to do for him.

And Jesus is coming in and he's reshaping that. And the only way that we're going to see that is when we are in scripture and we're reading this, when he says to them, be on guard against all kinds of greed. A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. Up until this point, that's the story this man was living in. As he's like, my possessions are everything.

And if I don't have these things, I have nothing. And Jesus continues with this man and so many other people. He reshapes the stories that they have been living in. And he wants to reshape our stories too. The way that we see things, the way that we hold on to things, the way that we surrender things.

He wants to come in and reshape those things. And then the questions that we have to ask is right now in these moments, like what are the stories that I'm believing? And are they forming me into the person of Jesus and to who I've been created to become?

Formed by habits and the practices that we repeat

The next is that we're formed by habits and the practices that we repeat. We are formed by the things that we do. We're shaped by them. Not only just what we say we believe in our hearts, but what we repeatedly do. And we've talked about this a lot as a church, and that's why we have practices that we want everyone to do.

Because something changes in you when you wake up and you start doing the same things. You think about it, your commute to work or to class. At one point, you probably needed a GPS. You needed to follow every single turn. You needed to double check to make sure that you were getting in the lane at the right time.

And then all of a sudden, or maybe it's just me, when you have those moments and you're like, whoa, I don't remember taking those last two turns. I just did it. It's because our brains are powerful. And after we do something so many times, we can turn the GPS off and we don't have to look anymore. Not only can we turn it off, but we don't even have to hear it.

We don't have to listen to it. We sometimes don't even have to pay attention because it's like our brain and our body just know where to go and what to do. That's the power of repetition and the gift that we have in our brains and being able to rewire them. The practices, the things that we do, they shape us. And so then the question is, who are they shaping us into?

Who are we becoming? If we repeatedly respond to conflict with being defensive or being bitter, that becomes familiar and that's going to become what we do. If we continually avoid different conversations because it's just like too hard, then we become really avoidant people. But if we start to practice gratitude and prayer and look for ways to seek forgiveness and look for ways to confront those things and we become people of generosity and prayer and forgiveness and grace and all of those things. And so today, like a question too, is what are some of those default responses that you see coming up over and over again?

The Bible, it talks about training for godliness, not just trying, not just praying and saying, God, make me more like you. Yes, it starts with him, but then he's like, now practice it, live into this reality. Jesus, he had rhythms of prayer, rhythms of gathering with his people to fast, to pray, to do these things, to help form them into this. But sometimes that starts with us slowing down to evaluate. What is forming us, both unintentionally and intentionally?

Because sometimes we can recognize the intentional things, but it's the unintentional ones that creep up sometimes in ways that we're least expecting. What do you reach for when you feel anxious? What is your first response when you feel criticized? Where do you go when you're lonely and you're seeking friendship? it.

It's so much more than simply removing unhealthy habits, but it's deciding what are we going to replace them with and what are we going to do instead? And will those things form us into who Jesus created us to be?

Formed by our relationships, our communities

The next is we're formed by our relationships, our communities. We're formed by our family of origin, the people that we surround ourselves with. We know that we were not created to become and be formed in isolation. And community is one of the best places that we get to experience becoming more like Jesus.

But it's evaluating to look at your family of origin and think, how did I become this way? I think all the time when I get to talk with a lot of you that are students here and you tell me, like all the brilliant careers that you're going into and the things that you want to do. And one of the things that I'm amazed about sometimes is I'm like, that thing never crossed my mind. Like not once did I think about, you know, becoming a doctor or like a lawyer or all of these things.

I wanted to be a teacher because my mom was a teacher and my aunt was a teacher and I saw teachers. And so I pretended to be a teacher when I was little and I wanted, that's what I wanted to do. Now, in some ways I'm like kind of doing that now as I get to teach the Bible. But the things that we're doing, like they didn't just come from somewhere.

