Welcome to the River City Church podcast and a message by our
lead pastor, Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message
would inspire and encourage you, build your faith and point you
to the life changing love of Jesus.
May you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow Him today.
Hi everybody, I'm glad y'all are here for 11 days of Christmas.
You ready? No same response in first
service. They're like get to it.
So I'm going to judge Silent Night.
Holy Night is not a song written about your house during this
season. Well, it is mine, of course,
everybody else but yours is right.
Isn't that funny? How the how the holiday works,
right? Like you put the lights up.
December 1st, we're ready. What are we?
We have the big argument. How?
Soon can we start Christmas? Can we do it October?
30th before Halloween, you know, and some people do kind of, hey,
see, there you are, see that the distinctions between the people
that we have to do that, right? So I think what you're feeling a
lot is like, even in that it's like, yeah, but I'm tired,
right? And then what?
We have everybody in their house like you have on your on your
shelf, like a nativity scene. Right, and it shows you what
Christmas is supposed to look. Like, right.
Except I don't trust my nativity scenes.
I don't believe them at all. You know, you look at, I mean, I
think about like, I've got kids and I remember those days and I
just try to think about how that birth moment would have felt if
there'd been like livestock in the room, you know, and.
I don't think Natalie would have liked that.
I don't think cattle lowing in the rubble of childbirth is
something that that, you know, like it's something that that we
all want. But there it was in the
Christmas scene. And then there's Joseph, right?
Always huddled back of the room, right?
Standing kind of in the corner as an increasing throng of
strangers press into the room to just like, gaze at the baby and
like. Touch.
The baby, I guess, and he's like trying to get Mary, like trying
to get like Mary, Are we OK with this?
Like Mary, these are shepherds, bro.
This is like, you know, your, your hospital is, you know, is
next door to like the construction site.
And so it's like the lunch hour and the construction workers
come over just to touch your baby, you know?
And there's Mary, right? It's got to be fine.
Because when you look at Mary, at the figure of Mary, she's
like this in ceramic. Forever, right?
Forever. Happy with the joy of the
Christmas season. Sure.
Yeah. Sheep and goats and cow in the
birthing room. Of course.
Why not? A bunch of strangers watching my
newborn baby trying to say sure, why the heck not, Right.
And so we look, and this is what we Silent night, right?
Joy to the world. This is happening all around us
and so. We have these sentimentalized
images of Christmas and ride. We have the Christmas cards with
the snowfall and the light and all this.
And so we have these pictures, these images in our house and in
our minds and in our heart of what the holidays look like.
And so when we see these kind of sentimental images, angels in
the background and trees and crosses and all that, these
images lead us, we're we're Pavlovian, right?
Like we're like the dogs who to hear the bell and start to
salivate right when the lights come out and the Christmas
starts to come out. We begin to have this low level
emotional response that we kind of generally tag with the title
holiday spirit. You have the holiday spirit.
What that means is that you're trying to keep up with your
neighbors to get your lights up. I just wanted everybody to know
I am the guy on my street and puts his lights up first.
So if you're wondering where the pressure comes from, it's me.
I'm the one, right? Like that does it?
The problem is by the time we get to like the 15th of
December, we're tired of Christmas programs and holiday
parties and fruitcake and snacks and I've gained 15 lbs and
there's cookies in my house all the time.
And then, I mean, that's like the early and then it's like the
15th or the 20th. And I'm just like, I've got all
these presents to buy and the money's gone and everybody's a
little bit cranky, right? I've got that.
I've got that ornament on my tree that sings.
And it's driving me crazy. And I'm starting to fight,
right? I want to do all the stuff.
And then by the 28th, we're just like laying on the ground,
right, Twitching, huddled on the Mass because the Christmas
season has come and gone. And we are just a mess.
See the holiday symbols, the trees and the bells and the
angels and and all these things, these stylized aspirations.
Silent night. Holy night.
What happens is they keep us hoping and so season comes in
and by the time Christmas gets here, where are some of you are
probably already seeing the other side.
Of the holiday. And I think what happens is we
get so wrapped up in this. Holiday spirit that is tied to
lights and nativity scenes and all of that, that we miss
something durable and I think that's what we feel.
I think that's. That holiday, I mean, sometimes
the holiday hangover is an actual holiday hangover.
But for the most part, often times, even behind that, the
holiday hangover is just this sense of maybe I wanted
something different. Maybe I wanted the lights and
the peace and the quiet and the silent night to be what the
story really was. And I want some of that.
