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What is up? Littleton campus. Can we keep it going? For all of our Denver based locations joining us tonight, Arvada, Park Meadows, Lakewood Online Campus, Austin, Texas, Brussels, Belgium, and our favorite campuses at our correctional facilities. Welcome to Red Rocks Church. How you feel? Come on. So excited. And before I head into the scripture that I want to read for tonight, I just want to honor our pastors, Sean and Jill. It's fun. I've been working here for about seven years and not everybody can say this about the place that they work, but the more that I get to know them and the longer I'm here, the more I respect them and the more I love them and the more that I see their integrity and their character. And so if you want to know if what you see is real, it's real. The authenticity that sets all of us free to be exactly who God made us to be. It's no small thing. And it's come with sacrifice, endurance and obedience. And so can we give it up for our senior pastors? So incredible. And you can be seated at Ya. I have this really bad habit where I get so excited. You're like, oh, she gets excited. Yes, I do. And I forget to seat them. And so I've had young adults standing for like 30 minutes before. And I'm like, you're young, but I know not all of you are. No, I'm just kidding. So I sit you right up top. But I'm just, I'm gonna read the scripture that I wanna talk about tonight. I am the young adult pastor here. And if you are in your 20s or you know somebody in your 20s, please, please, please come to young adults. They say that it's the loneliest generation. And you'll hear all the statistics and the things on the news and then you'll come to a young adult service and you'll see 5 to 600 young adults praising Jesus together. There is nothing like it. And so come on out. I'd love to invite you. This scripture that I'm gonna read tonight is for us as the church. Ryan said it before, the church is not a building, it is a people. And so you, congratulations for those who the Holy Spirit is in you. And now you. You, your life, your story, your gifts, your personality, all of it. You are the church. Yes, the church comes to a building to gather, but you, you are the church. And so I'm gonna read out of Matthew and then out of Acts. Now, in Matthew and Acts, it's kind of an overlapping story. Jesus dies. He says he's going to die. And everyone's like, is he really going to die and be resurrected? And then he calls the shot, and then he does it. He dies. And then he raises from the dead. And if you don't know the story, here it is. And then after he's raised from the dead, he goes and he finds the disciples that had been following him for the past three years of his ministry. He goes and finds them, and there's a lot of different stories about how he interacts with them. And he goes through walls and he finds some on the road. And if you read your Bible, there's a lot of different interactions there. But the last thing that Jesus says, final words before he ascends into the clouds. I almost like to think of it like an Avengers movie. It's so epic. It's so epic. And Jesus had just done the thing that no one has ever done and no one will ever do. He'd conquered death. And then he gives his last words, and don't you want to know what they are? And he says them in Matthew 28. And then he says a different version of them again in Acts 1. In Matthew 28, 18, 20, in the NIV, Jesus says this. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And then there's such good news, and surely I am with you always until the very end of the age. Now in Acts 1:8, he promises them his presence in the person of the Holy Spirit. He says this. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. And thus begins the early church. In Acts, the early church, where every single thing was set against them succeeding. Yet against all odds, Jesus grants his power, his authority, and his presence to the early church. And look at today. We are still here gathering. We are still here, the church. And so it's important for me that when you hear Jesus speak this commission and this promise of power and presence and authority in the name of Jesus, it's so important for me that you take these final words personally. It's so important that you take them personally and that you make them your responsibility. And so I need you to hear these words for you tonight. And I'm gonna pray. God, I thank you. I thank you that you didn't just leave and not give us your presence. I thank you that because of what you did, there is power in your name. I thank you that you are a God that keeps your promises. And for any of us that might be doubting your power, we can look no further than the existence and the growth of the church at large right now. We love you and all of Red Rock's church said amen. All right, so you hear the Great Commission, you hear Acts 1:8, and you're like, yes, like, I'm gonna run through a wall like the Kool Aid Man. Like, I'm pumped up. And sometimes I'll go and I'll read the Great Commission and I'll picture it, and it's almost like this locker room talk. And then you go out to play the game. Anyone watching the World cup, and you're like, on the field and you're like, power, authority, presence. And then you kind of look at your life and you wonder, why doesn't the actualities of my life and the actuality of following Jesus seem to resonate or look anything like the intensity of his commission? And it feels like there's this expectation versus reality going on here as the church. Like, some of us are like, well, I'd have to. Maybe I have to move to the ends of the earth, or maybe I need to become a full term missionary, or maybe I need to take a