Move Church Forward 2

It’s Move Church Forward Month. And today is my opportunity to speak to you about the church. And when we speak, no matter who’s speaking this month on any given Sunday, when we speak about the church, I just want you to know that we’re very clear that the church that we are speaking of is the church of Jesus Christ. It is the church that He is building. The church that he is the chief shepherd of. For us and for the redemption.

And now we all receive this invitation from Jesus to believe that Jesus is who he says he is. And he accomplished what God sent him here to accomplish. And if we believe that and we receive what we receive him, then we become newborn people. One scripture says we’ve we actually are translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. And we become a whole new species of human. All because of what Jesus did, our faith in him and our acceptance of the salvation that can only come by grace through faith in Jesus. There’s no other way. And I know that is offensive to humanity, but listen, God did not have to offer us anyway. That’s amazing. Why would we be griping about that? Instead, we should be thankful. There is a way to God. There is a way for us to be redeemed and recovered and to live whole and holy lives. That’s who we’re talking about when we talk about the church of Jesus Christ.

This is not just information, this is revelation

And this morning, I just want to go to the book of Ephesians. Since I came to the Lord many, many years ago, this probably has been the letter to the church, because that’s what these letters are in our Bibles in the New Testament. They are letters that were written to the early church, but they are also letters to us. And they inform us about Jesus, and they inform us about us, and they inform us about how to live this life on earth, not just in heaven, but on earth, how to live out this life that God has given to us. This is not just information. But this is not just information, this is revelation, revealed knowledge from God to us. Is in these documents. And so for us to treat it like it’s information that we can decide whether we agree with it, like it, understand it or not, is a mistreatment of this document. This document holds revealed knowledge and instruction for us to live life as God intended for us to live it. And that life is the highest and best life that any human can live on earth. And so we don’t want to treat this as common or just pulling out the bits and pieces we like and ignoring the bits and pieces we don’t. We need the whole document. It’s written to the first century, but it’s written to us.

Ephesians 3 21 in the Passion Translation reads this way. Now, now, that’d be today.

Now we offer up to God all the glorious praise that rises from every church in every generation through Jesus Christ. And all that will yet be made manifest through time and eternity.

Amen. We’ve been made a part of that. And so this morning, as we do this quick overview of Ephesians, I’m it’s not going to do it justice, and I know that, but what I hope it will do is it will spark a curiosity and it within you and something of God in you that will lead you back to the scripture so that you would sit down and take time, take 15, 20, 25 minutes to read through the whole letter. It’s a letter. Yes, it has chapters. Those were added so when we talk to each other in church, we can tell you where we’re going. But it was a letter. It didn’t have chapters, it didn’t have numbers, it didn’t have verses. It was a letter to a living breathing church, and it is a letter to the living breathing church of Jesus Christ today.

In God we have been given a place, a position, and a purpose

And so when we come to chapter one, I want us to read this. Um in chapter chapters one through three of Ephesians really are this. The book, the letter could be divided in half and in parts. It might help you when you’re reading through it. The first three chapters, the first half of this book really are an explanation of who God is, how he sees us, and what place he has given to us in God. Really, in the first three chapters, we learn that in God we have been given a place, a position, and a purpose. We have. Not exempt. You weren’t excluded. You’re included in God, and you have a place in God. You have a position in God and in this world. And you have a purpose now. A God purpose. And that’s what happens in the first three chapters.

And Paul is exuberant. In fact, in chapter one, his sentences, any English lit teacher would crucify. It’s just long run-on sentences because he can’t give enough expression. I pray that we recapture that. And we can just barely get a little understanding, but oh, oh, when we see him, I’m telling you, it is going to be so much more than we could imagine. We’re going to fall on our faces in worship because he is so glorious. We get little pieces of it. So let’s grab all the pieces.

In chapter one, uh, let’s read. This is the church. We read the Bible. We teach the Bible. So pinch yourself to stay awake if you have a hard time reading your Bible. Ephesians chapter one, uh, verses 1 through five, and we’re going to read it from the Passion Translation. Dear friends, I want you to see yourself in this.

