If I follow Jesus, should I ________?

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- Uh. Action! - What?

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Hey, welcome to Crossroads.

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We are so glad that you are here.

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My name is Andy Ryder,

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Community Pastor for Crossroads Anywhere.

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And this is Emily.

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- I'm Emily, the Student Pastor for Anywhere.

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- Yes, and we were actually just having

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a conversation about ChatGPT and some of

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the funny, odd, random, and even hilarious questions

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that we have been asking ChatGPT just this week.

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For me, there were a lot of random ones

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that we were just talking about, but one of them is,

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confession, I've never successfully completed

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a March Madness bracket.

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ChatGPT did that for me this week. Thank you.

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- That's crazy that you've never done it on your own,

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but hey, there's no judgment.

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Mine recently was how to parallel park a car

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without a backup camera. So, you know.

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- While you were driving?

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- No, I got out of the car before I looked it up,

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but, yeah, got the answer. I just can't do it.

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- Perfect. Well, hey, throughout this whole series,

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we are looking at not ChatGPT level questions,

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but deeper questions.

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The questions that actually inform who we are

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and how we walk through our lives.

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That's what this the series is all about,

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and hopefully can help you take some of

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your deepest questions to God

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and see what He says in return.

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- Yeah, and we've actually got a lot going on

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in our church right now.

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Right now we're halfway through our Digital Reset.

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And if you don't know what that is,

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it's actually not just for Millennials, Gen X,

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Baby Boomers. So sorry.

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Um, it's also for Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

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So we want to help eliminate digital distractions

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so that technology can actually enhance the life

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we want to live and not steal the one that's in front of us.

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Middle schoolers and high schoolers,

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we have something for you.

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One of Crossroads newest ministries

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is helping us do just that.

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Crossroads Anywhere Students wants to bring

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the love of God's Church, not only to the pocket --

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Or to the phone in your pocket, but to your day to day life.

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So we've got camp, groups, weekly messages, cohorts,

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and so many special opportunities for you

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to engage with Crossroads online no matter where you are.

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One of our goals is actually to help equip you online

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so that you can make an impact on the ground

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no matter where you live.

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And high schoolers, if you want more information,

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text the word "students" to the number below.

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And parents, if you want to get

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regular Crossroads Anywhere student updates,

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you can do the same. - That's right.

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No matter how old you are or how young you are,

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apparently Emily thinks I'm 65. No.

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No matter who you are, hey, this is

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a really, really special season for us to lean in

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and experience more of what God has for us.

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So while we're only halfway through our Digital Reset,

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that also means that we're halfway through

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a series called Lent-- or through a season called Lent,

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which is all about preparing ourselves for Easter

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and getting in the right headspace.

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And Crossroads has some amazing things coming up

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for Holy Week that we want to let you in on right now.

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- Have you heard about Holy Week?

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That time every spring where Christians

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all over the world celebrate Palm Sunday,

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the Last Supper, Good Friday, and Easter?

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But there's so much more to discover about Holy Week

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and what it means for our lives today.

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It's quite literally the week that changed the world.

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Join us at Crossroads to make space to experience

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the hope of Palm Sunday,

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the intimacy of the Last Supper,

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the pain of Good Friday,

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and the transcendence of Easter.

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Go to crossroads.net for dates, times and locations.

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- Yeah, Holy week is a huge deal

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and we want you to get the most out of this Easter

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and the season leading up to it as possible.

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All the details for at our sites and online

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are at crossroads.net/HolyWeek.

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- Yeah. And including Holy Week,

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everything we do around here is to help you

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build a relationship with Jesus.

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To do that, you connect with God.

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There's so many ways you can connect with God.

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One of them, for me, I hear God more easily

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when I'm reading scripture, but I feel Him more evidently

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when I'm listening to worship music.

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We're about to hear from some of our Crossroads musicians

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that are going to lead us in some worship.

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So I challenge you to lean in and hear what God has for you.

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- What's going on, Crossroads?

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Great to have you guys here. My name is Robbie.

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We're going to spend some time singing together.

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These are songs to God and about God.

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So why don't you stand up where you are

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and let's tell Him what we think,

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what we feel, what we love about Him. Here we go.

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- Hey, it's so good to get to worship.

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Whoa! Did you hear that? That was loud.

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So good to get to worship with you guys.

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My name is Robbie, and I'm going to let you in

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on a little thing about guitar players.

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So it's not -- This is not a joke.

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Most of us in our guitar cases, we carry around --

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Where's my pocket?

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We carry around extra ones of these.

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These things. These are guitar strings.

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If you're, like, 13 and playing guitar, you're like,

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"Oh, my gosh, he has extra guitar strings?"

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And as, like, a grown up guitar player musician,

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yeah, I have a lot of them because occasionally,

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um, these get old, right?

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And so I replace them.

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Before a time like this, I'll go in and restring it.

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But what's special is not necessarily

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the guitar strings in and of themselves,

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but it's where they go and what happens to them.

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And so you can see here I've got a kind of a big one

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with a red end on it, I think that's red, red end on it

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And a skinny one here and it's got a purple end on it.

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And the color and the size tell me where it goes on the guitar.

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So this purple one, it's a B string. It goes right here.

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And this red one, it's an A string and it goes right there.

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And it's not just that I know where to put them,

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but it's also I know how to tune them.

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I know the pitch that it's supposed to be at.

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So all of a sudden when it's brought to the right tension,

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it's beautiful.

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And I think in a lot of ways,

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you and I can be like guitar strings.

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We spend our whole lives looking for our place.

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And if I put those strings on in a different place,

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it doesn't work. The chords sound funny.

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The player, like, me as a guitar player,

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I just know when the strings aren't in the right place.

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And when we find the right context for our lives,

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the next part is for us to be brought to the right pitch.

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And maybe you've been searching

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for where you're supposed to be.

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Where is my context?

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And I would say, I think it's here.

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Because the world isn't offering us anything

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that's going to change us from the inside out.

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But here, in the context of

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a loving, kind, compassionate creator God,

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we find our place.

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And when we allow ourselves to be tuned,

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beautiful things happen.

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So, God, would You tune us?

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- And guitars are funny sometimes.

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- I look around this room and I know the stories,

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I know some stories.

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Jesus, we say you are worthy for 22 years of sobriety.

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You are worthy of restored marriages.

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You are worthy of the praise that comes

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from lost kids coming home.