vow of poverty or become a monk. Or some of us are like, do I need to go to more extreme measures to be encountering this power or living on mission? And so there's this expectation and then there's this reality of following Jesus. There's the waking up in the morning and you're tired and you have to go to work. There's the waking up in the morning and your kids are crying. Not me, but some of you. There's the work stress, there's the bills that need to get paid. There's the school assignments that need to get turned in. I mean, we have so much going on in our own lives, and yet on top of all of it, go and make disciples. Really? God. But I've got so much of my own things going on. And so this expectation versus reality makes me think of the idea of camping. Do we have any campers out there? How many of you have been camping already this year? Okay, how many of you have said we should go camping and have not camped? Look around Colorado. When I moved to Colorado, I thought camping would be much more a part of my story. And the thing about camping is camping always feels like A really exciting idea, right? Like we're going to be in a tent. We're going to be under the stars. We might even see a bear. We might even see. We might even see wildlife, an owl. I don't know. We're going to hike the 14 or it's not going to be as bad. Thought I was going to be in better shape. We were going to be off roading in the Jeep. Guys. I took all the stuff off my Jeep. Finally, four years ago, I got a Jeep. I was like, I'm going to be in nature. I'm going to be a Colorado. On the drive here, I really regretted that. And it's why my hair looks like a tumbleweed. But what I want to say is this. You're in the midst of the Rocky Mountains. You're in the midst of the most beautiful nature. You know, there's something in you that knows that there is power around us, that there is power in our midst. You drive along the Rocky Mountains, you drive into Evergreen, Colorado, and you are in awe. And there is something in you that is like, gotta get the gear, gotta get the Jeep. I gotta get out there because I want to be in the midst of power. Our family, we are not a camping family. We took one camping trip, and I'll never forget it, to the Kern River. My dad bought all the gear. He had a Eurovan, which, this will make sense later. There was five seats. Two seats faced the three seats. And there's a table with curtains. It's honestly a small house. Don't get why he bought it, but it fit all the kids. And we packed all the camping gear up. We had the desire to be in the midst of nature. We knew that it would change us. We knew it would make our summer worthwhile. And we pile into the Eurovan. We drive eight hours, pick a random spot, and you start to. All of a sudden, as you unpack the gear, you're like, this isn't as cool as I thought it was gonna be. You're setting up your tent, you're like, there's so many poles. And I threw away the directions. Cause I thought it'd be simple. And you pull out your sleeping bag and you're like, should have got a sleeping pad at the time I was a kid, but I'm sure my dad regretted, you know, his neck in the morning. When you're over 30, your neck in the morning, my gosh. You get out there, you begin to regret it. And for us, it was just one horrible thing after the other. Maddie, my sister, we went on paddle boards on the river. She got lost down. The last image I saw was her, like, screaming, crying bloody murder. And I was like, hope she makes it. And then the next moment, we're jumping off a rope swing, which. How cool. My dad's finger got, like, stuck in the rope, broke it, went to the er. I know. We're beginning to run out of food and you're starting to turn on each other. There's nothing that'll make you turn like running out of food. And then to top it all off, on our drive home, the roads are pretty windy. We got our stomachs full of camp food. Maddie finds herself head behind the curtain in the Eurovan. Mind you, we're all facing each other, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, whips that curtain back, projectile vomit onto bare feet. I had $1 left in my pocket, made it to the local convenience store, bought sour cream and onion Pringles and had to share them. But we got back from that camping trip and the resounding theme wasn't, how great was the nature. That was amazing. It changed me. The resounding theme was, we are never doing that again. And we have a garage full of gear. We know the nature's gonna change us, but we are never doing that again. Because somewhere along the way, we realized the power and the encounter was not worth the inconvenience. The power and the encounter was not worth the discomfort. And I wonder, I wonder, as Christians, if we feel such a similar way about living on mission for God. I know that I always. I say this joke where, like, Coloradans that want to go camping but don't end up going to REI and buying more gear. And the REI here is, like, incredible. There's, like, bricks and fire, and you're almost. It's almost like you're doing it. And then there's a Starbucks. You're like, we're definitely not there, but we're equipped and we're commissioned. We have the power. All for evangelizing and living on mission for God. Yet we rarely step into spaces where that power is experienced. REI gets something that the church, I think, has lost. Black Friday. How many of you are Black Friday shoppers? Okay, well, how many were you when it was cool? Okay, cool. You're like, we have Amazon now. So when I was younger and in middle school, my mom took us Black Friday shopping. I had never seen so many grown adults lose themselves over a flat screen tv. But REI is interesting. Rei, a store that is a consumeristic store in capitalist