We're born into these stories. We see these things. We're taught how to interpret the world through the lens of the people we surround ourselves with. And so it's important to go back through your story and say, how did I become this way?

Where did I learn these things? And where do I take them from here? Jesus, he invited his disciples to come to be with him in community. He spent time training with them, practicing with them.

They got to see up close how he handled conflict, confrontation. They got to see up close that when the moments when he got angry, they got to see him weep. They got to see those things in the presence of community. They learned how to love and live like him through living with him in community.

This is where we see how intentional formation should be. Because again, how we treat strangers and how we love and forgive sometimes is a lot different than the people that are close to us. I don't know why this story popped in my head of loving a stranger and forgiving them, but also when I was in college, I lived off of the cafeteria food and Taco Bell. And there was a point in my life where I thought like, I will never stop eating Taco Bell.

And now I couldn't tell you the last time I did, but that's what I lived off of with the cafeteria food and Taco Bell. And of course, like it was like literally like counting the change to be like, do I have enough to buy my Taco Bell for tonight? And can I get two meals out of it? Because it's college.

And I remember one night that we're sitting there and we're waiting, we're waiting, you know, my friend's name is called, other friend's name is called. It's okay. It's my turn. It's coming.

It's coming. And I hear my name called and I go to get up from the table. And before I can get my food, I see a stranger walking out the door with my Taco Bell. And of course I'm angry.

Of course I'm mad. But there was something in me where I was like, well, they probably needed it more than me. There must be some reason. I'll forgive them.

I'll let this one go. But can I tell you, if it was one of my friends that just took my Taco Bell and walked out the door, it would have been a different story. They would have seen the real me come out right there. It would have been like 17 year old Abbie full send.

Like, there probably would have been some, I'll just stop there. It would have been bad. Because sometimes the people closest to us, they see the reality of who we are. They don't just see the politeness of maybe even when we show up to church.

Sometimes they don't get the grace of being forgiven as quickly. But it's in those places that we need to lean in. And that's a good check for us is saying, who am I becoming? A good sign is who am I around the people that are closest to me, that see me the most often in all different stages of how I'm feeling and how I'm doing.

And if I'm not becoming more of a person of love and kindness to those people, then it's time to take those things to Jesus and to say, will you come? Will you transform me? Will you help me, Holy Spirit?

Formed through pain and suffering

The next is we are formed through pain and suffering. Romans 5 says:

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Romans 5:1-5 (NIV)

This one is tender, the pain, the suffering that forms us. We will experience this on this side of eternity. Things that don't go as planned, things that were more painful than we ever could have imagined. And Jesus, he never ignores this.

Scripture does not ignore this, but does teach us what we can do with it. One, we get to relate to Jesus and his suffering. So many of us, because we maybe have been rejected, we live from those places of rejection and we long to not feel that way anymore. And what we see is like Jesus didn't avoid rejection by never inviting people, by never loving people, but he faced rejection.

He overcame those things on the cross and so many other things. He watched people betray him. He watched people talk bad about him and he took it to the cross and it was defeated. And we need to be reminded of that.

Even part of the reason, like, we gather together and we sing songs over and over again about who Jesus is, about the power of his death and resurrection because it reminds us when we are weak, when we are weary, when we are experiencing pain and suffering that he has overcome all of those things that we are afraid of. And although we may temporary feel some of it on this side of eternity, there is hope that someday it will be gone, that we won't feel the aches of loneliness. We won't feel the grief of betrayal. We will feel the fullness of his peace and his presence for all of eternity.

Our pain, it shapes us, but we always have choices of how. Do we sit in it? We need to sit in it, but long enough so that we can give it to Jesus and take it to him because he's the one that overcomes. He sees us in those things and he promises to be our comforter in them.