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You are worthy of the praise that comes

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from healing taking place,

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physical healing, emotional healing.

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I'm so grateful that we can come into a place like this

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and step out of the rushing world,

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into the shadow of the wings of the Almighty God

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and experience the shelter.

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We say, "Who else is worthy? No one but You, Jesus.

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No one but You."

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- God, we love You.

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We love the way that You draw us to you.

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We're thankful for a place like this that we can come

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and humbly seek you.

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With the little amount of certainty that we have,

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with the little amount of hope and faith that we have,

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that we can come here to encounter You.

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And that's what we want today, to encounter You, Jesus. Amen.

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Come on, y'all. [applause]

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- I'm not crying, you are.

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Hey, maybe you feel like one of these,

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like a string out of place.

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I want to tell you, this is a place for you.

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You can find a place here. We're glad you're here.

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Why don't you turn to somebody

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and say, "I'm glad you're here?" Then have a seat.

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- Ah, doesn't a beach sound nice right about now?

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But if you stay on the beach, you're actually missing out.

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What if I told you the most exciting part

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was under the water?

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When we go deeper in our relationship with God,

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He takes us on an adventure

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and we see things we never thought were possible.

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When we look at the Bible,

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Jesus challenges us to go deeper.

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People would come to Jesus asking Him

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to meet their immediate needs,

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but He would regularly respond with deeper questions

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because He knew wrestling with those questions

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is where life change really happens.

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To go deeper with God, we have to ask deeper questions.

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And the deeper we go, the more He has for us.

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Will you go deeper?

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- Hey, how are you doing, everybody?

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It's good to be with you.

00:27:01

I'm Alli, if we haven't met before.

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And we have been asking questions around here

00:27:06

the last few weeks, we've been all about

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getting below the surface in our connection with God

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through our questions.

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We all have questions for Him

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and sometimes we don't see the bigger things

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that are lurking underneath,

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what look like just kind of surface everyday questions.

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I have a friend who says,

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"With Jesus, the thing is not the thing."

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She always says that.

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And so in this case, I think like the thing

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that we're asking is actually connected to a deeper thing.

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We see Jesus push His disciples to the bigger thing,

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the deeper thing all the time.

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There was one night when they were out together in a boat

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and a huge storm blew up, and they started taking on water.

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And Jesus was actually asleep.

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And His disciples went and woke Him up

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and asked what sounds like a really reasonable question.

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They said, "Don't You care if we drown?"

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And Jesus answered them with a question of His own.

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He said back to them, "Why are you so afraid?"

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Through their question He drove them to the bigger issue

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He wanted them to notice that

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was going to impact their entire life of faith.

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And that is exactly the kind of question

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that we're going to deal with today.

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Let me pray for us.

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Lord, I pray that You would bring

00:28:25

our questions to the surface first

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so that You can take us deeper with You.

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Help us to be honest about our questions today,

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and to talk openly about the deeper things

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in a life of faith. In Jesus's name, Amen.

00:28:40

Well, today we're going to deal with questions

00:28:43

that actually fit in one big category,

00:28:47

that's how I would put it.

00:28:48

This is like a category of questions.

00:28:51

And they're kind of frustrating questions

00:28:53

because what we're going to talk about today

00:28:55

are questions that don't have an absolute answer.

00:28:59

These are questions that don't have a black or a white.

00:29:02

They're the questions that we kind of have to

00:29:05

fumble our way through wondering, like,

00:29:07

Did I do the right thing or not? I'm really not sure."

00:29:12

So this whole message came about because of

00:29:16

the most read article on our Crossroads website.

00:29:19

And we kind of did a head scratcher on why it would be.

00:29:24

I actually wrote it several years back,

00:29:26

and I thought that I was just addressing

00:29:28

a really niche question, but I think what happened is

00:29:32

I accidentally stumbled on

00:29:35

this whole category of questions.

00:29:38

The article is called Can Christians Do Yoga?

00:29:43

Can Christians do yoga?

00:29:45

So like, you can get my take on that on the article.

00:29:47

But the thing is not the thing.

00:29:49

What we're doing today is asking like,

00:29:51

why is that article, and you all, I'm not kidding,

00:29:55

tens of thousands of people over years

00:29:59

have continued to read this article. Why?

00:30:03

And honestly, we all asked ourselves, "For real, why?"

00:30:08

Not that many of you are doing yoga,

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but I think it intrigues us to ask a question like that

00:30:14

because it scratches on this category of question.

00:30:18

The question of should I? God, should I?

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And it seems like that's kind of the question

00:30:27

under the question that that article was digging at.

00:30:29

It's a question of not can I, but should I?

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And we all carry around questions

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that start with should I for God all the time.

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I don't know what yours are, but I would love to know,

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for real, right now, I want you to scan this QR code

00:30:45

and fill in the very simple box and tell us

00:30:50

what your should I, God, questions are.

00:30:53

And let's just see what some of these are together,

00:30:55

because I believe we're all carrying questions

00:30:58

like this around all the time.

00:31:00

God, should I? So none too small.

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Remember we're going to go below these in a second.

00:31:05

I just want to get a sampling.

00:31:06

Maybe you're going to ask me, like,

00:31:07

should I spend that much money on a purse?

00:31:10

Or should I smoke pot if it's legal? What are yours?

00:31:14

Should I listen to Cardi B?

00:31:16

I actually have an answer for you on that one.

00:31:18

Should I listen to Cardi B?

00:31:19

Should I date someone who doesn't go to church?

00:31:22

Should I go to Vegas?

00:31:24

Should I let my kids participate in Halloween?

00:31:27

Should I tell my parents that I lied to them?

00:31:29

Okay, these are the questions that we carry around

00:31:32

with us all the time, and we have to figure out

00:31:35

a way to answer them.

00:31:36

But they fall in this gray area.

00:31:39

I got one of these questions came up

00:31:42

the other day in our household.

00:31:44

Because my daughter, she was going to school

00:31:47

and at lunch that somebody had a deck of cards.

00:31:50

And she started dealing Blackjack at the lunch table.

00:31:54

That's my kid.

00:31:57

So the teacher comes by and she goes,

00:31:59

"You know what, guys?

00:32:01

You really shouldn't be playing that game.

00:32:02

Find another game."

00:32:04

And she came home and said, "Why did she say that?"

00:32:09

And I asked her back, "Why do you think

00:32:10

the teacher might have reacted differently

00:32:12

to Blackjack than maybe Go Fish?"