Dear friends, my name is Paul, and I was chosen by God to be an apostle of Jesus the Messiah. I’m writing this letter to all the devoted believers who have been made holy by being one with Jesus, the anointed one.

Did you see that? He’s writing it to you. Are you a devoted believer? He’s writing it to you.

May God Himself, the Heavenly Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, release grace over you.

Oh, I take that. Do you take that? I’m taking the grace that He’s releasing over me. I’m taking it.

And may He impart total well-being into your lives.

Oh, I want that too.

Every spiritual blessing,

the our sonship in the Father’s plan is his heading, he inserted there.

Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm has already been lavished upon us as a love gift wrapped into Christ. This is why we celebrate him with all our hearts. And he chose us.

You got chosen. Isn’t that exciting? It’s exciting to be chosen. And we were chosen by God.

And he chose us to be his very own, joining us to himself even before he laid the foundation of the universe.

I don’t get that at all, but I believe it. Do you know you can do that? You can believe things that you don’t understand. I don’t understand that, but I believe it because God said it.

Because of his great love, he ordained us so that we would be seen as holy in his eyes with an unstained innocence. For it was always in his God’s perfect plan to adopt us as his delightful children through our union with Jesus, the anointed one, so that his tremendous love that cascades over us would glorify his grace for the same love he has for his beloved one Jesus, he has for us. And this unfolding plan brings him great pleasure.

I’m gonna tell you, I first read these words 50 years ago, and I read verse 3, and verse 3 said, Um, I am blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ. And I said, I don’t have a clue what that means, but it sounds really good and really important, and I really want it. In these first verses of chapter one, we find out good things. We find out that we, I and you, I am adopted, I am accepted, and I am blessed with all spiritual things, with all spiritual blessings. I said 50 years ago, I said, I don’t know what that was, but I like that something within me.

And can I tell you what I did not know then that I know a little bit more of now? That the written word of God, this word, it’s active, it’s alive, it has power. And when we read it and we receive it into ourselves, our reborn, recreated human spirit leaps up and says, Yes. I don’t understand that, but I want that. And when that happens within you, pay attention. Because even though your mind doesn’t understand it, your spirit is in agreement with it. And your spirit wants to lead you into a place of understanding and a place where you can live it out.

It’s also why God gave us the Holy Spirit to help us understand. Do you know that? The Holy Spirit is teacher, He’s explainer, He’s persuader. To open us up to receive it. And then He gives us pastors and teachers in the church to teach us so that our understanding and our mind begins to grow into it. Listen, our unrenewed mind has to grow into the things of God. Our unrenewed mind cannot get God. We try, it just cannot. We have to have the help of the spirit, and our spirit has to be made alive. And do you know that’s the greatest spiritual blessing? That’s the greatest spiritual blessing. We’re going to get to that in just a second.

Christ rules the church

And then at the end of chapter one, he Paul prays this magnificent prayer for all of us because he’s just explained to us that in Christ we have a place in God, we have a position with God. He chose us. We have a position with God, and we have a position in this world, and we have purpose with God and in this world. And then Paul prays this amazing prayer in Ephesians chapter 1, 16 through 23. And I’m telling you, if you ever get to the place where you can’t pray yourself, just flip open your Bible, stand up and read it out loud to yourself and receive it as what it is. It’s a prayer that was prayed that is still working. It’s still being answered. This is the prayer.

I couldn’t stop thanking God for you. Every time I prayed, I’d think of you and give thanks.

Imagine that. This is how God thinks about you. Every time he thinks about you, he’s happy.

I’d think of you and give thanks, but I do more than thank. I ask. I ask the God of our Master Jesus Christ, the God of glory to make you intelligent.

Oh, yes, God, please. Please let it be so.

Make me intelligent and discerning and knowing you personally, your eyes focused and clear.

Oh, I need that. Do you need focus? Do you need focus right now? God give us focus right now. Focused and clear.

So that we so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do. Grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for Christians. Oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him, endless energy, boundless might, and all this energy,

these are power words in the Bible.

all this energy is issues from Christ. God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule, and not just for the time being, but forever. Charge of it all. He is the final word on everything. And at the center of all of this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world. The world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ’s body in which he speaks and acts, and by which he fills everything with his presence.