But by the time we get to January, I realized it was just
maybe a breath. And the hurry sneaks back in.
And here's what happened. Psychologically, when that
happens, and I don't know that we can't.
But when you get your hopes up and you begin to believe that
something real and good is coming.
And then when you get on the other side and you have the
experience and it doesn't deliver and it doesn't prove to
be what you expected it to be and what you hoped it would be
and what you needed to be, in the end of that, you're left
with disappointment. And the problem with
disappointment over time is it hardens, right?
You get disappointed, and then the next time it happens and
there's more disappointment or another way disappointment in
what happens is slowly disappointment starts to harden
into cynicism. I have to be very careful with
my heart because it's easy for me to get into cynicism, right
where you start from the outset. Maybe you're going through the
motions, but you're waiting with some kind of you, me, some kind
of perverse joy, waiting for the other shoe to drop so we can go.
I knew it. Christmas brings all of this out
on us. We're disappointed.
We get cynical, and cynicism inevitably brings isolation and
loneliness. And so this holiday season of
lights and candles and festivity and incarnation and God coming
to be with his people ends up leaving us.
All kinds of stuff. Distracted, afraid, anxious,
overwhelmed, losing a sense of what's that?
Do you feel like that? And maybe not now, but you know
what I'm talking about this Christmas season, it's supposed
to be about lights. There's good news for you, I
want to say. That sense of disruption, that
sense of bordering on cynicism, of disorganization and and going
all over the place. That thing that you're feeling,
that thing that you can identify in your heart.
My guess is that. Feeling is probably closer to
the actual original experience Christmas than anything that we
see on a Christmas card. Think about that first Christmas
we read about it Luke chapter 1 and verse 39 in those days.
I want to stop and talk about what those.
Days meant in those days right before this we tell we read the
story about an Angel. His name is Gabriel and he
visited a guy called Zechariah in the temple.
Zechariah was a priest and it was his time his turn to go into
the holies and offer that the sacrifice.
And while I was in there he would met an Angel and the Angel
said Zechariah you're going to have a son and you're going to
name him John and John would go on to become John the Baptist,
John the Baptizer. And he said John is going to
fulfill the prophecies of Micah. He's going to be the forerunner
of Messiah and he is going to be your child.
An Angel visited Elizabeth and Zechariah and Elizabeth and
Zechariah. Elizabeth had a cousin or a
relative whose name was Mary, and Mary also had had an angelic
visitor, an Angel visitor. And he said, you're blessed,
Blessed are you among women? Highly favored among women is
what the Angel who sits at the throne room of God said about
Mary. He said, blessed are you among
women. And he says you are going to
have a child and that child is going to be hope.
That's a heavy. That's a heavy message.
For Mary to receive, you know why?
Because she was a virgin and she knows how babies were made.
So she says to the Angel, Angel, you're crazy because that can't
happen. And the Angel said don't worry
about that. Now if my wife had become
pregnant by the holy. Spirit, my hope is that an Angel
would also visit me to tell me the truth, right?
That right. And so sure enough, an Angel
visits Joseph and is like, hey, Joseph, it's true.
Hang in there. You can stick with her.
You can hang out with her and marry her and wow.
These are the days. Now, Can you imagine one Angel
visitor in the middle of your night telling you that your
whole entire life is going to be turned over and disrupted?
Can you imagine one, much less three of them in the span of a
little while? So what we read those days, Mary
set out and hurried to a town in the Hill Country of Judah, where
she entered Zechariah's house and greeted Elizabeth.
Now we know that Mary and Elizabeth and Zechariah lived
about 80 to 100 miles apart from each other.
So, And this time, what we're told is that Mary hurries on
foot 100. Miles to go visit her friend,
her cousin, her relative Elizabeth.
And now you're like this now sounds like Christmas
overwhelmed Rd. weary relatives pulling into town at the last
minute, dragging their drama with them.
And make no mistake, Mary's full of drama.
You don't have a 14 year old girl pregnant by the Holy Spirit
show up in your house and everything.
Just go, oh, this is normal. It's not a normal thing.
It's not normal for Elizabeth. It's not normal for Zechariah,
who've already had their own weirdness.
It's not normal for Mary, certainly not normal for Joseph.
And so this is the big picture of Christmas.
This is where Christmas actually begins.
And this is good news for you because the joy of Christmas
almost always begins with monumental disruption.
Zechariah and Elizabeth are old. The Bible tells us they're
beyond child rearing years. And you know what that means,
right? That means that they had
dreamed, they had planned, they had prayed, they had wanted it,
and eventually, over time, you just get settled into the lives
that where you. Are And now all of a sudden,
Zechariah in his old age, he's got to put together a crib.