00:32:15

And so we had this interesting question about the gray area.

00:32:18

Now, I happen to have an opinion about

00:32:20

whether the teacher was right or wrong there,

00:32:22

but it's my opinion. We're in a gray area, right?

00:32:27

What was she responding to?

00:32:29

These are the kinds of things that we get into

00:32:30

when we ask these sorts of questions.

00:32:32

And I want to suggest to you that

00:32:34

there's a deeper question of faith

00:32:35

that's underneath this whole category of questions

00:32:39

that start with God, should I?

00:32:43

And the deeper question is,

00:32:45

how are you supposed to use your freedom?

00:32:50

Your freedom.

00:32:51

Because we have freedom in our lives.

00:32:53

We have freedom where we get to choose.

00:32:55

We have areas that the Bible doesn't speak to.

00:32:58

Most of our life is lived in a gray area.

00:33:02

And in that gray area,

00:33:03

we actually have quite a lot of freedom.

00:33:05

Even if you tried to follow every single command

00:33:09

in Scripture to the best of your ability,

00:33:12

everything that was black and white,

00:33:14

you would still go through most days

00:33:15

living your life in a gray area for so many issues,

00:33:20

even if you don't want to.

00:33:22

And so I think that the question under the question

00:33:24

is really about what do we do with our freedom?

00:33:28

How do we use it well?

00:33:29

And are there ways that would be not good?

00:33:33

You know what about the things that God doesn't speak to?

00:33:35

And I think we have two ways of that we usually deal with this.

00:33:38

Two ways we typically deal with the gray area are

00:33:41

we actually pretend like we have less freedom than we do.

00:33:46

We shrink the gray area as small as we can possibly get it,

00:33:50

and push everything into a black or a white,

00:33:53

at least as many things as we can get there.

00:33:55

And I think a lot of times this comes from a good heart.

00:33:57

You know, we want to stay aligned with God.

00:33:59

We want to make sure that we're doing the right thing,

00:34:01

or we just want to be a decent person.

00:34:04

And so we pretend that we have less freedom than we do,

00:34:07

and we push things into the black and white.

00:34:10

But I think real maturity, real spiritual maturity

00:34:15

is actually not doing that.

00:34:16

It's actually navigating the gray area

00:34:19

in relationship to God, because that's what He wants with us.

00:34:23

So when we push everything into black or white,

00:34:25

we actually shortcut the need for a relationship with God,

00:34:29

because then we're just, you know,

00:34:31

everything's black or everything's white.

00:34:33

Or there's another group, another group of people.

00:34:38

Maybe we both do.

00:34:39

You know, maybe we all do both of these things,

00:34:41

who knows, over the course of our life.

00:34:43

But some of us lean toward another way

00:34:45

of dealing with the gray area,

00:34:46

and that's just to, like, relish it.

00:34:48

We love the gray area. You know?

00:34:50

If God cared, He would have said, you know?

00:34:53

I can do whatever I want in the gray area,

00:34:55

and that suits me just fine.

00:34:57

And we pretend like we have no accountability to God

00:35:01

in these gray areas of our life,

00:35:03

in the places where we don't have a hard and fast rule,

00:35:06

and we just kind of do whatever we want.

00:35:08

We assume it's all good.

00:35:10

It all must be fine or He would have said so.

00:35:14

And I'd like to suggest to you that we can find

00:35:16

another approach if we look closely

00:35:19

at a letter in the Bible called 1 Corinthians.

00:35:22

Now, this letter was written by the Apostle Paul.

00:35:25

And he had lived in the city of Corinth for about 18 months.

00:35:29

And at the time of this letter he was gone.

00:35:32

So he knew this church pretty well that he planted

00:35:35

and, you know, kind of developed,

00:35:36

if you will, in this city.

00:35:38

And so he's writing to them because he's heard

00:35:42

they're a little bit off the rails.

00:35:43

They've gone like definitely for number two.

00:35:46

He's telling them, like, "I've heard these reports

00:35:49

about what's going on there.

00:35:50

It sounds like you're off the rails."

00:35:51

And he starts giving them a lot of counsel

00:35:54

on how to use their freedom.

00:35:59

He wants them to develop convictions

00:36:02

that are consistent with their life in Christ.

00:36:05

And instead of doing that,

00:36:06

they've they've opted for number two.

00:36:08

And he's like, "You know, I've been hearing

00:36:09

this crazy stuff about all these fights, crazy lawsuits,

00:36:13

bad sex practices, crazy wild uses of your gifts

00:36:17

and weird ways you're doing communion.

00:36:19

Like, you need to rein it in. You know?

00:36:21

We need to develop some convictions about

00:36:24

how you're supposed to live in this freedom

00:36:27

that you've been given."

00:36:28

And he communicates some principles through the book

00:36:30

that we're going to look at.

00:36:32

And first he gives them some background.

00:36:34

He's like, "You know what?

00:36:36

I need you to remember something

00:36:39

because this is impacting your whole life.

00:36:42

The way you use your freedom,

00:36:43

the way you navigate these gray areas,

00:36:45

it's actually going to impact your life

00:36:48

in ways that you might not even see."

00:36:51

And to explain that to them, he gives an example

00:36:55

from ancient Israel, from the nation of Israel

00:36:58

and their history after they were rescued

00:37:01

out of Egypt from slavery, and they come into

00:37:06

a new phase of their relationship with God.

00:37:08

1 Corinthians 10 says this:

00:37:49

So right here, Paul compares Old Testament Israel

00:37:53

to the state of these New Testament Christians.

00:37:56

And he's saying, "You need to know what happened to them

00:37:58

because it could happen to you."

00:38:01

And he starts to compare the two.

00:38:03

And he says, "You know, they were all,

00:38:05

all the business about them being under the cloud

00:38:07

and drank the drink and ate the food."

00:38:09

Basically, he's saying they were also rescued by God,

00:38:15

provided for by God, brought into relationship with God.

00:38:20

They were baptized, communion taking believers,

00:38:24

if you will, just like you.

00:38:27

And they died in the wilderness.

00:38:31

They died in the wilderness.

00:38:33

And the question he wants to drive them to is why?

00:38:36

Why? What happened that they never reached

00:38:39

the promises that God has for them?

00:38:41

Because He rescued them to bring them into a new life,

00:38:45

to take them all the way to the Promised Land.