America that honestly should be putting out all the promos and opening its doors early. Closes its doors on Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving. Why? Why does REI close its doors? It begins an opt outside campaign that says that the reason that they close their doors on Friday encourages anybody who would ever shop at REI to opt outside instead and post a photo on Instagram and Hashtag optout. So they said they did this to push back against consumerism and align with the company core value that a life outdoors is a life well lived. REI understood that their identity as a store was they existed to send people outside. Our identity as a church Red Rock Church we exist to make heaven more crowded. How do we do that? We exist not just to make disciples and consume Christian content. We exist to send people outside. Will we take up the identity of the church? The commission of Jesus Christ himself? And will we go not just go and awkwardly share our faith, but we go and live a lifestyle that is missional? Do we exist as a church to be sent or to consume? To look outwardly or to continue to look in the mirror? Tyler Stanton says it like this in the Familiar Stranger. The early church congregations where supernatural ministry was common were made up mostly of illiterate peasants filled with the power of God. They didn't know their Enneagram number or Myers Briggs types. They had no clear strategies for church growth, conferences with renowned speakers or even a completed copy of the New Testament. But they were desperate for the power of God, desperate enough to risk. So they became practitioners. And what they did we study. The early church was not a matter of talk but power. The modern church is a lot of talk, a little power. If you wonder if there is some power or some change or some authority, or maybe there's some boredom in your faith, or you're missing some power in your faith and you're wondering why your faith journey doesn't look like the early church. My question for you is this. This. How often are you brushing shoulders with people who do not know Jesus? And I'm not here to shame you because we live in a world where we are all encouraged to build lives that insulate ourselves from discomfort and inconvenience. It's so easy to build a life that way. And so the title of my message tonight is Opt Outside. And I know that all my Gen Z ers are gonna give me crap for using hashtag cause that's so millennial, apparently. Here's the reason that I think we don't brush shoulders with Christians, because I actually don't think the issue is that we don't wanna love people well or share our faith. I actually just think that we live in a society where we work really hard to reduce the amount of time and spaces where we have opportunities to just engage with people. But the problem that I want to diagnose today is that the Great Commission has become the great insulation. We're building lives around convenience and we're building our schedules around convenience instead of constructing our schedules in our lives around love. Love in which the way Jesus defines it now, the early church did not have this struggle and temptation in the same way that we do. Yes, they could, like, take a certain road that would go an entire town, right? But for us, it's as simple as you could live your entire. I bet we could all live an entire week not leaving our houses at all. You can call in, hey, I need to work from home this week. You can doordash all your meals, Uber eats all your meals. You can build a home gym or honestly look up on YouTube for somebody to lead you through just a body weight only situation. You can be on your phone in line. You can be on your phone honestly, anywhere. Anywhere that maybe would lead to an interaction or a moment with a stranger. We opt for our phones when we have an opportunity to opt for outside. Most of the time we opt for inside. The word insulation is defined as this, a barrier that protects and separates, keeping the inside safe, comfortable, while blocking out outside influence, temperature or noise. I want you to see a photo of what insulation looks like. I worked in construction for a little bit right before I worked at this church. I wanted the carpenter experience. No, I needed to make money. And so you begin building this house and you start with the foundation, which involves rebar and wire, and it's really hard labor. And then you're putting up the framing and the floor joists and the flooring and there's nail guns and it's so intense. And then you put the roof up and it's like, there's shingles and wood and it's like painstaking. Like it's hard labor. And then when it comes to putting in insulation, it's almost laughable because insulation is like fiberglass material that is so light. Like, I pulled a prank on this girl when we were building a house. I was like, carrying it and I was like, acting like it was so heavy, you know. And then she came over and I was like, you know, and I like launched it onto her and she was like, ah. But it was just like one pound. And it's funny because insulation, more than the Wood and more than the roof is the thing that's going to make the temperature of the inside be drastically different from the outside. And insulation is really easy to install. It's really easy to install. And it makes a big difference in separating you from the power of the elements. And so I want that image to sit with you for a sec. Think of the insulations in your own life right now. Think of them all. The ways that you organize your life. Is convenience the driver, or is the commission the driver? Is comfort the driver, or is discomfort so that the power of God can go through you the driver? When Jesus gave the Great Commission, he was not calling us to add the commission to our lives and build around it. He was giving us an entire new way of living. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done. Souls aren't waiting for one day, but we are building heaven now. And he will use his church. And this is why I love the next generation. And this is why I'm giving this message to our church. I think the next generation takes this Great Commission very seriously. And it's funny because I think some people hear the Great Commission and they're like, well, it makes sense that Gen Z takes this seriously because they have so much time on their hands, right? And it makes sense that they invite people to church because they don't have bills to pay, right? And it makes sense that Gen Z takes this serious because when you're younger in your faith, you're more passionate. And in my head I'm like, the mature believer should take this the most serious. And we have this event every year with young adults and with youth called one event. And every single year we have a week before the event where we look at our rooms and we give a message that says, you need to invite somebody to church. Because the church was called to be sent out, not just to consume in. And every single time, the attendance at the event the next week is the doubled. And I have students and young adults running up to me to introduce me to the person that they've already been loving on. And so the invite wasn't some weird thing, but it was somebody that was already encountering the love of Jesus. And then they got an invite. And you see salvations across the board like crazy at those events. And I think to myself, at this last one event in March, why not our whole church? I think sometimes, and this is what I've seen, we've relegated the responsibility of evangelism onto the younger generations. We've given them the responsibility and the mantle. And what I think what we need to do instead is learn from their example. Because passion does not have an age. Passion and intensity, living radically for Jesus does not have an age. And the call to take the Great Commission and go is a way of looking at your current life, not a ticket on a plane to a different country. Let's take responsibility as the whole church. Could you imagine if we were, yes, focused on making heaven more crowded, but if also we were on mission so that Denver would become crowded with Christians? Imagine church. And I'm passionate about this because these generations convict me. I get comfortable. I get so comfortable. And so I am bringing the conviction I get serving every week at YA to you because I believe it's our identity as the local church. So we're gonna dive in to opt outside the heart, the 99. I think it's really important before I ask you to change some parts of your lifestyle, it's important for us to talk about changing our hearts or at least remembering the heart of the shepherd. And so Jesus doesn't actually he gives the Great Commission. But before that, earlier in Matthew, he gives this parable. He gives a parable that dives into the heart of why God wants us to be on the lookout for the lost. And so the parable in Matthew 18:12, 14 in the NASB reads like this. Jesus gathers around his disciples and he says, what do you think? If any man has 100 sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the 99 on the mountains and go and search for the one that is lost? And if he turns out that he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the 99 that have not gone astray. So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven for one of these little ones to perish. I think sometimes we are really concerned and consumed with what the will of God is for our life, and we should be. But I think it's interesting, at the end of this parable, Jesus says, it is not the will of our Father in heaven that one should perish. In a different gospel. In John 17, Jesus is. He has this prayer, it's called the high priestly prayer, and it's a recorded prayer of Jesus. And how cool that we get access to Jesus, like, final prayer to God before he takes the cross. And in this prayer, guess what he's praying about? He's praying about the little ones. He's praying for the lost ones. And he actually, in John 17, I didn't put it on the screen because I didn't know if I would go there. But he defines eternal life as knowing God. And his prayer is that all would come to a find eternal life. What is eternal life? Knowing God, knowing their creator. And so we see that God's will is not that one should perish and that all would come to know God. It's so important for you to understand that the creator of the universe has a will that none would perish. And it's interesting that he talks about the sheep in terms of lost and astray. I think that sometimes we are less charitable towards those who do not know Jesus than Jesus is that we are more self righteous and more judgmental. Or we assume that maybe that they should be getting to church or making the right choices and that it's kind of all on them if things aren't going like we are so much less charitable than God is. But God doesn't use the word evil here. He uses the word lost. He uses the word astray. I don't know if you have this picture of like a kid at a playground who's playing and then all of a sudden they can't see their adult and the look on their face is utter panic and terror. The person that was supposed to look out for them, the person that had them, they don't know where they are. And would you imagine the lost who don't know the Father and don't know that they have a purpose? Imagine the lost navigating a space where there are stumbling blocks around every corner. And there's a reason Jesus uses sheep