2024 Men's Conference - Session 3

[00:00:00] All right guys I know I'm hitting you with a fire hose and you know I remember

[00:00:12] once teaching at this I was I do a lot of work for you know Luis Palau yeah so

[00:00:19] Luis is a mentor of mine very dear friend and I work for the Palau

[00:00:23] Association so I do a lot of speaking... Anyone know what the final words that Jesus spoke from the cross was? It actually isn't it. It's actually father into your hands, I commit my spirit.

[00:01:42] It is finished, obviously, into the arms of his father. It's very beautiful, but it also speaks to the heart of what it means to be image bearers of God. I'm gonna explain that in just a second. I wanna ask you guys a question.

[00:03:00] I'm not gonna have any slides up for this one.

[00:03:03] There's a famous quote that's attributed to a guston.

[00:03:06] I'm not totally convinced it. It's actually not true. Now if you're like, what are you talking about? Well, first of all, anytime anyone on the stage asks you a question, they always mean the opposite of what they're saying. So, the second half of the statement is very true. The one who has everything but God has nothing.

[00:04:23] But the first half of the statement is not true.

[00:04:26] The one who has God has everything. time gap when Adam is alone in the garden, God, who just, we're just got done being told in Genesis 1 over and over again, something very profound about God's creative act, and that is that God was satisfied with what he made. Not just satisfied, but it would say in God's sabbatia made, and it was what?

[00:05:43] Good.

[00:05:44] And closes with it, and it was very good.

[00:05:47] Very good. to simply be alone with Him. He created us to know Him through the other. And the other is what I like to refer to as the neighbor. When Jesus was asked what is the most important commandments, what was Jesus' answer? Love God with all of your

[00:07:02] heart, soul, mind, and strength. But say about the Trinity is this whatever it means It means that it's essence that God is a community within himself

[00:08:24] that God in the essence of his being is

[00:09:23] relationship that's become right with others, and then and only then does it become a relationship that is right with self.

[00:09:26] Hell is a place where relationship does not exist, where you live eternally in the falsehood

[00:09:35] of the shadow self.

[00:09:37] This is why it is not resurrection into eternal like himself because we are moving.

[00:12:22] That's why, if you guys, everyone's always freaked out by Portland. And I think that what we have turned the church into over the last 40 years is incredible. This is what I would say about the Jesus movement. The Jesus movement was an incredible return to a personal belief in the living Christ and the authority of scripture. But we must remember that the Jesus movement

[00:13:41] was a revolution within a counterculture.

[00:13:44] It was a counterculture within a counterculture. the stones while they were playing. And it was supposed to be woodstock and all love and peace and it ended in violence. The whole day was marked by endless violence. And it was the facade and the lack of contentment with this path that actually didn't lead us where we wanted. It became this great symbol that this was not the salvation

[00:15:00] that we had hoped for.

[00:15:03] In that same time frame was is a lifestyle that I embrace. In fact, he kept it hidden because what he didn't find was victory over that area of sin. But he was the one that God used to bring all the young adults to the church that Chuck said, I don't know how to reach these people to close today's message with, this is what has happened. Now all we have is Thomas Kincaid. And we need to repent immediately.

[00:17:40] The world gets Picasso and we get the painter of lights.

[00:17:43] And they're not even coming from the right direction.

[00:17:47] Here's my point. We had purity culture, you don't sleep around, but all that stuff is blown up in our faces. And people say, I don't care about any of that, because I just wanna know if there's a God who actually loves me, and how can I know him? And see, I think the misstep was this, is that though there was a return to the real Jesus

[00:19:02] and the real gospel, there was still a complete embracing

[00:19:06] within that generation of what was a cultural embrace, first words over Adam in the garden. It's not good that man be alone. And realize that the missing component is that my love for God is defined by how I love and serve the people around me and that there are no enemies because we are all, you always do. And I began to reach out to my dad. But here is what I saw is that the gospel and the community, our community, that we participate in the church, why the church is so necessary, and why so many of abandon the church today is because they thought

[00:21:41] that the gospel was mainly about their relationship with Jesus.

[00:21:44] And I would say, you know, people are like,

[00:21:45] what's your relationship with like with Jesus?

[00:21:46] They're like, it's recorded, I'd like to write that down. Yeah. Um, but I think that this is the, this is the point, is that we've got to come back to a, to an apostolic faith, which is a return to a radical vulnerability that speaks out not just before God,

[00:23:01] but for one another,

[00:23:03] our absolute need, not only for God, but for each other.

[00:23:07] This is why we don't just enough, and sends me text messages.

[00:24:21] It was like, I love ending the day and you're like,

[00:24:24] you didn't walk your stuff.

[00:24:25] Like, shut up.

[00:24:27] You don't know anything. the two-year anniversary of my father's death. He died on February 8th, 22. And here's what happened. 2020 hits. I'm in Florida. I'm speaking for the plows. And I'm flying home.

[00:25:40] And I get a call while I'm in the airport? And so Frank tells me this, so Frank, tell me a little bit about yourself. He's like, I actually was a pastor in the Bay Area. I actually don't know. I haven't talked to him in quite a while. I don't know the details. But he felt called by God to move with his family, his wife

[00:27:00] and his kids, to Alaska and to plant a church.

[00:27:03] And he planted a church and it failed.

[00:27:05] It's a failed church planter.

[00:27:07] And he needed to figure out something in this hospital is that I have found my church, and my church is the church of those that the church doesn't believe are able to save. That this is the community of broken people and it has been the most life-giving job.