00:38:47

But almost all of them never made it there.

00:38:50

And that's the exact point that Paul is driving at

00:38:54

with this church, the Corinthians.

00:38:57

He wants them to know that even after Israel was set free,

00:39:01

they never learned how to live free.

00:39:03

They they ended up spending their whole life

00:39:06

in this in-between, in this gray area, no convictions,

00:39:10

and that the same thing could happen to us.

00:39:13

So I have four questions for you

00:39:14

and they're straight out of the passages in 1 Corinthians

00:39:18

where Paul actually establishes some principles

00:39:22

by which we can kind of deal with these questions

00:39:25

should I, God? What about this area, God?

00:39:29

Is it okay, God if I? How do I? Should I ever?

00:39:33

Those kinds of wonderings that we have,

00:39:36

those kinds of questions on the surface

00:39:38

that maybe we just kind of bypass

00:39:39

and fumble our way through.

00:39:43

He's actually saying, whoa, whoa, whoa.

00:39:46

The choices that you're making in that gray area

00:39:48

with your freedom, they're actually going to determine

00:39:52

whether you ever find the life of God,

00:39:55

whether you ever actually thrive.

00:39:57

Okay, so are you ready for the first one? First question.

00:40:01

If you have a should I question,

00:40:03

the first thing I want you to ask yourself is:

00:40:05

is it helpful?

00:40:08

This seems super basic, but so many times we bypass this.

00:40:11

Is it actually beneficial in some way?

00:40:15

Here's where that comes from.

00:40:16

The Corinthians had obviously pushed back on Paul.

00:40:19

They had said some things to him about their freedom.

00:40:21

So he quotes them.

00:40:22

He says, "'I have the right to do anything, ' you say,

00:40:25

but not everything is beneficial."

00:40:29

So Paul lays down this principle of,

00:40:30

"You've got to ask yourself, is it actually helping you?"

00:40:33

How many times do we spend time doing things

00:40:35

that aren't very helpful?

00:40:37

If you're doing the Digital Fast,

00:40:38

you've certainly discovered that along with me, right?

00:40:41

How much time do we spend maybe scrolling our phone

00:40:46

and it's not really helping us,

00:40:48

not helping us physically, emotionally,

00:40:50

spiritually, relationally.

00:40:52

It's only ever taking from us.

00:40:54

Not just your phone, I'm not talking about,

00:40:56

but whatever you're asking God about.

00:40:58

We so often spend our time in ways that

00:41:01

we never even bother to ask, is this actually helping me?

00:41:04

That's sort of the number one thing

00:41:05

that I've promised myself.

00:41:07

Part of my Digital Fast was to get off of social media.

00:41:09

And so I promised myself, before I go back,

00:41:13

I want to be able to write down on a piece of paper

00:41:16

what conditions, what circumstances,

00:41:19

when and how is this actually helpful?

00:41:23

Because if I can't articulate those,

00:41:24

I'll just wallow around in the gray area it provides.

00:41:29

And so the first way that Paul wants them thinking is,

00:41:32

is it actually helping me?

00:41:34

When we're willing to wrestle with this,

00:41:36

we're actually -- we have to be in a relationship with God.

00:41:40

We have to be able to look Him in the face at some point

00:41:43

and say, "I chose this because I thought it was benefiting me."

00:41:49

So that's the first one.

00:41:50

The second one is: does it put me under its power?

00:41:54

Now, this is a really, really interesting one

00:41:57

because, um, Paul quotes again, it's from the same verse.

00:42:00

He quotes their excuse, "I have the right to do anything,

00:42:05

but I will not be mastered by anything."

00:42:09

So he gives them a new thought here.

00:42:11

He says, "Okay, so you say that you can be free

00:42:14

and you say that you're allowed to do anything.

00:42:16

But what about being mastered by something?"

00:42:19

It's a fascinating word he uses, and it actually

00:42:22

calls back to his example from the nation of Israel.

00:42:26

Because remember who he gave them

00:42:28

as the example of what not to do.

00:42:31

It was a bunch of former slaves.

00:42:34

God had rescued Israel out of slavery,

00:42:37

and they came into freedom

00:42:38

and they're living in the wilderness with God.

00:42:40

They're supposed to be moving toward the Promised Land,

00:42:43

but they kept acting like slaves.

00:42:49

Many times if you read that part of the Bible,

00:42:51

they are actually yearning for their old life.

00:42:56

And Paul is actually poking at this principle

00:43:00

of not being mastered by something

00:43:02

because he's saying you and I,

00:43:04

he actually says this explicitly in another letter,

00:43:06

"We are former slaves. We will never have --

00:43:13

We will never have to practice slavery.

00:43:18

That's our natural state.

00:43:19

And God has taken us, and He's freed us,

00:43:21

and He's brought us into this life of freedom.

00:43:24

Now, don't allow yourself," Paul says,

00:43:27

"to be mastered by anything, but the God who loves you,

00:43:31

the God who rescued you."

00:43:33

And this is a really fascinating principle,

00:43:35

because oftentimes we don't see this at work in our life,

00:43:41

or we downplay it, or we willingly close an eye to it.

00:43:44

You know, sometimes other people can see this

00:43:46

operating in our life better than we can,

00:43:48

because we don't want to say that, "Oh, something has,

00:43:51

you know, kind of a pull on me or a power over me."

00:43:54

I probably think that the should I questions around, like,

00:43:57

alcohol or marijuana, things like that,

00:43:59

this is probably a relevant thing because

00:44:01

a lot of times people will say, "You know,

00:44:04

it doesn't matter, you know, if it's just a little bit,

00:44:07

it's not going anywhere.

00:44:08

It doesn't matter that there's alcoholics in my family.

00:44:11

I'm fine. It's me."

00:44:15

You know, we don't want to acknowledge that

00:44:16

sometimes those things carry a power

00:44:19

to drag us back into slavery.

00:44:23

Now, that's not where you would

00:44:25

necessarily see it in my life.

00:44:27

The strongest for me, it's in kind of a weird place.

00:44:30

You would see this principle at work in my life

00:44:33

if you worked out with me.

00:44:35

Now I do some some stuff that

00:44:37

really bothers people when I work out.

00:44:40

I never track anything, anything. I don't.

00:44:45

I'm a runner. I won't track my mileage, my pace.

00:44:50

You know, I know roughly because I know where I live

00:44:52

and what routes I run on, so I have a rough idea.