here because sheep were prey number one. Wolves were always after them. And let's not make the mistake in thinking that Denver in all of its beauty is not spiritually desolate. In some ways there is darkness still in this city. Yes, the light overcomes the darkness and the darkness has not understood it. But there are wolves and stumbling blocks and the spiritual landscape. It is not easy. It is not easy to not feel lost spiritually. In Matthew 9:36, Jesus makes it personal. It says when he saw the crowds he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. And the word compassion here in the Greek is sploc, nid, whoop, splock, nizomai. I pronounced it in my notes and I still messed it up. Compassion is a deep, visceral, gut level emotion felt in the innermost being that moves us towards action on the behalf of others. Compassion moves us to action, otherwise it's sympathy. Jesus has compassion for the lost ones. Do you view the Lost ones the way that he does as the 99 who are endeavoring to follow the Shepherd. Do you have the same heart for the lost ones? This is his will for you. And I need you to not forget that you were once lost. Remember. There's going to be three points that I think is important for you to re. Remember the heart of the 99, which if you call yourself a Christian, you are the 99 1. Remember where he found you. Remember where he found you. If you could close your eyes right now, across the room. Remember where God found you. What were you struggling with? What did your home situation look like? What was the shame narrative that you were dealing with? What were the chains that were wrapped around you that made you feel not good enough or not valuable or not lovable? What were the decisions you made to get you there? Or even what were the decisions that other people made and the collateral damage of sin that affected you? Where were you when he found you? Because he felt compassion and he saw you and his eyes were on you and you did not do one thing to earn his gaze, his favor, or his grace. Where did he find you? The second one is this. Consider how he saved you. Consider how he saved you. That even our best works are like filthy rags compared to the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It's all grace. It's all grace. And the last one is this. As you remember that you were the lost one, first move where he leads you. This will move you from self righteousness to compassion to a movement outside of yourself every single time. I was going to the gym the other day and God convicted me as I was writing this message and I was like, you know what? I'm opting outside. I'm going to the gym. And I felt like I was in a season where I just was like God, kind of insecurely attached to God. God, do you love me? God, is it really enough? God, what are my gifts? God, it's too hard. I felt like I was just complaining and complaining and then I was like, God, would you speak to me about my life today? And it's not wrong to want God to love on you. But I felt like that was all I was doing with God, getting him to reassure me and validate me. And it's so funny because what greater validation and reassurance is somebody dying for you? And I think we keep coming back to it time and time again. And I feel like I felt Jesus look at me and be like, girl, we came here together. Girl, we came here together. And so can we go look for my lost ones. Because I think sometimes we miss being the one because of the attention and the validation and the reassurance. But there's something even more powerful. I'm with Jesus and we've got something to do. I'm with Jesus, I'm at the gym. Where are the lost ones that we would be on mission with the Father. And the question I have for you is don't you wish and don't you pray? How many of you have loved ones that don't know Jesus? Look around me too, and it burdens me. And my greatest prayer is that they would come to know Jesus. And if it's not through me as a pastor even, who's it going to be through? And my greatest prayer is that somewhere in California, somewhere in West Virginia, where some of my loved ones are, that somebody, somebody would be on mission at the gym looking for lost ones. And that somebody would be on mission at the grocery store ready to meet my brother in law, ready to invite him to their table. That somebody would take the Great Commission seriously, live life on mission and invite my loved one, who I don't live near to church, to hear the greatest news. Isn't that your prayer? Can we go first? Denver? Because people across the world are moving here and people in different places are praying that their loved ones here would be met by love and ban. You can come up. So the mindset and the heart of the 99 needs to be in alignment with the heart of the shepherd because it's who we're following. The shepherd is always going after the lost one. And if you want to know where power, authority and real kingdom building is, it's where Jesus is. And do you know where Jesus is? He's out looking for lost people. So if you want the power and you want the authority and you want to be the church, it's time to do the same lest you go astray yourself. The heart and the compassion will always lead you to action. It will always lead you to a shifted lifestyle. Jesus was so intentional in his culture of choosing paths that would brush shoulders with lost people. If you read the Gospels, Jesus is always just on a hike, he's just always on a walk and he's always trying to make decisions that take him to places where there are hurting and marginalized people. And time and time again, Jesus is interruptible. If you read the Gospels, they are riddled with stories of somebody grabbing the hem of his robe, riddled with stories of