You crazy arthritic fingers, man, you can't bend over your
back. Can't handle that for that long,
right? It's a disruption.
What about Mary and Joseph? 14 year old girls imagine their
wedding. They imagine being married to
their husband. I promise you she did not
imagine a visit from an Angel and a child before she's
married. I imagine.
I promise you that was not on her vision for the future.
What about Joseph? Joseph's the one in this story.
He literally does everything right.
He does. He's just minding his own
business, doing his thing. And now an Angel comes and says,
hey, I'm going to turn this. And here's the thing.
You look at that and go, now, it's pretty cool to give birth
to the king. What do you think the neighbors
thought? Oh, oh, oh, the God got her
pregnant. Joseph, not you Sure, Sure he
did. See, we look at the sentimental.
Pictures and we look at it and we just imagine that there was a
hymn playing over all of those things.
But I think this first Christmas disruption significant and it
was seismic. And I don't want you to rush
past the reality to get to the Christmas card picture because
what we see here in this gathering, what we see here, and
Mary hurrying to see her relative, her older.
Relative who is? And experiences.
She's rushing her. What we see here is that this is
what actually moves us towards joy.
What I would say is the story, the movements that we see, the
conversations that we see, build a foundation for us to have a
lasting and a durable joy. But it's just like all the
other. The provision has been made for
us to have hope. Jesus is our hope.
Christmas is a season of hope. But you have to choose the path
that leads to that. You can have peace, like we
talked about last week, but you have to choose the path.
And in the same way, if we're going to have the joy of
Christmas that lasts into January and February and May and
June and September, we have to choose that way.
And So what we see Mary doing in the midst of this disruption,
what we see Mary doing as all of a sudden happens as she runs to
a companion, a trusted friend, a trusted person who can look into
the situation and provide some comfort.
So what is what happens? So here this very young, very
pregnant young lady runs 80 to 100 miles.
And as she's walking up to the house, you can imagine she's
breathing, right? Her feet are tired as she walks
up. When Elizabeth heard Mary's
greeting. Mary's still far away.
She's outside the house going. Elizabeth Zechariah, is anybody
home? When Elizabeth heard Mary's
greeting. The baby leaped inside her.
Then Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.
Then she exclaimed with a loud cry.
Blessed are you among women by the wayside.
Note, this has nothing to do with this.
But this is an important or at least an interesting theological
thing, right? And our kind of Protestant
tradition where we've been very, kind of very careful to
acknowledge and to like marginalized and minimize Mary
off to the side. It's important to acknowledge
that before the 1st 2 chapters of the Gospel or Luke of Luke
are. Open.
There are two. People, one of them who
originated from heaven, who called Mary Molest among women.
She is not just like everybody else in the story.
I don't believe she's perfect. I don't believe that she's
sinless. I don't believe that she died
sinless. I don't believe that she was
born sinless. And still, in the whole entire
world, God chose this teenager to be the mother of his child.
I think that's important. I don't know that we need to do
anything with that. Just maybe be nicer to marry in
our brains. Blessed are you among women, and
your child will be blessed. Listen.
Are you listening? How could this happen to me,
that the mother of my Lord should come to me, the mother of
my Lord? Do you realize what Elizabeth
has just done? Elizabeth now becomes the first
person in the Canon of Scripture.
Elizabeth is the first person in the Bible to announce the coming
of the New Covenant. Not a priest, not Peter, not.
A woman, an old woman beyond childbearing years.
So we have the first prophetic utterance of the New Covenant
coming out of the mouth of a woman.
And we have. The.
First, telling of the gospel outside the tomb at Easter in
the mouth of a woman. I think that's a pretty
interesting pattern. Interesting side note, do with
it what you will. Verse 44 you see.
And the sound of your greeting reached my ears.
The baby leaped for joy inside me.
That baby would go on to become John the Baptist, right, the
forerunner of Jesus, the one who in Isaiah it talks about, you
know, every mountain will be made low and every valley would
be laid up. And it says as he prepares the
way of the Lord right in the wilderness, he would prepare the
way of the Lord will this moment where that baby John the Baptist
in the womb, that is that baby that's John the.
Baptist's Baptist first prophecy.
It's his first. Prophetic recognition.
And notice what happened. Mary didn't become unpregnant.
Elizabeth didn't become unpregnant.
There was no check in the mail. There was no pre arranged crib
that came. There was no diaper shower.