00:44:55

But I won't track anything.

00:44:57

I don't wear an Apple Watch for that reason,

00:45:00

because it feels like a little master on my wrist.

00:45:03

Get up, close the rings, do this many steps.

00:45:06

You know, it's like --

00:45:08

And I am susceptible to that.

00:45:09

You know what I do if I can't help it,

00:45:11

because I'll run on the treadmill sometimes.

00:45:13

And of course, there's the tracking right in front of me.

00:45:15

I can't help but see it.

00:45:17

And so I'll hit stop at like 2.96 miles.

00:45:22

I'm done, three miles, and I'll just get off the treadmill

00:45:26

because I have to practice not being sucked back in.

00:45:29

Why? Why do I do that?

00:45:32

Because my old master, my old self, my flesh

00:45:37

has a tendency to move toward measuring

00:45:40

and standards and performance.

00:45:43

I'm not worried I'm not going to do a good workout.

00:45:45

I'm worried it's going to drag me back into slavery.

00:45:48

Can you imagine somebody having an Apple Watch on

00:45:51

that was like that and going like,

00:45:53

"Oh, I got to close the rings."

00:45:54

It would start dictating parts of your day.

00:45:57

It would start making choices about what you were going to do.

00:46:00

That's the thing that I'm talking about.

00:46:03

It might be a really healthy kick in the pants

00:46:05

for some of you.

00:46:06

I'm not anti Apple Watch.

00:46:08

There's a couple in my own house.

00:46:09

I'm just saying I know who my old master was

00:46:13

and I'm not going to go back there.

00:46:16

I'm not going to purposely enslave myself

00:46:19

with behavior like that because

00:46:21

I know we have to practice being free.

00:46:25

We have to practice being free.

00:46:28

We don't have to practice our old crap.

00:46:30

We have to practice being free.

00:46:32

So we have to, like, ruthlessly adopt habits

00:46:35

that do not allow us to be dragged back into slavery.

00:46:39

And so Paul is saying, "Do not allow yourself

00:46:42

to be mastered by something."

00:46:46

You know, let's revisit the yoga article for a minute.

00:46:50

The topic of yoga is really interesting.

00:46:51

I didn't know this, but I started to do some digging.

00:46:54

For some of you, you're like, "You know what,

00:46:57

happy baby, downward dog.

00:46:59

Just really good stretching, that's what it is.

00:47:01

It's just some really good stretching."

00:47:03

And for others of you, you're kind of open

00:47:06

and susceptible to spiritual things.

00:47:09

You're interested, you're open, you're intrigued by it.

00:47:12

And some of you are like, "Why are we talking about this?

00:47:15

Why is this a thing?"

00:47:18

What if I told you there was a study done in 2016

00:47:21

and 62% of students of yoga and 85% of teachers of yoga

00:47:27

done long enough change their primary reason

00:47:30

from exercise to spirituality,

00:47:33

their primary reason for engaging in yoga.

00:47:37

Fascinating, right?

00:47:38

Does that mean no one can do yoga,

00:47:40

or the stretching isn't really good for you,

00:47:42

or the positions aren't helpful for your body?

00:47:44

No, it doesn't mean that.

00:47:45

But does it mean that there might be a power at work

00:47:49

that might be pulling on you,

00:47:51

that you might not necessarily see at first?

00:47:55

It seems so.

00:47:57

And here's the deal, you're allowed to ask that question

00:48:00

and answer that question with God to God and for yourself.

00:48:05

But your flesh doesn't want you to do that.

00:48:08

The enemy of God doesn't want you to do that

00:48:10

because he was your old master.

00:48:11

He would love it if you just came right back on into slavery.

00:48:15

And so even the bravery of asking this question

00:48:18

that Paul is posing, does it have power

00:48:21

or could it have power over me?

00:48:24

This is a really important consideration

00:48:26

as we think about how are we using our freedom?

00:48:29

How are we making these decisions

00:48:32

about what we're going to do in these gray areas?

00:48:35

Okay. Third one, third one. Does it hurt others?

00:48:40

Now we're not talking about the like black and white,

00:48:43

just shameless harm of other people.

00:48:46

That's not what Paul is talking about here.

00:48:48

We're not talking about theft or assault or,

00:48:50

you know, things like that.

00:48:52

Those would be more black and white issues,

00:48:54

I think most of us would agree.

00:48:55

Paul is speaking to something in the gray area

00:48:58

that's pretty subtle here.

00:49:00

1 Corinthians 8:9 says this:

00:49:10

I love that he said your rights because we love our rights,

00:49:13

you know, and we can exercise our rights.

00:49:16

We love to exercise our rights.

00:49:17

You know, I have the right to do that.

00:49:19

So who are you to say anything about it?

00:49:21

And he says, "Careful when you're exercising your rights,

00:49:26

that you don't become a stumbling block to the weak."

00:49:28

Now, what he means by weak here,

00:49:30

if you went on to read the passage,

00:49:32

it's those weaker in faith.

00:49:35

Paul is primarily concerned about people

00:49:38

coming closer and closer to God.

00:49:40

And so he lays down this challenge of

00:49:42

if your freedom and your rights get in the way,

00:49:47

present a stumbling block to somebody coming closer to God,

00:49:52

then you're free so you can lay them down

00:49:56

or you can pick them back up.

00:49:58

Now, the example Paul gives here

00:50:00

is a little bit hard for us to grasp because

00:50:02

we don't live in this city at this time.

00:50:04

But the church was asking a should we question to Paul

00:50:08

They were asking a question that was:

00:50:10

should we eat meat that's been sacrificed to an idol?

00:50:16

That was a common practice.

00:50:17

And these were, again, we would say, false gods

00:50:20

that were being sacrificed to in the city of Corinth.

00:50:22

And it wouldn't have been unusual for one of them

00:50:24

to maybe end up at a meal, maybe with an unbeliever

00:50:29

or somebody who is newer into their faith in Jesus.

00:50:31

And so the meat gets presented and you're like,

00:50:33

"Wait, should we be eating this?"

00:50:37

That's kind of what they're asking.

00:50:40

And Paul's answer to them is super fascinating.

00:50:44

It's so firmly in the gray area.

00:50:47

He says, "You know what? It's a fake God,

00:50:50

so it really has no bearing on the real God.

00:50:53

So if you're free enough to understand that,

00:50:55

then you can eat it, unless --

00:50:58

Unless you're in the presence of somebody

00:51:01

who that would interrupt, impact,

00:51:04

or prevent their understanding of the real God.