somebody screaming out his name, someone climbing up a tree like Jesus has placed Himself in the midst of the people. He's a carpenter. He was doing regular, ordinary things. He didn't have a plane ticket to go fly somewhere else to be on mission. This was where his feet were. This is where he would do his mission. And this is where power would go through him into regular, ordinary people just trying to survive. Jesus embodies this lifestyle. And it's funny, because when I was younger, I was like, man, I feel called to missions. I want to go, you know, spread the gospel and the nations. And I took the Great Commission, and I was like, I'll go. And I realized pretty quickly, I was like, I don't know if missionary missions is for me. I flew to Kathmandu, Nepal, with a group of people, and we were like, all right, we're going to be missionaries. We're going to be here for three months. And every morning at 8am we would do prayer and worship for two hours. It's illegal to convert people to Christianity there. So we'd start the morning with prayer, and then we'd ask the Holy Spirit, where should we go? What should we. And then the leader at the time, she was awesome. She just was so new to all of it. She was like, I sense that God's saying, we're gonna go on a walk. And I was like, you sure it's not something more effective? Like what? And we were there day in and day out, and it just felt like we were so ineffective for the kingdom. And I was like, I pictured myself doing more here. Like, I pictured myself helping more people. And. And then. And then she was like, well, Casey, what do you think we should do? And I thought to myself, I'm like, okay, well, the last time I felt like I was really effective for Jesus was when I was playing sports. Because I played sports, and nobody on my team was Christian. And we just went to practice together. And I just loved them as people, and it was just so organic. I just. I just really loved them. It wasn't some shtick. I just loved them. And they needed to know about Jesus. And. And so I was like, let's start an indoor soccer league. And so we started an indoor soccer league. It was every Tuesday night, and people would come, and they'd bring their kids. And soccer is really big across the globe. It's one of the greatest missional tools of all time. And we start the league, and then we realize we're like, well, let's start doing our laundry at the local Laundromat. And then instead of riding the mopeds at the missions, Base. Let's start taking the local bus. And then what we started to realize is that the greatest missional tool that we had in Kathmandu, Nepal, was ordinary living without insulation. The opportunities to love people and talk about Jesus exploded because we weren't standing far off on a big stage looking down. We were doing life with the lost ones and we were just loving them. The adventure isn't a place Red Rocks Church. It's a missional lifestyle. Will you choose to opt outside? Point number one? There's three points for opting outside, and I'd love for you to write them down. I cling to these because it's so easy to become insulated and to make my life's purpose just building an easy, comfortable life. And so these hold me accountable. The first is to relinquish privilege. In Galatians 5:13, it says, you, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge in the flesh. Rather serve one another humbly in love. It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. Make no mistake, but he set you free for a mission and a purpose and an abundant life. It is for freedom he has set you free. How will you use your new freedom? Number two and relinquished privilege will look like you getting a $15 Vasa membership and going once a week. It might look like you using the local laundromat when you have a laundry thing in your house. It really might look like instead of doordashing sprouts, just go to sprouts. It might look like you being in line and just not being on your phone. And maybe it'll just be awkward or maybe you'll talk to somebody. I don't know. But shouldn't we give the Holy Spirit ample opportunity just to see relinquish privilege? And I know our church is already so for this and so maybe this is just a reminder for us. The second integrate into the ordinary. And that's kind of a similar to the first point. The first point is you don't really have to live this way, but man, you could and see what God does and then integrate into the ordinary. Maybe you ride the bus with the light rail. I don't know what it looks like. Maybe you invite your neighbor over over for dinner because everyone has to eat dinner. How ordinary is dinner? God really just wants to use the ordinary things of being human. What ways can you just be ordinary and see how God transfigures it? And the third is embrace inconvenience. As the Gen zers would say, be Open to side quests. They love the idea of a side quest. And I get it. Embrace, inconvenience, reframe. Reframe. Interruptions as divine appointments. It might be an interruption to us, but God had this moment appointed in eternity that you would not be on your phone in a line at Sprouts, and you would strike up a conversation with someone behind you, and maybe it would turn into a church invite or an invitation for dinner, or maybe just a kind moment where they thought, huh, and then they saw your red rocks. Mer, I don't know. But it was a divine appointment. God can transfigure any ordinary moment into a miracle moment. Don't you believe it. This isn't up there, but make room at your table. Make room at your table. Invite someone over, and if it gets weird, you can laugh about it with your family. And if you have a family out here, there is no greater thing that I see when families bring everybody in on this missional living. I met a woman. She was like, yeah, my daughter just went up to someone and, like, encouraged them, because we live missionally. I was just like, it's a family affair. It's not just for the young. Imagine if the church lived this way. Imagine if each one of us lived this way. Say there's a 16,000 people that go to our church, including online. If every single one of them just lived this way for another year, I think we would triple in size. And that's not just because we want to get bigger. We want heaven to be crowded. But I don't just want heaven. I want Denver to be crowded with Christians. And I'm passionate about this because I have been a recipient of people living this way. I remember when I was 16, I was so lost, and I wasn't gonna step into a church building because feelings. I just couldn't do feelings. And I wasn't gonna step into a place where people raised the hands and it was uncomfortable. But I remember feeling so lost in my home, feeling so broken, and. And I was on this soccer team, and one of my teammates, her name was Jessica. We would always sit next to each other on the bus rides, and then we had a pasta feed at her mom's house. And then I met Julie Kennedy. Julie Kennedy, a woman committed to living on mission. And she saw that I was lost. She saw that I was lost, and she took me under her wing. And I found myself at that dinner table at that house almost every other night. And she didn't just let me sit there. She always made extra food, so. So Even if it was last minute and I needed to come over, she's like, of course we have enough. She'd ask me how I was doing and she'd ask if she could pray for me. And she was kind of creating inconvenience in my life, but I was so lost. And she relinquished her privilege. She ingrained herself in the ordinary. She would give me rides home. She was just being the mom of my friend. But I experienced the heart of God through her because instead of inviting. Inviting me to church, she, as the church, came out of the church and introduced me to the heart of God. And so the coolest part is this. When I heard the gospel, you guys, I had already tasted and seen it. I got invited to a gospel event when I was 16 and I heard about a man, Jesus, who relinquished his privilege. He said he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but he humbled himself, taking the form of a servant. He left heaven and came into the form of a baby, embracing the ordinary. And he lived in a small town that nobody ever cared about or heard of. And he became a carpenter. And he lived a faithful life. He relinquished his privilege. He ingrained himself into the ordinary. And then, last but not least, he embraced the inconvenience of the cross. And inconvenience is too small of a word for what the cross was, for the joy set before him. Jesus did each of these things, and then he ended bearing the cross, our sin and shame, so that we could have a relationship with him. I remember when I heard the gospel. After tasting and seeing it, there was only one thing left to do. And it was to fall to my knees and weep that I had met my creator and my Savior. And I've never been the same since. And I want to give a shout out to Doug and Sandy. They're two of my two, like, adopted parents. For me out here, so many of us need to get the heart of an adoption, that we are adoptive, that we bring people in the 99 walk around with Jesus ready to adopt the 1. Make room at your table and you guys can stand. Jesus lived this way to find you. And I believe it is your mandate, your divine purpose as the church to live this way so people can experience the hope of the glory. They could experience Jesus through you and the way you decide to live your life. If you would close your eyes. I just have a couple questions. Will we opt outside? Red Rocks Church number one. I think some of us in this room need to just sit in the heart part of it. The heart of the 99 and just need. They're asking themselves, man, why don't I follow? Feel this heart for the one they need. You need to just sit in a moment where you remember that you were the one and that it was all grace and that God found you. And then there's some people in this room that really are like, you know what? I want to make some lifestyle changes. I want our family to go first. I want us to put ourselves in situations where we might brush shoulders and give the Holy Spirit opportunity for power to move in and through us. Would you raise your hand if you are one of those two camps of people in this room right now? Yeah, I see you. And last but not least, if you're in this room and you don't have a relationship with Jesus, but you've tasted and you've seen because you're in this room for a reason, there was something in you. There was something in you that brought you into this space where you wanted to hear about, maybe there is a God and maybe this isn't an accident. And if you want to take that step and you realize that Jesus eyes are on you, you want to take a step to follow Jesus for the first time and begin this new life of thy kingdom come, Thy will be done. Would you slip up your hand? Yeah, I see you. I see you. See hands across. Yes. I'm gonna pray. Let's go into worship and let God move Jesus. I thank you for what you're doing across the room. Lord Jesus, I pray that you would continue to use this house as an instrument to build your kingdom. Lord Jesus, we accept the weight and the mandate of the Great Commission. It is not a suggestion, it is a commission. Lord, we want to live a missional life and we want the adventure, the adventure of living in the midst of your power and your glory until you return one day. We love you, God. In Jesus name, Amen. Let's worship.