Everything that caused Mary to run to her cousin Elizabeth in
the 1st place is still real and still relevant.
Elizabeth in her old age, not knowing what's going to come is
still pregnant. Still the only thing that's
changing the story. Is Jesus is in the room?
And you didn't even recognize Jesus because Jesus is just an
embryo at this point. And you're like, well, what can
I do with an embryo? But.
Listen, there are some of you in this room right now who Jesus is
in an embryonic phase in your life.
You've heard about Jesus. You've had people talk to you
about Jesus. You're not sure if you believe
in Jesus? You want to believe in Jesus,
but you got some questions about Noah's ark.
It flood the whole earth. You got some questions about
Genesis 1-6 days, right? What I want to tell you is
there's an embryonic thing in you, this place of hope and this
place of faith in you that wants to blossom and wants to bloom
and that's enough. Your embryonic, the presence of
Jesus causes Elizabeth not just to recognize Mary, but it causes
Mary to be filled with the Holy Spirit and notice what's
happened. Jesus has entered the room.
Now Jesus needed. Help to get into the room.
Mary showed up a comfortable a relative and John the Baptist
leap. So now we have Jesus and John
and Mary and Elizabeth. See, at first we had all these
people processing their stories on their own, and now all of a
sudden we have this connection, we have this community, and
that's what even a flat. Reading of this shows.
Right. And I talk about flat.
I'm like just the details. We don't have to have any
interpretation, any understanding, right?
This. We just have Mary went to
Elizabeth's house and the baby and Elizabeth recognized the
baby and Mary and jumped and left.
And what I want to say to you is joy is not Christmas lights.
It's not a warm fuzzy feeling in your heart.
Joy is the spiritual quality of recognizing that God is at work.
In the moment at hand. Are you listening?
Joy is not a generally happy feeling.
Joy comes in the moment where I realize this moment looks as
dark as anything I've ever seen. But I believe that God is here
in this. Not just that He is here, but
that He is good and that He is working for my good, even if I
don't recognize it or see it or understanding.
Even a flat reading will give you that flat.
I just mean like the details, who was there, what did they
say? What do they do?
Where do they go? That's a.
Flat reading, but that's not even the good stuff.
I do, I do want you to know like it's, it's good news because
listen, whatever darkness you're in, whatever loneliness you're
in, whatever despair or cynicism or isolation or sin or addiction
or whatever it is that you're in, I just want to tell you the.
Story of Christmas is that Jesus is here now.
He's in this for you. With.
You. He's not waiting for you to get
better so that you can come to him.
Jesus. Went to Elizabeth's house.
He's at your house, too. That's the good news.
But what comes next in our kind of in this story, and we're
going to finish this story next week, next week is Mary's
prayer, the big the big Magnificat, right?
And we're going to look at at that kind of love.
But as we look at joy this week, right the.
Good stuff is what we see even in this just brief, simple
interaction, right? OK, so here's some things and I
just want us to notice some things about joy, right?
It just got a bulleted list. The first thing, joy is received
and not acquired. This is where we go wrong.
We think joy is something that we have to earn or purchase.
We think joy looks like more square foot.
We think joy looks like nicer hood ornament.
We think joy is more of this or that or better.
A better neighborhood, a better neighbor, a better friend, a
better job, a better income, a better picture online, better
more. But joy does not come from more
or better. Because here's the thing, if
your joy only comes from more and better, there is only one
person because everybody has some is someone who has more
than them or is more than them or what or whatever it is.
There's nobody wins. One person wins at all, I guess.
What about that person? They're going to die and leave
it to the next person. Joy isn't about something that
we can keep or grab or hold. Joy is the recognition that oh,
Jesus is here and in the middle of this and you know what that
means for you. Some of you need to hear this.
This is the whole reason that you came today.
What that means is you can have joy whether or not you have
generally positive happy feelings.
You can have a sense of settled joy and not feel super content
in this moment. Mary didn't suddenly.
Have all the answers to how she was going to talk to her friends
about this child that was growing in her.
She didn't understand that Elizabeth didn't know how she
was going to explain to all the people how A506070 year old
woman is suddenly a child. She didn't know anything other
than she knew before, only that Jesus was there.
So what that means is that if you're having grief right now,
that you can possibly you can have joy, but the.
Joy that we find in grief doesn't come from recovering
what was lost. Me.
Say it again. The joy that we find in grief
doesn't come from recovering what was lost.
