Finding and Forming Your Foundation.

Happy Sunday and happy new year. We are so excited to be back after our short little sabbatical where we took two weeks off. I'm excited to be back with all of you.

We are starting a new series today called Rule of Life. This is our fourth year since we introduced as a church what we call a rule of life. So I'm going to talk more about that, but essentially a rule of life is a set of spiritual practices. As we continue to pray and discern and listen, we ask: Who is God inviting us as a church to be right here at this moment? We really felt the Lord continue to show us that if we are to create the culture of Christ and that is our mission and vision at New Culture Church, then we need to continue to look at the culture of Jesus and ask, how can we live like that? How can we have the same practices and customs and beliefs as Jesus, not just be people that know them, but be people that live them?

We have what we call a rule of life. There are cards at the welcome table, it's on our website. If you're unfamiliar and you're newer to the church, you can see that we are committed to following. We don't want to just be people that say, "It's nice to talk to Jesus," but we want to be people that are committed to praying and talking to Jesus. We don't want to just be people that say, "On Sundays, it's great to come and listen and worship through music," but we want to every single day be living lives of worship.

We are going to be centering today's message on Matthew 7:24, which is where the vision for our church comes from. For those of you who have been here for years, you've heard versions of this over and over again. That's kind of intentional. Because we live in such a fast-paced society where we are on information overload, we are constantly wanting new things. But even the way that Jesus taught his disciples, he often went back to things that they had probably heard before but needed to hear again. My prayer today is that we move through this text, whether you have heard it a million times or this is the first time, that you would open up your heart and say, "Holy Spirit, would you speak today to me in a new way? Would you highlight things that maybe I haven't heard before? Would you remind me of things that I need to put into practice so that we can be people who not only know what it looks like to know a lot about Jesus, but we truly can become like him and live like he did?"

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against the house. Yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against the house, and it fell with a great crash. When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching because he taught as one who had authority and not as their teachers of the law.

Matthew 7:24-29

Like many of you, I spent the past few weeks with family celebrating Christmas and different things like that. I was driving home last night and I was doing something that I'm not really proud of, but I do way too often. I was playing the nice little game where you speed just fast enough to shave off a few minutes from your drive, but not fast enough that a cop's going to pull you over. But I was so focused on trying to get home five minutes earlier than the GPS was telling me that I completely missed my exit and ended up adding forty minutes to my drive. I wish I could say that was the only time that has happened to me.

But I feel like there are so many moments of life, whether it's like that or a couple weeks ago when I'm running out of my house and I forget that I don't have my keys in my hands. Things happen and we forget things and we miss things when we're going so fast. There's always this pressure, especially as we walk into the new year where it's like January 1st hits and all of a sudden we're supposed to have a new diet and a new workout plan and new financial goals and all of these things. I always look at that and like, when do you have time for that? I barely got the presents wrapped and opened after Christmas, let alone a few days later, and suddenly we're ready to transform our lives. But there's this pressure sometimes for the hurry and the rush. If we're not careful, if we just try to keep up with the pace and the pressure around us, we end up missing where God is moving and speaking right in the slowness and the stillness right in our midst.

This morning I sensed this invitation for us to just take these deep breaths and ask, how do we enter into this new year unhurried and walking at the pace that Jesus wants us to be at, close to him?

There are all these different things and all these different ways that we can start the new year. I have to say, I do love the idea of new year and new year goals and resolutions and all of those things. Not because January 1st is the only time that we can make changes in our lives, but it's a reminder to us that we can change. It's a reminder to us that every single day with Jesus it can be a fresh start, and that we can wake up and say, "I don't want to be who I was yesterday anymore." So it's a beautiful gift that we have at this time of year where we get to have this kind of rhythm in life where everyone's like, "It's time to start fresh. It's time to start new."

But here's the thing. These new goals and these new resolutions and all of these rhythms are only good if they're things that point us to Jesus. They're only right for us if they make us more holy and more righteous and more in love with Jesus. So I want to talk today about what does it look like for us to truly start to live the life that we long for?

That life is found and formed

I believe that the life that you long for is both found and formed. Too often we can preach this simple gospel, which is that Jesus came to set you free from your sins. Yes, he did. We're grateful for that. He died on the cross, paid the price for our sins. He's raised back to life. And we get eternal life with him in heaven.

And that's all good and beautiful and true. But not only do we get to find relationship with Jesus here, but we don't have to wait until then, until we get to heaven to experience his glory and his fullness and his peace and his kindness and his love. We can be formed into his likeness and we can experience the overflow of his mercy and his grace. We can be people that get to help see his kingdom come every single day around us. That is the good news of the gospel.

So what does it look like for us to be people that don't just say, "I found a relationship with Jesus," but now "I am willing to be formed into his likeness so I can be someone that helps other people experience this goodness"? I'm not waiting until I get to heaven to have intimacy with Jesus, but I want that to start now here today.