Oh, we know the world doesn’t think that. The world thinks they’re the center of the universe. But God, who created the universe is very clear. The world is not the center of the universe, the church ruled by Christ. It’s the center of the universe. So if you want to live your life where the things of God are really happening, you’re gonna have to live it with Christ in the church because that’s where it’s happening. That’s where God centered it. The world doesn’t like it, and half of Christians don’t like it. But it is what it is. God got to decide. And he decided that his church, that he is ruling, that he is building, he would rule, and he would fill the whole earth through his church. Filling the earth with his glory. Amazing, isn’t it? It’s not the view that the world has, and it is not the view that most of us have, but it is the view that God has.

We were dead, but now we’re alive

And then we get to chapter two, and in chapter two, we find out this right away. I was dead. We sang it this morning. He went down into the grave, but he got up, and now I’m alive. I’m alive in you. We were dead in trespasses and sins. You want to see it? He does this so briefly, but he has to remind us of who we were, of how we were living and what we got redeemed from. Church, don’t live in the past, but never forget what God saved you from. Chiefly yourself without God. Ephesians chapter 2, and they amplified it reads this way, verses 1 through 4.

And you, he made alive when you were dead by your trespasses and sins, in which at one time you walked habitually. You were following the course and the fashion of this world. You were under the sway of the tendency of this present age.

He’s describing us and every human before we come to God.

We were following the prince of the power of the air. You were obedient to and under the control of the demon spirit that still constantly works in the sons of disobedience, the careless, the rebellious, and the unbelieving who go against the purposes of God. Among these, we as well as you once lived and conducted ourselves in the passions of our flesh. Our behavior was governed by our corrupt and sensual nature, obeying the impulses of the flesh and the thoughts of the mind. Our cravings were dictated by our senses and our dark imaginings. We were then by nature children of God’s wrath and heirs of his indignation, like the rest of mankind. But God, so rich is he in his mercy because of and in order to satisfy that great and wonderful and intense love in which he loved us even when we were dead in our sins.

Now the world doesn’t believe that about themselves, and we didn’t believe it about ourselves either. But that this is what God knows to be true. We’re like, I wasn’t a Satan worshiper. I wasn’t following, I wasn’t following the devil. I don’t even believe in the devil. Doesn’t matter. It’s whose influence we were under. We were under the influence of the prince of the power of the air. And the people in our world that have not yet come to know Jesus are still living under that same influence, and they don’t believe it either. But not believing it doesn’t make it untrue. We need help. Without God, we think we’re just doing our own deal. We all think we’re doing our own deal.

Listen, I saw pictures last night of my grandkids, one of them going to homecoming. One of them, I’m not sure what she was doing, but she was with a bunch of kids. And I looked at them, and the boys all have the exact same haircut. I don’t tell them. Don’t do anything to embarrass them. They think they’re all, they are all creating their own look, and they are, but it’s all the same. They’re not going to know it until they look back at the pictures, just like you and I didn’t know it until we look back at the pictures. I’ve seen pictures of us. There’s pictures of my age group. We’re in an assembly in school in the gym, and all and the girls have to sit on one side and the boys have to sit on the other. And guess what? We all have the same haircut. And we are all wearing exact same clothes. We don’t think that, but we were. We were under the sway of this world and we didn’t even know it. Why? Because we’re blind. Without God, we can’t see. We can’t see clear. We can’t think clear. We can’t speak clear. We can’t live clear. We think we’re doing fine until we’re not.

We were dead. But now we’re alive. To trespass means we go against a boundary that God set. To sin means that we take aim like with a bow and arrow and we aim at the target, but we miss it. How do we miss it? Because from the beginning, God’s intention was that male and female, human, all of humanity, we would be co-rulers, co-regents with him, walking and talking and fellowshipping with him every day, all day in the cool of the day, and we would have the stewardship of all of earth. And with the stewardship of all of earth, we would expand the glory of God and we would multiply and we would replenish and we would do all kinds of things. And then the first humans decided that they could do it better without God. And every human born since then has still decided the same thing. Oh no, I can run my life without God. I don’t need God. I’ll do fine without God. In fact, I’ll do better without God. And we believe that and we live that until the Holy Spirit introduces us to who Jesus is. And when we come to know who Jesus is and how much he loves us, we can have our eyes opened. We see things we didn’t see before, we feel things we didn’t be feel before, and we know things we didn’t know before. And the thing that is most important that we know is we know we need a Savior. And we know Jesus is that Savior. So we were dead, but we’re not dead. We’re alive, fully alive unto God. When the scripture talks to us about being dead, it’s not without life. It means that we’re separated from the life of God. And now we’ve been reunited with the life of God. And when we’re reunited with the life of God, we can live whole in our spirit, our soul, and our body. That’s what God intends for us.