The joy that we find in grief comes from being held and loved
in community. The joy that we find in grief is
going over to somebody's house and laying your soul bare before
them, your weaknesses, your fears, your anger, your
insecurity, the ugly, sloppy, messy stuff and having them put
their hand on your shoulder and look you in the eye and go.
I'm not going anywhere. We're going to figure this out.
The joy that is given to us is the joy that when you come up
here and you talk to somebody on our prayer team afterwards and
you just say he left, she's sick or out of everything, we have
nothing. And those people look with you
in the eye and they go, that's worth grieving.
You deserve to be sad about that.
And I'm going to be sad with you.
Doesn't change your it doesn't change your situation.
What it does is it changes your heart.
It changes your awareness of what's going on.
Now, let me hold this up because this is the reality.
Some of you don't have someone like Elizabeth in your life.
For some of you, this is the Christmas that you don't have
mom for the first time and she's the one that you would go to.
And what I want to tell you, are you listening to me right now?
Your mom is worth grieving. Whether she was a great mom or a
terrible mom, he's worth grieving.
And the Lord does not begrudge you grieving a loss like that.
But do you remember when we were talking about Ephesians, right?
And we talked about you? Who's you?
You is who? Do you know the solution for
grieving people without a family is all y'all.
That's the church. That's what the church is for.
And some of you are like, great, I just got like, I've got some
things to no, that's not what this is for.
But this is not the church. You're the church.
That's why we do community, that's why we do small groups,
and it's why I don't hand hold and manage it super tight And on
that, because you've got to find the people that will give you
grace. But here's the deal, you've got
to find them and joy finds its way in there.
That leaves us the next part. Community is a joy multiplier.
It's a joy multiplier, Mary. All she did is walk up to
Elizabeth's house and what happened?
We see that her attitude, her posture went from hurry to
peace. We're going to see her
magnificent next week. It's.
Beautiful she comes overflowing with praise and love for for the
father right. That's what Mary does that's
what community does and what happens is I want you to know
like Elizabeth is interpreting Mary.
This is what community does. We interpret each other.
Now, I want you to know, when Mary ran up, nothing had changed
about her situation. Elizabeth could have come.
Oh, you're pregnant too, But Mary, you're not married.
Aren't like, how did that happen, Mary?
Oh, well, God got you pregnant, Mary.
Nobody's going to believe that. We got to come up with a
different story, Mary. Oh, we got.
No, of course I believe you, Mary.
Right. She could have been doubtful.
But you know what Elizabeth says to Mary as soon as she walks up?
Bless it. Are you Because here's the
thing, let's talk the Christians, right?
Largely like pro-life, pro-life thing.
This is great. I believe it takes God to create
a life. That's fine.
We should celebrate life. You know what Elizabeth doesn't
say to her? I am so sorry.
Mary didn't apologize. There's a life that's coming.
God made life. Elizabeth's like.
That's how we're supposed to be. That's what we're supposed to be
about. Those kids up there in the
children's ministry, right? All of them.
Some of you are like, yeah, I'm so that.
Listen, I don't want, if you got parents of little small
children, I mean, we need to write like that.
But listen, the rest of y'all whose kids are gone, you need to
be up there. Those aren't, those are our
kids. Yeah, somebody that's Liz
Biggers back there. She's saying, yeah, listen, hey,
because guess what? Parents of small children, they
get to do that all week. Long.
All week long. And guess what though?
You, you are gone. You can give me an hour.
Especially if you don't have grandkids.
Listen, I love babies. I want to hold your baby.
I'm going to kiss your baby. I'm going to squeeze your, your
baby. Yeah, because I love it.
But I want to. I want to be a grandpa with
babies, not a parent with babies.
Right. But you know what?
I can do every chance that I could get.
I can go hold a baby for it. Scared parent or tired parent or
weary parent. You don't think that would bring
joy? You don't think that would
multiply the joy, right? When people come in and you just
go, yeah, I've got an hour and I got 2 hours on Sunday, guess
what? Sometimes the Cowboys play at
noon, so I'll have to get out, right?
But for the most part, I can get in here and I can do that and
I'll hold your baby, right? Because what God is doing in
people's lives doesn't always fit neatly into here.
So here's a question for you and your community.
I mean, I'm going to ask you about your community and I don't
want you to feel shame, but I want you to tell the truth.
How often do you and your community talk about what God is
doing all around you and how you can get involved?
How many times do you talk about which burdens you can bear for
other people? What if your small group?
Just said we. Got the 9:00 nursery.
We'll go to the 11:15 service together, but we're going to go
tell Miss Bit Miss Jamie that we got 15 people in our small group
and we'll serve twice a month. Don't like babies.
I don't probably like you either, but that's fine.
You don't have to serve babies. Can you hold a door?
Can you drive a car? Can you pray for somebody?
Like what? Like what can you do?
But the idea is like, it takes all of us to build.
And by the way, that's what we are about.
That's what it is like. Like I want you to know, like as
a staff, we look around and go, how can we get involved?
That's why we help orphans. That's why we help foster kids.
That's why we go to Legacy Oaks to help people who are because
that's what being a church for New Braunfels is.
To be A to be for New Braunfels means that we go out into the
world and we interpret their situations in light of God's
presence. We just go, I know it's scary
out there, but God's here, don't worry.
Just keep loving, just keep serving.
So that's what makes our do you know what our mission statement
as a church is? Do you know why we exist to be
here? River City is a church helping
to interpret God's work in New Braunfels.
How? By authentically experiencing
and expressing God's love and our lives and community, That's
what we do. We're not here to get a fill up
so I can walk out there and be better than everybody.
I come here so that I can be reminded that God has worked in
my kids school, in my neighbor's job, in my my neighbor's.
If my neighbor's marriage falls apart, God is working there too.
Oh, but divorce and it's sin. Like you don't think God works
in sin, do you? What do you think the cross
says? Redeemed it made it just like
new and that's what we are about.
Our job as a church is to walk around in our community, in our
neighborhood, at our jobs and the places that we go and subtly
or directly, because we've experienced in our life, begin
to ask people or point to where is God in your illness?
Where is God in your poverty? Where is God in your divorce?
Where is God in your injustice? Where is God in your fear?
And we don't ask angrily. We ask pastorally, from a seat
committed to staying until we find it.
If everybody in this room would help one person find God in
their life, do you know what that would do for your faith?
Forget them. Your faith.
As long as the story of our faith is we show up once a week
to. Have a guy yell at us generally
positive things. That's not faith.
And let me just tell you, if that's what your faith is,
you're going to be tired of heaven real quick.
In fact, you're probably going to find that heaven doesn't suit
you much because heaven is where the sin is gone.
Heaven is where we read what we read in Ephesians write.
The walls have been torn down. There's no difference.
No longer Jew or slave or free or Greek or male or female.
There's just Jesus and us together.
And we as the church are called to experience that and live that
out here. And so the final thing for us is
your words are a blessing, joy or they're not.
Your words are a blessing of joy or they're not.
So the first one, right, the last time we talked about
community is a joy multiplier. What that is kind of like that's
the communities responsibility to the individual, right?
Like that is that is our job as a church.
Listen when people walk. Through here you need to know.
My assumption is you're screwed up.
My assumption is you're trying hard, but you're screwed up.
My assumption is if I give you half a minute under the right
circumstances, you'll abandon it all.
Do you know why that's my assumption about you?
Because that's what I know for sure about me.
And so I kind of feel like we're all together, we're all in the
same boat, right? We're all trying to get
together. We're all trying to trying to
figure this out. But The thing is like we have
the power within us to bless just like Elizabeth did.
So this, this ability to bless, whereas the previous one, the
multiplier of joy is the community's gift to us.
This is our gift and not just our gift.
It is our responsibility to the whole, and it's effective.
Elizabeth's blessing worked. Mary showed up hurried.
Elizabeth says what she says. And then immediately out of
Mary's mouth comes this song of blessing and praise.
So the question is, are you able to walk around your world and
look at people's lives and discern and see God at move God
and at work in people's difficult?
Situations and in people's difficult circumstances.
And not only that, but do you have the prophetic courage and
discipline to speak about that instead of the seedier details
of people that you see? Online and in your world.
Mary could have talked about all the ways or Elizabeth could have
talked about all the ways that Mary had failed her people and
all of that and all the questions.
She could have meditated and counted on that.
She didn't waste one word. Blessed are you because what God
is doing in your presence and what God is doing in your myth,
if you'll allow me just a second, to be a little bit kind
of prophetic and to get in your business a little bit.
I do not believe as a whole, as a general rule, speaking wide
across the big picture, that Christians speak redemptively
enough. I think the words that come out
of. Our mouth are far.
Too often tinged with the same political and economic and
social fear that is that is all over.
It's thick, it's in the air. And what I want to say is
church, that is not for us. The question is, do we believe
that God is redeeming darkness or not?
And if so, do and will we say something about it?
My concern is we don't say something about it because we
don't see it. We have given our culture and
our world the ability to define reality for us.
And it is a failure on the part of the church.
The question is, will we as his church have the prophetic
courage and discernment to bless people that our culture
condemns? You think I'm crazy for saying
that? Here's my question for you.
When Mary showed up on Elizabeth.
'S door, who was. She was Mary, a statistic about
waning. Youth.
Morality and the decline of the family in the 1st century. 14
years old and pregnant. You can only imagine how that
happens. Where were her parents?
Why didn't they get involved? Who let?
Joseph with her. Unsupervised.
You know, I already had questions about that Mary, shady
little girl that she is, and now, well, look at what she's
got. What's coming to her?
Or was Mary the victim of a patriarchic society that gives
women different results for men? Why was Mary scared and not
Joseph? Why wasn't Joseph?
Why did an Angel have to come set?
Joseph at ease Maybe Mary's problem was she lived in a
culture in a society that had the wrong idea about what gender
roles and if she were here, the whole thing would be.
Different Who is Mary? Is Mary a statistic?
Is Mary a victim? Or is Mary blessed among women,
the one chosen by our Father to be the mother of the eternal
King? Not perfect, not sinless, not
eternal, but blessed. The question is, when people
walk in here in a situation that makes you uncomfortable, are you
able to see them as a candidate for grace and then extend it to
them? That's the role of the church.
That's the invitation of Advent, and that's where our joy is
found. That's what Advent is about.
Stop agreeing with the wrong story about what God is doing in
your life and start believing that God is at work.
Stop agreeing. Some of you are settling for
political victory and I'm telling you, you're settling
short. That ain't enough.
Some of you just want to get rich.
And I want to tell you there will always be somebody who has
more and there's diminishing returns on that.
Anyway. There's something in you that is
recognized, that is seen, that is bearing the work of the Lord,
and nothing but that will satisfy.
That's what this Christmas spirit points at, and it makes
us desire and it creates this longing and this desire for us,
but it doesn't satisfy us. I'm not talking about word,
faith, heresy. I'm not talking about us so
much, see, and I'll get a hundredfold none of that.
That's nonsense. What I'm talking about, church,
is do the words of our mouth point to the reality that we
believe that our God is present and he is here and he is working
in the darkness and in the light?
And I know it's hard. This is hard for me.
I don't have a room for that in my heart.
But that's what Christmas is about, preparing room for the.
Joy that the Father has for you. So how do we, Createspace, first
bring your disruptions to Jesus? It's going to happen.
You've got your plan, don't you? It's good.
It's a good plan, well thought out, well organized.
You've paid for everything. You just didn't factor in that
thing that's going to happen. And what I want to tell you is
when that thing inevitably happens, and by the way, the
reason that it happens is so that you know that that's not
your ultimate source of hope. Because if your hope is in
getting to go on vacation, if your joy is on vacation, it's
going to suck the drive back. If your joy, listen, I, I, I
mean it like I, I know it. If your joy is in your children,
high school graduation is going to be a dark, dark day for you.
If your hope is in grandchildren's or financial
security or whatever it is, none of those things are within your
control. None of them.
And God will absolutely send disruptions into our way to
drive us to Him and to each other.
But Mary's pregnancy wasn't an interruption, was it?
It was the best. Thing that happened to the
entire world. Mary's disruption, all the
things that Mary would go through and she would experience
all those things ended up being for our good.
And so the thing for you is you don't have to know or pretend to
know what your disruption is about, but you should assume
that God isn't surprised that by this interruption.
Oh, it's unexpected. It is urgent and it is
important. And you're at your wit's end and
you don't know what to do. That's the moment to stop.
You want to jump in and go faster and work harder.
Stop, pause, pray, God, what the heck are you doing here?
And then call somebody that you know who will tell you, who will
help you and interpret what God is doing.
That's the second part. Move towards an Elizabeth.
I don't know who the Elizabeth is in your life, but I know that
you need 1. And I also know this for most of
you, it can't be me because you know what?
I'm going to come stand right here at the end of the thing and
you're going to walk up and you're going to need me to
interpret your life, but I don't know you.
I know God's word. There's some people that I know.
I know that he has good for you, but you need someone that's
going to look you in the face and go.
God has better for. You than that.
You're settling for that. Don't settle for that.
And do you know how that happens?
You have to go. There's a table right up front.
Listen, I just bought small group program.
Like, yes, you need a small group.
We're angry as a culture, we're angry.
We're fired up, we're ticked off.
We don't trust each other. We're mad.
We're disgruntled. Yeah, that's what that proves,
and that's what it breeds. So do something different.
Go to a group of people. Fire your friends that don't
bring joy. Well, that's the last one.
Becoming Elizabeth. Hey.
So when we started this, it was 2012.
I was 35 years old. I had three kids.
My oldest child was 8 years old. And when we I'd never been a
lead pastor. I had never done this.
I knew nothing. Nothing.
And River City is a young church.
Like, I mean, look around, we are a young congregation.
But here's the thing I want to say.
When we first came here 2012, there was a group of probably 15
or 20 people, 55 plus who stayed.
And I want to tell you, whatever spiritual depth and maturity and
wisdom is present at River City is because a small handful of
hand, handful of older people who didn't.
I'm not preaching about retirement.
I'm not preaching about what to do in the second act of your
life. Their kids are gone.
I'm worried about how to like. I'm preaching about things that
don't engage them. And they stayed and they engaged
and they loved this place and they walked with me and when my
kids. Grew up and started freaking
out. They put their arms around me
and they walked with me and they encouraged me and they prayed
for me. And we are still a young
congregation and we are eternally indebted to those
folks who have gone before us. Those folks who are in their 50s
and in their 60s and their 70s, who have walked with the Lord
for a long time, who are able to look me in my face and go, I've
been there. I found the Lord there.
You can find him too. Let's walk together.
So here's what I'm saying. If you're a young person in in
here and you've got this and you don't have a community or group,
you should go to a group with old people in it.
If they cook better, they want to hold your babies.
They love you. And when you are at the end of
your rope, they will look you in the eye and go, I made it, you
can make it too. But old people can I call you
old people? I'm right there on that edge now
so we can speak to us. Hey, listen, you did it.
You ran the race. You finished, go find a young
person and give your life to them.
You'll find a group of young people and give your life to
them. Oh, and they're going to
inconvenience you like crazy. I mean, I'm telling like giving
refrigerator rights to your house invite.
Them in so when they're grieving, when they weep, so
they'll have a place to go, so that you can tell them that God
is there. Oh, and they will inconvenience
you. They will ask more.
From you than you think you have, and all you'll get in
return is this abiding sense that God is working through you
and the next generation to do something amazing and wonderful.
That's my dream for River City, that we'd be a place that
generationally just multiplies. Listen, I'm going to die.
Not soon, I hope, but someday. And when I die, if all this
stops, my life will have been wasted.
Wasted. Because you're not going to die
when I die. And you've got a part in this,
and you've got a role on the Lord's joy for.
You is supposed to be eternal. But we get so easily derailed.
And I'm saying we can do the things that we need to do.
We move to community, we begin to give people access to the
dark places, and we take the liberty of.
Going into people's places and speaking life and encouragement
and blessing over them. That's my prayer for us as a
church, January through December, that we wouldn't
settle for the made-up feeling that everything is fine, but
instead, I pray that we would develop a shared awareness in
community that Jesus is at work right here, right in the middle
of our disruptions, and that we would organize everything around
that. You pray with me, Jesus.
The fact that this Christmas season sparked something in US
tells us that it's there. We want joy.
We were created for joy. So forgive us when we settle.
Forgive us when we settle for less than because it's easy.
Forgive us when we settle for less than because we just can't
figure out how the other one will work.
And I just pray for anybody in here who maybe is just, it's
been all dark. Jesus, I just pray that in this
place, you would surround their heart and comfort them and lift
them up. But I pray that you would move
through this room in a different way.
Father, I pray that as we scatter from this place and go
to our neighborhoods, I pray that we would be joy bringers,
joy multipliers, that we would speak to the goodness of what
you're doing in other people's lives.
Many won't get it. They won't understand, but I
pray that we wouldn't just do it for them, but we would do it for
you and that we would do it for us.
I pray that your church, specifically River City Lord,
would be the most joyful place within 100 miles.
I pray that people would come here and they would hear hard
things and difficult things and face difficult realities, and
that they would find your joy in the midst of it.
Thank you, Father, for your goodness and your grace.
We love you and we thank you, and we ask all these things in
your name. Amen.
Thank you for joining us today. River City Church is all about
experiencing and expressing God's love in our lives and
community, and we hope that you've been able to experience
that today. As grateful as I am that you've
spent this time listening in this morning, this podcast is no
substitute for full participation in a local church.
I love it when River City people listen to other pastors, but it
is those who show up week after week, faithfully giving their
support and time and resources that make all of this possible.
If we can help you get connected to a local church, pray for you,
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Thanks so much for listening. May the Lord bless and keep you
in all grace and peace.