What is a rule of life?

A rule of life is not just these external behaviors, these things that we're going to do, because again, any resolution, any goal, anything, if it doesn't lead us closer to Jesus, it's not really good for us. Our goal for this is that these are all spiritual practices that would help us be with Jesus, become like Jesus and do what Jesus did. We want to be people that know how to abide, we know how to remain with Jesus. Through transformation, we want to become like Jesus so that we can do what he called us to do in Matthew 28, where he said, "Go and make disciples," to continue his work of seeing his kingdom come and rule and reign.

The word rule comes from the Latin word "trellis." So at first it sounds kind of scary when you're like, "A rule in a church with rules." This is the last thing I want to be a part of. But if you have ever planted anything in your life, you know that if you just throw a bunch of seeds and scatter them, maybe something's going to pop up. But then if it pops up, is it going to grow in the right direction? If we plant seeds and we put in this rule, this trellis, what it does is the trellis supports the seeds, it supports the plants, it supports what is growing so that it can flourish and be all that it's supposed to be.

So spiritual practices, when we refer to a rule of life in these set of spiritual practices, this is what we're talking about here. We are creating a trellis in our life. We are creating something that's going to help every time God speaks, every time God moves, every time a seed is planted. This is going to make sure it's growing in the right direction and it's leading us closer to Jesus.

Three practices: stay slow, centered, and surrendered

First, stay slow. I already talked about this a little bit when thinking through how much we try to hurry through things. In doing that, it gets sloppy and it gets messy. There's such a culture around us where we think that if I found relationship with Jesus, then everything's going to change in my life. He does heal and he does restore and he sets you free. But then we get to start to put those things into practice and we get to start to train ourselves how to live whole and live free.

Sometimes there can be guilt or shame if you've been praying for God to set you free from an addiction and all of a sudden you feel in a moment like chains were broken, like something fell off of me. And then a month later, you're still tempted to go back to that addiction. You can start to feel a lot of guilt and you can start to feel a lot of shame and be like, "Well, was I not free?" Yes, you were free. But now you have to choose to submit to that freedom and you have to choose to submit to what God did in that moment. Spiritual disciplines help us do those things.

The next is to stay centered. How do we stay centered on Jesus? Looking at if every practice that we have in place is pointing us closer to Jesus. Is Jesus everything? Everything should lead us to Jesus. And then through that, we should be leading others to Jesus. So the question that we have to answer is, even now, as you think about this past year, as you think about the decisions that you're making, the goals and the plans that you're making for this year ahead, who's at the center? What are you centering these things around? Is it Jesus?

A part of my time away I was in Europe and I was at this conference for young adults and got to meet people from all over Europe. There was a story of this one girl that really struck me. She was in Ukraine and she's still in Ukraine. A couple of years ago, when the wars really started to hit and things started to get bad, a pastor in another country called her and said, "Hey, I have a place. You can come stay with me. Get out." She responded with, "Why would I leave?"

Now, if our life is centered around safety and protection and comfort and happiness, then the clear answer would be, "You leave." Like, when war hits, you run, you flee. But her response was, "There's still people that are here that need Jesus. So I'm going to stay." That is a life that is centered around Jesus. That's not centered on the immediate, how do I get out? It's not centered around getting out of bad situations or hard things or avoiding pain.

Because what we're going to see as we begin to unpack this text is that we are not promised that storms aren't going to come. We're actually promised that they're going to come. We're not promised that there's never going to be pain or hardships. We're actually promised that there are going to be things. So then the rule of life and these spiritual practices are saying, how do we continue to stay rooted and anchored in Jesus? So when these things come, we're ready to stay and we're ready to stand and we're ready to keep him at the center of it all.

Life is not centered around just our personal safety or our happiness. It's centered around us being with Jesus so that we can become like him and continue to see his kingdom come. But that can be a hard gospel for us to really swallow, to think that it's so much more than just our comfort and our peace that we're living for because we're living for all of eternity, not just the moment here today.

The final thing when we start to practice these things is to stay surrendered. Because if we stay surrendered to what God is doing in our lives, we start to see this new level of openness where if we try to hold tight to things, we end up often just making ourselves more stuck. But when the storms do come and when things happen that don't meet your expectations, if we can live in this posture of, "Lord, I'm surrendered to you and I trust you," he will guide us and he will direct us and he will get us where we need to go.

A rule of life is a gift

The next thing I want to talk about is how a rule of life truly is not a burden but a gift. When we start to have these practices that are a part of our life, these rhythms that every single day are drawing us closer to Jesus, it becomes one of the greatest gifts. What does it look like for us to not only find Jesus, to create that space to be with him, but then also to be formed into his likeness?