God’s purpose in all this was to use the church

In chapter three, you doing okay? We’re gonna speed up here. In chapter three, he says to us in all of this chapter three, he says, Listen, I’m as I am united with others, I am united with others, and as we are formed into God’s dwelling place. In chapter three, he starts talking to us about this great mystery of God that God had kept to himself until after Jesus was resurrected. And it was this mystery that God didn’t just want Jewish people, he wanted everybody. It was for all of humanity of all time of all eternity that Jesus made the way for all of humanity to come alive unto God and live fully in the life and with the life of God. Isn’t it amazing? Ephesians 3 10 says this. It says, this is from the New Living Translation.

God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was his eternal plan which he carried out through Christ Jesus our Lord.

What? God’s plan is to demonstrate through his church what life with God. What a people alive unto God, filled with God, called into their position and called into their place and called into their purpose. God is going to show the whole world, not just earth, but heaven. I mean, we got to get our heads up. God’s got stuff that he wants to do with us, through us, all together, to become a demonstration to the principalities and powers. They thought they would take us out, and God is going to show them through us what people filled with God look like and how they live. It’s a completely different life, sourced from a different kingdom than this world. Without its limitations, without all the stuff that comes with it. Church, it’s far more than we can imagine. And that’s what he says in verse 20.

He says, Now all glory to God who is able through his mighty power at work in us to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.

Listen, in the first three chapters of this, Paul is laying it out. It’s magnificent, full of God’s revelation and his plans for his church that is chosen by God, alive to God, quickened by God. And now God wants to work the life of God through us individually and together to be a demonstration to this world who doesn’t yet know him. Why? Because he wants them to know him. And guess what? He still loves them dead in their trespasses and sins. And he wants to work through us to bring them to wholeness and to life in him.

Strip off the old life, put on the new life

And then in chapter four, five and six, he starts to lay out for us how. How is this gonna happen? How is this even possible? I mean, God, do you remember what earth is like? This is not heaven. It is not heaven. So how are you gonna do this, God? And in chapter four, he he starts real clear. He says, here’s what you do. You gotta strip off the old life, you gotta put on the new life, and you gotta be continuously renewed. Continuously.

You know, several weeks ago, Louise told me, I think it was a Tuesday night, that she had been with some people and they were eating, and she said, Oh, I gotta go, I gotta get to church. And they said to her, Why do you gotta go to church? You’ve been going to church forever. Don’t you know everything? And I thought, oh my. People think this way. You just go to church to learn one thing. That’s it. You just learn about Jesus. You learn about Jesus. Once you know Jesus, you don’t need to come back. Oh no, honey. No, no, no, no. This life takes continual learning. We have to learn Christ. We have to learn Him by living with Him. We have to understand. We have to get understanding so our minds can be renewed, and we can think like Christ. And so we got to strip off. We have to, every one of us, we have stuff from how we used to live, how we used to walk that has to come off. We have to renew our minds with the Word of the living God with the help of the Holy Spirit. And we put on new speech, new thoughts, new patterns, new habits. It affects every single part of our life.

And he says to us, in the beginning of chapter four, you’ll read, he speaks a whole lot about all the things we have in common. We have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who has called and anointed us all with a holy calling. And then that God, those are the things that pull us together that keep us together. We come from, we are all ages, all backgrounds, all races, all kinds of different upbringings. We have different quirks, different personalities, but it is this one Lord, one faith, one baptism that keeps us unified, keeps us walking in step. And he says, work to keep that harmony. And then he says, But this God’s grace is so wide, it is so expansive, it is so diverse that he puts giftings in every human to show the diversity of God’s grace. And so we’re not all going to be equipped and good at the same thing, but we’re all going to be graced with the divine influence of God that will work in this world out there and in here that will draw people to this magnificent God. You have it. So that we who are graced, and we have grace gifts to pastor and to teach and to prophesy and to apostles and evangelists. We’re to help the church. We’re to teach the church. Why? So the church is equipped to do the work of ministry. To do get out there and live Jesus. Wear Jesus well, wherever you go. Because ministry doesn’t just happen here, ministry happens there.

And he graces us and he gives us. He says, but listen, you can’t be living the way you were. You can’t. The way you lived before, and the way we live without God is we live from the vanity, the futility, the vainess of our minds and our souls. You weren’t intended, you were not created to live in vanity, futility. You have purpose. Your life is meaningful. You count, you have value, and not just for what you can do. You have value because you were created in the image and likeness of God. And your value isn’t determined by how productive you are, like it is in the world. And yet we’re designed to be productive. You want, don’t you want to be productive? Do you like being a slug? I do for a day. I can be a good slug for a day. How about you? Two. Don’t go a week being a slug. It’ll keep sucking you down. No, live life. Live life big.

And he says we’ve got to learn Christ. Those verses are in, uh I’m gonna speed past this. Those verses in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 22 through 24. Really and truly. Strip yourself. You had an old nature. You you just listen, when you come to Christ, he create recreates us from the inside out. And some of the stuff that you used to do, that you used to wear, that you used to think, places you would go, you don’t fit there. You don’t fit there. Why? Because you’ve been expanded. You’re bigger. You’re bigger on the inside. And that low level vain way of thinking and living, it doesn’t fit you. So you got to take that off. Stop. Don’t think that way. Don’t use that speech. Don’t go those places. But you put, you don’t just not do that. You put on something bigger, better, newer, more expansive of the life of God. Church, we live too small. The world wants to squeeze you into nothing. That’s why they were told over and over, don’t let them, don’t let them squeeze you into their mold where you’re just a number. You’re just your social security number.

Two weeks ago I had to go uh back to Denver to do uh more tests. Just it’s just the annual thing. And every time I walk up to the counter, birth date, I said, I should just tattoo it on my forehead. Y’all don’t even know my name. You don’t, you don’t, you couldn’t tell me. You if somebody asked you what my name was and what I look like, you wouldn’t be able to tell me because all you ever ask is my birth date. I guess that’s better than my social security number, which if you’re in college, that’s what they ask you, right? You don’t have a name, you just have a number. No, don’t let the world squeeze you that way. Uh uh, uh uh. Live bigger. Live to God. Don’t live bigger on your own, live to God.

I just want to, I want us to get this. When he says be renewed in the spirit of your mind, he says, he’s saying this, be renovated and get this. Are you listening? Stay young. Literal meaning. Stay young. It doesn’t mean immature. It means recent. All this stuff that God wrote here, all this stuff we’ve talked about. Don’t keep it in the far distant past as something you heard, something you went to church, Louise, and you heard it 50 years ago, and you don’t need to hear it. No, you need to hear it over and over and over. You need to keep Jesus recent. You need to get what Jesus has said about him, about you, and about others. Recent. Is it fresh? Is it stale? Is it young? Is it just old and boring? I’ve heard that a zillion times. Yeah, but what are you doing with it? It’s not information. We’re drowning in information. We need instruction from the living God. And guess what? We have it. It’s not lacking.

Walk worthy, walk in love, walk wise

In chapter 4, he’s uh of Ephesians, he’s he’s telling us that strip it off. And then in chapter 5, he says, You gotta walk worthy, you gotta walk in love, you gotta walk as children of life, you gotta walk wise in relationship with others. What’s he doing? He’s giving us instruction for the day today. How are we to live here and now? Not in heaven. In heaven, it’ll just be our first nature. Here is work. It’s walking. It’s walking. It’s walking. You used to walk this way. Now you gotta walk this way. When he says worthy, it’s not earning it. It’s live up to who God has made you. Live bigger. Think bigger, church. Not more. Think expansive. Like God thinks. Think possibility. Do you think possibility or impossibility? Because God thinks possibility. Walk and keep it young.

This, what he says to us in chapter 5 affects every part of our lives. It affects every cell in our body. It affects every thought that passes through our minds. It affects our speech. It affects our sexuality. It expects our it affects our work ethic, our spending practices, our opinions, of which we have no shortage. Do my opinions agree with God’s opinions? Because they need to. It should affect our vote. It affects every part of our life. Listen, we don’t have a spiritual life and a natural life. We have life.

The first century church, which this letter was written to. But in the first century church in Rome and in Greece, but in Rome, there was absolutely no restriction on sexual behavior. This is the way our world wants to go back to. It’s not, it’s called progressive and it’s called forward. It’s not. It’s backwards. It’s going backwards to the days of Rome and others. Noah, maybe. We’re almost to Noah, aren’t we? Jesus said, it’s gonna be like Noah. We’re getting there. There’s absolutely no restriction on sexual practices. Pastor Cindy, you shouldn’t talk about sex in church. Well, the Bible talks about it. And the whole world is talking about it. We really need to know what God thinks about it if we’re gonna come into alignment and agreement with God and not just get shaped by the world.

So in Rome, there’s no restriction on sexual practices. And when there are no restrictions on sexual practices, guess what comes of that? Unwanted babies. Yeah. Unwanted babies come. And it was common practice with that in that culture that unwanted babies were just discarded. There were actually places in Roman cities that you would take unwanted children. And they were mostly girls, because girls had very little value. And so they would leave the girls, but they would also leave the weak and sickly boys and those that may have some type of malformation. They just left them there to die. And they also just left elderly and sick people on the side of the road, nobody caring for them. They’re dying, and they just leave them out there. Leave them outside. No help. It was common. It’s what everybody did.

And then here comes these Christians, and they go, hey, Jesus said that He came to give life and to give life more abundantly, and that it’s the thief that comes to steal, kill, and destroy. So God loves people. We should be helping these discarded people. And the Christian people would take, they’d take a baby, they’d taken a person who was ill, they would take different ones and bring them into their homes and nurse them and feed them and care for them and tell them about Jesus. And they just kept doing it for centuries. And Rome kept doing what Rome was doing, and the Christians kept doing what Christians were doing. And centuries later, there were more people in Rome that believed in Jesus than there were people that didn’t. And when there were more people that believed in Jesus, and their hearts had been changed, laws changed. And it was no longer okay to abandon your baby or abandon an elderly or a sick person. Christianity changed the world. Believers who followed, they didn’t just mentally assent or verbally assent. They lived it. And they’re still living it. And it’s still changing the world.

Do you know that right here? It’s been this way all over, all over the world. Oh, we hear about all the bad things, and there’s plenty of bad that Christians have done. There’s been stupid things, idiotic, foolish things that Christians still do. But it does not negate the wonderful, the good that Christianity has brought into the world. Girls have done better because of the example that Jesus set for women in this world. Babies do better. They live longer. They have a shot at life. And it’s not just the sick, it’s not just all of that. It’s in every part of our lives. It’s in government. It’s in the arts. It’s in music. It’s in medicine. It’s in education. It’s in business. Every one of those areas, there are list and list and list and story after story of people who have served God in those arenas. And because they loved God, their service to humanity made life better, not just for themselves, but for everyone.

Do you know that right here in our own city in 1908? Reverend Hugh A. Cooper, who was a Presbyterian pastor, he founded the Southwest Presbyterian Sanatorium. Isn’t that some picture? It’s a picture of the sanatorium there. I hope that you can see it. Marshall looked at the car. You notice the car. It tells you, it tells you what year doesn’t. But Pastor Cooper, he wanted, he was caring for people who were coming into Albuquerque who had tuberculosis. And it was believed if they could get to the Southwest and they could get here where the air was better, that they would recover. And there were so many of them that he built this sanatorium to care for them. Of course, then we all planted the same trees that they were suffering with. And now, you know, we do crazy things, right? But guess what? Pastor Cooper, Presbyterian pastor, who started the Southwest Presbyterian Sanatorium was the beginning of what today is Presbyterian Hospital. A pastor, a believer, wanted to care for sick people, and he did. He found a way to do it. In 1970, the Albuquerque Christian Children’s Home was founded, was opened, it’s still open 50 years later, right here in Albuquerque to provide a home for children who had been orphaned. You know, Christians have been doing this since the first century, and they continue to do it. To care for children that can’t or won’t be cared for by their own parents. And Albuquerque Christian Children’s Home has a piece of property. They have six acres, but they get no government help. Why? Because they’re Christian. They can’t have any of our tax dollars. So they depend solely upon Christian people, people who care about children to help them.

See, there’s still so much that our city needs, that our world needs. And you’re gonna have to draw strength from God. And he has more than adequate strength for you. And you can draw it, but you draw it by putting on all these things of God. You put on his righteousness, you put on his truth, you put on his piece, and you take a stand and you stand in in who you are in God. You don’t fight with people, you stand the ground that God has given you and you pray.

You’re not asking God for enough

Church last week, Pastor David mentioned that great cloud of witnesses, and I almost I always think about this. I don’t think they’re aware of everything that’s going on. Because if you’re in heaven and all you’re seeing is the news reel of here, that ain’t heaven. Right? No, it’s not. So I don’t know. I don’t know that. We’ll know that when we get there. If we needed to know that, God would have told us that. But sometimes I do think we have this great cloud of witnesses. And I just wonder if every once in a while they look at us, Christians in the year 2024 and they go, hey, hey, Christians, you’re not asking God for enough. You’re you’re you’re trying to do, you’re trying to figure it out. You’re trying to come up with your own plan, your own method, do it in your own strength, and you’re just not, you’re not asking God for the help he sent to give you. You need to ask God more.

The early church, the four things, Acts chapter two, that they were devoted to was the teaching of the apostles. They needed to learn Christ. The second thing was prayer. The whole church came together to ask God. You can’t, you we can get more people to come for a free taco than to pray. And I’m not begrudging you a free taco. But prayer is more powerful than the free taco. Come on. Believe God. Believe what he said. Third thing that they believed in was communion, and the last thing was partnership or fellowship with one another. We almost have it backwards. Come on. If we want the results of first century, we got to do the things first century church was devoted to.

A church at the eastern gate

Do you know before Marshall and I even moved to Albuquerque? We didn’t know this was happening later. We met this lady. Her name was Bonnie Geis. In fact, later Marshall worked for her and we we taught at the Bible teaching center. But long before we moved to Albuquerque, Bonnie Geis had a prayer group. And I never went to the prayer group. Marshall never went to the prayer group, but they had been praying for years that God would raise up a church on the eastern at the eastern gate. This is the way they prayed at the eastern gate of the city of Albuquerque. And they believed that the church should take over Western Skies Hotel. I never saw Western Skies. Marshall said he saw it. I have no recollection. We were raising kids and building a church. I don’t remember. Some of you guys might remember it. I’m not sure exactly where it was. I know it was down central west of here. And listen, knowing Bonnie, a lot of things happened. Western Skies was this premier hotel. President Kennedy came here. There’s an interview with a lady who was a waitress. Her name was Rose, and she was serving President Kennedy. And while she was serving President Kennedy, Frank Sinatra comes out of the bathroom. I mean, all kinds of famous people stayed at Western Skies. It was apparently quite the wonderful place for the city of Albuquerque. But it fell into disrepair, and they put chain link fences around it. And listen, I know I knew Bonnie well, and I’m quite sure that she and probably a few of her prayer group did Jericho marches around the chain link fence, and they could see how God could take that property and do something magnificent as a teaching center, as a church for the kingdom of God. But in 1988, that property was demolished, and we didn’t hear any more about it, about Western skies. And by then we had already started the church in 1980. We didn’t have much contact with Bonnie, occasional, but nothing wrong. Just we were in in different places.

And we started the church in 1980, and we met in all kinds of crazy little places. But in the in the 1990s, we had an opportunity to buy this piece of property, and it was 16 acres of property here at the very edge of the city where the wind blows 12 months out of the year, and usually at 90 miles an hour. But you don’t think about that when you’re just walking property, right? Um, and so we had an opportunity to buy this property. We had a building on Lomus, but that building on Lomus, we had already outgrown it. And honestly, there was no place. The kids in the nursery stayed in what we affectionately called the dungeon because that building had originally been um grocery store, and the dungeon was, I’m pretty sure, the old freezers, and it was disgusting in Grace’s words. But we did the best we could, and we redid everything in a zillion times, and but we were out of space, and the the off the staff had to move out and three blocks down the road, and there was no place for the teenagers to meet, and the teenagers had to be dropped off at the office building three blocks away, and the parents didn’t like that, and we didn’t like that. We just didn’t have enough space.

And so we found this piece of property. We went to the church, and we said, here’s what we think needs to happen, and they said, Let’s do it, let’s do it. Let’s pool our resources. We we’ll trust God, we’ll sacrifice, and we’ll get this property and we’ll build this church that will have more space. There’ll be a safe, non dungeon y place for all our kids and the kids that will come after. There’ll be a wonderful room for teens to gather in and grow. So that’s what we did. And it right now, when you look back at it, it seems like, yeah, we bought property, we we built a building, we and thankfully we paid it off. But I’m telling you, it was war. It was war. Marshall and I had a call from the city every darn day for months and months and months. We had to go to the city, meet with the city, meet with this group, meet with that group. None of them agreed. You gotta plant this many trees. The mayor says no. They say yes. What do you want us to do? Okay, they won that one. Oh, you want a sign? No, can’t be that high. Well, a casino can have a sign taller than that. Yeah, but you’re a church. You gotta keep it small. You gotta keep it contained. We said, nope, mm-mm. No. No. We ain’t keeping God contained. God’s not small. You’re not gonna put God in this tiny little box so you never have to think about him. You never have to drive by something that shouts God because it offends you. Did we say all that in the meeting? No, but we sure enough did say it in prayer. A lot. And so finally, it got done. War still going on. War.

And then, and I know this, I know this because we had to deal with this. You’ll have to deal with it. The generations after us will have to deal with it. In every generation, there is this thought, there is this tension that the church has to deal with. Well, we think the church should be small, it shouldn’t be big. Well, we think the church shouldn’t own property. Listen, we sang it this morning. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. And I just don’t see why it’s okay for the drug dealers to own property and not the church. I don’t think that’s the way of God. I think it’s great. I love it when a new business breaks ground. I love it when we build a new school. I really love it if we’d build a new shopping center or at least fill up the empty spaces in the ones we’ve got. I love it when there’s prosperity in the city. I love it when there’s growth. And I love it when a church takes ground. I love it when you get to move into your house. Why? Because the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. We don’t need big, this is not any big extravagant cathedral. This is three metal buildings. And the first one, the first steel girders that went up right there on that back wall, the wind came and folded that steel like it was spaghetti. I’m telling you, it was war. Don’t think small like that. Think big. Well, I don’t need no big thing. That’s fine. But you do need for God to meet your needs and for you to have a surplus left over so that you can help somebody else and so that you can help spread the news of the kingdom.

And because of the generosity and the faithfulness of people in the 1980s and the 1990s, today we are able to hand the next generation, sixteen acres of property with 50,000 square feet of building with no debt. Please, please don’t belittle what my God did to get us here. Soon after we opened this building, we had a meeting, and Bonnie Geis came. She came down to the front, tears streaming down her face. She started taking off this jewelry, her bracelet. I didn’t wear it because it’s about to fall apart and it’s very clingy. Bonnie liked big pieces. She started taking off her jewelry. She said, put it in my hand. She said, I want to give you this, and I want you to never forget this is what we saw. This is what we prayed for. We didn’t pray for it. They prayed for it. People went before us and prayed that God would raise up a church at the eastern gate of the city that would speak forth with all boldness, the name of Jesus, that would preach the truth of the word of the living God and would make space for thousands of people, more people to hear it, to come to know him, to worship him. I won’t forget, I won’t forget their prayers were answered, and we got to walk in it. And I won’t forget to pray for those that are coming up behind us so they can walk in what God has that I might not even be here to see. Jesus is building a church that is so expansive with energy that the gates of hell itself can’t stop it. And you and I are a part of that.