00:51:07

If it would be a stumbling block to them, then don't do it.

00:51:11

Lay it down because you're free.

00:51:12

You can lay it down or pick it back up again.

00:51:15

Think about them."

00:51:17

And so he concludes the issue like this. He says:

00:51:27

He's basically saying, "I'm the free one.

00:51:31

I can set it down, or I can pick it back up

00:51:33

for the good of somebody else's journey toward God."

00:51:37

Now, I think this actually sounds kind of crazy to us

00:51:41

in the culture that we live in.

00:51:43

We live in a culture that's like, "No, no, no.

00:51:46

That is your right and you don't let anybody stop you

00:51:50

from what you have the right to do."

00:51:52

You know, we just have this kind of attitude

00:51:54

about our rights and our freedoms,

00:51:56

and we don't want anyone to, you know, step on those at all.

00:52:00

What if you could just step on it?

00:52:02

What if you could do that

00:52:03

so that it would benefit somebody else?

00:52:07

And Paul's not saying let yourself be imposed upon.

00:52:09

He's saying if you see that you could be

00:52:12

a stumbling block to someone, just set it down.

00:52:15

You're no better if you do.

00:52:16

You're no worse if you don't.

00:52:17

You can just choose.

00:52:19

And it made me think of a couple of years ago.

00:52:22

I know that you guys, when you see Brian or Chuck

00:52:26

or Kyle up here, they pretty much wear the same thing, right?

00:52:29

It's a shirt and it's a pair of jeans.

00:52:32

Sometimes there's a jacket or a t-shirt or whatever,

00:52:36

but it's pretty standard.

00:52:37

Like, guys' clothes are not that complicated.

00:52:40

Women's clothing is. It's a lot more complicated.

00:52:45

I don't know if you've seen this or not. It just is.

00:52:47

And so as I have regularly discovered over the years.

00:52:53

And so a couple of years ago,

00:52:56

I hope you know me well enough to know

00:52:57

I would never, ever stand up here in something

00:52:59

that I thought was disrespectful or inappropriate.

00:53:02

I just wouldn't do that.

00:53:04

It's a gray area, but we recognize the setting, right?

00:53:08

So I step up and I'm teaching that weekend

00:53:11

and it's a turtleneck, a turtleneck,

00:53:16

but it's summer and it was sleeveless,

00:53:18

so the sleeve ended right here.

00:53:20

Now women's sleeve lengths. Let's talk about this.

00:53:24

There's long sleeve, there's three quarter length sleeves,

00:53:26

there's elbow length, there's short sleeve,

00:53:28

there's camis, there's sleeveless,

00:53:29

there's one shoulder.

00:53:30

There's even what our dear friend Greg,

00:53:34

the Oakley Community Pastor, calls a flu shot shirt.

00:53:38

Those are the ones where you have a sleeve,

00:53:40

but it's missing the part right here. You know?

00:53:42

He calls that your flu shot shirt.

00:53:44

He's like, "You getting a flu shot today?

00:53:46

Just stick it right in there. It's easy, easy access."

00:53:49

He calls them flu shot shirts.

00:53:51

There's a lot of different kinds of sleeves. Right?

00:53:54

And we could have all kinds of opinions

00:53:57

about which ones are appropriate for what setting.

00:54:01

I think we can all agree

00:54:02

we're pretty firmly in a gray area there.

00:54:05

But I heard a lot of things,

00:54:07

and I do mean a lot of things about shoulders.

00:54:12

We just have a lot of opinions about the shoulders.

00:54:15

And so what was my first reaction?

00:54:17

Probably what yours would be,

00:54:20

"How -- you want to talk about my shoulders?

00:54:22

That's what you got from this message?"

00:54:25

You know, are you serious right now?"

00:54:26

You know, it's that kind of thing.

00:54:28

You feel -- You feel that, like offense. You know?

00:54:31

This is your basic freedom.

00:54:34

I should be able to wear that shirt.

00:54:36

It was a turtleneck, for goodness sake.

00:54:38

But I heard this little, this little nudge from God

00:54:42

right about the time I wanted to say that.

00:54:46

And He was like, "Hey, psst."

00:54:51

And I just paused long enough to consider

00:54:55

what's really going on here?

00:54:57

And I decided what's really going on here

00:55:00

is I'm in a gray area and I can just set that down.

00:55:05

I think that's what He wanted me

00:55:07

to pause long enough to consider that maybe, just maybe,

00:55:11

we we live in a time that's taught us

00:55:13

that we need to fight, fight, fight

00:55:16

for every single right or freedom that we have

00:55:18

and use it anytime we want, wherever we want.

00:55:21

If that's our approach, that's not freedom.

00:55:25

Paul is saying you could pick it up or put it back down.

00:55:28

You could pick it up in one situation

00:55:30

and put it down in another.

00:55:32

You could pick it up with some people

00:55:33

and put it down with another.

00:55:35

The freedom to move and adjust

00:55:39

and not be so charged up about that one thing,

00:55:42

that is freedom.

00:55:44

And I feel like God just nudged me a little bit.

00:55:47

And I went, "You know what?

00:55:48

The thing is not the thing.

00:55:51

Because the thing is the people that are listening.

00:55:55

And if a shoulder or anything else is a distraction,

00:55:59

set it down. Just set it down.

00:56:02

This is about me. This is about people's faith."

00:56:05

And so I just took a deep breath and moved on.

00:56:08

And also, you'll probably email me more times

00:56:10

about other things and we're all in a gray area together.

00:56:14

And so we just have to ask ourselves,

00:56:16

is somebody else's journey toward God,

00:56:19

is somebody else's faith at stake?

00:56:21

And if it is, we get to decide, do I pick it up?

00:56:24

Do I put it down for the good of others

00:56:26

and the glory of God?

00:56:29

And that brings us to our last question, which is

00:56:32

does it glorify God?

00:56:35

This is the fourth question that if you have a should I God?

00:56:42

And this is this is a little bit like our first one,

00:56:44

in that sometimes we just want to run to the edges of this.

00:56:47

We just want to go, like, "Would you be mad at me, God?"

00:56:51

You know, we want the answer to, like,

00:56:54

would You be mad at me if I did this?

00:56:57

This is a totally different question.

00:56:59

This is does it actually glorify God?