But if we only avoid our pain and suffering and we don't acknowledge what it has done to us or how it has shaped us. It will start to take over our lives in ways that we will see it leaking out in all the wrong places in all the wrong times, but when we sit with our suffering in a way that we invite Jesus into it to heal and to restore, it changes things. It shapes us. Second Corinthians one says:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,

2 Corinthians 1:3 (NIV)

This is written by Paul who endured so much suffering. And he's saying the God of comfort who comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. Paul is pointing to this cycle so beautifully. He's saying like, yes, we're going to have pain and we're going to have suffering, but let's remember the God of compassion and comfort. And then as he comforts us, we can comfort others.

And who doesn't want more comfort going around in this world? There's enough pain. There's enough suffering. What does it look like for us to become people of comfort? Where that's what flows from us.

All of this starts with Jesus. But Jesus here, he does not ask us to hide our pain. He doesn't ask us to just suppress it so that we can appear to be spiritually wise and mature. But he says, will you bring that pain into my presence? And will you let me heal you?

Will you let me do what I already did on the cross and now show you what that looks like to live into that reality of being healed and restored and free? And so when you have pain, when you have suffering, my question today is, do you have a plan in place of what do I do with this? Because that's where the intentional and the unintentional formation can creep up on us, is if we never think about, do we have a plan when we experience pain or suffering? That's when it starts to take control of our lives, and we're no longer in control of shaping it and forming it. If we don't take it somewhere, it will take over us.

But we have a choice in how we respond. And I think one of the things that got me the most of when we read that passage in Luke, and again in verse 53, it says, Jesus left. Jesus, the son of man, fully human, fully divine. He's coming. He's confronting these things within them.

And their response shows a lot about how they have been shaped and formed. They begin to oppose him fiercely. They get defensive. they're opposing him it's like they talk about fight or flight they're like we're ready to fight like let's go. They're waiting to catch him in something he might say.

How do we respond when Jesus challenges us, when he confronts us? How do we respond to these things? Is it to say, Jesus, through your spirit, help me become more like you, transform me from the inside out? Or do we get defensive? And if some of those things are our first response, we need to look at how we've been formed.

Where did I learn these? What are the stories I've been told, the stories I'm still believing, the stories I've been living? Look at our families of origin, the people that we surround ourselves with now. If our default is to still be negative in all of these ways, think about what are the conversations I'm having all the time? And what would it look like?

Here's my encouragement and what I want us to get today is what would it look like if we all lived into this intentional way and became more like Jesus? What would it look like if we didn't just tell stories of freedom, but we lived them? If we truly did not fear tomorrow, if we didn't worry about money or the future or where the next paycheck was gonna come from, what would that look like? To live, to practice the ways of Jesus, to where by default we're just generous, we're loving, we're kind, we're forgiving, we understand our stories, but then what does it look like for us to move from just understanding them but allowing the Holy Spirit to shape them and reshape them every single day. Our being, it shapes our doing and our doing forms our being.

It is not this competitive thing, but it is complimentary and it is needed. We need both. So I'm going to invite the worship team to come and I want to talk about today, what does this look practically? What does this look practically for us?

Reflect constantly

Well, I believe first that we need to reflect constantly. One of the things that we encourage everyone to do at this church is to end your night with praying the prayer of examen. End your night with taking time to examine day to day. God, where was I today?

What did I do? Because sometimes we can start with the, like, repentance, which is good. We want to repent, and we'll get there. But if we only start with, like, okay, here's all the things that went wrong, that's only going to get us so far.

But what's helpful then is to go, well, like, where was I today? Because then we can go, why did that happen? Why did it go so wrong? I found myself being like really rude to people on the way home.

Well, if you had a really stressful day at work that maybe you weren't prepared for, you didn't sleep well the night before, it makes sense. So we start with the reflecting of simply saying, where have I been? What have I been doing? And then we dive deeper into, God, where were you in that?

Will you show me? And moments, if I am noticing I felt so lonely today, God, will you show me where you were? If I was feeling like super defensive, God, would you help me see why? Like what was going on?