I think about even when I'm home and we're seeing different family members and friends. I always tell how much I like my mother. But it's not just because my mother gave birth to me, but it's because I probably talk to my mother more than I talk to any other human in the world. I have her mannerisms. We speak alike, we move alike, we think alike because we spend time together. We are formed by the people we surround ourselves with. We're formed by the things that we fixate on, the things that we focus our attention on.

So if this year in 2025 we want to say, "How do we become more like Jesus so that we can see his kingdom come and rule and reign in this city and around the world?" We have to fix our gaze on Jesus. We have to focus our attention on Jesus. We have to be with Jesus.

Some practical things I want to talk about with that is this year we have adapted our rule of life workbook here. We have these at the welcome table. If you've yet to establish a rule of life, this is a guide for you to do that. We have both as a church daily practices that we encourage everyone to do. Starting our morning in scripture and prayer, midday pausing, acknowledging God's presence, interceding for other people, and then finally ending our night in the prayer of examine where we are practicing repentance, gratitude, and confession, all of those things.

For our daily rhythms, we have our daily rhythm journal that are also available for you to grab. This helps walk you through this every single day. This really comes from this place of saying, are we going to be people that just show up once a week and say, "Yeah, I want to learn something cool from the text," or are we going to be people that every single day we are centering everything we do around Jesus? This all comes from this text of saying, "Let us not be hearers of the word, but let us be doers of the word." People that don't just hear it, but they do it.

The storms will come

The rain came down, the streams rose, the winds blew, they beat against the house. Jesus is describing here the storms that were physically happening. But we know, even looking back on your year, you can think of all the storms that happened. We all have our own versions of the rain, of the floods rising, of the things that you weren't hoping would ever happen.

This is the hard reality of this text and many others in scripture where again we see that storms are a promised thing in life that we will experience. Jesus doesn't offer here this conditional promise saying, "Hey, when the storms might come, here's your escape route." Instead Jesus is saying, "Here's how you prepare for the storms. Here's how you get ready to stand when they come."

Storms are promised, but how we prepare for them determines whether or not we stand or we fall. There's no escaping the rain. There's no avoiding the winds, the floods. They're going to come, whether it's financial loss or unexpected illness, the death of someone close to you, relational conflict, spiritual crisis, abuse. Life is going to have storms.

But just as the storms are inevitable and they're going to come, so is Jesus right there in our midst. There's the everyday opportunity for us to prepare for the storms, to stay centered on Jesus.

We read this all throughout scripture. Psalm 18:2 says, "The Lord is my rock and my fortress, my deliverer, my God, my strength in whom I will trust, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold." Referring to the Lord as this unshakable foundation. This is where we see Jesus is saying, if you're wise, you're going to build your life upon Jesus, the firm foundation.

But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. Here's the thing about sand. Sand is a shifting foundation. The foolish builder chooses not to act on them, chooses to build his house on the sand. But here's the thing about sand. It gives this illusion of safety.

Because when you first build your house on the sand, you'd probably smooth it out. You'd make it look real nice. But it's just pieces of broken up rock and stone and glass. It's not the wholeness. It's not the real thing. It's not the firm foundation. It's pieces that give you an illusion that you're safe, an illusion that your house is successful, an illusion that you're at peace, an illusion that the rain's not going to come.

But then when the storm comes and the streams start to rise, all of a sudden you realize how unstable that foundation is. There is a danger in us building our foundation on temporary things. There is a danger of us building our foundation on half truths and half pieces of the wholeness that Jesus came to bring.

But maybe you're coming out of this year or you're even going into this year and you've been a little shaken up. If you're realizing like, "I don't actually know if I built my foundation on the rock," here's the good news. Jesus can transform us. Today is a new day for you to prepare, for you to build, for you to put into practice the things that Jesus is teaching and to start fresh. There's still time to be transformed today.

Rocks are formed

As I was looking into this, I started to study a little bit more about rocks. I will admit I am no expert on rocks. I never even got a rock polisher as a kid, although I always dreamed of it. I did collect rocks, you know, like most people did.

But there's something about rocks that are fascinating. They're all so different. They're all so beautiful. And they all also have a formation process. Here's some of the things that I found. There are different types of rocks. Some of them are formed by cooling magma. Some of them are formed beneath the earth's surface and this cooling happens and all of a sudden these large crystals start to form. Examples of this would be like granite. There are other types of rocks that are more sedimentary rocks that are formed by layers of material. These rocks are not just found, even though you might think, "Oh, I just found this rock on the side of the road." Like it was formed somehow. Some of them are formed by different layers. Sandstone is one of those, limestone, rock salt. Then there are also metamorphic rocks that are formed by heat and formed by pressure. Examples of this are slate and marble. These are usually buried deep beneath the surface, beneath the earth, but they are formed by heat and by pressure.