00:57:02

And this comes from 1 Corinthians 10.

00:57:06

Paul's actually addressing some more food and drink issues,

00:57:09

some more questions to the church.

00:57:11

Jewish dietary laws were pretty strict,

00:57:13

so they had a lot of questions

00:57:15

they addressed about this kind of thing.

00:57:18

And so we get this from our last --

00:57:20

Or our verse in 1 Corinthians 10,

00:57:22

our last question.

00:57:35

So in this gray area, when we get to choose,

00:57:37

when we have freedom, when we ask God

00:57:39

should I do it or not? Should I go there or not?

00:57:41

Should I be with him or not?

00:57:43

We need to ask, does it bring God glory?

00:57:49

What? What is glory exactly?

00:57:51

I asked God this question.

00:57:53

And I remember how many years ago it was only because

00:57:56

we were on our first vacation with my oldest son.

00:57:59

He was maybe like a year old, and I just remember

00:58:01

it was the first time we took him to the beach.

00:58:03

So this is like we're pushing 20 years ago.

00:58:06

And I remember asking God, "Okay, what's glory?

00:58:10

Like, I read it and I get it, kind of,

00:58:13

in the context of the Bible.

00:58:14

I understand it's got to do with Your Majesty

00:58:16

and you know, all the good things about You

00:58:19

and all that kind of stuff. But what is glory?

00:58:22

Like, can you help me out, God?

00:58:23

I just don't know that I fully understand it."

00:58:25

So we're on this vacation,

00:58:27

and I'm out on the deck of our condo,

00:58:30

and I'm watching the tide roll in.

00:58:33

And there's a cloud over the sun.

00:58:35

And the sun, you know, you can look at the ocean

00:58:37

in two spots and it can look completely different?

00:58:40

So the cloud is over one part of the sun.

00:58:42

And I look over this way and it's sort of

00:58:45

the water rolling in was grays and blues, kind of dull.

00:58:51

And it looked a little lifeless, just kind of

00:58:53

like not, not an ocean you're going to go, "Ah," you know?

00:58:56

And then over here, the part that the rays of sun,

00:58:59

I could see them

00:59:00

and they were making prisms of all these colors.

00:59:03

And off the little crests of the waves

00:59:05

were like diamond, you know, patterns.

00:59:07

It was just absolutely beautiful.

00:59:10

And all the blues and greens were coming out of the water.

00:59:13

Couldn't have been more different than the other side.

00:59:17

And I just, to the best of my ability,

00:59:21

to understand the the voice of God,

00:59:23

I just got this idea right then

00:59:25

that He was answering that question.

00:59:27

And I looked one way and it was like,

00:59:31

"That's not glory. That is."

00:59:35

Same body of water, just like same life. You know?

00:59:39

We can work with the same life, the same matter.

00:59:42

We're looking at the same ocean.

00:59:44

And He's like this part kind of gray, sort of dull,

00:59:47

sort of lifeless over here.

00:59:49

And this part, wow.

00:59:54

And I think about this in terms of

00:59:56

how we exist with our freedom.

00:59:58

Like, we get to choose.

01:00:00

Our life is going to look like one of these things.

01:00:04

And we get to make some choices about how much it sparkles.

01:00:08

How much glory do you see through it?

01:00:10

How much of God's light or goodness or love

01:00:13

is reflected through through our life?

01:00:17

Same life.

01:00:18

You could go two different directions with it.

01:00:21

One glory, maybe one not.

01:00:24

I had a friend in college who told me

01:00:26

I'd lived in Ohio too long.

01:00:28

She grew up in Tennessee.

01:00:30

And when it would get sunny.

01:00:32

You know, when it gets real cold in the winter,

01:00:34

the sun is often out?

01:00:35

And it was really sunny and really cold.

01:00:38

And I said to her, I was like, "What's the sun doing out?

01:00:43

It should be gray, you know? Like, the winter is gray.

01:00:47

And it's so bright and it's bouncing off the snow

01:00:50

and it's annoying me."

01:00:51

And she was like, "You have lived in Ohio too long."

01:00:55

She's like, "The only good thing about this day is the sun."

01:00:57

And and she told me, she said,

01:00:59

"You've just been living with gray skies for too many months."

01:01:04

And I said, "Boy, isn't that the truth?"

01:01:06

Like, we get used to the dull, lifeless,

01:01:10

gray parts of our life.

01:01:14

And we mistakenly think that we can't really impact that much.

01:01:19

With the Digital Fast. The other thing that I stopped,

01:01:23

like, the other thing I decided to give up

01:01:25

besides social media was I have a habit

01:01:28

on my drive into work I will listen to

01:01:31

either news or a news podcast.

01:01:33

It's just like my time of day where I would take in

01:01:35

that kind of information, content, whatever.

01:01:37

It's just a habit. And I thought, you know what?

01:01:39

I just feel like, I wonder -- I don't need that.

01:01:43

I just don't need to fill myself with that,

01:01:45

especially at the beginning of my day.

01:01:46

I'm going to stop.

01:01:47

I'm not going to listen to any news during the day.

01:01:51

I didn't really feel like --

01:01:52

It wasn't some big conviction.

01:01:53

It was just like a small habit.

01:01:55

I just thought, "I'm going to get rid of that."

01:01:57

So I have, and I don't know if anybody's noticed,

01:02:00

but the last three weeks I've sort of been wondering,

01:02:02

"I think I'm showing up to work different."

01:02:06

Because what I've been putting in that place is,

01:02:08

generally speaking, worship music.

01:02:11

I'll drive in and sometimes I'll mix it

01:02:13

with other fun playlists I have, but a lot of times

01:02:15

it's worship music. And I've started to wonder,

01:02:17

"I wonder if I did this long enough,

01:02:19

if you'd notice that I walk in the door

01:02:22

and I'm like, I don't know, I'm different somehow.

01:02:27

I'm sparkly, or reminded who God is,

01:02:29

or I hear something that really fills me

01:02:32

with His Spirit in a fresh way or whatever.

01:02:34

I just started to wonder, like, I wonder if this matters

01:02:38

to the extent that I would actually

01:02:40

shine forward His Image in a different way,

01:02:43

depending on what I do on my drive to work.

01:02:47

One life, two choices.

01:02:49

Like, one, do I stay in the dull grayness?

01:02:52

Is that wrong or immoral? No, no it's not.

01:02:56

But could I shine, could I sparkle,

01:02:58

could I reflect His light, His love, His patience,

01:03:01

His goodness in a different way

01:03:03

maybe if I made a different choice?

01:03:06

And so that's what Paul says, "Whatever you do,

01:03:09

do it for the glory of God."

01:03:11

We can make choices with our freedom

01:03:13

to actually reflect more of Him.

01:03:15

There's an old confession of faith.

01:03:19

There's there's a handful of confessions of faith

01:03:21

that people used to memorize, and some places still do.

01:03:25

They're good ways to memorize

01:03:26

the tenets of Christian faith.

01:03:28

And one of those is called

01:03:29

the Westminster Confession of Faith.

01:03:31

And there's a line right at the beginning that says:

01:03:34

Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

01:03:39

Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

01:03:44

I think this is a beautiful thought because

01:03:46

it forces us to wrestle with God made us to enjoy life,

01:03:52

and He gave us a bunch of freedom to do it.

01:03:54

And we get to decide, like, in good, deep, satisfying ways,

01:03:58

what are we going to do with that freedom?

01:04:01

But anything that doesn't glorify,

01:04:04

point to, uphold Him, anything that would dishonor

01:04:08

the One who gave us that freedom

01:04:12

surely is a bad use of it, right?

01:04:14

Surely there's a better use that we could find

01:04:17

of the freedom that's been given to us.

01:04:20

You know that that freedom comes

01:04:22

when we first come out of our slavery,

01:04:25

when we first get rescued by God,

01:04:28

and we come into the life that He made us for.

01:04:32

And you were not made to stay in the wilderness.

01:04:35

You and I, we were not made to live

01:04:37

our life wandering around in the gray area.

01:04:40

We were made to glorify God.

01:04:42

We were made to point to Him, to reflect Him,

01:04:45

to enjoy Him forever.

01:04:49

And so many of what -- so many things about

01:04:53

what will determine that are answers to should I? Should I?

01:05:00

And so I want you to think of your should I question.

01:05:03

We're going to end like this together right now.

01:05:06

It could be super small.

01:05:09

Remember the thing is not the thing.

01:05:12

So we want to just ask our surface question,

01:05:14

but then these four things I want you to think through

01:05:20

and see if God doesn't drive you down to a deeper answer.

01:05:25

First question about your should I, God?

01:05:29

Is it beneficial? Is it helping you?

01:05:33

Could you write down on a piece of paper

01:05:36

how it was helping you?

01:05:38

Second question: Does it put you under its power?

01:05:45

Does it put me under its power?

01:05:50

Third question: does it hurt others?

01:05:55

Is there something about it that if I did it

01:05:57

in this way, with these people,

01:05:59

in front of that circumstance,

01:06:00

that would actually interrupt somebody else's

01:06:03

understanding or path toward God?

01:06:08

And the last one is: does it glorify Him?

01:06:12

Not do you get out of hell, but does it glorify Him?

01:06:16

Does it actually bring His presence to Earth

01:06:19

in a vibrant, brighter, more majestic way?

01:06:22

Does it glorify God?

01:06:25

You know, we don't always need all four of these questions.

01:06:28

Maybe just one will hit the nail on the head

01:06:30

and that's the only one you need.

01:06:31

But sometimes you have a subtle one

01:06:33

and you need to kind of see where the arrows

01:06:35

are pointing on all four of these.

01:06:37

This would be a great conversation

01:06:40

with the people who know you best

01:06:42

if you laid your should I, God, questions on the table

01:06:45

and went through these four things together.

01:06:47

My guess is we would all end up using our freedom better.

01:06:51

So I'm going to pray that you would do that right now.

01:06:53

Lord, I ask -- first of all, I thank You

01:06:57

that you've given us freedom.

01:06:58

You've given us a life where we get to choose things.

01:07:01

Thank You for that.

01:07:02

Help us to use our freedom well.

01:07:05

I pray that we would be honest

01:07:07

about the answers to these questions,

01:07:10

and allow them to push us into

01:07:12

a deeper connection with You. In Jesus's name, Amen.

01:07:19

Hey, if you want someone to pray with you

01:07:21

about your should I, God, question,

01:07:23

we have prayer teams that are active online

01:07:25

and at every single site.

01:07:28

So I would just encourage you get someone praying for you.

01:07:31

And if you want even more prayer,

01:07:32

you can join us at our Monday Night Prayer Meetings

01:07:35

at every site this next week. So I'll see you then.

01:07:40

- Well, just as Alli said, we would love to pray for you.

01:07:43

We, Andy, myself, and the whole team would love to pray for you.

01:07:46

You can do that by going to Crossroads.net

01:07:49

and chatting with us in the chat box.

01:07:50

And remember that no prayer is too big or small.

01:07:52

- That's right.

01:07:53

And in the same way that we love it

01:07:55

when we have the chance to pray for you personally,

01:07:57

we also love it when we as a community have

01:07:59

the opportunity to throw our weight all together

01:08:02

and say, "God, we want You to move.

01:08:03

We want You to move in the lives of other people."

01:08:05

So not to receive prayer,

01:08:06

but to pray for God to move and other people's lives.

01:08:09

And that's what we're doing

01:08:10

every Monday night throughout Lent.

01:08:12

We're just saying, "God, we want You to bring revival,

01:08:14

and we want You to start here in our church

01:08:17

and move across our nation and our globe

01:08:19

and throughout all of our cities."

01:08:20

You can join us on Monday night

01:08:22

at all of our sites and online.

01:08:24

You can just text "together" to 301301 or head to

01:08:27

crossroads.net/Anywhere for all the details.

01:08:30

And all the stuff, all the stuff that Alli shared,

01:08:33

all the stuff that we do and we talk about as a church,

01:08:36

all is meant to grow you

01:08:38

and help connect you to the God who loves you.

01:08:40

And all of it would be impossible if not for

01:08:42

really just normal, generous, faithful people

01:08:45

who make this stuff happen.

01:08:46

And so if you've got questions around

01:08:48

what does Crossroads believe about money, or man,

01:08:51

what does Crossroads invest in and spend money on?

01:08:53

Or you want to join the team of faithful givers,

01:08:55

you can do all of that and more at crossroads.net/give.

01:08:59

- Yeah, and that's all we have for you guys.

01:09:01

So thanks for watching

01:09:02

and we can't wait to see you next time.

Does What I Do With My Body Matter?

If I follow Jesus, should I ________?

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