[00:28:20] And I was like, Frank, this all makes so much sense

[00:28:23] because my dad had never been to church in his life.

[00:28:27] And I was tripping out that I had been spending time and allowed to drink. And so he would have moments of clarity as he would be nursed back to health. And he would be in the hospital often for a week, sometimes two weeks at a time. And in those, every time he was getting daily church from Frank. So I call my dad. And by the way, I will be forever indebted

[00:29:41] to the church in Saldatna for the way

[00:29:43] that those nurses and doctors,

[00:29:45] they function like the church ought to function don't count actually in the political conversation. Because you just live on state assistance and you've spent your life as a drug dealer. I was like, I don't understand why we've been having a conversation. Like, you're not a Republican, you're not a Democrat. I don't know. You're grizzly Adams, dude. Like, just shut up. And so my dad, I call my dad and I was like, dad,

[00:31:03] I heard you prayed to receive Jesus.

[00:32:05] the God's grace is stickier than your doubt.

[00:32:09] And I said, Jesus isn't interested in you giving him your alcoholism

[00:32:12] or your cigarette habit.

[00:32:15] What he's interested in is you giving him you.

[00:32:19] And that comes with all those things.

[00:32:21] And then it's your responsibility

[00:32:24] to give him the responsibility

[00:32:26] to sort that out as he's he's spent.

[00:33:25] I was like, I'm like, as long as you started with Jesus,

[00:33:30] and he goes, I did, and I go, yeah,

[00:33:34] I think that's probably just fine. And he goes, he goes, good,

[00:33:35] because that's how I think about him, it's a big fella.

[00:33:39] And he just told me, love me, and we hung up.

[00:33:41] So that was, dad gets saved, amazing.

[00:33:45] But he's still in and out give me permission to do that. I don't know about you guys, but that seemed like too much to ask of anyone. To give someone permission to let someone die seemed like a responsibility that was too much.

[00:35:03] You know, you're like,

[00:35:06] I've been through enough of a blizzard. I got on this small plane that's terrifying that you feel like you're going to die the whole time.

[00:36:20] I've landed in Saldatna at 6 in the know I know and I took the phone out and I put the song on and with the nurses one nurse came in this is my father this is classic dad like she came in and she kissed his forehead and she said I'm gonna miss you old-timer I guess

[00:39:02] I'm not gonna get that date you promised I'm like she's like 19 or something I'm I put the song on again. And this time when I put the song on, he opened his eyes. And he panicked. And I stood above my father. And I looked directly into his eyes.

[00:40:20] I was like this it's time, it's time, it's time. And that may seem like a weird thing to say to someone that's dying, but it is a strange mystery how reluctant life is to surrender. And as I touched his face, he became calm and peaceful.

[00:41:42] And literally before the words of the last chorus

[00:42:45] Except that God kept my dad living out,

[00:42:49] barely eking out in existence for the last few years because God is patient.

[00:42:51] And he pursued my father all the way to the grave.

[00:42:56] And I believe that when my dad looked into my eyes,

[00:42:58] what he saw when I saw him become peaceful,

[00:43:02] at first I was like, oh, it's because his son is with him.

[00:44:06] And he became the thief on the cross, the thief that became a sheep in that moment. And he tasted real rest, but it wasn't just him that tasted rest.

[00:44:11] I found rest because it was a holy moment.

[00:44:17] It's a sacred moment that you can't escape.

[00:44:20] And you see, when our lives are lived with Jesus if you refuse to let other people into your lives. You know, women's conferences, it's all talk and love and emotion and just it's overwhelming.

[00:45:42] I've had to do sound for a that song that I wrote for my dad. And then I'm just going to call you guys to just respond to this question. It's the most fundamental question that one can answer. Because if the goal of Christianity is not arriving but knowing, I just simply ask you

[00:47:03] the question that Jesus asked Philip, if you will, because we are, every day is the question arises in our hearts.

[00:48:20] Well, today I return to the father,

[00:48:23] and tomorrow you have to answer that question again.

[00:48:26] And I don't care pray for you guys, okay? Awkward transition. All right. I'm glad I'm not having to move that giant pulpit right now. That would be awkward. Some days I just fall apart So many worries haunt this heart Sometimes I feel I'm losing ground Forgive it wrong, still hunt me down And sometimes I can drain a room of joy Sometimes I can't hear you through the noise

[00:52:24] And oh Forgive me for the sound of love that hides. Forgive me I see you, I'm always by of faith today and I just want to just begin before we even bow heads

[00:55:04] because I believe that stepping are moments where we just have to take a stand. We have to be willing, as Teddy Roosevelt called it, to be the man in the arena, to be willing to fail courageously. The willingness to allow people to see our brokenness, our frailty, our deep need to

[00:56:21] know that we're loved.

[00:56:22] And you're not alone in this, and you're no different than me.

[00:57:40] We are all broken men who need to know that we are loved on these men, that they would receive into the depths of their being, that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. Nothing. Lord, let us not refuse something that cannot be stopped.

[00:59:01] And so I pray that they would first of all

[00:59:02] know that they are loved, deeply loved, that have felt like they've walked with you their whole lives. I pray they will experience you in the power of your spirit in a new way. And Lord, your word says that whoever confesses with their lips that Jesus is Lord and believes in their heart that God raised them for the dead shall be saved. And so we say together as men in this room,

[01:00:20] Jesus, you are Lord.

[01:00:22] Say with me, Jesus is Lord.

[01:00:25] Jesus is Lord.