Here's where I want to talk about this. For all of these, they were formed over long periods of time. It was a process and it was slow. The rocks that we might see and we might look at and we just think, "Oh, we just found this, it was just sitting here, it just happened to be," were actually formed over a long process, a long time.

I wonder here today if you are looking at your year and starting to look and say, "I want to build it upon a firm foundation." What does it look like for us to be people that we don't run from the heat and the pressure but when the heat and the pressure comes, we look and we say, "Okay, I am being formed." Because if Jesus is the firm foundation and I want to become like Jesus, then I need to be formed into his likeness. So there might be heat, there might be pressure, there might be uncomfortable things. That's not a sign for me to run from, but me to say, "Holy Spirit, where are you speaking? Where are you in my midst? How do I run into this formation process?"

It means for us to think, in the moments when it feels like, "Is it worth it to read my Bible every single day? Is it worth it to keep fasting and to keep praying? And I just feel like I'm doing all these things and is anything happening?" Instead to say, "These are the layers and I am being formed by every single thing that I do. As I add this on, I'm being formed every single day."

A rule of life is so much more than just spiritual disciplines and spiritual practices, but it is a way for us to be formed into the likeness of Jesus. But this takes time.

Closing

Today I wanted us to start by talking about some of this practically to try and see what does it look like for us to really take time to slow down as we enter this year and to really establish, like, who do I want to become? If I want to become like Jesus, what does that look like in my life? How can I start to not just say these things, but live these things? How can I start to really be formed into his likeness?

I think sometimes it first takes us slowing down long enough to just hear the voice of God again. It takes us slowing down long enough to say, "Lord, like before I rush in to make any plans, I just want to be in your presence. Like before I start to build anything, I want to make sure my foundation is where it needs to be."

The last thing that Jesus does here, after the end of the Sermon on the Mount, which in a few weeks we're going to start teaching through leading up to Easter, is he comes and says, "Do not just be people that hear these words but put them into practice." Recognizing that at the end of the day it doesn't matter so much how much you know but who you know. Do you know Jesus? Are you one with Jesus? Are you becoming like Jesus?

Because even as we talk about the storms that we experience, we recognize that people that we walk past every single day are always walking through things that we could never possibly imagine. We don't know people's stories. We don't know the pain that they're carrying. But we were sent in to be that hope and that peace and that life to give them, to offer them.

But in order for us to let the love and the kindness of Jesus flow freely through us, we have to allow him in and we have to allow him to flow through us so that we can love people and usher in his presence and his power and his kingdom here. How can we be people that are formed into the likeness of Jesus that say, "I am so happy that I found a relationship with Jesus, but I don't want to just stop here and wait until I go to heaven someday. But I want every single day to be formed more into his likeness so that I can see his kingdom come."

So God, I thank you that you have sent your son Jesus to be our firm foundation, that we can continue to build our lives around you, upon you, that we can continue to be formed into your likeness. God, I pray that right now your Holy Spirit would just speak to us. Would you just show us if there's anything in our lives that needs to be torn down? Would we tear it down?

If there are things in our lives that it's like, "Yeah, I've been building this, but it's not on firm foundation," would you just tear it down in the name of Jesus? God, if there are ways that we have been building our lives on just pieces of the truth but not the whole thing, broken up pieces of the truth but not the firm foundations, would you just show that to us? Would you help us to just sweep that away and for it to be gone as we enter into this new year?

God, I pray for people that are here that maybe are in the midst of that formation process and are in the heat and the fire and are feeling just like that pushing and that pressure. God, would you be near to them? Would you continue to show them exactly where you're at in their midst, even if it's not what they thought it would feel like to follow you? Lord, would you show them where you are at and where you are leading them, and that this too can just be a part of that formation process?

God, would you continue to empower us to every single day keep putting on those layers and putting on those layers and planting those seeds and digging deeper into your word and deeper into community, trusting that this is a part of the process of being formed into your likeness?

God, I just pray this year that as we begin, that it truly would be at your pace, centered around your presence and nothing else. Trusting and knowing and believing that you are the one that we need. You are the one that we long for, that the life that we were created for is found in you. We thank you that we get to be formed into your image and into your likeness every single day. We thank you Jesus. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

God, we thank you so much today for your presence that is here in our midst. I pray that as we go throughout our weeks, from our Mondays to our Saturdays and every moment in between, would we continue to just have our eyes open to see you clearly, to fix our gaze upon you so that we can be formed into your image? God, would you continue to just draw us closer to you? Would you empower us to be people that usher in your presence, in your kingdom, every space that we enter, every conversation? We ask this in your name. Amen.

We'll have an incredible week. If you guys don't have a daily rhythms journal, please grab one. Spend some time this week in our rule of life workbook. We'll be back next week talking about daily rhythms. We'll see you next week.