And then to move to a time of repentance. The Pharisees were so hung up on their rules that they had no room for repentance. And conviction from the Lord should be a beautiful thing. When we stand there and he's going, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're almost there, but there's this one thing, switch, change.

That should be something that we see as kind and comforting and we run towards and we say yes and amen. I receive that God, I repent and I'm turning and I'm walking towards you again. We should not fear it. That is lies of the enemy that we should sit and be stuck in shame, but we need to move forward in that surrender.

Jesus wants us to live free in that type of way. And then we end in gratitude. and rejoicing and just reminding ourself of who God is. Something changes in us when we continue to behold who God is.

We start to become more like him. We remember the power. We remember the beauty and all of those things. And so I'm going to invite us to stand today, and I want us to end today in a time of just reflecting on who God is and his beauty and the power of that.

But before we do that, I realize that there's many places that we can be coming in today. And so if you're here in a place today, and you're realizing that you are not who you want to become, in this moment you're looking and you're like, maybe there's things already in conviction. I just want you to hear, like, God is transforming you and shaping you. And how you were formed does not have to define you.

But you can continue to behold Jesus, to live into his ways, and see those things change. You can't change everyone else around you. And maybe you're here and you're like, I'm trying, but I'm in situations right now where I feel so stuck. And I just want to say to you, if that's you, that, like, God sees you in that.

And he's just longing for you to continue to bring it to him over and over again, so that he can give you that Holy Spirit strategy of, like, here's how to respond, here's what to say. And if you're here and you're like, I feel like I'm doing the right things, and I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying, but like, I'm still bitter, or I'm angry, or I'm struggling with unforgiveness again, you can change. Jesus comes to transform us. And I want to invite you to just lean more into your daily life that prayer of examen, of inviting the Spirit to search you and to shape you and to continue to center your life around being with Jesus.

And so I want to do this. I want to read Psalms 139 over us. And then we're just going to end in the time of worship and beholding Jesus. And then this week, if you're like, I want to focus on my becoming and be intentional, I have kind of just two practical things.

One is pray the examen every night. Pray the examen. It's on the Daily Rhythms app, our website, the journal's there. Practice praying the examen.

And if you're not in a forum group, if you don't have a partner that you're doing this with, sign up for that. So that we can do this in community. but if you would take a moment and just close your eyes and just position yourself in just a posture of surrender to the Lord. And psalms 139 says this:

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand— when I awake, I am still with you. If only you, God, would slay the wicked! Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty! They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name. Do I not hate those who hate you, LORD, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?

Psalm 139:13-21 (NIV)

And so for just a moment, would you just invite the Holy Spirit to search you? Would you invite him to just come and show you any ways that you have been formed, that he's inviting you to take a deeper look at, to sit with? Would you invite the Spirit to search you and show you just any default responses, or stories that you've believed, lies that you believe, that he's just saying, hey, I'm reshaping that. I have something new for you. I'm restoring you.

I'm setting you free. Would you just invite the Spirit to do that? And then as the team leads, can we just behold Jesus together for these last few moments today as a way to center our gaze and our attention and say, Jesus, we want to see you in your beauty, as we say yes to the invitation of becoming more like you every single day. So Holy Spirit, we take our pain, our suffering, the stories, everything, and we lay it at your feet, Jesus, and we behold you in your glory. So Jesus, we thank you that you are love on display in the way that you gave your life for us.

And because of the power of your death and resurrection, that we can live into this resurrection power and this reality, and that you have made us in your image, God, to bear your image. And so Lord, I just pray right now that as we move from this space today, that you would help us to continue to not look at who we are and sit in shame, but we would look at who you created us to be and we would see that as hopeful as we step more into becoming more like you every single day. So God, will you continue to transform us into your likeness? Holy Spirit, would you transform us from the inside out? Would you come and do things that only you can do?

And would you help us to be obedient and walking that out and living in the hope and the freedom that you have given us? In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen.